The Women Who Run Hollywood

Early Directors on Directing

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

Alone in the World

Idle Wives

The Eye of God

Hop - The Devil's Brew

Scandal

Sunshine Molly

False Colors

Lost by a Hair

The Pursuit of Hate

The Spider and Her Web

The Merchant of Venice

The Jew's Christmas

How Men Propose

Suspense.

The Rosary

The Picture of Dorian Gray

A Japanese Idyll

Eyes That See Not

Fine Feathers

The Price

Lost Illusions

Sherlock Holmes, Jr.

Fate

On the Brink

The Twins

From Death to Life

A Heroine of '76

White Heat

The Angel of Broadway

Topsy and Eva

Sensation Seekers

The Marriage Clause

A Chapter in Her Life

What Do Men Want?

The Blot

Too Wise Wives

What's Worth While?

To Please One Woman

Forbidden

Home

Mary Regan

A Midnight Romance

When a Girl Loves

Borrowed Clothes

For Husbands Only

The Doctor and the Woman

Tarzan of the Apes

The Price of a Good Time

Even as You and I

The Mysterious Mrs. M

The People vs. John Doe

Wanted- A Home

Saving the Family Name

Shoes

Where Are My Children?

John Needham's Double

The Flirt

The Dumb Girl of Portici

Discontent

Jewel

A Cigarette - That's All

Betty in Search of a Thrill

Captain Courtesy

Hypocrites

It's No Laughing Matter

The Troubadour's Triumph

Florence Lois Weber (June 13, 1879 – November 13, 1939) was an American silent film director, screenwriter, producer and actress. She is identified in some historical references as among "the most important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films".
Film historian Anthony Slide has also asserted, "Along with D. W. Griffith, Weber was the American cinema's first genuine auteur, a filmmaker involved in all aspects of production and one who utilized the motion picture to put across her own ideas and philosophies".
Weber produced a body of work which has been compared to Griffith's in both quantity and quality and brought to the screen her concerns for humanity and social justice in an estimated 200 to 400 films, of which as few as twenty have been preserved.

She has been credited by IMDb with directing 135 films, writing 114, and acting in 100.
Weber was "one of the first directors to come to the attention of the censors in Hollywood's early years".
Weber has been credited with pioneering the use of the split screen technique to show simultaneous action in her 1913 film Suspense.
In collaboration with her first husband, Phillips Smalley, in 1913 Weber was "one of the first directors to experiment with sound", making the first sound films in the United States.

She was also the first American woman to direct a full-length feature film when she and Smalley directed The Merchant of Venice in 1914,
and in 1917 the first American woman director to own her own film studio.
During the war years, Weber "achieved tremendous success by combining a canny commercial sense with a rare vision of cinema as a moral tool". At her zenith, "few men, before or since, have retained such absolute control over the films they have directed—and certainly no women directors have achieved the all-embracing, powerful status once held by Lois Weber".
By 1920, Weber was considered the "premier woman director of the screen and author and producer of the biggest money making features in the history of the film business".
Among Weber's notable films are: the controversial Hypocrites, which featured the first non-pornography full-frontal female nude scene, in 1915; the 1916 film Where Are My Children?, which discussed abortion and birth control and was added to the National Film Registry in 1993; her adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes novel for the very first Tarzan of the Apes film, in 1918; The Blot (1921) is also generally considered one of her finest works.
Weber is credited with discovering, mentoring, or making stars of several women actors, including Mary MacLaren,
Mildred Harris, Claire Windsor,
Esther Ralston,
Billie Dove,
Ella Hall, Cleo Ridgely,
and Anita Stewart,
and with discovering and inspiring screenwriter Frances Marion. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Weber was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960.

Lois Weber