On a February morning in 1910, silent film actress Florence Lawrence awoke to discover she was dead—according to the newspapers, anyhow. “I…was startled to see several likenesses of myself staring me in the face,” Lawrence wrote in a 1914 article for Photoplay “topped by a flamboyant headline announcing my tragic end beneath the wheels of a speeding motor car.” Lawrence’s “death” was one of the earliest publicity stunts in Hollywood history. Just as Independent Motion Picture Company (the studio Lawrence as contracted to) hoped it would, the story spread quickly. Fans mourned. If you hadn’t known who the living actress was in life, you knew her now that she was dead. Then, just as abruptly as she’d died in the public’s eye, Lawrence resurrected. IMP announced not just that their starlet was alive, but that the entire story had been a rumor planted by rival studios. For what reason?…