Eclair's debut vehicle and her first star turn. Titanic disaster and first film based on it Dorothy Gibson's most famous screen role was that of herself in Saved from the Titanic (1912), based on her experiences in the legendary disaster. Saved From the Titanic, released a month after the sinking, was the first of many films about the event. The Titanic is the best known aspect of Dorothy's life. After a six-week vacation in Italy with her mother, she was returning on the Titanic to make a new series of pictures for Eclair at Fort Lee. The women had been playing bridge with friends in the lounge on the night of the ship's fatal collision with the iceberg. With two of their game partners they escaped in Lifeboat #7, the first lifeboat launched. After arriving in New York on the rescue ship Carpathia, Dorothy was persuaded by her manager to appear in a film based on the sinking. She not only starred in the one-reel drama but also wrote the screenplay. She even appeared in the same clothing she had worn aboard the Titanic that night—a white silk evening dress topped with a cardigan and polo coat. Although Saved From the Titanic was a tremendous success in America, Britain, and France, the only known prints were destroyed in a 1914 fire at the Eclair Studios in New Jersey. The loss of the motion picture is considered by film historians to be one of the greatest of the silent era. Dorothy Gibson's other accomplishments in early cinema included starring in one of the first feature films made in the United States (Hands Across the Sea, 1911), co-starring in the first American-produced serial or chapter play (The Revenge of the Silk Masks, 1912), and making one of the first-ever public appearances by a movie personality (January 1912). With contemporary Mary Pickford, Dorothy was the highest paid movie actress in the world at the time of her premature retirement in May 1912. In a brief but eventful cinematic career, she appeared in an estimated 22 Eclair films and in an unspecified number while at Lubin and IMP studios. Dorothy left movies to pursue a choral career, her most notable appearance in that venue being at the Metropolitan Opera House in Madame Sans-Gene (1915). Personal life In 1911, Dorothy Gibson began a six-year love affair with married movie tycoon Jules Brulatour, head of distribution