Frances Hubbard Flaherty was married to acclaimed documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty from 1914 until his death in 1951.
Background
Frances Johnson Hubbard was born in Bonn, Germany into "a household of erudition, gentility, and privilege," the daughter of Lucius L. Hubbard (1849-1933), who was studying mineralogy at the University of Bonn, and his wife Frances (1852-1927). She met Robert Flaherty in 1903 in Painesdale, Michigan, where he was employed by her father. The two fell in love, but Flaherty, then "a lumberjack-handyman.
Of no means and few expectations," was dismissed by her father, after which Frances had a nervous breakdown and was treated at a sanatorium in Dansville, New York, while Flaherty went to British Columbia.
Career
Frances visited him there during the summer of 1908, but the two quarreled, and Frances broke their engagement and went back East. Coming back for a visit to my own country last July, I found myself caught by the war, and doubly caught in the toils of an old romance. Because an innate sense for the preservation of his own genius has saved him from all educational institutions or instruction of any kind.
2.
Because that genius is for (a) exploration, (Profession: Exploration and Mining), and (b) music and the arts, (Avocations: playing the violin and portrait photography). She appeared in a feature-length documentary on her and her husband"s film work Hidden and Seeking (1971) directed by Peter Werner. She died on June 22, 1972, in Dummerston, Vermont.