[3][7] By 1914, with the release of the melodramatic romance A Million Bid (1914), in which she played the long-suffering Agnes Belgradin, Stewart was elevated to a veritable screen icon.

[7] Film historian Hugh Neely describes the phenomenon: Soon, Stewart was being promoted as "America's daintiest actress," and her image was featured on sheet music, souvenir plates, silver spoons, and a collection of paper dolls published in Ladies' World Magazine.

[7] This legal contretemps signaled the end of Stewart's six-year tenure at Vitagraph and her recruitment as a business associate and co-producer with aspiring movie mogul Louis B. Mayer in 1917.

"[7] Anxious to move to Hollywood, and promised opportunities to acquire quality directors and film roles, she contractually formed Anita Stewart Productions with Mayer in 1917.

Marshall Neilan, who had directed and starred opposite Mary Pickford in several productions,[10] made two pictures with Stewart: In Old Kentucky and Her Kingdom of Dreams (1919).

[11] Among her other directors at Anita Stewart Productions were Edward José (The Fighting Shepherdess) (1920), Edwin Carewe (Playthings of Destiny) (1921) and John Stahl (Sowing the Wind) (1921).

Stewart championed adapting films that presented socially significant topics, including realistic literary treatments of prostitution (e.g. Theodore Dreiser's sexually provocative Sister Carrie).

Mayer's "moralistic" outlook allowed only for features that would be suitable for family entertainment: "The sort of mature stories that appealed to Anita Stewart were out of the question.

[7] After leaving Cosmopolitan, Stewart began accepting roles offered by Poverty Row studios in order to stay employed.

[7][3] Stewart divorced Rudolph Cameron shortly after retiring from film, and married George Converse, an heir of a United States Steel president and they settled in Beverly Hills, California.

Though the book's dust jacket traded on the author's Hollywood connection, the plot concerned the killing of a stage actor and was set in San Francisco.