[2] The federal census of 1900 documents that seven-year-old Harriet, her younger sister Armina (Mina), and their parents were still residing that year in Columbus, where Washington supported the family by working as a grocery clerk.

[c] When and where she was introduced to performing in theatre remains uncertain; but by 1906, at the age of 13, the future film star was already acting in local stage productions such as Dora Thorne, East Lynne, and then in New York in Princess of Patches.

[4] Much later, in 1916, the circumstances of Grace Cunard's (Harriet Jeffries') entry into acting are briefly discussed in "Before the Stars Shone", an article in the New York-based trade monthly Picture Play Magazine.

[5] That article by staff writer Al Ray informs his readers, "Grace Cunard...when very young, begged for a stage life until her mother took her to a manager who gave her the title part in 'Dora Thorne.'"

[8] According to Cunard, after one of her "stock engagements" a friend one evening at dinner dared her to try acting in "'canned drama'", a slang term used in the theatre community to describe motion pictures.

[11] At Universal she continued throughout 1913 to co-star and collaborate with Ford in other two-reel shorts like The Black Masks, From Dawn Till Dark, The White Vaquero, The Belle of Yorktown, From Rail Splitter to President, and others.

[12][13][14] The two were increasingly being referred to in trade publications and newspapers as the production team of "Ford-Cunard", with Francis being credited consistently for directing and both of them being praised as "unusually promising screen artists".

Promoted as a "photoplay" about an evil woman, a "wrecker of men's hearts and reputations", She Wolf circulated throughout the country and by May 1914 finally reached Phoenix, Arizona.

There the state's leading newspaper, The Arizona Republican, announced, "One of the most interesting and thrilling moving pictures ever shown at the Regale theater, is that scheduled for today.

[16] The financial success of Lucille Love inspired the Ford-Cunard partnership to release between their ongoing shorts three more serials for Universal over the next two years: the 22-episode The Broken Coin (1915), the 15-episode The Adventures of Peg o' the Ring (1916), and the 16-episode The Purple Mask (1916-1917).

While it is now well documented that a significant number of the "pioneers" in early American filmmaking were women, it was still not common by the 1910s for a young actress with an eighth-grade education to write, perform in, direct, and edit films to the extent Cunard did, often doing all those duties on a single project.

Her entry in the 2005 edition of The Encyclopedia of Early Cinema credits her with starring in over 100 silent films, writing screenplays or treatments for 44 of those releases, and directing at least eight of them on her own and more in concert with Ford.

[22]A year after the preceding interview with Cunard, the fan magazine Photoplay published a feature article written by William M. Henry about the "king and queen of movie melodrama".

She starred in Hell's Crater, an elaborate five-reel Western written and directed by W. B. Pearson and filmed on location in Death Valley National Park.

She only appears as a landlady in one of its 13 episodes, but her presence in that production was deemed important enough by Universal to include her name in a third-tier bold credit on the serial's theater posters.

[28] Shortly after the release of that film, Universal underwent a change in leadership and administrative restructuring, which resulted in the studio discontinuing its program of serials and low-budget features.