Chapter II: Part 2

It was a somewhat inglorious attitude for any heroine, and Fanny was not slow to realise it. Sitting there in her soaked ermine coat with her plumed hat all awry, she relieved her feelings in a manner highly satisfactory both to herself and to those about her.

“At last,” commented one of her fellow actors, hearing this outburst of indignation, “we have seen it--the lake of fire and brimstone.”

But it was only a moment after this that the victim was laughing quite as heartily as the spectators. Indeed, among the various tempers which I have looked over in my career as producer, Fanny Ward’s variety comes nearest to the ideal recognised as “lovable.” Not only is her anger short-lived, but it is accompanied by such warmth of heart and generosity of spirit and it is followed so swiftly by her infectious laugh that one never remembers her stormy moods except with an affectionate smile.

Certainly her residence in Hollywood did much to dispel the horror which the mere mention of California evoked in the minds of many screen performers of that day. Into that former community with its few shops and its unpretentious homes Fanny moved with a suggestion of Eastern pomp. Having been married to a wealthy man and being therefore independent of her salary, she took the largest house in Hollywood and filled it with a fine blend of gold plate, servants, and bric-à-brac.

This home became the rendezvous of the picture-making colony. If you entered it on Sunday afternoon you found that forty-nine people had preceded you. No hostess could have been more delightful and gracious.

Whatever may be later sources of inspiration in motion-picture festivities those at Fanny Ward’s did not wander far from childhood’s happy hour. Once, I remember, a donkey-party was tendered. On this occasion Eva Tanguay did everything she could to sustain a famous self-characterisation. She did a bit of comedy work for which this nonsensical game offers such wide scope, convulsing us all with the innocent blundering she so well knows how to simulate.

There was one personal prejudice of Fanny’s which is recalled with amusement by all those who used to be invited to those parties. No matter what she served her guests at dinner--lobster, or quail, or turkey--she herself always ate frankfurters. Furthermore, she liked a mob scene of these “hot dogs,” and I can see her now as she sat before one of her famous gold platters heaped high with the incongruous fare.

Every other type of refreshment at the Ward home sprang from an equally liberal source. Witness to this fact is supplied by a dinner given by Fanny just previous to a discussion arranged by the Lasky Company, the Famous Players, and the Triangle Company with a view toward a merger of these organisations. A representative of one of the two rival companies sat beside me while a relentless hospitality was being waged. At last he turned to me pleadingly.

“For Heaven’s sake,” he whispered, “I want a clear head for our talk. Won’t you tell that butler to stop filling my glass?”

“Butler!” I whispered back, almost congealed with horror. “Sh! That’s Miss Ward’s husband.”

This husband, by the way, was Jack Deane, her leading man, whom she married after coming to Hollywood.

Fanny’s expenditures began at home, but they did not stay there. She made the same opulent gesture in the studio. Thus I remember that when Percy Hilburn, the cameraman who used to film her, threatened to leave us because we would not raise his salary from one hundred to two hundred a week, the actress made up the extra amount out of her own purse.

“What,” she exclaimed, “have Percy leave the place while I am here! A man that can make you look as beautiful as he does me!”

There was, of course, a great deal in what she said. For an expert cameraman can be as flattering as a pink sunshade. However, Fanny was dependent upon his ministrations.

Her sustained ability to look young was especially definite in “Heart’s Ease,” a Bret Harte story in which she played a seventeen-year-old part. As Fanny’s own daughter was at the time just about this same age, newspapers everywhere saw the opportunity for much good-natured fun, and it was after such far-flung propaganda that her close friend Nora Bayes greeted her with a sally I have never forgotten.

The famous comédienne just mentioned was opening up on a certain night in the Orpheum Theatre at Los Angeles. Fanny gave a large dinner that night, including Charlie Chaplin, Marie Doro, and De Wolf Hopper, and after the dinner she asked me if I would not drive into Los Angeles with her to Nora’s opening. I did so, and before the comédienne’s appearance Fanny took me back of the scenes. Nora came down the stairs to greet us and when she caught sight of her friend she cried, “Why, Fanny Ward, I expected to find you with a rattle in your hand!”

For several years Fanny’s screen popularity continued. Then quite gradually she began to go under an eclipse. Why was it? Perhaps she may not have forgotten the proper dramatic mediums. More probably the public failed in its former response to her type of acting. Be that as it may, this decline in popularity--so tragically familiar in the motion-picture world--left Fanny behind us, a pleasant memory. However, the Lasky Company had always prided itself on fidelity to contract, and we did not depart from this standard in our dealings with Miss Ward. It was she who finally severed our business relations.

I have dwelt upon the career of Fanny Ward at this length, not only because hers is one of the vivid and lovable personalities in the screen world, but because the social atmosphere which she created forms a cherished background for the recollections of many a screen star. To-day if you find yourself in a crowd where Mae Murray, Tommy Meighan, Mabel Normand, and other famous stars are gathered together, you are sure to hear, “Oh, do you remember that evening at Fanny’s when she did so and so?”

_Chapter Five_

MARGUERITE CLARK MISSES FIRE AND EDNA GOODRICH DOESN’T IGNITE AT ALL

Meanwhile, of course, I had been negotiating with various other stars. Among this number was Marguerite Clark. Miss Clark, you remember, had stirred the public deeply by her beautiful performance in “Prunella,” and this success of the speaking stage resulted in a competition between Mr. Zukor and ourselves for her services on the screen. Our final compromise indicates how ably we lived up to the friendly-enemy ideal of conduct.

“See here,” called Mr. Zukor over the phone, “I hear you’re negotiating with Marguerite Clark. Now I want to tell you something. I’m going to get her, no matter what I have to pay. So you’ll do me a favor if you don’t bid me up any higher.”

I agreed to withdraw, but upon one condition only. The Lasky Company had just secured the rights to Harold McGrath’s “The Goose Girl,” and we had been thinking for some time that Marguerite would be ideal for the part. My final understanding with my competitor accordingly was that he should lend us the coveted star for this single picture. In this arrangement, however, we reckoned without Marguerite herself. “What, Marguerite go all the way out to California!” exclaimed the star’s sister when I called at the Clark apartment that first evening.

An Astor or a Vanderbilt ordered to go out and hoe potatoes, a Russian nobleman sentenced to Siberia--neither of these could have expressed more profound emotion. Nor was the prejudice of Miss Clark’s sister an isolated one. I quote this exclamation, indeed, as significant of an almost universal obstacle I encountered in those early days. Stars did not want to leave New York for California.

I soon suspected that in Marguerite’s case the prejudice was a more deep-seated one than could be explained by climate or landscape. The very morning after she agreed to go out to the Lasky studios a young man in the employ of Mr. Zukor came to my office. His name was Harold Lockwood and he will be remembered for his work in some of Mary Pickford’s earlier stories, and later as a famous star for the Metro Company.

After a little preliminary clearing of his throat the handsome Harold suggested the purpose of his call. “Ahem,” began he, “I hear you’ve engaged Miss Clark to do a picture for you?”

“Yes, yes, so I have,” retorted I, leafing over a pamphlet.

More pronounced symptoms of nervousness by Harold before he could proceed. “Ahem--well--I just thought--of course you may not be looking for anybody--but----”

We did not take advantage of Harold’s willingness to share Miss Clark’s banishment, but there are numerous parallel situations where we found the pressure more forceful. Sometimes, in fact, we have been obliged to take a constellation in order to secure the services of the one particular star which graced it. Our engagement of Blanche Sweet, of Pauline Frederick, and later experiences with Geraldine Farrar--these episodes to which I am coming presently--reveal the extent to which some emotional preference influences the contract of the feminine star.

Well, Miss Clark did go to California and she made for the Lasky Company its successful play of “The Goose Girl.” The performance was not, however, devoid of friction. From the studio across the continent to my office in New York came constant mutterings of disagreements between Miss Clark and her director, Fred Thompson. Once I wired to De Mille to ask him how the play was coming along, and his answer to the telegram was as follows:

“Don’t know much about the play, but geese and photography both looked great.”

I have mentioned that Marguerite’s sister met me that evening I went up to her apartment. This sister, who was some years older than her celebrated relative, was almost as constant a phenomenon as was Mary Pickford’s mother. Indeed, many feminine luminaries of the screen possess one of these adhesive relatives. There is nearly always a mother or brother or sister or husband standing around back of the screens to see that justice is administered.

There was one time when Mary Pickford’s supremacy was seriously threatened by the success of this other Famous Players’ star. “Is Mary jealous of Marguerite?” I asked Mr. Zukor at this period.

He shook his head. “No,” said he. And then he added swiftly, “But it comes to the surface through Mrs. Pickford and Marguerite’s sister.”

From this remark I gathered that the two doughty supporters of opposing causes used to look at each other about as pleasantly as did the Montagues and Capulets. And if you possess any flair, like Landor, for imaginary conversations, you can easily construct a dialogue between the twain based on their respective claims to the most mail, the most unappeasable demands of exhibitors, the most appreciation from Mr. Zukor.

Yet Mary long outlasted her fair rival. Why was this? Marguerite Clark was beautiful, she was exquisitely graceful, and she brought to the screen a more finished stage technique and a more spacious background than did Miss Pickford. My answer to this question, so often propounded to me, applies not only to Miss Clark, but to all the other actresses who have flashed, meteor-like, across the screen horizon. First of all, she did not have Mary Pickford’s absorbing passion for work. Secondly, she did not possess the other artiste’s capacity for portraying fundamental human emotion. Simple and direct and poignant, Mary goes to the heart much as does a Foster melody. Herein is the real success of a popularity so phenomenally sustained.

Previous to engaging Miss Ward and Miss Clark, the Lasky Company had secured the services of Blanche Sweet. The performance of this actress in Griffith’s “Judith and Bethulia” had lingered in my memory, and almost as soon as we organized I took Lasky to see that film. He was so much impressed that we wired at once to De Mille to negotiate with Miss Sweet, then working under Mr. Griffith in California.

From the first she did not seem satisfied with her new environment. After some days, in fact, she came to me and begged that she be allowed to leave us. She wanted to go back to New York.

Easily the screen’s most beautiful brunette, and whose eyes are known the world over.]

John Bowers, Molly Malone and Will Rogers at the table. Chaplin is serving root beer.]

“But why?” I pressed her.

After some hesitancy she finally confided the reason of her unrest. Marshall Neilan, whom I have mentioned as playing with Mary Pickford, had been unable to find work in Los Angeles and was taking the train back East the very next day. The result of this conversation was that I sent for Mr. Neilan, and so impressed was I by his intelligence that I engaged him as a director at two hundred and fifty dollars a week. His success was marked from the first and I have already indicated his rapid ascent to fortune.

As to Blanche, who eight years later became Mrs. Marshall Neilan, it was not until she began to work under Mr. Neilan’s direction that she justified our expectations of her. I shall never, indeed, forget my disappointment at seeing her first Lasky film.

“What!” thought I. “Can this be the same girl who was so effective in that Griffith picture?”

It was my introduction to a recurrent tragedy in my career as producer. Various times I have been attracted by Griffith successes only to find that they could not thrive in another environment. Just like Trilby when no longer confronted by the hypnotic baton of Svengali, so many of the men and women who have worked under Mr. Griffith can not perform when deprived of his inspiring force.

Meanwhile the Lasky Company had been expanding tremendously. Like an octopus it clutched at all the landscape available in the vicinity of the original livery-stable. New buildings kept going up. New people were being added. So swift was the pace of progress that De Mille’s brother William, whom we had sent out meanwhile as a scenario-writer, frequently voiced his leading plaint. He liked to work by himself in a little building away out in a field, but to save his life he could not move that little building fast enough. “I wake up in the morning after I’ve just staked a fresh claim,” he used to say, “and the doggone studio has caught up with me in the night!”

A tremendous impetus was given to both Mr. Zukor and the Lasky Company by an organisation of the distributers who had been handling our films. About six months after Lasky and I went into business these functionaries decided that in order to make themselves a real force they would have to guarantee to theatrical managers throughout the country a larger number of pictures. Their organization, under the name of the Paramount Pictures Corporation, requisitioned one hundred and four films a year, of which our company agreed to supply thirty-six. As this was just three times the number we had planned to produce, you will see the urgency of growth. It is equally evident why our capitalisation now increased from the original twenty thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

But the domestic market by no means exhausted our outlet. Always I have been penetrated by a sense of international possibilities in the film industry. That this Esperanto of the stage could be communicated to foreign countries--here was the idea which in the early Summer of 1914 sent me speeding to Europe.

I was interested in placing not Lasky products alone, for before my departure Mr. Zukor had asked me if I would not look after his interests also.

Until this time we had engaged in no concentrated drive of the sort. For, although Mr. Zukor had a representative in London, the agency waged only a haphazard, picture-by-picture campaign. Nor was my first important interview pregnant with hope of more systematic sales.

Great Britain had always been active in picture-production and her leading distributer was William Jury, who has since been knighted. Mr. Zukor’s London representative arranged my meeting with this personage, and from almost the minute I began talking to him I saw that Mr. Jury believed that Britannia rules the films as well as the waves. After he had listened to my enthusiastic praise of both Zukor and Lasky products, he told me that no American company could possibly be as great as I said we were going to be. To this I retorted that no one so lacking in confidence in a product could possibly be able to sell it. Having thus clarified our views, Mr. Jury and I parted. Almost immediately afterward I helped finance Mr. J. D. Walker to handle both Famous Players and Lasky Films in Great Britain. Under my contract with him he was to take the output of both studios and to pay us ten thousand dollars advance against sixty-five per cent. gross.

After this my progress was comparatively easy. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark promised to buy all the pictures we made at something in the neighbourhood of three thousand dollars each. I closed a deal with Australia guaranteeing to take our complete output at thirty-five hundred dollars a film; Germany put in the same large order at an even higher rate--four thousand each; Belgium and Switzerland contributed their quota, and although France represented our poorest customer, even she did not withhold her mite.

Is it any wonder that as I rode from Berlin to Paris my head reeled with the magnitude of our success? Could this really be I, the poor boy who a short time before had wandered over these very countries with hardly a sou in his pocket?

Yet mine was no miracle of success. I traveled in Europe day and night. I pitted all my enthusiasm against many citadels of prejudice and scepticism. When, indeed, I finally sailed from Liverpool I was physically prostrated by the long strain of it all.

Even the triumph which I have just chronicled was doomed to only a partial realisation. I could not anticipate, of course, on that Summer day when, riding from Berlin to Paris, I counted up my thousands, that in a few short weeks a bomb would explode in Sarajevo which would change the map and the psychology and the industrial conditions of the whole world. And I certainly could not foresee, therefore, the broken contracts and the difficulty of obtaining ships to fulfil contracts which followed the declaration of war.

While in Europe I was constantly on the lookout for actors, and one of the results of my search was Edna Goodrich. Miss Goodrich had three assets at this time. She was beautiful; she had created a sensation on the London stage, and she had recently joined the famous recessional of wives of the late Nat Goodwin. Eventually Miss Goodrich made a picture for us at five thousand dollars, with the understanding that if it were successful we should have the first option on her second venture.

Too bad for Miss Goodrich! Too bad for the Lasky Company! Almost the minute De Mille started to work with her he wired me, “Goodrich too cold.”

In the film world this is an epitaph. Nor did Miss Goodrich live down her obituary. Time refused to thaw her, and I was then initiated into the profound truth that many an actress whom individuality of voice and beauty of colouring render glowing on the stage are absolutely calcimined by the camera.

However, my interview with Miss Goodrich resulted profitably in another way. While dining with her at the Carlton in London I was introduced to a tall, broad-shouldered, manly-looking chap with a mop of chestnut-brown curls. From the moment that I saw him I was struck with Tommy Meighan’s possibilities for the screen, and when he came to America I wired Lasky to look him over. We engaged him, and Tommy went to California to make his first picture, “The Fighting Hope.”

“Tommy no good”; this was the telephoned verdict which De Mille rendered after this initial performance. I was then in San Francisco, and when I arrived in Los Angeles the defendant got to me before the prosecutor.

“See here,” announced Tommy ruefully, “they say I’m no good around this place, so I guess I’ll clear out. The Universal has made me an offer, anyhow.”

“Do nothing of the sort,” I commanded. “Wait until I see your picture first.”

My view of that picture convinced me that our chief director’s opinion had been conceived too hastily. And the outcome of my intercession was a very distinct gain. A year or so planted this star on terra firma. To-day he is one of the most popular actors of the screen.

All this happened in 1914. The next year was one especially significant in motion-picture circles. Among the events contributing to its impressiveness was that Titanic conception of the silver-sheet, “The Birth of a Nation.” This Griffith picture which, by the way, was the first screen performance where two dollars a seat was asked, might also have been called “The Birth of Numerous Stars.” Mae Marsh, the Gish girls, perhaps a dozen luminaries who have since flashed across the public consciousness, owe their success to parts in the giant canvas.

It was during this year that De Mille and I went to a dinner given to Raymond Hitchcock, at Levy’s Café in Los Angeles. We were half-way through when we were attracted simultaneously by a young man who had just sat down at an adjacent table. One look at the clear-cut face and we exclaimed in unison, “Isn’t he attractive! Wouldn’t he be wonderful in pictures!”

He was wonderful in pictures. For his name was Wallace Reid. The very next day we engaged him at a salary of one hundred dollars a week, and it was not until this first meeting that we discovered he had already worked at pictures under Mr. Griffith’s direction. The untimely death of this gifted and attractive young man, whose future held so much of promise, brought to his profession an irreparable loss.

_Chapter Six_

THE MISCHIEVOUSNESS OF MAE MURRAY

In this same eventful year the Lasky Company engaged another actress whose name is now familiar to the motion-picture population of the world. The Ziegfeld Follies of 1915 contained for the first time a screen episode introduced for the presentation of an auto race. From the moment when I saw Mae Murray romp across this incidental screen I saw her possibilities. When I got in touch with her, however, I discovered that several other producers had been inspired by the same belief.

That our organisation was the lucky competitor was due to a very advantageous connection which the Lasky Company had formed some time previously. The chief concern of both Mr. Zukor and our organisation was to get big stories, big plays, and to this end Mr. Zukor and I engaged in a memorable skirmish over Mr. David Belasco. It is apparent, of course, at first glance why the production of this, the most eminent producer of the spoken drama, should have assumed such importance in our eyes. Both of us felt that if we could only have the screen rights to the Belasco plays we should be placed in an invulnerable position.

In our rival efforts Mr. Zukor had the first advantage, for he had earlier formed a connection with Mr. Daniel Frohman, and through this alliance he was enabled to get into direct touch with Mr. Belasco. I, on the contrary, made all overtures through the great producer’s business manager. In spite of Mr. Zukor’s lead, the result hung in the balance for many days.

At last, just when I was beginning to despair, Mr. Belasco announced that he would see me. How well I remember that day when with beating heart I sat in the producer’s private office awaiting the decision so vital to my organisation! It seemed an eternity that I listened for the opening of a door, and when at last I heard it Mr. Belasco’s entrance was as dramatic as that of a hero in one of his own plays. The majestic head with its mop of white hair sunk a trifle forward, the one hand carried inside of his coat--I can see now this picture of him, as slowly, without a word, he descended the stair to greet me.

After I had gathered together my courage I began to talk to him about De Mille and Lasky and our organisation, and he seemed impressed from the first by my enthusiasm. I think he liked the fact that we were all such young men. Indeed, he said so. And it was this, I am sure, which influenced his decision. He made it that very day, and when I went out of his door my head was swimming with my triumph. Mr. Belasco had promised the Lasky Company the screen rights to all his plays. For these rights, I may mention, we promised him twenty-five thousand dollars advance against fifty per cent. of the profits.

I saw my esteemed but defeated rival at lunch on this very same day, and when I told him the news his face grew white. It was, indeed, a terrific blow. But a reversed decision would have meant even more to me. For such plays as “The Girl of the Golden West” and “Rose of the Rancho” merely helped to offset our leading competitor’s tremendous advantage in the possession of such stars as Mary Pickford and Marguerite Clark.

The promise of the Belasco plays influenced favorably many a screen actor of the time, and it was, in fact, my assurance to Mae Murray that she should play “Sweet Kitty Bellairs” which weighed against more dazzling offers from other studios.

Before Mae departed for California she came to me with trouble clouding that fair young brow. “I can’t do it,” said she.

“Can’t do what?” I inquired apprehensively.

“Why, this contract you’ve made with me; it says that I get one hundred a week and that the company buys my clothes. Now I can’t trust anybody else to pick out what I wear. Clothes are part of my personality and I’d much rather have more salary and have the privilege of buying my own wardrobe.”

I yielded the point and allowed her an extra one hundred a week to cover this expenditure. Incidentally, I may remark that Mae could not have saved many nickels from her allowance. There is a tradition that one evening at the Hollywood Hotel the charming little actress changed her evening wrap four times. I can not verify this legend, but I can say that Mae never changes from bad to worse. She is regarded as one of the most beautifully dressed women of the screen.

The clothes-cloud was dispelled from Mae’s horizon. Unfortunately, however, more severe storms awaited her in California. First of all, she was rent by the commands of a director whose conception of her talents had nothing in common with Mae’s own.

“Be more dignified. Remember that you are a lady, not a hoyden”; this was the spirit if not the substance of guidance.

At some such suggestion Mae would protest angrily. “But I’m a dancer--that’s the reason I was engaged. And now you want to turn me into something different. I tell you I’ll be an utter failure if you go on like this.”

Mae’s anger, was, of course, perfectly justifiable. Her subsequent successes have verified this fact. Without the infectious mad-cap gaiety which she herself appraised so correctly from the first we should never have had George Fitzmaurice’s great success, “On with the Dance,” or “Peacock Alley.”

Miss Murray found another obstacle to overcome during those first days. Fresh from a different medium she knew nothing of the workings of the camera. This knowledge, so important in assuming the pose most beneficial to oneself, was gradually imparted by a young chap in the cast of her play.

“Say,” said he, “that guy’s giving you a raw deal. He’s trying to get his friend on the set right and you can take what’s left of the camera.”

“But what shall I do?” asked she helplessly, “I don’t know how to stand or look.”

“You watch me,” rejoined the good Samaritan. “I’ll put you wise.”

Right then and there he arranged a code by which to defeat the operations of a cameraman who, according to report, did not administer his lens with impartial fervour. If he put his finger to his left cheek it meant, “Turn to the left”; to the right, and the gesture was equally logical. From this point onward the system progressed to all the most minute provisions for securing some of the coveted attention.

How to engross the most of the camera! I regret to say that here on the roof of this ambition has been wrecked many a lofty nature. The public does not realise as it watches the beautiful feminine star look up at the handsome male star over the moonlit stile the warfare that may possibly have occurred as to which should get the more advantageous focussing. Nor does it interpret the moving subtitle, “Promise me you’ll leave me,” which may accompany this scene, in its correct spirit of “Promise me you’ll leave me--a little of the camera.” I have known sweethearts strangely impervious to the higher point of view when it came to this test. And I shall tell presently of a husband who skirmished fiercely with his famous wife on this particular point.

Mae’s case was far from indicative of such unappeasable appetite. Her struggle was only for a just share of the camera. Indeed, she has too much respect for a good story ever to offend by insistence on an individual prominence, which often destroys the story.

She did insist on another director and on claiming my promise of “Sweet Kitty Bellairs.” Both wishes were gratified. But perhaps, in spite of her avowed admiration for the workmanship of Jimmie Young, no director ever really took with her until she met Bobby Leonard.

“Girls, girls,” she cried on the evening of the day after she had first worked under Bobby, “I’ve got a great director at last!”

She was radiant. As she tripped across the lot to her dressing-room her blue eyes danced exactly like those of the little girl who has finally drawn the gold ring at the merry-go-round. Nor did her gratification stop at the studio. For, as all motion-picture fans know, she subsequently married Viking Leonard, and they have been engaged in living happily ever since.

Again I realise that I seem to be piping the honeyed lay of the press-agent. And once more I protest my innocence. Bobby Leonard and Mae Murray have, like Doug and Mary, one of those marriages based on an intense common interest. They are both absorbed in pictures and together they work out direction, business, costuming, and all the minor chores of creating a picture. It is undoubtedly due to this co-operation that Mae’s achievements have broadened so notably in the past few years.

I have told of Mae’s early struggles with objective light-heartedness. She herself recounts them to-day with a full appreciation of their humour. But there is another more vital approach to the subject. You must consider that every picture is tremendously significant to the screen actor involved. If it succeeds, well and good. If it is a “flop” the proportionate damage to the actor’s reputation is infinitely greater. I think I am safe in saying that if even such emphatic successes as Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, or Griffith were to make two or three successive failures they would find the coming back somewhat difficult. In fact, I have often heard Mr. Griffith remark, “I simply can not afford to make a failure.”

In the light of such knowledge, the heartache of Mae’s first weeks on the Lasky lot are instantly apparent. Here she was, fully conscious of what that first picture meant in her career. And here at every step she was met by circumstances pointing to failure. And such heartaches, such beating of wings against barriers of prejudice and misunderstanding and actual hostility--those palpitate through many of the disputes recorded in this volume.

_Chapter Seven_

GERALDINE THE GREAT

In the early Winter of 1915 I went to the stage production of “Maria Rosa.” Who that witnessed the same performance can ever forget the creation of Mr. Lou Tellegen? That Latin lover whose ferocity showed in every silken accent, in every gesture of panther-like, slim body--to-day this lingers with me as among the most telling of dramatic brush-strokes.

How distinctly I remember the first day that the young foreign actor, who, previous to his triumph in “Maria Rosa” had been hailed as “Bernhardt’s beautiful leading man,” came to my office! We were talking about salary when suddenly Tellegen jumped up from his chair and walked over to look at a photograph on the wall.

“Who is that?” he asked, peering at the face in the frame.

“Oh,” answered I, “don’t you know her? That’s Geraldine Farrar.”

“Oh, yes, the famous singer,” he responded, never taking his eyes from the dazzling victorious face. “H’m--very, very beautiful, is she not?” he mused.

I had hoped that he was perhaps permanently swept away from the theme which he had relinquished so abruptly. I had, however, underrated Mr. Tellegen’s powers of recuperation. A moment more and he was standing before me with a light in his eyes very different from that evoked by the abstract consideration of Beauty.

“Let us say a thousand dollars a week,” said he. “Certainly after all my experience I ought to be worth that.”

Mention of Mr. Tellegen brings me logically to one achievement of my life which I always survey with pride. The year and a half that had elapsed since the production of “The Squaw Man” had brought almost incredible improvements in both the manufacture and presentation of photo-plays. The modern system of lighting had replaced our former reliance upon the rays of the sun. More and more we had substituted the carpenter for the scene-painter. As to the motion-picture theatre itself, this of course presented an aspect very different from the peanut-strewn area which in 1913 had suggested my great enterprise.

However, in spite of orchestral accompaniments and high-priced seats, in spite of the growing ascendancy of such screen stars as Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, the motion-pictures were merely popular. They were not fashionable. How to make them so, how to intrigue that shy marginal group known as “the carriage trade”--here was the challenge offered to the producer of 1915.

It was about this time that Morris Gest came to me and said: “I think I’ve about got Geraldine Farrar to the point where she’s willing to go into motion-pictures. What’s more, I believe she’ll come with you instead of with Zukor, for the idea of California is attractive to her, especially if she can go and come in a private car.”

After a smile at this approach to the situation on the part of Miss Farrar I asked him, “But how does the famous prima donna look these days?”

“Wonderful? More beautiful than ever,” retorted Gest.

On the first evening when Lasky and I called at Miss Farrar’s home we found that Gest’s enthusiasm was not misplaced. As she swept into the drawing-room to greet us we both thought we had never in our lives seen any one so beautiful.

It did not take long to arrange matters between us. Miss Farrar agreed to go to California for eight weeks to make three pictures--“Maria Rosa,” “Carmen,” and “Temptation.” For these services she was to receive twenty thousand dollars and, in consideration of the modesty of the sum--she would have realised more for a concert tour of the same length--we agreed to supply her with a special car to and from Los Angeles, together with a furnished house, servants, and food during the period of her stay.

On all such minor points Miss Farrar was immediately reasonable. Only in one subject did she display any vital curiosity.

“Whom are you going to engage for my leading man,” she asked.

“Never mind. It will be somebody that you’ll like,” we assured her.

“But,” she urged, “you know it’s very important that my Don José should be right. Otherwise the performance would be ruined.”

Again we assured her that she was sure to be satisfied with our provision for this part.

“But who is he?” she insisted. “I want to know his name.”

We evaded this request. And we kept on evading it throughout our subsequent interviews. This was not easy, for in every spare moment the prima donna would plead with me, “Why won’t you tell me his name?” It was almost the first question she asked after she stepped from the special train bearing her into California.

So many people have asked me for my first impression of Geraldine Farrar that I should like to interpolate here my response to that frequent inquiry. If you can picture a flowering arbour and then picture the subsequent surprise of finding inside of it a perfectly good dynamo you will have conceived the full force of Miss Farrar’s personality. At the time when I met her she was in her early thirties and that beauty of lucent grey eyes and curving lips--the flowering vigour of look which she doubtless inherited from some ancestress of the Irish seas--was then at its height. Under this screen of physical allure I felt from the very first moment the pulse of a mind restless, eager, alert to every possibility of learning.

Indeed, the figure with which I started falls short of conveying the full effect of Miss Farrar’s presence. Not only does she charge the atmosphere with that mental vitality of hers, she creates the impression always of cutting--cutting straight through any given subject. If I had said, therefore, that the arbour concealed one of those marvellous implements that cut, thrash, and sack the grain, all in a single operation, I should have come nearer the ideal of description.

Miss Farrar is, like Mary Pickford, a captain of industry. She has the same masculine grasp of business, the same masculine approach to work. The difference between them is construed not alone by the immeasurably greater cultural equipment of Miss Farrar but by many temperamental divergences. Whereas Mary Pickford’s manner and voice are always marked by the feminine, almost childlike appeal to which I have referred, the prima donna’s speech has a man’s directness of import. She picks her words for strength, as might a Jack London sea-captain or an Elizabethan soldier. And her utterance of these words reveals the same strange compound of qualities I have noted elsewhere. It is an enunciation both flowering and incisive.

The cantatrice’s entrance into Hollywood was an unprecedented one. The Mayor of Los Angeles was there to welcome her to California. So were five thousand school children. Cowboys in their chaps and sombreros added their customary picturesqueness to the scene. Flowers were everywhere. All Los Angeles reminded you of a festa day in some Italian city. Nowadays we are so accustomed to spectacular personages in the motion-pictures that it is hard to recapture for you the thrill that shook the entire country when Geraldine Farrar, the queen of the Metropolitan Opera House, came to California.

The night following Miss Farrar’s arrival we gave her a dinner at the Hollywood Hotel. This dinner included among its two hundred guests, not only the leading representatives of the screen colony, but a number of distinguished sojourners. Among the latter may be mentioned Mr. John Drew and Miss Blanche Ring.

At this dinner-party Miss Farrar turned to me almost at once with her habitual question. “And now surely,” she pleaded, “you’re going to tell me who is to be my Don José?”

De Mille and I exchanged a haggard glance. Many, many times had we shuddered together over the thought, “What if she doesn’t like him?” Our previous experience with stars had taught us not to minimise that possible calamity.

“Tell me,” repeated our great planet. “Not another minute will I wait!”

I was just about to reply when I looked up. A tall young man had entered the door and was now walking toward us. He was only twenty-three. His evening clothes were by no means faultless, but the face above them was flushed with excitement. The blue eyes shone. I had never seen Wallace Reid look more like the beautiful and romantic young man of the daguerreotype collection.

“There,” I whispered, watching her tensely, “there is your leading man.”

She had already noticed him and as he moved slowly toward us she never took her eyes from his face. At last, just before he reached us, she began slowly nodding her head. “Very good,” she whispered, and the smile with which she said it lingered as she repeated the encomium. “Very, very good.”

I do not need to dwell upon the relief afforded to us by that smile. I venture to suggest, however, that it may have brought corresponding heart’s ease to Wallace himself. For he was then young and inexperienced and I have no doubt that for many days previous he, too, had been quailing before that grim possibility, “What if she doesn’t like me!”

A number of the screen people were inspired with awe of Miss Farrar’s reputation. “I bet anything she’s up-stage,” several of them predicted before meeting her. That evening disarmed all such fears. So simple and friendly, so gay and unaffected, was the Metropolitan star that everybody went away singing her praises. I soon found, indeed, that the ancestry of the Irish seas had dowered her with more than that flowering vigour of look and manner. She has the warmth of personal approach, the ability to get along with folks of all descriptions, that characterise the Irish race.

This element in her character was brought out particularly in the studio. It was not long before everybody there, including “Grips” and “Props”--the local terms by which are designated respectively the electricians and the property men--were calling her “Jerry.” This intimacy of reference was a token of real affection and it was deserved, for she seldom passed the most humble worker in the studio without a smile or a friendly word.

This photograph, it should be said, was taken some time ago.]

Original screen vampire, now retired as the wife of Charles Brabin]

When she arrived in Hollywood she didn’t know, of course, a single thing about making a film. “What,” she exclaimed on her first day, “why, I didn’t realize you had to make a single scene over four times.” This freshness of view-point placed her in a situation ideal for observation of the mental eagerness of which I have spoken. She asked questions of everybody in the studio from De Mille to “Grips.” It was wonderful to see the zest of her application to this new task, to watch that perfect implement of a brain cut and thresh and assort its selected subject.

There is no doubt about it. Geraldine Farrar enjoyed every minute of those first eight weeks spent in the movies. She loved the atmosphere of the motion-pictures. She liked the people in the cast. She told me she thought De Mille was great. I can hardly express what this wide area of satisfaction meant to me after eighteen months that had been instructive chiefly in the hardship of pleasing any star, at any given point.

So eager was Miss Farrar for her film day to begin that she used to arrive at the studio every morning at eight o’clock. She was then all made up for the set, and as this process is so much more exacting than the average woman’s dab of powder and rouge, one knew she had risen not later than six.

“H’m, where’s Mr. de Mille? Where’s everybody?” she used to ask.

Her manner was exactly that of a war-horse sniffing, “Here am I. Where’s the war?”

And when she began to work nothing seemed to tire her. At four o’clock in the afternoon, that hour when the average screen performer begins to wonder if she’ll melt before she takes root or take root before she melts, the great prima donna was as radiant with energy as she was at eight o’clock in the morning. The explanation of this sustained vitality lay deeper than her undoubted physical strength. She herself voiced it one day during her second engagement with the Lasky Company.

She was then making “Joan the Woman.” It was during the most intense heat of the California Summer. During this particular set she wore a suit of armor which must have been about as soothing to her feelings as wrist-warmers to a resident of Bombay. The set, which had been called for one hour, was not actually taken until more than four hours’ later. This wait, so characteristic of a studio day, was rendered more oppressive by the thud of adjacent carpentry work and by experimentation with the glaring electric lights.

While all this was going on a lady of the court of Charles VII. sat with her make-up box on her knee and from time to time dabbed with powder beads of perspiration rising above the surface of grease-paint. This manifestation of warmth was not unprovoked. For the lady wore a velvet dress with heavy trimming of fur and her head was engulfed in one of those gigantic coiffures prescribed for mediæval times. No wonder that as she administered her powder she made sweet moan about the hardships of life on “the lot.”

“People that think this life’s easy,” she muttered at last, “let them try it on a July day--let them wait around for hours all tucked up in these hot-water bottles of clothes. Whew! Say, are they ever going to start shooting?”

“Cut out your grouching,” retorted a more stoical fellow sufferer, “look how Jerry’s taking it.”

“Jerry” presented, as a matter of fact, anything but a wilted appearance. She was talking, now to this person, now to that. Her eyes were sparkling, her white teeth flashed in a frequent smile. Piqued by such revelations of fortitude, the first lady of the court walked over to her.

“Won’t you tell me how you do it, Miss Farrar?” she asked. “Don’t you ever mind anything; the heat or the long waits or anything?”

“Jerry” threw back her head and laughed heartily. “Not a bit of it,” she answered, “I’m too much interested all the time to know what’s happening on the outside of me.”

It was during the production of this same play that some gentlemen of the court of Charles VII. availed themselves of a contemporary solace. A long shot had been taken of the French court and it had been taken, according to custom, four times. None of these occasions had revealed anything wrong and it was only when De Mille “saw the rushes”--the technical term describing a first view of the previous day’s shots--that he discovered an anachronism which would have made Sir Walter Scott’s offenses in this direction seem blameless.

“For Heaven’s sake,” he cried, “look at that! The gentlemen of the fourteenth century are chewing gum!”

Miss Farrar whooped with merriment over this historical discrepancy, and to-day the incident supplies her with a favorite motion-picture story. I may mention casually that this mistake is eloquent with the possibilities of waste involved in a single wrong performance of a single extra performer.

In this case we used up a thousand feet of film and the hundreds of dollars involved in wages, lights, and other expenses on a scene which, of course, had to be entirely remade.

The eminent singing actress often showed back of the screens that impulsive generosity which has endeared her to so many people. Once she did not like the gown worn by a certain extra. Neither did the extra.

Quick as a flash Miss Farrar sent her maid to her residence in Hollywood to obtain a costume from her own personal wardrobe. And when she put this raiment into the extra’s hand it was for keeps. She sometimes lent her fine jewels to people in the cast, and her frequent “small” gifts to those about her were what most of us would call large. Such donations were always performed with a certain splendour of gesture that made one think of a mediæval prince taking off the gold chain around his neck to give to somebody who had chanced to say, “What a beautiful piece of jewelry you are wearing.”

If, indeed, Miss Farrar is a captain of industry, she belongs to that particular branch which flourished in the Florence of the fifteenth century.

While she was making “Maria Rosa” there befell Miss Farrar the great romantic adventure of which the world has heard so much. As a result of my interview with Mr. Lou Tellegen he was engaged by the Lasky Company to go to Hollywood during the Summer of 1915. He was not playing in Miss Farrar’s productions and it was not until after some days spent in California that the two met.

Mr. Fred Kley was responsible for the introduction. Here at this widely known figure of the film world I feel bound to pause for a few words of tribute. Kley, who now occupies an important position in the organization of the Famous Players-Lasky organization, had gone to California with Cecil de Mille. He it was who had selected the original site of the livery-stable, and after the Lasky Company moved there he had attended to a wide variety of details.

He kept books--often on the back of stray envelopes; he hired extra performers; he assembled properties, and when De Mille imported several rattlesnakes for the production of “The Squaw Man” it was he, I believe, who ministered to these pets. I am sure that Briareus with his hundred hands never accomplished more than did honest, faithful, Fred Kley with his limited equipment.

I shall give Mr. Kley’s own account of the introduction, for certainly nothing could be more vivid. “Mr. Tellegen happened to be with me one day,” he recounts, “when Miss Farrar, still in the Spanish costume she had been wearing in ‘Maria Rosa’ walked across the lot. ‘I want to meet Miss Farrar,’ said Mr. Tellegen, ‘Won’t you take me over?’ I did and I’ve never seen anything like it before nor since. It was just as if a spark came from his eyes and was met by one from hers.

“They began speaking in French right away,” adds he, “and of course I couldn’t understand. But, believe me, there’s a whole lot in a tone, and their tones gave them away as much as their eyes did. He walked across the lot with her, then to her dressing-room. And after that you’d see them together all the time just the minute they could get away from a set.”

In the light of this personal experience of Geraldine Farrar, that frequent question of hers “Who is to be my Don José” is invested with a strange, perverse, almost sinister, quality of destiny. It was not the Don José of her own life drama that she met in Lou Tellegen. It was the Toreador. When she came to California her heart, according to rumour, had not been untouched. But if this same rumour is to be credited further, it had never before been subjugated. Like the heroine of the drama and the opera with which she is so brilliantly identified, she had always retained her supremacy in love. Like this same Carmen, she surrendered at last, not to the most loving, but to the most conquering type.

The last memory of the beautiful Farrar’s first visit to Hollywood centers about the station from which pulled out her special train.

Tellegen had, of course, come down to see her off, and as the engine steamed away on its long eastern course the actor could be seen running along the platform beside the car from which his love still clung to his hand. For many yards he raced along and it was only a sudden acceleration of the engine that finally parted those reluctant hands.

A very different leave-taking from the one I shall record when several Summers afterwards Geraldine Farrar again came to Hollywood, this time to make pictures for the Goldwyn studio!

_Chapter Eight_

THE DISCOVERY OF CHARLIE CHAPLIN

While the Lasky Company and the Famous Players organizations were taking their long and often competitive strides forward numerous other motion-picture enterprises had been coming into prominence. Among these was the Fox Company.

Some years ago William Fox bought the story, “A Fool There Was.” For its leading rôle he engaged a very prominent actress. She disappointed him at the last moment, and it was while he was at his wit’s end to know how to replace her that he happened to go one day into his casting department. There were several extras standing around in the hope of picking up a day’s work, and among these Fox’s eye fell upon a dark-eyed girl. He looked at her. He looked again. Finally he said to his casting director, “I wish you’d have some tests made of that girl. It seems to me she’s got possibilities.”