Chapter V: Part 5

To grasp the essence of Fairbanks it seems to me that you must think of “Sentimental Tommy.” As he works out his gigantic historical films he is exactly like Barrie’s boy hero playing with _Corp_ and _Shadrach_ in the den. There is no doubt about it. He thoroughly believes that he is in truth _Robin Hood_ or _D’Artagnan_. To him, therefore, work is one long engrossing game of make-believe; and if “Sentimental Tommy’s” “methinks”--that one magical utterance which changed the entire atmosphere from the literal to the romantic--sometimes pursues Fairbanks to the drawing-room one can forgive this self-dramatisation to the man who has given us such unforgettable pictures of ages far removed from our own.

_Chapter Sixteen_

RODOLPH VALENTINO

When in Hollywood about four years ago I learned to know by sight a young man who frequently stood around in the lobby of the Hotel Alexandria. He was very dark and slim, and his eyes had the sombreness of the Latin. I was especially struck by the grace of his walk and of his gestures. Even when he leaned up against a cigar-case he did it with a certain stateliness, and you felt that the column of some ruined temple overlooking the Mediterranean would have been much more appropriate than his present background.

Quite evidently he was looking for a job. In fact, before I was introduced to him I heard him approaching various people in the industry.

“Anything doing to-day?” “Have you finished casting So-and-So?” “When do you start shooting?” These questions, so familiar in the lobby of a Hollywood hotel, were made more touching in his case by a very naïve manner, by a slightly foreign accent. He always looked so eager when he put the question and so disappointed when he got the answer.

Not long ago when I was in Hollywood I saw this same young man at a near-by seashore resort. On this day he was in a bathing-suit, and he was leading three police-dogs. The dogs were not a protective measure, but certainly the scene that day might have warranted some sort of guard. For as the young man walked out toward the waves, as the sun shone on his swarthy skin, the hundreds of women and girls who had come to Long Beach pressed onward for a more satisfactory glimpse of the bather. And as they did so an awed whisper passed through the feminine multitude.

“That’s he--that’s Valentino.”

In all film history, replete as that is with instances of meteoric success, there has been nothing quite so swift as the rise of this young Italian pantomimist, Rodolph Valentino. The beginning of the breathless ascent may be traced to a reception given one afternoon by a certain Mr. Cole, a painter living in Hollywood. To this reception came Rex Ingram, then lately returned from overseas service in the Flying Corps. Came also in company with Paul Troubetsky, Rodolph Valentino. At this point I shall allow Mr. Ingram to tell the story just as he related it to me one evening last Summer while we sat chatting on the porch of Mae Murray’s and Bobby Leonard’s home at Great Neck.

“I was attracted at once by Valentino’s face and by his remarkable grace of movement,” said Ingram, “and I made immediately a mental note of him. There’s a fellow, thought I, who would be great in pictures, and if I get my job of directing back I’m going to use him. I was pretty confident then, you see, that this experiment was due for the very near future. Little did I think that months--yes, almost a year--would go by and find me just as idle as I was that day when I walked into Mr. Cole’s reception.

“I wasn’t remembering much about Valentino in those days, I can tell you. I was so poor that I had to hock all the civilian clothes I had left behind me in my storage-trunks. This left me nothing but my uniform, and the uniform proved, as it did to so many other ex-service men, anything but a talisman. The only effect it seemed to produce was to prejudice any possible employer against me. At last--of course that’s the way it always happens--I had two jobs offered to me at once. In the meantime, though, I had been obliged to give up my little two-dollar room. In fact, when I got my double offer I was owing two months’ rent for it.

“The job I chose was with the ----. No sooner had I started to work than I discovered Valentino was on the same lot under Holubar. This second contact with the young foreigner deepened my confidence that he would be a great success on the silver-sheet, and when ‘The Four Horsemen’ came along I thought of him immediately.

“Of course it was obvious that he was the exact type for the young tango-dancer hero of the story. Even after I started work with him, though, I had no idea how far he’d go--not at the very first. But when we came to rehearsing the tango, “Rudy” did so well that I made up my mind to expand this phase of the story. I did this by means of a sequence in a Universal picture I had made several years before. The sequence showed an adventurous youth going into a Bowery dive and taking the dancer after he had first floored her partner. Bones and marrow, I transposed this action to South America--yet only a few of my wise Universal friends recognised it.

“This bit of acting not in the book gave Valentino a chance for one of his showiest pieces of work. I rehearsed it very carefully for three days right on the set, and I think the result showed it.”

At this point in the director’s story I asked him if he thought, as so many people do, that Valentino was a mere flash in the pan.

“By no means,” rejoined he promptly; “he’s very ambitious and earnest, and if he doesn’t take what the fans say too seriously he will live a long time as a picture idol--provided, of course, that he is kept in good stories and has a capable director.”

Here at this point I can not refrain from quoting the most famous of directors on the subject of the present-day idol. In talking to Griffith one day I asked him what he thought of Valentino.

“I declare I don’t know,” replied he; “all the time I was looking at him in ‘The Four Horsemen’ I kept asking myself, ‘Is this fellow really acting or is he so perfectly the type that he doesn’t need to act?’”

The existing impression that this famous novel afforded Valentino his first part in pictures is erroneous. Not only had the young Latin worked with Holubar, as Ingram mentioned, but he had been cast with Mae Murray by Bobby Leonard. And, of course, he had rounded out his experience as an extra. Had it not been, however, for Rex Ingram and for the materialisation of a story so exactly adapted to his type, Valentino might still be standing around in the lobby of some Hollywood hotel--one of the thousands of young men and women whose hearts are suffocating with that one cry, “The chance! If only they’d give me the chance!”

“Hail, Czar of Hollywood!”--thus some woman addressed Charlie Chaplin not long ago.

“Oh, no,” smiled Charlie, “that no longer. Valentino is the present ruler.” And then he went on to say, “I like the fellow, you know. He’s got a lot of colour and charm. I went around to see him the other day and it just delighted me to see him stepping about on his thick beautiful rugs among his gorgeous bric-à-brac and his incense-burners. They seemed to suit him, you know, and he was so pleased with all his new splendour--just like a child.”

There is Chaplin for you--always delighted with the colourful, the pictorial, the thing which sets his imagination going.

In line with Charlie’s approval come the words of another man I know, a man well-read, cultured, and charming. “Any one who thinks Valentino is an illiterate young foreigner with a handsome face and a talent for dancing is mistaken”--so protests this witness. “I know him well and I am always interested in his comments on life and work. You’ve got to remember that ‘Rudy’ doesn’t come from the lower classes in Italy. His father was a scientist and his family connections are with professional people.”

“The Four Horsemen” carried not only Valentino high into the ether of popular success. Although Rex Ingram had made successful pictures before this, he had never so thoroughly demonstrated his capacity for that difficult union of finely knit narrative and sweep of vision as did he in Ibañez’s masterpiece. To my mind the skill with which the personal element is presented against the background of great epic disaster places Ingram in the very foremost rank of screen directors. As for Alice Terry, her rôle of the wife in the story afforded her the first satisfactory avenue for that exquisite something which differentiates her.

The story of Alice Terry has the same fairy-tale quality as Valentino’s own. Like him, she had worked hard as an extra for many years, and the hard work had resulted in little recognition. However, discouraging as had been her experience, it was not without results. For Rex Ingram happened to see her in New York when, as a girl still in her mid-teens, she played with Bessie Barriscale in “Not My Little Sister.” The promise which she gave impressed the young director almost immediately. When, indeed, he moved from New York to the Coast he welcomed the fact that she, too, had shifted from East to West. Had it not been for the War, in fact, Alice Terry would probably have been his leading lady some years before.

When Ingram on his return from overseas service finally located the job which put a roof once more over his head and civilian clothes again upon his back, he was to resume his slight acquaintance with Miss Terry. For she came to his office then and applied for a position as script girl, the functionary who, working on the set, chalks off the scenes as they are made and notes the new ones extemporised.

The most talked-of personality the screen has ever known.]

Who journeyed from Paris to Hollywood for Mr Goldwyn.]

He looked at her in amazement. “What,” cried he, “you don’t mean to say that you’ve given up acting, do you?”

She looked at him somewhat sadly. “Oh, dear, yes,” she replied. “I did that some time ago. It was too discouraging--I wasn’t getting any place, you see. No matter how hard I worked nothing seemed to come of it. And of course being an extra or getting some bit now and then doesn’t keep you. So I decided I’d just get a regular job.”

“And what have you been doing since?” inquired Ingram.

“I’ve been working in the cutting-room,” replied she, “and that was fine--I mean it was fine--knowing just what you were going to get each week. But the ether commenced to get into my lungs and that’s why I’m looking around for something else.”

Ingram promised to give her the desired position in the picture following “Shore Acres.” However, something changed his plans and instead he cast her for a wild and woolly Drury Lane melodrama called “Hearts Are Trumps.” To his surprise she seemed loath to accept this chance of returning to the screen.

“Oh, no, I don’t want to try--I’ve given it all up, you see,” she kept protesting in a way that showed how completely previous discouragements had shattered her self-confidence.

But he finally succeeded in overcoming her fears, and since then she has been his leading woman in every story except “Trifling Women.” It was not, however, until the appearance of “The Four Horsemen” that Alice Terry, the girl who, heartsick from her discouragements on the set, had wanted to retire to the comparative obscurity of script work, won the wide recognition which her beauty and her screen personality had so long deserved.

All this I have just related I heard from Miss Terry, now Mrs. Rex Ingram, on the same evening when Ingram told me of his experience with Valentino. On this same occasion she and her husband mentioned that her next appearance will be in John Russell’s “Passion Vine.” In this her support will be Ramon Navarro, another dancer from whom Ingram predicts a success which may even duplicate that of Valentino.

Anent both Valentino and Navarro, Ingram made an interesting observation. “A good dancer,” said he, “frequently makes a good screen actor. Why? Because he has both poise and repose, and I don’t know any better start than these.”

In this connection do not forget that Chaplin is one of the most graceful of dancers. Although not a professional, he might easily have become so.

_Chapter Seventeen_

ROMANTIC TRUE STORIES OF SOME SCREEN FAVORITES

Another film triumph won only after a long siege of the citadel is that of Von Stroheim. Born of an old and distinguished Viennese family, the Baron von Stroheim was in another day one of those pictorial young officers who swaggered about the Ring Strasse, partook of café mélanges and fancifully whittled cakes at the smart confectioners’ on the Graben, sunned themselves where the bands play “The Beautiful Blue Danube” and other Strauss waltzes--in brief, lent themselves to that atmosphere, at once sprightly and sentimental, which made the fascination of prewar Vienna. Perhaps he lent himself to it somewhat too thoroughly, for he always smiles when you ask him how he first happened to come to this country. And the smile seems to hint at some youthful escapade.

When he arrived in this country he had no more equipment for making his own livelihood than is suggested by this background of frivolity, of leisure, and of rigid caste etiquette. Yet he was penniless now. Soda-fountain attendant and groom in a stable--these two jobs are only a few of the milestones passed in the wanderings of Von Stroheim from his hereditary environment. He was, in fact, almost starving when Griffith’s war-pictures presented to him an opportunity. His Austrian uniform, his scars, his typical Teutonic appearance--all these were utilised in a screen presentation of the hated German officer.

After the vogue of the war-picture had passed, however, Von Stroheim found himself in a plight almost as bad as that from which these pictures had delivered him. No use to him now was the uniform, the scars, the typical Teutonic appearance! Quite the reverse. For days he would sit in those depressing anterooms which guard the presence of the great. I used to see him in the Goldwyn Studios and, remembering with admiration his work in the war-pictures, I wished only that the change in popular taste had not prohibited my employment of him in a characteristic rôle.

“I knew all the time that I had something in me which might be valuable to the screen,” so he himself told a friend of mine in reference to this period, “but I couldn’t get myself over. I lacked the American push. I took no for an answer far too easily, and so I might still be sitting around in dingy anterooms had not something happened to me. I became deeply infatuated with a girl. But she said to me, ‘No--not until I see if you can ever make good.’ Then for the first time in my life I made up my mind to succeed.”

The rest of his story is known by those who follow the history of screen celebrities. He had long been fired by an idea for the screen. Maddened by his inability to get an audience for this idea, the erstwhile Viennese aristocrat resolved upon forceful measures. He literally broke into Laemmle’s room in a hotel, and with all the fire of desperation set forth his great ideas. The result was “Foolish Wives.” This picture, notable--even notorious--among screen folk for the tremendous costliness of its production, is also set apart by the fact that Von Stroheim’s activities in it were three-fold. He wrote the scenario, he directed it, and he took the leading part. His subsequent work shows the same correlation.

The first time I ever saw this picturesque figure away from the studio was at a café where he was the object of concentrated attention on the part of the other diners. Men glared at him; women whispered to each other, whispered as if an ogre had suddenly walked in upon the feast. “There’s Von Stroheim--look at him; oh, isn’t he too horrid!” I understood then why I had so often heard him called “the most hated man on the screen.”

He must have been conscious of the antagonism of these strangers surrounding him, but if he was he gave no sign. Unconsciously as if the many hostile eyes had been directed toward some other person, he went on talking to the woman who was with him. Was he really insensitive or did he command his face to be a mask?

Afterward I heard that Von Stroheim is quite aware of the personal odium with which his professional characterisations of brutal German officer and villainous foreign aristocrat have surrounded him. Some say, indeed, that he cherishes this reputation, that not for worlds would he lift his finger to soften the hated impression. Yet as against this I have heard what Von Stroheim has said to his intimate friends.

“When Elliott Dexter goes into a café or some other public place,” he once remarked, “people exclaimed delightedly. ‘There he is--oh, isn’t he charming!’ But when I come in it’s ‘Ugh, there’s Von Stroheim’; and if it’s a man who notices me he’s very likely to start off my name with a curse. I must say it hurts a little--in fact, it often makes me feel very disappointed in the American people--to think that they can be so childlike as to confuse me, Von Stroheim, the man, with Von Stroheim, the actor, to imagine that because I play the parts I do I must be that kind of a man.”

Of course this confusion itself is a testimony to the excellence of his work, to that dramatic insight which had made numerous fellow professionals regard him as the most finished actor on the screen--with the exception of Chaplin, to whom, of course, because of the different character of their plays, he can scarcely be compared. As to his personal manner this has all the traditional grace of the cultured Continental. But there is more to Von Stroheim than the clicking of heels, the bows, the gestures, the precise phrasing with its slightly foreign accent, the air of attention which isolates the person to whom he is talking from all the world. There are many products of this mould, and, though over the American mind they usually exert the fascination of strangeness, such mannerisms do not explain the arresting quality of his personality. This lies in an expression which, both sad and gay, thoughtful and vivacious, reproduces the blend achieving the charm of his own Vienna.

Ex-nobleman and present film star! Surely no story on the screen could present greater contrasts of fortune than this story behind the screen. He himself is thoroughly conscious of it, and one day, sitting in his shirt-sleeves in his office, he remarked to some one I know, “Strange, strange, what America does for you! Do you know that if my old self, the Von Stroheim of Austria, were to have met my present self, the Von Stroheim of Hollywood, he would have fought a duel with him? For I’m everything now that I was brought up to despise.

“When I was a young man at home I remember that one day at the dinner-table I unhooked the high collar of my uniform--just the top hook, you understand--because the day was so warm and the collar so tight. My stern old father glared at me across the table and then he sent me away from the room. ‘Low-born,’ ‘vulgarian’--these were some of the words he hurled at me as I went out. And now, behold! I sit here without any collar and in my shirt-sleeves, and when I go home to-night I shall sit down to dinner without putting on either collar or coat. My wife doesn’t mind--neither do I. There you are.”

Because of his own struggles Von Stroheim is often exceedingly kind to those trying to get a foothold in the profession. Mae Busch, for example, speaks glowingly of Von Stroheim’s helpfulness and says that it is to him she owes the chance which proved a turning-point in her career. The mention of Mae carries me to one of the most forceful examples of the fact that few screen careers are achieved without experiencing reverses.

In about the second year of the Lasky Company’s existence, Mae Busch, a little Australian girl with big hazel eyes fringed by incredibly long lashes, was acting in one of Lasky’s vaudeville companies. For some reason or other she bolted the show in Los Angeles, and soon after this she made her first appearance in pictures as one of Mack Sennett’s famous bathing girls. While she was in Sennett’s organization she became involved in a drama of love and jealousy and revenge which had nothing to do with screen performance. The situation, familiar to many of the Hollywood colony, resulted temporarily in her professional overthrow. A pathetic little figure, she wandered from studio to studio in search of work. Unable to find it, she finally married. Perhaps, as one of her friends has suggested, the marriage was the result of gratitude on her part to the man who did not let the world’s desertion shake his love for her.

Be that as it may, the marriage proved disastrous, and for some years the pretty little Australian girl went down under the deep waters which have submerged so many others in the profession. Poor, unhappily married, the victim of several severe illnesses, who would have believed that Mae Busch would ever come back?

Those who found this belief difficult did not reckon with the mettle which is her distinguishing quality. One day she said to herself--this is the story as she tells it--“This has got to stop. Others are getting away with it. Why not I?” This crystallisation brought her to Von Stroheim, who gave her a part in “Foolish Wives.” Small as the part was, she made it stand out. Von Stroheim praised her work. So, too, did no less a person than Charlie Chaplin. The latter, in fact, promised her a big part in his next picture.

It was about the time when she had come to an agreement with Chaplin and the Goldwyn Company was absorbed in the problem of finding an ideal _Glory Quayle_ for its production of “The Christian.” This search is an answer to those who complain that the picture organisations are content with inferior dramatic talent and with types falling short of any real characterisation. We literally sifted the country for Hall Caine’s heroine. Beautiful and near-beautiful, famous and obscure, East and West, young and middle-aged--all were represented in those four thousand women of whom we made tests.

Of course everybody in the industry had heard of our search, but it was not until the contest had been going on for some time that the idea of entering it occurred to Mae Busch. When she did finally come to the studio she has often said that it was with no expectation of being victorious. Nobody was more surprised than she herself when out of those four thousand applicants we chose her for _Glory Quayle_!

How did she do it! This is the way she herself tells of the experience: “When they told me I’d have to be a fourteen-year-old girl in one test I just almost swooned. Imagine me--after all I had been through--trying to look a kid like that. But I thought to myself, “Well, you’re here now and you might as well stay by.” So I put on the short dress and--funny!--I guess I was just in the mood for it--but when I stood in front of that camera I got to feeling just exactly the way I did when I was a youngster out in Australia. Of course,” she adds quickly, “there was a great deal in this. I didn’t really care whether I won out or not--I mean I wasn’t all keyed up and nervous about it--for, you see, Charlie had promised me that part and so I didn’t have everything at stake.”

These last remarks draw attention to one of the acid experiences of the screen performer. No matter how often he or she has been subjected to these tryouts, the latest challenge always seems to make them feel as uneasy as the first. They become rigid with fear of what the new director may think of them and so, naturally, defeat the very results they so much desire.

In speaking of Mae Busch, Charlie Chaplin once said, “I always remember Mae at a party one evening when she suddenly thumped herself on the chest. ‘It’s here,’ she said fiercely, ‘something inside me--something I’ve got to get out!’ That impressed me a whole lot,” added he, “for I haven’t heard so awfully many screen actresses in my time complaining of any inner weight of talent oppressing them.”

It was, of course, this real fire of histrionic energy which burned down every obstacle before it. That together with all the suffering she had undergone counts enormously in her work on the screen and removes her many degrees from the puppet types which have cast discredit upon the profession.

The moment you meet Mae you recognise her as “good copy.” This is so because she is perfectly natural, and being natural with her means saying exactly what she thinks. She says it graphically, pungently, often slangily, so that almost every sentence she utters lingers in your mind as a vivid picture of some phase of experience. Far from being a highbrow herself, she is one of those vivid types in which the real highbrow delights.

Another screen performer who sailed a few choppy seas before coming into port is that delightful young comedian, Harold Lloyd. The first time I ever met Lloyd was at a dinner at which Chaplin was also present. The latter was talking on one of his favourite themes, religion or economics--I forget which--and his words, always clipped just enough to reveal his English birth, were coming thick and fast. I noticed that as he spoke a rather tall, rather serious-looking young fellow, who was one of a group in an opposite corner of the room, was looking at him wonderingly, almost wistfully. He himself was not saying a word.

“Who is that chap over there?” I asked of the man next to me.

“Oh, don’t you know him? That’s Harold Lloyd, the comedian.”

“Quiet fellow, isn’t he?” I remarked. “I’ve hardly heard him say a word.”

“He’s usually like that at parties,” replied the other man. “I’ve been around with that boy a lot and I’ve never once seen him cut up like Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. He says he doesn’t feel that way when he isn’t on the set--that it isn’t until he gets on the old horn-rimmed spectacles and the rest of the make-up that his comedy catches up with him.”

“What sort of a chap is he, anyhow?” asked I a few moments later.

The answer was prompt and incisive. “The nicest, kindest, most wholesome, most sincere young fellow in Hollywood. Harold Lloyd--why, he’s the sort of kid you’d just sit around and pray your daughter would marry!”

I hasten to say that there is nothing eccentric about the view of Lloyd just presented. All that I have since heard of the brilliant young comedian corroborates this first glowing account. When later on, too, I came to have a long talk with him any vestige of the scepticism normally induced by such universal praise vanished.

When I had this talk there was no trace of the silent young man who had first aroused my curiosity. In fact the shyness which sometimes overwhelms him at a party disappears entirely in a tête-à-tête or in a small group of friendly spirits. Then he talks a great deal. He expresses himself well and every word has a drive, the drive of his tremendous earnestness.

Lloyd, I think, would make a poor subject for psychoanalysis. He seems to have no complexes. He probably never caught any colds in his subconscious. A fine balance is the outstanding effect of his whole personality.

He is very much interested in athletics. He is a fine amateur boxer, and I suppose he gets more fun out of his swimming-pool than out of almost any other possession of his. In this he presents a great contrast to Chaplin, who doesn’t care for Hollywood’s “chilly pools” as he calls them.

If you go to Lloyd’s studio you find almost everybody calling him “Speed.” Even the youngsters on the lot make use of this nickname. These latter all seem to love him, and he is often followed by such a troop that he resembles the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

There is a great deal of the old-fashioned gentleman about this lovable young fellow. He is so earnest about his work, so determined that he is going to do everything which will make him a better actor, so modest of his achievements, and then, too, he has all the old-fashioned reverences. Mother, country, religion--all the unities so often exposed nowadays to the critical mood--are accepted by Lloyd unquestioningly.

“I can’t understand how any man could ever dissect his own mother’s character,” he once said in speaking of somebody who had engaged in this modern pastime. “After all--whatever she does, whatever her faults--she is your mother.”

No rebel, not in the least degree introspective, Lloyd is essentially a thoughtful person. He has been made more so by the accident--an explosion in his studio--which so nearly cost him the loss of his sight. Nowadays when he loses his perspective he tells me that he often visits a hospital.

“I go into that grim white place,” says he, “and I put myself back into those weeks and months when I lay with a bandage over my eyes, when everything that I had or wanted--youth and success and work--seemed to be vanishing, and I think I can see--what does anything else matter?”

Who spent one million dollars on “Foolish Wives”. He is a prominent villain on the screen.]

The famous trio at play after a strenuous day at the studio.]

It is due to the old-fashioned gentleman in Lloyd that he will tolerate no suggestion of anything broad, anything Hogarthian in his comedy. One day one of his advisors came to him and said, “I’ve got it, Speed, a bit of business that will go over big!”

When he heard what it was Lloyd retorted promptly, “Not on your life! If I can’t be funny and clean, too--why, then I’ll decide to be just clean.”

This year Lloyd tells me he expects to make about a million dollars. Yet it was not so many years ago when, according to his own amused word, his most cherished ambition was to be able to buy a silk shirt. His start toward this goal is as original as anything offered in the annals of motion-picture success.

When just a youngster out of high school Lloyd came to Hollywood with the intention of going into motion-pictures. Motion-pictures, however, seemed to have an equally firm intention of keeping him out. Every studio to which he applied turned him down, and finally he hit upon a unique “open sesame.” Noticing that everybody who was in costume passed through the forbidden portals without challenge, Harold decided that there was nothing obligatory about a sack coat. So he got himself a costume, and from that time forth he has stayed on the inside.

While working as an extra in one of the studios he met another young extra named Hal Roach. After some time the two of them, with only several hundred dollars to sustain their resolution, decided to go into business for themselves.

“I wasn’t any meteor, I can tell you that!” comments Harold in relating his experiences of these early days. “But we did succeed in selling a few pictures the first year. The next we sold more. Still, that limited success of ours did not seem to get me much nearer to the silk shirt. The fact of it is that we were terribly poor in those days, for every cent we made we put back into our pictures.”

This indomitable desire to improve his films makes every one feel that even “Grandma’s Boy,” that story where his irresistible comedy is developed from the most vital psychological situation he has yet chosen, is merely a starting-point in the triumphs of characterisation that await him. Anent this picture of his, Lloyd told a friend of mine that the tribute to “Grandma’s Boy” which he most appreciated came from Charlie Chaplin.

“Charlie wrote to me as soon as he saw it,” he confided to this friend, “and what do you suppose he said? Why, that the story was an inspiration to him to do his own very best work, to be contented with nothing else for himself.” And then, his dark eyes glowing with pleasure, he added, “Just fancy what that meant to me--coming from Chaplin!”

Lloyd is an ardent admirer of Charlie’s work. Also of his personality.

Harold Lloyd is to-day one of the five or six greatest drawing-cards of the screen box-office. From him I proceed logically to another name in this limited peerage--that of Norma Talmadge.

My introduction to the work of this, the greatest emotional actress of the films, came about in a way that was altogether personal and exceedingly sentimental.

One day I went up to the office of Joe Schenck, a theatrical man, who had been associated with Loew and Zukor in their earlier theatrical ventures, and whom I had known for some years. When I found him the first thing he did was to point out a velvet box on his desk. It was open, and inside curled a beautiful bracelet.

“Hmph!” exclaimed I, “what’s all this?”

“It’s a present,” retorted he. “Do you know I’m engaged to be married?”

“Well, well!” answered I. “This is news. Who’s the unfortunate lady?”

“Come around to the Rivoli to-night,” he responded with a look brimming over its pride and happiness, “and I’ll show you her work. Her name is Norma Talmadge.”

_Chapter Eighteen_

POLA NEGRI

One of the most interesting experiences I had during a recent trip to California was my meeting with Pola Negri, the famous Polish star who was recently brought to this country by Famous-Players.

I was introduced to Miss Negri at a dinner given by Mr. and Mrs. Fitzmaurice. Practically every one of importance and reputation in the film colony, including Miss Negri and Charlie Chaplin was present.

It was on this occasion to which I had long looked forward that an amusing incident occurred that gave me an illuminating insight into her character.

During the course of the dinner Mrs. Fitzmaurice remarked:

“I saw some of your work in ‘Bella Donna’ to-day, Miss Negri. You looked very charming.”

“I know I am charming,” replied Pola. “I consider my work great, as I am a great artist.”

She realises she is a true artist and a great one, and always lives up to this knowledge.

I was tremendously impressed with the beauty, ability, and intelligence of this gifted woman. She is one of the few motion-picture stars who is well-read enough to discuss any subject intelligently. She typifies in real life, everything she seemed to be in “Passion” and “Gypsy Love,” the two European-made pictures that served to introduce her to the American public and pave the way for her American debut.

It was probably this superior intelligence plus an unusual experience and training under Max Reinhardt, Ernest Lubitsch, and other continental theatrical geniuses that influenced Ben Blumenthal, an American friend of mine, to offer her a salary over 200,000 dollars a year to make pictures for him. He told me that when she started with him in Berlin she was earning 2000 marks.

I was very much interested to hear that she came to Berlin from Warsaw, where she had been both a dramatic actress and a motion-picture star.

It was this same American friend of mine who was responsible for her American trip, which was carefully planned and press agented by one of the most elaborate campaigns ever conducted for any one star.

Amusing little anecdotes told me by John Flinn, a special representative of Famous-Players who was delegated to accompany her on the trip from New York to California, serve to show her tremendous sincerity as well as interesting side-lights on her character.

One of the most amusing of these stories relates the attempts of Miss Negri to teach her maid Lena, in the astute spending of the strange American coins, which had proved very puzzling to both maid and mistress.

Miss Negri finally sketched each coin from the five cent piece to the silver dollar, placing opposite each silver piece its equivalent in German money.

The first morning on the train, Mr. Flinn told me, the star gave Lena a five dollar bill to pay for her breakfast. Lena came back triumphantly with the breakfast, but no change. When asked what had happened to the three dollars and forty-five cents change, the maid replied with great pride that she had given it to the waiter as a tip.

An amusing sequel to this story happened in the hotel at Los Angeles at the time of Miss Negri’s arrival.

As she was busy with photographers and newspaper interviewers, Lena attended to the placing of the trunks.

When Pola reached her suite and smiled on the assembled porters, she was greeted with frowns.

“Did you teep them?” she inquired of Lena, having learned enough about America by this time to interpret the bad humour of the porters correctly.

Lena nodded emphatically.

“What you geev them?” inquired her mistress.

“The piece with the cow on,” replied Lena.

Hastily consulting her chart Pola discovered to her chagrin that the maid had given the porters each a Buffalo nickel. It took but a moment to change the frowns to smiles with a different kind of gratuity.

Miss Negri was anxious to come to America, because it seemed to her, like to every other foreigner, to be the Land of Promise. Also, America was the place where she would again see Charlie Chaplin.

Her first meeting with Chaplin has always interested me. It happened during Charlie’s last European trip, over a year ago. He had arrived in Germany one afternoon, and at dinner time had gone to the Palais Heinroth to dine. No one recognised him at first, until Al Kaufman, an American film executive came in with a large party given in honour of Pola Negri. Chaplin was invited to join them, introduced to Pola, and given a seat by her side.

He could speak no German, she no English. In spite of this difficulty it was plain to see that a mutual admiration sprang up between them. That night they met again at a friend’s.

Mr. Blumenthal, knowing he was to take Miss Negri to America, arranged to have photographers take pictures of Charlie and Pola. This created a sensation in the hotel, where the pictures were taken.

A large crowd gathered to watch the farewell outside the hotel, for Charlie was leaving the city that day.

As “Good-byes” were being said, Mr. Blumenthal said to Pola, “Give Charlie a kiss.”

And Pola did, while the cameras clicked, and a dozen or more impressions were made.

“Good-bye until we meet in Los Angeles,” she said.

The following week this incident was featured in a London paper as “Chaplin’s welcome in Germany.”

It was apparent in the ensuing days that the impression Charlie made on her was not a fleeting one. Her mind was already set on seeing him again. It was plain that she thought of him always, and part of her eagerness to reach America was due to this interest.

Therefore, it is not at all unusual that this interest should develop into a beautiful romance when she met him again in California.

I saw these artists together a great deal during my visit there. In fact they are inseparable.

A great many people have asked me if I think they will marry. Judging the depths of a woman’s feelings and her intentions from the way she acts, which of course, is not an easy thing to do, I believe Miss Negri intends to marry Charlie.

While Chaplin does not admit he is in love, I have never seen a man so devoted to a woman as he is to Pola. In fact I think she is the one woman who has ever interested him completely. Stories are circulated to the effect that Miss Negri announces her engagement to Chaplin in the morning papers and Charlie denies it in the evening papers and vice versa. I know these are not authenticated or authorized by either of them, for they are both sincere.

Both are great artists, and therefore misunderstandings are bound to happen. Whatever I am asked about the combination I say it is a great one, but that there exists perhaps a little too much temperament.

At the present moment, however, Miss Negri’s career is occupying her most vital thoughts. I believe that she, like every great artist, puts her career before her personal desires, no matter how strong they may be. She is working to establish her American reputation as she established her European one, with a thoroughness and intensity coupled with tireless energy and indefatigable attention that makes her an extremist in everything.

I learned at the studio that if she has music to work with she will be satisfied with nothing less than ceaseless playing of funeral dirges throughout the entire day. She is known to make twice as many scenes each day as is normally required. Her first day at Famous-Players studio was a record breaker. She made thirty-nine scenes, whereas twelve scenes are considered a good day’s work. She not only learns her own rôle, but the rôles of all the others acting in the picture with her.

She objects strongly to visitors being brought to the “set” where she is working. It interferes with her mood, she declares, and she is right. The making of moving-pictures is a business, just as the making of steel, or the growing of flowers, or the sculping of a great statue, and there is no reason for it being made a curiosity shop.

If she studies fashions, she studies them with this same indefatigable zeal that marks her every effort. She has every fashion magazine published in Europe and America, and pores over them for hours. She is an incurable enthusiast in everything she does.

There is probably no other woman in pictures to-day who is endowed with more of the basic elements required to make a great dramatic actress than Pola Negri.

_Chapter Nineteen_

THE TWO TALMADGES

I accompanied Schenck to the Rivoli to see his fiancée on the screen, and I was very forcibly struck with the beauty and talent of Miss Norma Talmadge.

“Very lovely--very gifted,” was my verdict as we left the theatre.

“Isn’t she, though?” he responded eagerly. “I tell you that girl is bound to go far.” He hesitated for a moment, and then turning toward me abruptly he asked, “How about it, Sam? Wouldn’t you like to have her for your company? She’d come with you for a thousand a week.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Joe,” I replied, “but you know what the situation is. It’s the big name that counts nowadays, and Miss Talmadge, beautiful and talented as she is, hasn’t enough fame for a man trying to put over a new company. But why don’t you try Zukor? He’s better established and could afford to take a chance.”

“No,” answered he, “I might as well tell you that he’s turned her down already.”

This dialogue was destined to be an illuminating comment upon both my competitor and myself. In refusing to heed the knock of opportunity we both lost many thousands of dollars. Indeed, I might as well admit here, in these annals of a life so crowded with errors of judgment, that in my case Opportunity was lenient. Once again, a year or so after this episode, she again knocked at my door. And once again I was deaf to the golden visitor.

On this second occasion Schenck, who had in the meanwhile married Miss Talmadge, came to me with a proposition.

“Sam,” announced he, “I’ve started producing Norma’s pictures and of course I realise that I’m not so awfully experienced. Now, what I want to know is this: Won’t you let her work over in your studio and get the benefit of your advice? If you do I’ll give you twenty-five per cent. of the receipts of her pictures.”

I hesitated for a moment and then I told him I didn’t see my way clear to any such arrangement. I was too busy, I explained, to give her the attention meriting any such returns. Nowadays in looking down the long road over which I have come I often pause at this point. For I realise to-day that had I accepted this offer I should have made enough to balance many costly experiments.

The realisation of my blunder came to me not long afterward when I was dining with Schenck at his home. After dinner we sat talking together in the living-room, and it must have been almost midnight when the door was flung open and Miss Talmadge stood before us. Her eyes were shining with excitement; the cheeks above the full collar of her gorgeous evening wrap were the color of a Jacqueminot rose. Never in all my life have I seen a more vivid apparition of beautiful, victorious youth.

There was only a second for me to record that impression, for Miss Talmadge just hesitated there on the threshold, and then with a tumultuous gesture she threw herself into her husband’s arms.

“Oh, Daddy,” she cried, clinging to him and looking up into his eyes, “I could hardly wait until I got home to tell you! They all said I drew bigger crowds than Clara Kimball Young. Think of it! Oh, isn’t it just too wonderful! I’m the happiest girl in the world.”

I had heard from Joe previously that his wife was making personal appearances that evening at the Loew theatres; but I was certainly as unprepared for the result as was the heroine of the incident herself. For in those days the beautiful Clara Kimball Young was one of the most popular women on the screen, and the announcement that she was going to make a personal appearance at any New York theatre was almost equivalent to calling out the police reserves.

But, struck as I was by the professional significance of her speech, I was even more impressed by its personal bearing. It was so evident--Miss Talmadge’s eagerness to share any triumph with her husband--she was so exactly like a child returning to its home with the ten gilt stars won from her recitations in geography or history--that all later memories of her are overshadowed by this one touching revelation of the real Norma Talmadge.

To understand the woman whose glowing attitudes have so enriched screen art you must think of her, not as a single figure, but as part of a pattern. True, her career is the most brilliant thread in this tapestry, but it is dependent for its brilliance and effect upon the somewhat less glittering but equally firm threads of its background and intermingling figures. The fabric of which I speak is family life. This includes not only Miss Talmadge’s husband, but her mother and two sisters. They would appear as a unit in any field of endeavour, but, as it happens, pictures have supplied the hand weaving them into their fixed and arresting design.

As a very young child, so Schenck has told me, Norma displayed her histrionic gifts. The talent was promptly encouraged by her mother, and it was undoubtedly due to Mrs. Talmadge’s influence that her eldest daughter entered the employ of the old Vitagraph Company. Unlike many others whose names have added lustre to the screen, Miss Talmadge was never an extra performer. At the very first she was given a small part. Yet at this time she was a girl in her early teens. Young as she was, however, she contrived to have a sister even younger. This sister, Constance, used to come to the studio with her almost every day and, wide-eyed over the importance of her more mature relative, would fasten Norma’s frock and help her put on her make-up. At last this career of self-effacement was rewarded by a chance for more individual enterprise. Constance became an extra in the Vitagraph studios.

On the part of neither Norma nor Constance is there any effort to suppress these humble days from the stranger’s consciousness. Quite the contrary. Once they were dining at the Ritz with a friend of mine who has decidedly less command of this world’s resources than have the Talmadge girls.

“Oh, how wonderful!” exclaimed this friend. “Think of being able to order like you, Norma--without ever looking at the expense side of the menu!”

Miss Talmadge laughed merrily. “Well,” she retorted, “it hasn’t always been like this, has it, Constance? Remember the old Vitagraph days when we always had to eat inside a quarter? It wasn’t a question with us of soup to nuts, but of soup or nuts.”

I happened to be at a dance several years ago which was attended by both the sisters. Norma Talmadge took that evening only several turns about the room. Constance, on the other hand, danced every number. I myself was lucky enough to benefit by this protracted exercise and as I did so I caught over Constance’s shoulder the eyes of Norma following her sister’s figure through the ebb and flow of dancers. The quality of that glance will always linger with me. Why, indeed, should it not? For here she was--young, beautiful, an idol of the screen--and she was surveying this sister only a few years younger with the fond, admiring glance which some dowager might bestow on one of the younger generation.

My interest was so piqued by this matter of the self-appointed wallflower that I asked a close friend of the Talmadges if this were a habitual attitude of Norma’s.

“Oh, dear, yes!” replied she. “Norma’s always like that. Very seldom do you find her dancing more than several times an evening. What she just loves is to think of Constance as the belle of the ball.”

Dainty sister of Norma and Natalie and aunt of Buster Keaton’s solemn-faced baby.]

In private life, Mrs. Joseph Schenck. A noted screen leader.]

“And how about Natalie?” I asked.

“Indeed, yes. Norma and Constance are as devoted to her as they are to each other, and they all three unite in worshipping their mother.”

“A close corporation,” I commented. “Yet Buster Keaton and Joe Schenck seem to come in for almost as high dividends as the original stockholders.”

“Of course,” assented my informer, “a Talmadge-in-law is all right so long as he is also an in-picture. For you’ve got to remember that pictures are the leading interest of the whole family. In fact, I think that was largely the trouble between Constance and her husband. He was not only outside the profession, but I understand that he objected to Constance going on with her work on the screen.”

I have been told by those who have worked with Miss Norma Talmadge on the set that, in contrast to her sister Constance, who is exceedingly even-tempered, she displays many of the characteristics popularly associated with a great emotional actress. Gusts of impatience followed immediately by the most radiant, sunshiny laughter; flurries of annoyance; ripples of amusement--these are the manifestations of a nature which, in the words of one admirer, is “as big and sweet as all outdoors.” Thoroughly consistent with such a nature is Miss Talmadge’s type of generosity. This functions more conspicuously through some concrete human appeal than through official solicitation. Testimony to this is offered by a letter from Joe Schenck to a friend of mine.

The letter, written by Schenck while he and Miss Talmadge were on a recent visit to Germany, records how Norma was followed by a beggar in the streets of Berlin. Old and emaciated and dirty, he fell on his knees before the radiant young American and begged her for help. Miss Talmadge thereupon emptied the entire contents of her purse into his hands. “It was a nice little gift,” commented Miss Talmadge in reporting the incident to her husband, “but it made me happy to do it, for I never saw a human being so grateful as he was.”

“And how much did you happen to have in your bag?” questioned her husband.

“Oh, it was all of a thousand marks,” answered she.

Her husband rocked with merriment. “And do you realize that you gave him all of twenty-five cents?” he said.