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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
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* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
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* *
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* Issue 43 -- July 1996 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
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* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
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"Untold Tales of Hollywood"
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
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TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
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Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
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death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
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scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
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(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
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murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
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silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
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toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
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for accuracy.
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Harry Carr, an associate editor on the LOS ANGELES TIMES, also worked
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for several different studios during the silent film era. In 1929 he wrote a
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special series of articles for SMART SET magazine, filled with legend, name-
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dropping, gossip, and personal recollections. Unfortunately, this
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interesting (though not totally accurate) series has been ignored by most
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silent film historians, who seem to have been unaware of its existence. It
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is reprinted below in its entirety, to provide additional background into the
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silent film era. A few endnotes have been added for clarification.
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The series does contain a few ethnic remarks which are offensive by
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today's standards, but they are reprinted as originally published, for
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historical reasons.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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December 1929/February 1930
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Harry Carr
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SMART SET
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Untold Tales of Hollywood
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Part 1
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In the movies, I date back to the days when we called motion picture
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studios "camps." Strictly in confidence I go even further back than that.
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I go back to the time when old man Talley ran a little peek-for-a-nickel
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show in a booth under the old Ramona Hotel, on the corner of Spring and Third
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streets, Los Angeles.
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One day he rushed out in great excitement and stopped me as I was
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ambling along the sidewalk. "Come in here," he said. "I've got the darndest
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thing--they call it a moving picture."
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I went in with him and saw my first movie--Mr. James J. Corbett, the
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champion of the world, punching the nose of one Courtney--on a screen that
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leaped and flickered and jumped.
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Since then I have seen stars in the act of being discovered. I have
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seen many of them sink back into the gory sea of oblivion. Incidentally I
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saw Talley become one of the great figures of the "Fourth Greatest Industry"
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--and drop out again.
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The first movie actress I ever saw was Miss Louise Glaum. She was the
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first great vamp of the screen. A young reporter on the newspaper I helped
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edit came in one day with a sensational suggestion. "I'll bet there's some
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news that people would like to read about out in these movie camps," he said.
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We didn't believe it, but we let him try. He came back towing Louise Glaum.
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She is not really so small, but the way she was dressed she looked like a
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porcelain doll. It was the day when girls wore very high boots. I remember
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that she had a pair that came to the tops of a very entertaining pair of
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calves. Our interest in news from the motion picture camps rose.
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Inasmuch as there are now more than two hundred writers in Hollywood who
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make their living out of news from the motion picture camps, it would seem
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that the boy reporter had a bright idea.
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Not long after that I was invited to come to the Universal camp for a
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literary conference. The Universal held forth at the corner of Sunset
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Boulevard and Gower, the present site of the Fox studio.
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I arrived at a time of stress and storm. Mr. Isador Bernstein, the
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general manager, had just received a bill for hay.
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"Who eats all this hay?" he cried. "The actors?"
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"The elephant," was the subdued reply.
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"The elephant!" he thundered. "I don't see any stories about
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elephants."
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"That's because we can't think of one," was the meek reply.
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Mr. Bernstein turned to me with an intense look. "Say, can't you write
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a story about an elephant?"
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To my intense mortification, I was unable to conjure up a drama in which
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the grand climax was a pachyderm eating forty-eight dollars worth of hay.
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And so my debut in the movies was a comparative failure.
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However I redeemed myself to some extent by writing a story about a
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little princess who had never had a good time. An old dragoon--at the risk
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of forfeiting his life--permitted her to go out and play in the gutter with
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the neighbor's children. It was called "The Princess Suzette and the
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Sentry." It was accepted and I went to the office dazzled by so much wealth.
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I received twenty-five dollars.
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At that time, the stars at Universal were Cleo Madison, Ann Little and
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Herbert Rawlinson. Among the directors was Miss Lois Weber, the first and,
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at that time, the only woman director in pictures. They gave my story to
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her.
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I didn't hear any more about it until I was invited to the first
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performance. I went with Miss Weber and her husband and co-star, Mr.
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Phillips Smalley. I gallantly bought the tickets myself--which cost me
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fifteen cents--reducing my net profit to $24.85.
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Mr. Smalley was a valuable husband--especially at a first performance.
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Every time any one in the house made a noise or whispered, Mr. Smalley leaped
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out into the aisle and found the offender, glowered at him (or her) and
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hissed, "Sh-h-h-shsush!" in a most terrifying manner.
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When the picture came on, I was horrified to discover that my little
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royal princess had become a debutante in an old Southern mansion. The
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dragoon had become an old butler who looked like Uncle Tom.
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"My public," explained Miss Weber with cold dignity, "demands that I
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star in the pictures I direct and I could not very well star in the part of a
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five-year-old child."
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So I learned about pictures from her.
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Having written a prize fight story called, "Kid Reagan's Hands," for Mr.
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Rawlinson and a newspaper story called, "The Sob Sister," for Miss Little, I
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was offered a guarantee to write for the company at a salary of one hundred
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dollars per month. My Scotch ancestry warned me that such huge sums of money
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couldn't be respectable. I knew that there must be a catch in it. So I
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turned it down. Afterward, I learned that some enterprising soul drew the
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salary in my name for more than a year.
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And I learned about pictures from him.
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About this time I remember meeting two little girls names Gish and a
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little girl named Mary Pickford who had a brother named Jack. I can't
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honestly say I was much impressed. Pictures didn't mean anything to us at
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that time--just some little folks who appeared in five-cent shows whose
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directors changed royal princesses into debutantes in a Southern mansion.
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The Biograph company was then riding on the top of the wave and Griffith
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had brought a company to California to escape the winters in New York. They
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were whirling off pictures at a dizzy rate. Mary made "Ramona" in one reel.
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They were more highbrow pictures than there have ever been since. They made
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"The Sands of Dee," Browning's "Pippa Passes" and many other great works of
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literature.
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Jack Pickford used to tell me ruefully that picture acting would be all
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right if you didn't have to do so much freight carrying. He and Bobby Harron
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were the two youngest actors, so they had to ride to location on bicycles and
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carry the props for the other actors. In the mornings, they would be wild
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Indians marauding around on their war ponies. In the afternoon, Griffith
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would have them change clothes and they would chase themselves over the hills
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as United States cavalrymen on Uncle Sam's sturdy troop horses, which had
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been wild Indian broncos in the morning.
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The girls of the company were required to be no less versatile. Dorothy
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Gish told me her troubles--which I thought were valid and reasonable as
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complaints against "the newest great art." In the morning, she had to be an
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innocent country girl flying from the demon Sioux. In the afternoon, she was
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a vicious gun man with a long beard--which tickled her neck.
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Griffith has since told me that Jack Pickford had the makings of the
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greatest actor who had ever come into his studio. He could have been a
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Mansfield on the screen, but he threw his life away because he could never
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make himself care.
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It was on one of these Western trips of Biograph that Mary Pickford left
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Griffith. He refused to pay the scandalous and outrageous salary she
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demanded. I believe it was two hundred dollars a week. After a somewhat
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heated discussion, he thought better of it, followed her to the train and
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meekly offered to meet her figure. But by that time Mary's dander was up and
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she sallied forth to make her own fortune.
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I met Mary not very long after that. She had come back to Hollywood
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with another company and was working in an old house near the present site of
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the Christie studios. Her salary had risen by that time to some astounding
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and prodigal sum--three or four hundred dollars a week. As a newspaper stunt
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I suggested that she change a week's salary into silver dollars and let me
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take a photograph of her trying to lift it.
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"Well I should say not," she gasped.
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"Oh, you are working for art alone," I replied sarcastically.
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"No. I am working for money, but it is just as well to let the public
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think I am working for art," said shrewd little Mary.
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I am not trying to write a consecutive history--these are personal
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impressions--so I am going to jump a little period of time and come
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to an event that might promote discussion in the Douglas Fairbanks family--
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were it not such a happy family.
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Doug was used as the instrument whereby the fair and businesslike Miss
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Pickford was to be set down in her place. After she left the company, Mr.
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Griffith decided to go out and find another little girl and make her into a
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Mary Pickford and then--by gum--Mary would be sorry!
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The Triangle company had been formed to efface the earth and all other
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picture companies. Griffith had imported De Wolf Hopper, Sir Beerbohm Tree,
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the great Shakespearean actor and a young fellow who did sprightly parts on
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the stage. His name was Douglas Fairbanks.
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What Doug needed was a Mary Pickford to play the lead in his pictures.
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Griffith saw a little brown-eyed extra girl. She was sweet and wistful.
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He took a puff at his cigarette and looked at her out of the corner of
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his eyes--the way he does.
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"What's your name little girl?"
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"Juanita Horton, sir," she said, trembling with fright.
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"That's a no good name for pictures."
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"I--I'm awfully sorry."
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"Don't worry. Something can be done about it. Your name from now on is
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Bessie Love."
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With Bessie came a beautiful, willowy, dark-eyed girl. She and Bessie
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had gone to the high school together. Her name was Carmel Myers and she was
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the daughter of a Jewish rabbi whom I knew and admired. I met her as she
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came out of the room where Griffith had been making a test. She was crying
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hysterically as the door closed behind her.
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"Good heavens," I cried. "What happened has happened to you?"
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"Mr. Griffith--he--he--told me all about the persecution of the Jewish
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race. He told me I was Hagar--or somebody--and it was so sad that I got to
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crying--and now--I--I can't stop.
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It was queer how things turned out for that company. The illustrious
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Beerbohm Tree made a picture that still stands as the worst flop in the
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history of the industry. De Wolf Hopper was a wash-out. But the little
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girls from high school and the actor who bounced around panned out.
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I remember meeting Griffith one day in a hotel. "Say," he said. "Want
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to do me a favor? Kill a man for me."
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"Sure," I said. "Any particular man--or just generally speaking a male
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human."
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"For choice--Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the world's most distinguished
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actor. On top of the worst flop I ever saw, I have to make two more pictures
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with him. Just bring me his scalp and no questions asked."
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"Why don't you let him walk across the floor and call that one picture;
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let him walk back again and call that the third picture?"
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"You have bright ideas," said Griffith gloomily, "but they come too
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late. You should have thought of that before we made a contract which gives
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him the right to pick out the stories."
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It must have been about this time that I received an invitation to go on
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location to see the big thrill in the first really big picture ever made. It
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was the first time I had ever seen a picture taken--much less a dynamite
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thrill.
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The picture was "The Spoilers." It made motion picture history.
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The studio scenes were made in a little studio on Glendale Boulevard
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where the Selig company held forth. It still stands there, having passed in
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and out of many hands since then. The picture was directed by Colin
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Campbell. The lead was taken by William Farnum; the heavy was Tom Santschi;
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the girl was Bessie Eyton; the bad lady who loved and lost was Kathlyn
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Williams.
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It was one of the finest pictures ever made. A few years ago I was
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invited by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio to see a remake of the old one.
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The showed me the old one with great scorn: then the new one made by modern
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methods. I was impressed with the fact that the old one was in every way
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superior.
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Colin Campbell never benefited by his work to the extent of recognition
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as one of the big ones. Bessie Eyton faded from the screen. Farnum became
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one of the highest salaried of movie actors, but a few years ago he too faded
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from the screen.
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Kathlyn Williams came the nearest to making hay out of it. It won her
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the long serial, "The Adventures of Kathlyn," in which she was chased around
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jungles by lions and tigers. I think she was the first actress ever to work
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in animal pictures to any great extent. Of all the women on the screen, she
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has changed the least since I first saw her that day when we went out in an
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automobile together to see the movie mine explosion.
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About this time I met in a very casual way, two people who were--as the
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young ladies say in novels--to have a great part in my life.
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Out in a canyon near town stood a little shanty on a vacant lot. Every
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time I passed the place, I wondered what was going on in that shanty.
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I found out. Quite a lot was going on.
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Mack Sennett had come to Los Angeles with Fred Mace and Mabel Normand
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and they were struggling with poverty and a contract to make a series of
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motion picture comedies. When I met them they had made two or three and sent
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them east--only to be told they were rotten and "don't do it again."
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Sennett was a young Irishman as strong as a horse but he was bashful,
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ill at ease and didn't know what to say. All he could do was work; and all
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he had to contribute to pictures was the finest sense of bubbling humor and
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the finest sense of discrimination and the best knowledge of drama that has
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ever come to the screen.
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He and Mabel worked--and quarreled--all day on the pictures. They shot
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wherever they could borrow a front lawn and persuade the lady of the house to
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move her best parlor furniture out in the sunshine. In the evenings, Sennett
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cut the film they had shot and prepared the sets they just had to have of
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their own making. They changed kitchens into royal palaces by putting on
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some more wall paper. In this, he often had the valiant assistance of Mabel.
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She held the paper while Mack swabbed.
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There was no secret in those days that their screen careers were bound
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together by a love affair. It has since ended tragically; but it will always
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remain as one of the great romances of Hollywood.
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I think there never have been two more brilliant motion picture minds.
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Mabel was adroit, beautiful, brilliant and as vital as an electric spark. No
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one will ever know what she contributed to Sennett's great screen career.
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Looking back, I think that these were the happiest days that either of them
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ever knew--days of poverty and scrimping and high adventure.
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Some years later, I went to work in the Sennett studio--my first studio
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job. I stayed there for more than five years. Most of my picture life was
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lived with Mack and Mabel. When I was there was the time that the Sennett
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lot was the incubator of stars. I saw most of the present names-in-electric
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lights in the process of coming out of the egg as it were. In a later
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chapter I will tell all about these days.
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One day I was at a baseball game with Charles E. Van Loan, who was on
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his way to becoming a great literary star. Van told me that he had an idea
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there might be good fiction material in some of these motion picture camps.
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Anyhow he intended to go out and have a look. A week or so later I met him.
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He told me he had found a cowboy out there who was great stuff for fiction
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stories. The fellow's name was Tom Mix.
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Mix was just a rough cow puncher then--green as grass and crude as an
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unplaned board. I remember that they had a cowboy rodeo in Los Angeles not
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long after that. The movie cowboys took part. Mix came whirling by the
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grand stand and lassoed Van Loan out of a box--dragging him along by the
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heels through the dirt--a joke which failed to make a hit with Mr. Van Loan.
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I mention this because, so far as I know, these Van Loan stories were
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the very first of the innumerable works of fiction whose scenes have been
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laid in Hollywood. Movie fiction began with a Van Loan story about a cowboy
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(Tom Mix) who proudly invited his best girl to the theater to see him on the
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screen, then found that he had been cut out of the picture.
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With the advent of the movie cowboys, the "yes men" at the studios
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inaugurated the custom of sending cavalcades of punchers down to the depots
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to welcome incoming and outgoing magnates. No magnate in good standing could
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go the beach and back without a regiment to whooping vaqueros to send him off
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and bring him back.
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A story is told about the first time that delightfully quaint old "Uncle
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Carl" Laemmle, the magnate of Universal, was greeted by such a Wild West
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demonstration. His jaw dropped with amazement.
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"This is a fine party," he said. "But may I ask who is paying for the
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time of all these cowboy gentlemen?"
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"Why--um--er--why you are, Mr. Laemmle."
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"Take me back. I can go without all those cowboys."
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It began to dawn upon me there really might be something in this motion
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picture business on a certain day when Bill Keefe came into my office. I had
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known him as a newspaper man. He disclosed that he was now a press agent and
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had come in to announce to me that the name of the "Clansman" had been
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changed to "Birth of a Nation." All I knew about the "Clansman" was that a
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very crude novel had been written under that title by a preacher named Dixon.
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The conversation ended by his asking me to go out on location and see
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Griffith make a scene from "Birth of a Nation."
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The field has long since become a populous real estate tract with near-
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Spanish Hollywood houses. I can't even remember where it was. But at any
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rate, Griffith was standing up on a high platform with a megaphone. All
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around were troops, wagon trains, galloping cavalry.
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I remember an old man with one arm who had been hired as a dynamite
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expert. He was also expert in exploding everything at the wrong time.
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Everything would be proceeding with high dramatic tension when Wham! The
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landscape for a hundred feet around would go up with a crash. And the old
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man would come out with a pleased air of satisfaction.
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In spite of the disadvantage of being three hundred yards away from him,
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Griffith would light into him; his words were also dynamite.
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I suddenly became fascinated with the movies and went out another day to
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see Griffith work. He was making that day what was to become one of the
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classic scenes of the screen. Many capable critics have stated that the
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finest single scene ever made on the screen was the one in which the Little
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Colonel (Henry Walthall) comes back after the war to find his old home
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wrecked. I think that no one on the set (least of all Walthall) realized
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that movie history was being made.
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We were, at the time, very much more interested in another event that
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took place. Looking down from his perch on the platform, Griffith saw a girl
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in the crowd of extras. His eye wavered from the Little Colonel. "Who is
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that pretty girl? Have her step out to the front." Every eye turned to the
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girl. I never shall forget the mingled looks of astonishment, hatred, and
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jealousy that were turned upon her. The King had elevated another commoner
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to the nobility. Every one realized what it meant. As I remember it the
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girl was Seena Owen.
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It was the first of many many stars I have seen tapped by the magic wand
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in the Griffith studios. Afterward I worked with him on the sets for four
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years as a production adviser and often I saw that incident repeated--Dick
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Barthelmess, Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro, Douglas MacLean, Carol
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Dempster, Clarine Seymour!
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There is a little family secret about the "Birth of a Nation" that I
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believe has never been told. Griffith's money gave out during the making.
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He twisted and turned every way he could think of, but it was no use. Bill
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Keefe came down into my office and asked me if I couldn't help him find
|
|
somebody who could let Mr. Griffith have eight thousand dollars. He would
|
|
give a fourth interest in the picture for that amount. There were no takers.
|
|
That eight thousand dollars would have made the investor several times a
|
|
millionaire. Finally Griffith sold some state rights to Sol Lesser, who was
|
|
willing to take a chance and got enough to finish the picture--almost. Not
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quite!
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|
Griffith found himself out one day on location with enough money to pay
|
|
off the cowboys until noon; not another cent. These punchers were not in it
|
|
for art's sake. "Pay or no ride," was their motto. The end had come and the
|
|
famous ride to the rescue had not been staged. Some assistant director got a
|
|
heavenly inspiration. He moved the "chuck wagon" straight down the road--and
|
|
blew the dinner horn! No one has ever known that the most famous mad ride in
|
|
the history of the screen was really some hungry cowboys hurrying toward
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grub.
|
|
That picture made many reputations. When Griffith needed some one to
|
|
play the part of the honest young blacksmith, they found for him a young
|
|
extra man with muscles like a prize wrestler and appealing young face. That
|
|
was Wally Reid.
|
|
Some time before that Griffith had had a player in his company called
|
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"Lovey Marsh." One day she brought her little sister on location with her.
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Griffith looked at the sister out of the corner of his eye.
|
|
"Sit down on that stump," he said abruptly. "Your beau is coming and
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|
you don't want him to know you care whether he is coming or not. That's it!
|
|
Now get up and run around the stump and fling out your arms. You are glad he
|
|
is coming--no matter whether he knows it or not. That's fine! You stay here
|
|
this afternoon. Lovey, you can go home but your sister stays."
|
|
That is how Mae Marsh happened.
|
|
To the astonishment of every one, he gave her the lead part in this
|
|
picture which was to make or break his fortune. Not only that, but he took
|
|
the singular dramatic liberty of killing off his heroine in the middle of the
|
|
picture.
|
|
Lillian and Dorothy Gish were both in that picture, but they were very
|
|
small pumpkins at that time. All Lillian had to do was sit at a spinning
|
|
wheel in some sort of symbolic costume. And I can't even remember what
|
|
Dorothy did. I was in the studio later when Lillian and Dorothy both did the
|
|
single scenes that made them world famous. [1]
|
|
Meanwhile, there were other studios in Hollywood that were making
|
|
history. It was around this time that Jesse Lasky and Cecil B. De Mille
|
|
started a studio in a barn out in the middle of a lemon grove in Hollywood.
|
|
Ince had been going for a long time in a canyon north of Santa Monica.
|
|
I didn't know either of them very well but I used to go down to Ince's
|
|
to see the Sioux and Blackfoot Indians who lived in teepees on the studio
|
|
grounds. Very casually I got to know two or three boys on the lot; one was a
|
|
lanky serious young fellow named Charles Ray. The other interested me
|
|
because he always seemed to try so pathetically hard to make good; his name
|
|
was Jack Gilbert.
|
|
Psychologically these big leaguers who were building up this great
|
|
industry were an interesting contrast.
|
|
De Mille always made me think of a fashionable jeweler; he laid out
|
|
glittering things on a tray and only he knew which were genuine and which
|
|
were bunk.
|
|
Griffith was always half actor and half evangelist.
|
|
Sennett was a street corner policeman who walked along swinging his club
|
|
and liked to listen to the quarrels of Mrs. Mahoney and Mrs. Clancy as they
|
|
hung the clothes out on the line; he had an avid instinct for life.
|
|
Ince was a patent medicine man who kept his eyes on the faces of the
|
|
crowds. The minute they looked away he changed the act. Like a medicine
|
|
doctor he was always packed up to go. He dealt frankly in hokum; and if they
|
|
didn't like that kind of hokum, he was prepared to switch it at any moment.
|
|
Bill Hart, who had come to the studios from the stage, several newspaper
|
|
men and a few actors used to have dinner at a German restaurant. Sometimes
|
|
it was so crowded that you had to eat in your lap. There was a little family
|
|
there--a mother and three daughters--who interested me very much. There were
|
|
making such a brave struggle to get on in the world. The mother especially
|
|
was a brilliant, witty woman with a downright common sense that made her the
|
|
most quoted woman in town. She was the mother-confessor for a great many
|
|
girls other than her own daughters. It was Mrs. Peg Talmadge; and the
|
|
daughters were Natalie, Constance and Norma.
|
|
It is an open secret in Hollywood that "Peg" and her original remarks
|
|
formed the basis for Anita Loos' "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." The other girl
|
|
in that book was taken from Mildred Harris. [2]
|
|
Anita herself had appeared on the scene by this time. I think I helped
|
|
to discover her. It is very difficult for a newspaper to find good country
|
|
correspondents. We discovered a jewel of the first water in A. Loos who sent
|
|
in reports from Coronado Beach. Sharp, keen, scooped the town regularly and
|
|
often. The first time I was called down that way, I went over on the ferry
|
|
to visit this paragon of journalism. A little child of twelve years came
|
|
out.
|
|
"I want to see A. Loos," I said brusquely.
|
|
"That's me," she said in a little, choked, scared voice.
|
|
Anita, at that time, was also writing sketches of life of the Lower East
|
|
Side of New York and selling them. The fact that she had never been in New
|
|
York was incidental.
|
|
At fourteen, Griffith sent for her and gave her the highest price ever
|
|
paid to a scenario writer at that time. Trust Anita to get the prices. [3]
|
|
In the next installment of this series I go to work in the movies on the
|
|
old Sennett lot--in the days of Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Fatty Arbuckle and
|
|
the bathing girls who became the great stars.
|
|
|
|
Part 2
|
|
|
|
There are various ways to break into the movies. I broke in by
|
|
reporting a war for a newspaper.
|
|
Before America took a hand in the World War, I spent one summer at the
|
|
front with the German and Austrian armies. It happened that D. W. Griffith
|
|
and the Gish girls had also gone to the front to make the first motion
|
|
picture of the war, "Hearts of the World."
|
|
We came back to Hollywood at about the same time. It formed a new bond
|
|
between us that has lasted until now.
|
|
The day he started rehearsal on that picture, Griffith asked me to come
|
|
to the studio and bring my photographs--taken on the Russian-German front.
|
|
As I was proudly turning over the leaves of the album under the admiring eyes
|
|
of the Gish girls, an extra man edged into the group.
|
|
"Excuse me," he said. "Those officers you photographed were in my
|
|
regiment in Austria." He pulled out a worn photograph of himself in the same
|
|
cavalry uniform. It made the desired impression. It got him a good part in
|
|
the picture. The extra man was Erich von Stroheim.
|
|
Little did either of us realize, at that moment, that Von and I would
|
|
one day be working together on a great picture which he was to direct and I
|
|
to supervise.
|
|
Mack Sennett sent for me and asked me to be his publicity man. He too
|
|
had been reading the war news. I did not see, at the moment, just why a war
|
|
correspondent was needed for the job. I found out.
|
|
The Sennett studio, at that time, was a little motion picture empire;
|
|
and Mabel Normand was the uncrowned empress. Sennett had twenty-two comedy
|
|
companies going at once. The battery of cars that drew up at the curb every
|
|
morning looked like an army being mobilized. I adored Mabel; and most of the
|
|
time I wanted to shoot her. She never kept an appointment. The only thing
|
|
about her that you could absolutely depend upon was that she was sure to be
|
|
somewhere else whenever you expected her to be--somewhere else. She was the
|
|
sweetest, most generous-hearted girl I have ever known in any studio; and I
|
|
have worked in a great many studios. Also she was the most maddening.
|
|
William Desmond Taylor, the murdered director to whom she was at one
|
|
time reported to be engaged, said that the measure of Mabel was that she
|
|
carried an Atlantic Monthly under one arm, the Police Gazette under the
|
|
other, and ate peanuts in a palatial limousine.
|
|
Mabel talked like a rough-neck waitress in a depot eating station, and
|
|
read heavy German philosophy. She almost wrecked herself financially giving
|
|
away money to every rag tag in Hollywood, and almost broke her sympathetic
|
|
heart over the troubles of the extra girls. She was sweet and patient with
|
|
old Minnie, the Indian squaw who worked around in small parts, and openly
|
|
insulted the actor to whom every one else was kowtowing.
|
|
He was one person for whom Mabel had a frank dislike. He always got her
|
|
Irish up. He was an English comedian whom Sennett found working in a
|
|
vaudeville show. His name was Charlie Chaplin.
|
|
I would like to say that all of us on the old Sennett lot recognized the
|
|
genius of Charlie from the first. But we didn't. He didn't even recognize
|
|
it himself. Sennett had offered him sixty dollars a week. Charlie told me
|
|
that he knew no such salary could last, but he might as well take it as long
|
|
as he could.
|
|
Sennett had a peculiar--and perhaps shrewd way--of hiring an actor, then
|
|
ignoring him until the actor's ego was reduced so in size it could be thrust
|
|
through the eye of a needle without hitting on either side going through.
|
|
For weeks, Chaplin wandered around the studio like a lost soul. When
|
|
they did not ignore him, they insulted him. It was during this period of
|
|
sulking around in the shadows that he wandered into the studio prop room and
|
|
found the little hat, the big pair of shoes and the cane that were to become
|
|
world-famous.
|
|
When they finally let him play a part in a picture, his real troubles
|
|
began. At that time, the big star of comedies was Ford Sterling. His
|
|
methods were radically different from Chaplin's.
|
|
Let us say--for instance--that Ford Sterling and Charlie Chaplin each
|
|
had to take a drink of water in a scene. Sterling would have rushed in,
|
|
snatched up the glass, spilled the water down his shirt front, gulped the
|
|
remainder and fled from the room. Charlie would have circled around it a
|
|
couple of times, nudged it, giggled, smelled it, gargled it, sipped, and
|
|
finally would have edged away without drinking it.
|
|
According to their standpoint, he was all wrong. But they couldn't make
|
|
him do it their way. He had a dumb, quiet obstinacy. Mabel used to call him
|
|
names. Sometimes they were funny, sometimes insulting. She came of a race
|
|
that had no surplus fondness for Englishmen anyhow.
|
|
Finally the director in despair gave up trying to get motion picture
|
|
technique through this Britisher's head, and appealed to Sennett. "He won't
|
|
do anything I tell him," said the irate director. Sennett chewed his cigar
|
|
thoughtfully and considered the British mutiny.
|
|
"Say you," he said, at last. "Get out there in front of the camera and
|
|
let me see you do it in your own way--just the way you think it ought to be
|
|
done."
|
|
In about seventeen seconds from that time, the technique of the motion
|
|
picture actor's trade had changed forever.
|
|
There was another actor on the lot of whom Sennett thought pretty well.
|
|
He and Mabel had been making a series of comedies together. He had been a
|
|
song and dance spieler in a cheap honkeytonk in Bisbee, Arizona, and had
|
|
found his way to a cheap theater in Los Angeles--a ten-twenty-thirty girl
|
|
show on Main Street. His name was Roscoe Arbuckle.
|
|
After chewing up about a box and half of cigars, Sennett made a
|
|
revolutionary decision--to make a comedy as long as a full length drama--
|
|
something that never had been done. The result was "Tillie's Punctured
|
|
Romance." It was one of the biggest box office hits ever filmed and made
|
|
Charlie, Mabel and Roscoe stars in their own right. [4]
|
|
At that time, the Sennett lot was an incubator of motion picture stars,
|
|
and I saw most of them coming out of the egg.
|
|
One of these girls was Gloria Swanson. Gloria was rebellious, defiant
|
|
and always had a chip on her shoulder. Any other girl would have been fired
|
|
the first day. But Sennett recognized in her, from the first, the makings of
|
|
a great star. The first time he ever saw her, he was in a scenario
|
|
conference in his office. This little girl came up the walk with some other
|
|
extra girls. He hurried out and stopped her.
|
|
"What's your name?" he asked.
|
|
"Why--G--Gloria," she stammered.
|
|
"Well, whatever your other name is, you are going to be one of the
|
|
greatest stars this business has ever known," he replied.
|
|
There must have been something about her that glowed. Cecil B. De Mille
|
|
saw a comedy in which she just walked through a door--and made her the star
|
|
of "Male and Female."
|
|
To tell the truth, there were two who didn't believe it--Gloria and
|
|
myself. I couldn't see that she was any different from any other little
|
|
extra girl, except that she was sometimes very sweet and sometimes very
|
|
catty.
|
|
At the time, there was a beefy comedian on the lot. He had started his
|
|
professional career as an elephant trainer and had risen (or fallen) to parts
|
|
in musical comedy--Wallace Beery. When I arrived on the lot, he and Gloria
|
|
had just been married. [5] They had the first "art" automobile seen in
|
|
Hollywood--an amazing vehicle. In their naive state of bliss, they had the
|
|
names "Wally and Glory" lovingly entwined in bright paint on all the doors.
|
|
Afterward they quarreled, and Gloria used to regale us with the sad tale-
|
|
-usually in the studio restaurant. I remember that the first rift occurred
|
|
because Gloria threw all Wally's guns, rifles, fishing rods and other
|
|
paraphernalia of the chase out of the house into the family garage.
|
|
I remember one day when Gloria wanted to go shopping downtown. Sennett
|
|
told her to ask the superintendent of the lot; the superintendent of the lot
|
|
told her to ask her director. Thereupon Gloria went around the studio asking
|
|
trained dogs, doorkeepers, blacksmiths, prop boys and finally an alarmed
|
|
chewing gum vendor--if any of them had any objections to her going downtown
|
|
to do some shopping.
|
|
All the other girls were jealous of Gloria. My office was the official
|
|
crying station. Any young lady wishing to weep hurried post haste to the
|
|
spot and dripped her chaste tears on my office desk. I should have saved the
|
|
tears. I didn't know how distinguished they would be.
|
|
One of the early tragedies came when Phyllis Haver invented a bathing
|
|
suit of wondrous design and a director took it away from her--to let Gloria
|
|
wear it. Ambassadors were promptly withdrawn and the war clouds lowered.
|
|
Another young lady with troubles was a little girl named Marie Prevost.
|
|
Very few of the bathing girls could swim, and Marie was called upon to do all
|
|
the dangerous diving stunts for the stars. Not for Mabel Normand, however.
|
|
Mabel could swim and dive wonderfully and never would use a double. Gloria
|
|
could swim, too.
|
|
One girl on the lot became world-famous as the result of a bet. I was
|
|
standing at the corner of Sennett's office one day with Sam Rork, then a
|
|
manager, but since a famous producer. "Sam," I said, "I am going to show you
|
|
what a lot of bunk fame can be. I'll make you a bet that I can make the next
|
|
girl who comes around that corner famous all over the world."
|
|
We waited and the next girl who came around the corner was a pretty
|
|
little school teacher from Utah, named Mary Thurman. It was almost too easy.
|
|
The first story I sent out about her was athletic. Miss Elinor Sears of
|
|
Boston had at that moment turned the public mind toward women athletes. We
|
|
rigged Mary up in a pair of short running pants and posed her with javelins,
|
|
vaulting poles and what not. With the valiant assistance of a couple of
|
|
college coaches, we invented a fine line of athletic records for her. Also
|
|
we tactfully graduated her from Vassar.
|
|
I don't know how much Miss Thurman's running pants had to do with it,
|
|
but the story sent around the world and they are still sending post cards
|
|
with her athletic pictures.
|
|
Her leap to fame aroused great jealousy in the studio. I remember that
|
|
one man comedian remonstrated with me furiously. "Say," he growled, "I just
|
|
betcha a lot of the men in Vassar couldn't make them records."
|
|
At the time, I was also running an illustrated section of a daily paper
|
|
in addition to my work as a publicity expert. There came to me one day a
|
|
young newspaper man who begged of me a favor for a girl who he said, needed
|
|
publicity like the dickens. I told him to bring her down with a
|
|
photographer. She was as lovely as a fawn. But, oh, so scared! She had
|
|
made a pretty bathing suit of her own and worked pitifully hard to get all
|
|
the poses just right. Out of the goodness of my heart, I gave her a front
|
|
page cover and thus started Betty Compson on her way. I imagine that she is
|
|
now one of the richest women in Hollywood. She was not only of the stuff
|
|
stars are made of; but she was a canny investor.
|
|
Another girl with a shrewd business head on the Sennett lot was Louise
|
|
Fazenda. She was a strange and delightful girl. She was always wandering
|
|
around the lot followed by the trained ducks and dogs and funny looking old
|
|
extra men. She had a Wall Street mind and, I imagine, was rich even then.
|
|
One of the early thrills of my days on the lot was when Louise cleaned up a
|
|
fortune on sugar stocks.
|
|
One of my duties was to be the consultant in all the love affairs.
|
|
Myrtle Lind was then a near-star. She was languid, indifferent and
|
|
dazzlingly beautiful. Sennett fired her six times to my knowledge. She had
|
|
an innocent faraway look of an angel listening to a celestial choir. A young
|
|
man proposed marriage to her and told of the wonderful things his great
|
|
wealth would bring to her door. She coyly and bashfully asked for a few days
|
|
in which to consider.
|
|
When he came back, she showed him a report from Bradstreet and Dunn and
|
|
remarked with slow sarcasm, "Where do you get that stuff--you are worth
|
|
$750,000? All you have is a mortgage against you for $23,000 and they are
|
|
going to foreclose that."
|
|
One time Myrtle ran away from home and went to live in the house across
|
|
the street while the frantic police searched for her. She said she always
|
|
liked the neighborhood.
|
|
Two of the old stand-bys of the studio were Mack Swain and Chester
|
|
Conklin. Mr. Swain was the proud owner of a pig ranch somewhere up the
|
|
country. Their partnership dressing room looked like a country fair. It was
|
|
decorated with samples of alfalfa, pig portraits and samples of bacon-making
|
|
food.
|
|
Ben Turpin joined the company while I was there. Ben had been a taffy
|
|
candy puller with a carnival company which made the round of hick fairs in
|
|
the Middle West. You know them. They pull the taffy over big hooks and
|
|
indulge in fancy motions as they work. Ben's work fascinated a fat man with
|
|
a bull neck one day. Naturally that inspired Ben to work up his act. He
|
|
made a great flourish with the taffy. The man, bewildered by the fact that
|
|
he couldn't tell which way Ben's crossed eyes were working, dodged the wrong
|
|
way. The result--Ben wrapped a hunk of red hot scalding taffy around the fat
|
|
neck of the chief of police of Cincinnati. Ben stood not on the order of his
|
|
going; he caught the first brake beam out.
|
|
He was still a Happy Hooligan when he joined us. He was always getting
|
|
hurt. A wire would wait all its life to break with Ben. If anything broke
|
|
on the set the end always flew up and hit Ben.
|
|
Being a frugal soul, Ben saved his money and bought an apartment house.
|
|
He did all the janitor work himself. He was always begging tearfully to be
|
|
excused from the set so he could hurry home and fix the bath tub in Mrs.
|
|
McGinnis's apartment.
|
|
Sennett put Ben in a series of comedies with Polly Moran and a man whose
|
|
front name was Heine. I forget what else.[6] His team mates were jealous of
|
|
Ben. One of the daily entertainments of the studio was to stand around the
|
|
front gate when they came together for the day and hear the names they called
|
|
each other--the result of a long night's patient thought and research.
|
|
Ben lived under one never-ending dread. His eyes had been crossed as
|
|
the result of a blow on the head. Every time anything cracked against his
|
|
distinguished skull--which was pretty often--he flew to a mirror in the fear
|
|
that his eyes might have been straightened again. They were his meal ticket.
|
|
During the course of the long array of battles in this unit, the
|
|
management got a terrible "mad" at Miss Moran. In fact it was decided to
|
|
dispense with her services. A shriek of protest came from the "trade."
|
|
Exhibitors who were our cash customers protested that all their patrons
|
|
demanded the girl who rode bucking broncos in the "Sheriff Nell" comedies.
|
|
"The girl who rides" was one of the big sellers of pictures. So Miss Moran
|
|
came back with an advanced salary and a grim smile. A grim smile because she
|
|
never had ridden. All the broncos were busted for her by doubles.
|
|
It was the day of the "Keystone Kops." It is amazing to know how many
|
|
of the big stars of pictures acquired black and blue spots as "Kops"--Ramon
|
|
Novarro, Malcolm St. Clair, Harold Lloyd, Wallace Beery.
|
|
Mr. St. Clair's promotion to the rank of regular actor was attended with
|
|
high incident. He had been a newspaper cartoonist and had been ordered out
|
|
of doors by his physician. That's why he was in pictures. He was very tall
|
|
and very thin. The first day he came out on the sets made up as an actor, an
|
|
irate face peered into his.
|
|
"Say, fellow, are you going to be an actor?"
|
|
"They say so," said Mr. St. Clair diplomatically.
|
|
Wham!
|
|
A big fist hit him on the nose. "There isn't going to be but one thin
|
|
guy on this lot--and that's me." The protestant was Slim Summerville, then a
|
|
well known comedian. Since then St. Clair has become one of the most famous
|
|
of directors and Slim has oozed out of pictures.
|
|
One of the men on the newspaper where I worked had a sister-in-law who
|
|
yearned for fame--and money. She just had to have a job somewhere. Her name
|
|
was Elizabeth Slaughter. We decided that was no kind of name for an actress;
|
|
so we re-christened her Betty Blythe. And we got her a job in vaudeville.
|
|
It was a pretty poor act, but the manager of the vaudeville house gulped
|
|
miserably and gave her a week's time. It did not earn her fame, but it
|
|
earned her, somehow or other, a job in the movies.
|
|
She rose to sudden fame--and as suddenly fell--for a very peculiar
|
|
reason. I think that her arrival in New York as the star of "The Queen of
|
|
Sheba" was attended with more advertising than has ever since heralded any
|
|
other picture. The Fox company could have been no more excited had they been
|
|
advertising a collision between two comets. Betty became world famous
|
|
overnight, and that was Betty's last high dive. She took off too many
|
|
clothes. Not that the public was shocked. Quite the reverse. They felt
|
|
cheated after that if she ever wore anything.
|
|
Exactly the same thing wrecked Theda Bara. I knew Theda very well in
|
|
those days. Never in all my life have I known any other woman with such
|
|
perfect, unruffled composure. She was a self-made woman; but she made a good
|
|
job of it. Even her fits of temperament were carefully modulated as to tone.
|
|
I recall once being in a projection room when Miss Bara was watching her
|
|
"rushes" being run. The picture was "Cleopatra." She had been away and
|
|
during her absence the director had taken far too much of another young
|
|
lady's acting.
|
|
"Oh, Mr. Edwards," said Theda. "It is lovely; so very lovely. And so
|
|
artistic. What a pity that none of it can go into my picture."
|
|
It was indeed lovely and none of it went into the picture. But a great
|
|
deal of Theda went into the picture.
|
|
Her fade-away was a pity; she had real talent. Her picture made from
|
|
Kipling's "The Vampire" not only started a fashion, but gave the English
|
|
language a new word. "Vamp" was brought in by Theda.
|
|
Another girl I remember well was Blanche Sweet. She had come West with
|
|
Griffith and the old Biograph outfit. But I didn't know her at that time.
|
|
I met her first when she was working at De Mille studio out in the lemon
|
|
grove. Griffith still says she had the makings of the greatest actress the
|
|
screen has ever known. I don't know what was the matter with her. I suppose
|
|
she was in love with Mickey Neilan and marriage was not possible at that
|
|
time. [7] Anyhow, she was a desperate young lady. The way she used to ride
|
|
around town in a big racing car gave us all the idea that she was trying to
|
|
kill herself. I really think that was true. In the studio she was just as
|
|
easy to handle as a jungle tiger. When the producers ventured timidly to
|
|
remonstrate, she slammed the door in their faces.
|
|
She was one of the most temperamental stars I have ever known, except
|
|
Pola Negri.
|
|
After her marriage, Miss Sweet became simple, sweet, tractable and
|
|
charming. Pola was tamed too, but not by marriage. That is another story.
|
|
Some time around this period I remember meeting the luckiest girl who
|
|
has ever been in pictures--Colleen Moore. Providence must have smiled at her
|
|
birth. From the very first she "got the breaks." Not that she did not have
|
|
talent; she had a very great talent and a winning personality. But
|
|
everything she attempted broke right, as they say in Hollywood.
|
|
As I remember it, she was one of the girls in "Intolerance," that
|
|
magnificent picture that broke Griffith flat. It was the making of a lot of
|
|
girls. Nearly every girl who appeared in that slave scene--where fascinating
|
|
young ladies were sold for harems, turned into a star--Norma Talmadge and
|
|
Pauline Starke among others. [8]
|
|
It is a very odd fact, during these years, two girls who had never
|
|
dreamed of trying to be funny on the screen became famous comedy stars. The
|
|
part of the mountain girl who ate raw onions was the making of Constance
|
|
Talmadge--in spite of the fact that "Intolerance" was a failure.
|
|
In "Hearts of the World" Dorothy Gish--to her infinite disgust, was cast
|
|
as "The Little Disturber." She went wailing into the part. She came out a
|
|
comedy star.
|
|
There are two actors who have been made stars by a single look: Dorothy
|
|
Gish and Sessue Hayakawa, the Japanese.
|
|
In Dorothy's case it was the sidelong smirk she gave to her soldier
|
|
lover when she accepted him--loving another fellow. The subtitle went with
|
|
that look so perfectly fitted that it fairly dynamited her to stardom: "If
|
|
you don't get what you want, want what you can get."
|
|
In Sessue's case it was his single brief look of scorn to the vamp in
|
|
"The Cheat," with Fanny Ward as the vamp. In a way he did as much in that
|
|
picture to change the technique of screen acting as Chaplin had done in the
|
|
Sennett school. It was the beginning of the repressed school, wherein the
|
|
actor holds his face as an impassive mask, but thinks his thoughts. Out of
|
|
the mystery of his Oriental philosophy, Sessue told me that an actual
|
|
physical vibration flows from the mind of the actor to the mind of the
|
|
spectator; and that it is the stronger if the actor tries to avoid showing a
|
|
single emotion with his face. Sessue was one of the most remarkable men I
|
|
have ever known on or off the screen. He was a Japanese naval officer and
|
|
schooled in the subtle, deep mysticism of the noble Samurai class.
|
|
To go back to the Sennett studio, Mabel in these years had started on a
|
|
series of star comedies of which "Mickey" was the first. That picture was
|
|
peculiar. It was the ill-fated Patsy of the studio. Everything that looked
|
|
like a calamity made straight for the Mickey studio. Mabel had one director
|
|
after another. The first was a gentleman whose beautiful wife had just run
|
|
off to get a divorce from him. Mabel told me that, in the midst of her most
|
|
emotional scenes, she would turn to the director for encouragement, to find
|
|
him sitting with his head in his hands--having completely forgotten her.
|
|
"Is that all right?" she would ask.
|
|
"Mabel," he would reply, "where I made my mistake was in ever inviting
|
|
that fellow to the house." [9]
|
|
In "Mickey" Mabel played the part of a green country girl who had been
|
|
sent to the city to be educated. She fell into the hands of the villainess
|
|
who had a villain for a son. The son chased Mabel around the room kicking
|
|
over the furniture and finally chased her to the edge of a roof whence she
|
|
was rescued by the gallant young hero. Years after, Mabel married this
|
|
screen villain, Lew Cody. "Mickey" proved to be an ugly duckling turned into
|
|
a swan. It is still known as "The Mortgage Lifter" by the exhibitors--on
|
|
account of the sagging fortunes it saved.
|
|
Mabel made two or three more amazingly successful comedies with Sennett;
|
|
then she flew away to join the Goldwyn company at a much larger salary. [10]
|
|
One by one, the old Sennett girls soared away to stardom in other
|
|
companies--seldom in comedy parts. Gloria Swanson has since told me that she
|
|
never learned anything about acting after she left the Sennett studio. She
|
|
learned to refine and tone down her work; but all she knows of the art of
|
|
translating thought into action was learned in the old rough days on the lot.
|
|
Other girls came to take their places--Marceline and Alice Day--Harriet
|
|
Hammond. The latter had an extraordinary record. She had been trained as a
|
|
concert pianist and her health had failed. She made one picture and they
|
|
thought she was due to be the greatest beauty and the greatest star ever
|
|
turned out on the lot, but she never did it again. Years after, Madame Glyn
|
|
found her and announced her as the great discovery of the age. She made one
|
|
picture under the Glyn banner and again faded into nothingness.
|
|
She was one of those girls temperamentally unable to get excited. Which
|
|
reminds me of the time they tried to rouse Myrtle Lind to a state of high
|
|
emotion.
|
|
Nothing could disturb the equanimity of that angel child. Having tried
|
|
many times over to make Myrtle start up in sudden fright, the director gave
|
|
secret instructions to his faithful assistant. "You sneak up behind her with
|
|
this pin," he said sternly. "When I give you the signal, jab it into her."
|
|
The set was arranged; the camera began to click; the faithful assistant
|
|
crept up with his mighty arm drawn back.
|
|
The signal!
|
|
Jab!
|
|
Myrtle never moved a muscle. "Ouch," she said placidly.
|
|
"Well," said the discouraged director. "There goes a perfectly good
|
|
pin."
|
|
|
|
Part 3
|
|
|
|
During the next epoch of my screen experience, I saw both Ramon Novarro
|
|
and Rudolph Valentino discovered; Dick Barthelmess came into pictures; many
|
|
other new stars rise and many fall again into oblivion.
|
|
The right thing for me to say is that I recognized both Valentino and
|
|
Ramon as being persons of high genius the moment I set eyes upon them. Alas,
|
|
I saw them both begging at Griffith's door and saw them turned adrift without
|
|
a protest.
|
|
I liked and admired Mack Sennett, but I hated the press agent business.
|
|
Also I hadn't the slightest interest in comedy-making. Comedies were not my
|
|
stuff. I was glad when D. W. Griffith made me an offer to come to his studio
|
|
as a production advisor.
|
|
It was an interesting period of his career. "The Birth of a Nation" had
|
|
been a triumph. Everybody connected with it had made a fortune--except
|
|
Griffith. Even a costume maker, who had grudgingly taken stock as part pay,
|
|
was rolling around in expensive limousines and living in a Hollywood palace.
|
|
"Intolerance" had been a flop. Griffith had expected to make a fortune
|
|
and an imperishable name by it. I don't know why it failed. When I went to
|
|
his studio he was trying to get back his courage by making a series of ten
|
|
pictures for Paramount. Some of them were good and most of them were pretty
|
|
bad.
|
|
Two companies were working at the studio at this time. Dorothy Gish was
|
|
making a series of comedies, and D. W. was making his own pictures.
|
|
Dick Barthelmess had just joined the company. His mother had run a
|
|
theatrical boarding house in New York. One of her boarders was Alla
|
|
Nazimova, then a struggling Russian Jewess, trying to find a foothold in a
|
|
strange country whose language she did not know. Mrs. Barthelmess helped her
|
|
over some stony places in the road. In gratitude, Nazimova gave Dick a part
|
|
in her first movie. He had just then graduated from a college in
|
|
Connecticut.
|
|
Of all the actors I have ever known in any studio, Dick was the most
|
|
determined. He would have succeeded in any business.
|
|
I can't say, however, that the combination of a headstrong temperamental
|
|
girl like Dorothy Gish and a grim, obstinate little Napoleon like Dick was
|
|
the most favorable recipe for family peace. It was a case of Greek meeting
|
|
Greekess.
|
|
I remember one day that Dorothy turned on him sarcastically with this
|
|
remark. "Well, Mr. Barthelmess, some day perhaps you will be the star and I
|
|
will be in your company working for you. Then I will have to do what you
|
|
say."
|
|
At the moment it seemed about as probable as that the Statue of Liberty
|
|
should go into the movies. But it is exactly what happened. Several years
|
|
later Dick starred in Hergesheimer's "The Bright Shawl" and was supported by
|
|
Dorothy.
|
|
Not that these spats ever really amounted to anything. They were just
|
|
spats between two spoiled children. With the exception of Mabel Normand,
|
|
Dorothy is the most generous-hearted woman I have ever known in the studios.
|
|
She was often hard to deal with owing to an odd characteristic of
|
|
temperament. Along in the middle of every picture she was seized with black
|
|
pessimism. Not but what there was a reason. Her comedies were not as good
|
|
as they should have been and Dorothy knew it. Her stage debut had occurred
|
|
at the tender age of two, and there wasn't much about the show business that
|
|
she didn't know. She began each new comedy with a burst of eager enthusiasm.
|
|
As she saw it going on to the screen, she sank into a morbid depression.
|
|
One day I found Dorothy looking over the want ads in a Sunday paper.
|
|
"I am trying to find a job," she said. "I find that the only thing I can do
|
|
is get a job as cook in a family where they live exclusively on prepared
|
|
breakfast food. I could bring in the milk bottle every morning."
|
|
Griffith and Dorothy were at sword's points a good deal of the time, but
|
|
there was no one whose opinion he so highly valued. Whenever they came to a
|
|
tough place in the story-rehearsal, it was Dorothy who was always called in.
|
|
To her rage, Griffith had a way of calmly looting her comedy unit for
|
|
anything or any actor who took his fancy--from props to leading men. When he
|
|
began "Broken Blossoms," Griffith drafted Dick Barthelmess for the part of
|
|
the Chinaman, leaving Dorothy without a leading man.
|
|
In many ways, that picture marked the high tide of Griffith's career.
|
|
It was never a riot at the box office, but it earned him an autographed
|
|
letter from a queen and imperishable glory from the critics. It marked
|
|
Lillian Gish's debut as a great artist. Also it made Dick Barthelmess.
|
|
The picture was made in three weeks--just tossed off as it were. The
|
|
scene where Lillian Gish is hiding in a closet from her brutal drunken father
|
|
still stands as the finest thing she ever did--one of the finest things
|
|
anybody ever did.
|
|
While Dorothy was gay and impulsive, then depressed and pessimistic,
|
|
Lillian was always the same--calm, quiet, patient. She had a peculiar habit
|
|
of living her parts. If, for instance, she was playing the part of a French
|
|
peasant girl, she lived the life of one for weeks. Read nothing but books of
|
|
French peasant life--kept absolutely apart from American friends--and even
|
|
ate the food that a French peasant would eat.
|
|
The Gish girls were like nearly all women who have been in the show
|
|
business from childhood. I never remember meeting one who was in the least
|
|
up-stage. They consider the stage hands, the electricians, the camera men
|
|
and the director--all to be working people on the same job. I never saw
|
|
Lillian leave a set without going around to shake hands and thank every
|
|
workman. As a result she was adored.
|
|
One day Lillian was working with a leading man who has since become a
|
|
famous star. He was indulging in an old stage trick--trying to steal the
|
|
scene from her by gradually moving back from the camera so she would have to
|
|
turn her back to the lens while he smiled into it.
|
|
The head electrician came to me at the head of a delegation of men in
|
|
overalls. "We want you to tell him," said the man, almost trembling with
|
|
excitement, "that we have been watching him from up there. We are on to what
|
|
he is trying to do. You just give him this warning from us fellows. The
|
|
next time he does this, we are going to drop that heavy dome light on him.
|
|
Accidents are liable to happen in any studio. One is going to happen before
|
|
long in this one."
|
|
I told the actor. He was so terrified that he refused to walk to and
|
|
from his dressing room unless I would walk with him. He was permanently
|
|
cured and has since become a good sport and a good fellow.
|
|
To go back to "Broken Blossoms" and Dick--one of the problems of the
|
|
picture was to make him look Chinese. Especially the slant eyes. This was
|
|
finally accomplished by pasting a strip of adhesive tape from his temples--
|
|
the other end being under his cap. Incidentally I might remark that this
|
|
system has been followed ever since by a well known man star who is getting a
|
|
little old. This tape pins up his sagging cheeks and has the effect of a
|
|
face-lifting operation.
|
|
Dick went down into Chinatown and studied the Chinese for days on end.
|
|
He learned to see without looking as Chinese do. A Chinaman's glance never
|
|
seems to travel out to meet anything as a white man's does. He even learned
|
|
to shoot as Chinese highbinders do--without lifting the gun from the hip.
|
|
I have never seen any other actor go after a part with such systematic effort
|
|
as Dick.
|
|
As a technical advisor on "Broken Blossoms" we had a little Chinese
|
|
student named Moon Kwan who has since acquired international fame as poet and
|
|
dramatist.
|
|
There was one critic who was not pleased with "Broken Blossoms." Thomas
|
|
Burke, the author for whom a literary market was made by the picture, wrote a
|
|
very catty article for the London papers about it. For that matter I have
|
|
seldom seen an author pleased with a picture. I have written a lot of screen
|
|
stories. I have never seen but one after it got to the screen. I learned to
|
|
know better. Kate Douglas Wiggin was still living when Mary Pickford made
|
|
"Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," thereby adding to the fame of that story. The
|
|
irate author wrote Frances Marion, the scenarist, a letter in which she
|
|
simply blistered the skin off.
|
|
Peter B. Kyne is the only author I know who always preserves his
|
|
equanimity in the process of being immortalized on the screen. Pete doesn't
|
|
care what they do with any of his stories as long as they pay for them with
|
|
cold, hard cash.
|
|
After "Broken Blossoms" D. W. Griffith began making a war picture.
|
|
I forget the name. It didn't amount to much--except that it brought a new
|
|
star to the screen--Clarine Seymour. [11]
|
|
I remember the day she came for the usual test and rehearsal. Those
|
|
rehearsals were awful. Griffith would put a couple of chairs down in the
|
|
middle of the room and the actors would go through the whole play pretending
|
|
the chairs were horses dashing to the rescue--or castle moats. The average
|
|
actor collapsed under the strain of state fright and embarrassment. This
|
|
little girl flopped down on a studio chair and pretended it was the body of a
|
|
dying lover with as little self consciousness as a child playing house. Had
|
|
she lived, Miss Seymour would have been one of the greatest stars in
|
|
pictures. I have never seen any other person to whom acting came so
|
|
naturally. I was very much impressed, and strongly recommended her to
|
|
Griffith because of her charming taste in dress. She afterward teased me
|
|
about it. The clothes were not hers. She had borrowed them from Seena Owen.
|
|
Without meaning to, Clarine Seymour brought one of the greatest stars in
|
|
the history of the industry into pictures.
|
|
It had been arranged that she should dance in the theater prologue of
|
|
the war picture. As far as I know, this was the very first prologue ever put
|
|
on with a picture. [12] She had to have a dance partner. Several were
|
|
offered and she selected a good-looking Italian boy who had been dancing at
|
|
one of the Los Angeles hotels.
|
|
One day while they were practicing the dance I happened to wander into
|
|
the set which they were using as a dance floor.
|
|
Clarine was blazing with wrath. "Say," she demanded of me, "is there
|
|
anything you would like to know--any mystery of life or death--of the earth
|
|
beneath or the waters under the earth? If so, ask this wop. If he doesn't
|
|
know he will think he does. He thinks he knows everything in the world."
|
|
I glanced over toward the "wop" and I was impressed with his quiet
|
|
dignity and the proud courteous disdain with which he received the insult.
|
|
After the dance rehearsal was over, I introduced myself and he told me his
|
|
name. It was Rudolph Valentino.
|
|
Fate handles the affairs of men in queer ways. Rudolph got his first
|
|
chance at a screen part shortly after that through his skill as a dress
|
|
designer. While they were working on the various pictures, the actors at the
|
|
Griffith studio used to go horseback riding in the park; Griffith Park was
|
|
only a few blocks from the studio. Valentino was a splendid horseman and was
|
|
in demand with the riding parties. Dorothy Gish couldn't find a riding
|
|
costume she liked, so Rudolph designed one for her. It became the rage in
|
|
Hollywood. It was like the trousers men used to wear in 1812 with straps
|
|
that went under the boots. Dorothy was so grateful that she gave him a small
|
|
part in one of her comedies. [13]
|
|
While they were making one of the pictures that followed "Broken
|
|
Blossoms," another Latin boy came into the studio, begging for a chance.
|
|
He had been around there day after day for weeks, begging for a test.
|
|
At last Griffith let him come in and he made his test while the rest of us
|
|
stood around giggling.
|
|
In our own defense I shall have to say that it was really funny.
|
|
The boy had made up a play in which he took all the parts. It was far
|
|
from a tame play. It was full of murders and duels. I remember the end of
|
|
it. He made a fatal thrust in behalf of the valiant hero (with an imaginary
|
|
rapier), then he leaped around the other way and received the fell thrust
|
|
through the heart of the villain. Having died with great eclat and plenty of
|
|
groans, he jumped up and demanded anxiously of Griffith, "How was that?"
|
|
We all laughed and the boy slipped out of the studio broken hearted.
|
|
"Say," said Griffith later in the day as we stood on one of the sets
|
|
waiting for the lights to be changed, "do you know that Mexican boy was
|
|
really pretty good--in spit of the groans."
|
|
I did not know until years afterward who the boy was: he was Ramon
|
|
Novarro. He recalled it to my mind.
|
|
"Sure," I shouted. "Now I remember you; you were the Mexican boy who
|
|
killed himself in a duel."
|
|
"Yes," Ramon said reproachfully. "And you laughed and Lillian Gish
|
|
nudged you in the ribs and made you stop."
|
|
Oddly enough, both these Latin boys whom Griffith allowed to slip
|
|
through his fingers were picked up and made into stars by Rex Ingram.
|
|
All was not harmony between Rex and Rudolph while they were making "The
|
|
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." It was to spite Rudolph that Rex picked up
|
|
this little Mexican boy and made him into a star--to eclipse Rudy.
|
|
I remember the time that Rex asked me to come to a little supper and
|
|
meet Ramon. Rex is an artist and sculptor. He was always to be found in
|
|
queer little cafes where crooks and gunmen were imbibing their sustenance.
|
|
This cafe was no exception. While Ramon and I talked, Rex sketched the tough
|
|
waiters and the tougher patrons.
|
|
His wife, Alice Terry, could sketch a little too. My memories of that
|
|
first talk with Ramon are a little vague because Alice was always
|
|
interrupting to ask, "Rex, for goodness sake how do you make a nose?"
|
|
Rex was one of the most extraordinary, and one of the most charming
|
|
characters in Hollywood. He had come here for his health, having been
|
|
cracked up in a war airplane. He went into the movies because it seemed to
|
|
be the thing that was being done. He always seemed to regard actors as an
|
|
affliction liable to happen to any one--like boils.
|
|
He fell in love with Alice Terry and married her. Alice told me that
|
|
Rex told her she was the only perfect screen type he had ever met. Then
|
|
these were the alterations he made in that perfection: Made her hang sand
|
|
bags around her ankles to reduce them, had her teeth made over, changed her
|
|
from a brunette to a blond, and finally gave her a new stage name.
|
|
"I never could figure out," she said in her slow indifferent way, "just
|
|
in what the perfection lay. He must have regarded me as good sculptor's
|
|
clay."
|
|
Rex was sophisticated. Not the Freshman pessimism that Hollywood actors
|
|
affect, but the real thing. He was a philosopher of indifference. Nothing
|
|
mattered. Not even death and taxes. When money was pouring in upon him like
|
|
a golden avalanche, he did not own an automobile. Alice owned a decrepit
|
|
Buick which she bought second hand. Sometimes she gave Rex a ride home.
|
|
Sometimes he stood in front of the studio like a hitch hiker, hopefully
|
|
signaling to the electricians as they sailed by on their way home.
|
|
Rex gave both Valentino and Novarro to the screen; but I don't think he
|
|
ever liked either one personally. He was always picking on them. There was
|
|
too much cultured Irish in Rex; too much Latin in them.
|
|
One night, after Valentino had become the greatest matinee idol the
|
|
screen has ever known, he invited me to dinner. It was a sort of family
|
|
affair and the only other guests were Gloria Swanson and her new husband, the
|
|
marquis.
|
|
Rudolph had lately been married to Natacha Rambova and she built the
|
|
house for them from her designs. Gosh! The living room was all black marble
|
|
with scarlet cushions flung around. It was lovely sure enough--but it looked
|
|
like a Cecil B. De Mille set! She was years ahead of the times. As she and
|
|
I sat talking together, we both began watching Rudolph. He was talking to
|
|
Gloria. He was so finished, cultured, elegant and charming!
|
|
"And yet," said Rambova in her curious, slow, mocking voice, "that isn't
|
|
the real Rudy. In his heart this means nothing to him--all this beauty and
|
|
luxury. At heart he is a simple, primitive Italian peasant."
|
|
Ramon was primitive in another way.
|
|
Ramon seemed to me to be always of the air; Rudolph of the earth. There
|
|
was something about Valentino that was crude and warm and real and vital--
|
|
like the glebe of an upturned furrow. Women felt that in him--a universal
|
|
fatherhood. That was what really gave him "IT." In a certain sense,
|
|
Valentino married every woman in the theater.
|
|
Ramon is crude and primitive as a tree squirrel. He has the bright,
|
|
quick ways, the beauty and illusive charm of a squirrel. Herbert Howe, the
|
|
writer, always insists that Ramon is a soul returned to earth; that, in a
|
|
lost age, he was one of the beautiful boys selected for human sacrifice in
|
|
some old forgotten city and thrown into the sacred well of Chichen Itza.
|
|
Valentino was literal, forceful and material. Ramon is a mystic. In
|
|
his veins runs the blood of a very old Indian race that once was proud and
|
|
regal, but fell before the greed of the Spanish Conquistadors.
|
|
But to go back to the Griffith studio where other stars were being made.
|
|
"Broken Blossoms" left Dorothy without a leading man. After that
|
|
picture, Griffith used Dick in "Scarlet Days," where he first created the
|
|
part of Alvarez, the California bandit.
|
|
Dorothy found a new leading man in Ralph Graves who had appeared in one
|
|
or two pictures under the direction of Maurice Tourneur. The best known of
|
|
these was "Sporting Life."
|
|
His first picture with Dorothy was his last with her. Griffith drafted
|
|
him too. His first picture with Griffith came very near to being the end of
|
|
his life. He had the closest shave I have ever seen in a studio.
|
|
It was a picture in which the spirit of a boy, killed in the war, came
|
|
back to warn his parents that they were in the hands of villains. It was a
|
|
very bad picture. [14]
|
|
Mr. Graves was supposed to have lost his life by being swept off the
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deck of a war submarine. When they made the scene, something went haywire
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|
with the signals. The submarine started to dive, leaving Ralph clinging
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|
frantically to the periscope. If he had not been an athlete of enormous
|
|
physical strength, he would have been killed. Two more feet of dive would
|
|
have swept him back on to the propellers which would have cut him to pieces.
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|
One day I came to the studio all warm and fussed with excitement.
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|
"Dorothy," I said, "I have found your new leading man."
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"That's funny," she said, "because I found one also."
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|
"He is a fellow I saw in Ruth Chatterton's 'Moonlight and Honeysuckle'
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last night. I have forgotten his name."
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|
"That's the one I mean too," she said. "His name is James Rennie."
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The sequel of this story is that Dorothy is now Mrs. James Rennie.
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|
Another boy who came to the screen at this time, and I believe in one of
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|
her comedies was Douglas MacLean. He had been an automobile salesman. I
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|
remember that I had to go down on a hurry call to the newspaper office and he
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took me down. He was a magnificent driver. And on the way he told me of his
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tremulous ambitions. That was in 1919. [15] In the ten years that have
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|
followed, he has become one of the best known comedy stars on the screen and
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|
has slipped back into oblivion. To tell the truth, I never thought there was
|
|
a single funny thing about him. He could have gone far as a dramatic actor.
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|
He had brains and determination.
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|
Bobby Harron was the one reliable old stand-by of the Griffith lot at
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|
that time.
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|
Bob, in a quiet, slow way, was an investor in stocks. He was always
|
|
trying to persuade the Gish girls to dally with Wall Street. Lillian was
|
|
very cautious with money. She invested all hers in life insurance annuities.
|
|
Finally, after much prayerful consideration and endless examination, she and
|
|
Bobby picked out one safe and reliable oil stock upon which she was to begin
|
|
her career as a money doubler. It turned out to be the worst lemon on the
|
|
exchange and she lost all her money.
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|
In the war play which brought Clarine Seymour to the screen, Griffith
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|
engineered the screen debut of another star who was to cause endless debate
|
|
throughout the screen world. This was Carol Dempster.
|
|
Griffith has one very peculiar characteristic--a sort of perverse
|
|
loyalty to any one "knocked." We all thought that Miss Dempster was not a
|
|
good bet. I never could see her at all as an actress. She was a girl of
|
|
good education, great personal charm and somewhat remarkable intellectual
|
|
power. She had been trained as a dancer, and a dancer she should have
|
|
remained.
|
|
But when we all tried to get him to take her out of the cast and give
|
|
Miss Seymour the lead instead of the second part, that was enough for
|
|
Griffith. He spent ten years trying to make an actress of Miss Dempster. At
|
|
length he succeeded, but he never could make her a popular star. The reason
|
|
was fundamental. She had too much proud reserve ever really to let herself
|
|
go.
|
|
One of the most singular experiences of my film career happened in the
|
|
Griffith studio.
|
|
A black-eyed Southern girl came asking for a test. She had fire,
|
|
personality--everything. They were about to rehearse a scene for one of the
|
|
pictures in which Lillian Gish was playing the lead. They permitted this
|
|
girl to come in and do her stuff. It was a cruel test. In the nature of
|
|
things we could not reveal the story to her. All she was told was to get out
|
|
in the middle of the floor and pretend she was barefoot and splashing water
|
|
in a river. The child was wonderful. She invented business that was used
|
|
with great success throughout that picture. She was piquant, pointed and
|
|
ingenious. The thought smashed into my mind: "There's Griffith's next great
|
|
star."
|
|
One of D. W.'s peculiar characteristics is a great caution. He is about
|
|
as committal as a clam. He said nothing to the girl; neither of praise nor
|
|
blame. Her face fell as she left the studio.
|
|
The next day he said to me: "Send for that girl. I am going to give
|
|
her a part in this picture."
|
|
"I didn't know you were interested in her; you let her go without a
|
|
word. I didn't know who she is."
|
|
Two years afterward when I had been to New York with Griffith and had
|
|
come back to the coast to resume my newspaper work, a young girl came in
|
|
trying to sell a story. I recognized her at once. "For heaven's sake where
|
|
have you been?" I fairly shrieked.
|
|
She told me that she waited a day or two in the hope that Griffith would
|
|
summon her. Then--broken hearted--she threw her make-up box into the garbage
|
|
can and said her good-by to pictures.
|
|
"If I wasn't good enough for Griffith I didn't want to play in the bush
|
|
leagues," she said.
|
|
"Give me your name; I'm going to telegraph to Griffith right now,"
|
|
I said. "You are going to be one of the great stars of pictures."
|
|
"No I'm not," she said with a little sad smile. "I broke my heart once;
|
|
that's enough."
|
|
This girl who waved aside a great screen career was Katherine Albert,
|
|
now a writer for Photoplay Magazine and Smart Set. She is likely to go as
|
|
far in literature as she would have in pictures--which was pretty far.
|
|
It is just such whims of Fate that make motion pictures the cruelest
|
|
business in the world. It is a good deal like the Klondike. It doesn't
|
|
matter how hard or how faithfully you work. It is the accident of finding a
|
|
chance. I have no doubt in the world that somewhere in a Hollywood
|
|
restaurant lugging hams and eggs for the cash customers is the greatest
|
|
actress who has ever been known to stage or screen. And she will keep right
|
|
on with the ham and eggs.
|
|
|
|
(concluded next issue)
|
|
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
NOTES:
|
|
[1] Of course, Carr's memory is wrong here. Lillian Gish had the leading
|
|
female role in "Birth of a Nation"; it was in "Intolerance" that her scenes
|
|
were limited to rocking a cradle.
|
|
[2] According to Anita Loos in "A Girl Like I," the character of Dorothy in
|
|
"Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" was partly based on Peg Talmadge, but the centeral
|
|
character of Lorelei Lee was based on Mae Davis, who was a temporary
|
|
sweetheart of George Jean Nathan.
|
|
[3] Although Anita Loos looked very young, she was born in 1888 and was thus
|
|
in her 20s when she began writing for the motion picture industry.
|
|
[4] Arbuckle was not in "Tillie's Punctured Romance."
|
|
[5] Wallace Beery and Gloria Swanson were married in early 1916, but Harry
|
|
Carr had been working for Sennett before that time. If he was there at the
|
|
same time as Chaplin, then Carr began working for Sennett not later than
|
|
1914.
|
|
[6] "Heinie" Conklin (not to be confused with Chester Conklin).
|
|
[7] Neilan was married to Gertrude Bambrick at that time, and did not obtain
|
|
his divorce until 1921. Sweet and Neilan were married in 1922.
|
|
[8] Neither Colleen Moore nor Norma Talmadge were in "Intolerance."
|
|
[9] The director was James Young, the wife was Clara Kimball Young; in their
|
|
divorce Lewis J. Selznick was named as co-respondent.
|
|
[10] "Mickey" was Mabel Normand's last comedy for Sennett and was not released
|
|
before she joined Goldwyn.
|
|
[11] This film was "The Girl who Stayed at Home."
|
|
[12] According to "D. W. Griffith: An American Life" by Richard Schickel, the
|
|
prologue was actually for the previous Griffith film, "The Greatest Thing in
|
|
Life," but the prologue did feature Clarine Seymour and Rudolph Valentino.
|
|
[13] The Dorothy Gish film with Valentino was "Out of Luck" (1919). But this
|
|
was not his "first chance at a screen part"--he had played the hero in "A
|
|
Society Sensation" (1918) a year earlier, and had several film roles between
|
|
those two films.
|
|
[14] This film was "The Greatest Question."
|
|
[15] This film with Douglas MacLean was "The Hun Within." MacLean had already
|
|
been in films for several years supporting actresses such as Vivian Martin,
|
|
Mollie King, Gail Kane.
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
For more information about Taylor, see
|
|
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991)
|
|
Back issues of Taylorology are available via Gopher at
|
|
gopher.etext.org
|
|
in the directory Zines/Taylorology
|
|
or on the Web at
|
|
http://www.angelfire.com/free/Taylor.html
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|