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Taylorology Issue 43
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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
* *
* Issue 43 -- July 1996 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
"Untold Tales of Hollywood"
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
for accuracy.
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Harry Carr, an associate editor on the LOS ANGELES TIMES, also worked
for several different studios during the silent film era. In 1929 he wrote a
special series of articles for SMART SET magazine, filled with legend, name-
dropping, gossip, and personal recollections. Unfortunately, this
interesting (though not totally accurate) series has been ignored by most
silent film historians, who seem to have been unaware of its existence. It
is reprinted below in its entirety, to provide additional background into the
silent film era. A few endnotes have been added for clarification.
The series does contain a few ethnic remarks which are offensive by
today's standards, but they are reprinted as originally published, for
historical reasons.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
December 1929/February 1930
Harry Carr
SMART SET
Untold Tales of Hollywood
Part 1
In the movies, I date back to the days when we called motion picture
studios "camps." Strictly in confidence I go even further back than that.
I go back to the time when old man Talley ran a little peek-for-a-nickel
show in a booth under the old Ramona Hotel, on the corner of Spring and Third
streets, Los Angeles.
One day he rushed out in great excitement and stopped me as I was
ambling along the sidewalk. "Come in here," he said. "I've got the darndest
thing--they call it a moving picture."
I went in with him and saw my first movie--Mr. James J. Corbett, the
champion of the world, punching the nose of one Courtney--on a screen that
leaped and flickered and jumped.
Since then I have seen stars in the act of being discovered. I have
seen many of them sink back into the gory sea of oblivion. Incidentally I
saw Talley become one of the great figures of the "Fourth Greatest Industry"
--and drop out again.
The first movie actress I ever saw was Miss Louise Glaum. She was the
first great vamp of the screen. A young reporter on the newspaper I helped
edit came in one day with a sensational suggestion. "I'll bet there's some
news that people would like to read about out in these movie camps," he said.
We didn't believe it, but we let him try. He came back towing Louise Glaum.
She is not really so small, but the way she was dressed she looked like a
porcelain doll. It was the day when girls wore very high boots. I remember
that she had a pair that came to the tops of a very entertaining pair of
calves. Our interest in news from the motion picture camps rose.
Inasmuch as there are now more than two hundred writers in Hollywood who
make their living out of news from the motion picture camps, it would seem
that the boy reporter had a bright idea.
Not long after that I was invited to come to the Universal camp for a
literary conference. The Universal held forth at the corner of Sunset
Boulevard and Gower, the present site of the Fox studio.
I arrived at a time of stress and storm. Mr. Isador Bernstein, the
general manager, had just received a bill for hay.
"Who eats all this hay?" he cried. "The actors?"
"The elephant," was the subdued reply.
"The elephant!" he thundered. "I don't see any stories about
elephants."
"That's because we can't think of one," was the meek reply.
Mr. Bernstein turned to me with an intense look. "Say, can't you write
a story about an elephant?"
To my intense mortification, I was unable to conjure up a drama in which
the grand climax was a pachyderm eating forty-eight dollars worth of hay.
And so my debut in the movies was a comparative failure.
However I redeemed myself to some extent by writing a story about a
little princess who had never had a good time. An old dragoon--at the risk
of forfeiting his life--permitted her to go out and play in the gutter with
the neighbor's children. It was called "The Princess Suzette and the
Sentry." It was accepted and I went to the office dazzled by so much wealth.
I received twenty-five dollars.
At that time, the stars at Universal were Cleo Madison, Ann Little and
Herbert Rawlinson. Among the directors was Miss Lois Weber, the first and,
at that time, the only woman director in pictures. They gave my story to
her.
I didn't hear any more about it until I was invited to the first
performance. I went with Miss Weber and her husband and co-star, Mr.
Phillips Smalley. I gallantly bought the tickets myself--which cost me
fifteen cents--reducing my net profit to $24.85.
Mr. Smalley was a valuable husband--especially at a first performance.
Every time any one in the house made a noise or whispered, Mr. Smalley leaped
out into the aisle and found the offender, glowered at him (or her) and
hissed, "Sh-h-h-shsush!" in a most terrifying manner.
When the picture came on, I was horrified to discover that my little
royal princess had become a debutante in an old Southern mansion. The
dragoon had become an old butler who looked like Uncle Tom.
"My public," explained Miss Weber with cold dignity, "demands that I
star in the pictures I direct and I could not very well star in the part of a
five-year-old child."
So I learned about pictures from her.
Having written a prize fight story called, "Kid Reagan's Hands," for Mr.
Rawlinson and a newspaper story called, "The Sob Sister," for Miss Little, I
was offered a guarantee to write for the company at a salary of one hundred
dollars per month. My Scotch ancestry warned me that such huge sums of money
couldn't be respectable. I knew that there must be a catch in it. So I
turned it down. Afterward, I learned that some enterprising soul drew the
salary in my name for more than a year.
And I learned about pictures from him.
About this time I remember meeting two little girls names Gish and a
little girl named Mary Pickford who had a brother named Jack. I can't
honestly say I was much impressed. Pictures didn't mean anything to us at
that time--just some little folks who appeared in five-cent shows whose
directors changed royal princesses into debutantes in a Southern mansion.
The Biograph company was then riding on the top of the wave and Griffith
had brought a company to California to escape the winters in New York. They
were whirling off pictures at a dizzy rate. Mary made "Ramona" in one reel.
They were more highbrow pictures than there have ever been since. They made
"The Sands of Dee," Browning's "Pippa Passes" and many other great works of
literature.
Jack Pickford used to tell me ruefully that picture acting would be all
right if you didn't have to do so much freight carrying. He and Bobby Harron
were the two youngest actors, so they had to ride to location on bicycles and
carry the props for the other actors. In the mornings, they would be wild
Indians marauding around on their war ponies. In the afternoon, Griffith
would have them change clothes and they would chase themselves over the hills
as United States cavalrymen on Uncle Sam's sturdy troop horses, which had
been wild Indian broncos in the morning.
The girls of the company were required to be no less versatile. Dorothy
Gish told me her troubles--which I thought were valid and reasonable as
complaints against "the newest great art." In the morning, she had to be an
innocent country girl flying from the demon Sioux. In the afternoon, she was
a vicious gun man with a long beard--which tickled her neck.
Griffith has since told me that Jack Pickford had the makings of the
greatest actor who had ever come into his studio. He could have been a
Mansfield on the screen, but he threw his life away because he could never
make himself care.
It was on one of these Western trips of Biograph that Mary Pickford left
Griffith. He refused to pay the scandalous and outrageous salary she
demanded. I believe it was two hundred dollars a week. After a somewhat
heated discussion, he thought better of it, followed her to the train and
meekly offered to meet her figure. But by that time Mary's dander was up and
she sallied forth to make her own fortune.
I met Mary not very long after that. She had come back to Hollywood
with another company and was working in an old house near the present site of
the Christie studios. Her salary had risen by that time to some astounding
and prodigal sum--three or four hundred dollars a week. As a newspaper stunt
I suggested that she change a week's salary into silver dollars and let me
take a photograph of her trying to lift it.
"Well I should say not," she gasped.
"Oh, you are working for art alone," I replied sarcastically.
"No. I am working for money, but it is just as well to let the public
think I am working for art," said shrewd little Mary.
I am not trying to write a consecutive history--these are personal
impressions--so I am going to jump a little period of time and come
to an event that might promote discussion in the Douglas Fairbanks family--
were it not such a happy family.
Doug was used as the instrument whereby the fair and businesslike Miss
Pickford was to be set down in her place. After she left the company, Mr.
Griffith decided to go out and find another little girl and make her into a
Mary Pickford and then--by gum--Mary would be sorry!
The Triangle company had been formed to efface the earth and all other
picture companies. Griffith had imported De Wolf Hopper, Sir Beerbohm Tree,
the great Shakespearean actor and a young fellow who did sprightly parts on
the stage. His name was Douglas Fairbanks.
What Doug needed was a Mary Pickford to play the lead in his pictures.
Griffith saw a little brown-eyed extra girl. She was sweet and wistful.
He took a puff at his cigarette and looked at her out of the corner of
his eyes--the way he does.
"What's your name little girl?"
"Juanita Horton, sir," she said, trembling with fright.
"That's a no good name for pictures."
"I--I'm awfully sorry."
"Don't worry. Something can be done about it. Your name from now on is
Bessie Love."
With Bessie came a beautiful, willowy, dark-eyed girl. She and Bessie
had gone to the high school together. Her name was Carmel Myers and she was
the daughter of a Jewish rabbi whom I knew and admired. I met her as she
came out of the room where Griffith had been making a test. She was crying
hysterically as the door closed behind her.
"Good heavens," I cried. "What happened has happened to you?"
"Mr. Griffith--he--he--told me all about the persecution of the Jewish
race. He told me I was Hagar--or somebody--and it was so sad that I got to
crying--and now--I--I can't stop.
It was queer how things turned out for that company. The illustrious
Beerbohm Tree made a picture that still stands as the worst flop in the
history of the industry. De Wolf Hopper was a wash-out. But the little
girls from high school and the actor who bounced around panned out.
I remember meeting Griffith one day in a hotel. "Say," he said. "Want
to do me a favor? Kill a man for me."
"Sure," I said. "Any particular man--or just generally speaking a male
human."
"For choice--Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the world's most distinguished
actor. On top of the worst flop I ever saw, I have to make two more pictures
with him. Just bring me his scalp and no questions asked."
"Why don't you let him walk across the floor and call that one picture;
let him walk back again and call that the third picture?"
"You have bright ideas," said Griffith gloomily, "but they come too
late. You should have thought of that before we made a contract which gives
him the right to pick out the stories."
It must have been about this time that I received an invitation to go on
location to see the big thrill in the first really big picture ever made. It
was the first time I had ever seen a picture taken--much less a dynamite
thrill.
The picture was "The Spoilers." It made motion picture history.
The studio scenes were made in a little studio on Glendale Boulevard
where the Selig company held forth. It still stands there, having passed in
and out of many hands since then. The picture was directed by Colin
Campbell. The lead was taken by William Farnum; the heavy was Tom Santschi;
the girl was Bessie Eyton; the bad lady who loved and lost was Kathlyn
Williams.
It was one of the finest pictures ever made. A few years ago I was
invited by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio to see a remake of the old one.
The showed me the old one with great scorn: then the new one made by modern
methods. I was impressed with the fact that the old one was in every way
superior.
Colin Campbell never benefited by his work to the extent of recognition
as one of the big ones. Bessie Eyton faded from the screen. Farnum became
one of the highest salaried of movie actors, but a few years ago he too faded
from the screen.
Kathlyn Williams came the nearest to making hay out of it. It won her
the long serial, "The Adventures of Kathlyn," in which she was chased around
jungles by lions and tigers. I think she was the first actress ever to work
in animal pictures to any great extent. Of all the women on the screen, she
has changed the least since I first saw her that day when we went out in an
automobile together to see the movie mine explosion.
About this time I met in a very casual way, two people who were--as the
young ladies say in novels--to have a great part in my life.
Out in a canyon near town stood a little shanty on a vacant lot. Every
time I passed the place, I wondered what was going on in that shanty.
I found out. Quite a lot was going on.
Mack Sennett had come to Los Angeles with Fred Mace and Mabel Normand
and they were struggling with poverty and a contract to make a series of
motion picture comedies. When I met them they had made two or three and sent
them east--only to be told they were rotten and "don't do it again."
Sennett was a young Irishman as strong as a horse but he was bashful,
ill at ease and didn't know what to say. All he could do was work; and all
he had to contribute to pictures was the finest sense of bubbling humor and
the finest sense of discrimination and the best knowledge of drama that has
ever come to the screen.
He and Mabel worked--and quarreled--all day on the pictures. They shot
wherever they could borrow a front lawn and persuade the lady of the house to
move her best parlor furniture out in the sunshine. In the evenings, Sennett
cut the film they had shot and prepared the sets they just had to have of
their own making. They changed kitchens into royal palaces by putting on
some more wall paper. In this, he often had the valiant assistance of Mabel.
She held the paper while Mack swabbed.
There was no secret in those days that their screen careers were bound
together by a love affair. It has since ended tragically; but it will always
remain as one of the great romances of Hollywood.
I think there never have been two more brilliant motion picture minds.
Mabel was adroit, beautiful, brilliant and as vital as an electric spark. No
one will ever know what she contributed to Sennett's great screen career.
Looking back, I think that these were the happiest days that either of them
ever knew--days of poverty and scrimping and high adventure.
Some years later, I went to work in the Sennett studio--my first studio
job. I stayed there for more than five years. Most of my picture life was
lived with Mack and Mabel. When I was there was the time that the Sennett
lot was the incubator of stars. I saw most of the present names-in-electric
lights in the process of coming out of the egg as it were. In a later
chapter I will tell all about these days.
One day I was at a baseball game with Charles E. Van Loan, who was on
his way to becoming a great literary star. Van told me that he had an idea
there might be good fiction material in some of these motion picture camps.
Anyhow he intended to go out and have a look. A week or so later I met him.
He told me he had found a cowboy out there who was great stuff for fiction
stories. The fellow's name was Tom Mix.
Mix was just a rough cow puncher then--green as grass and crude as an
unplaned board. I remember that they had a cowboy rodeo in Los Angeles not
long after that. The movie cowboys took part. Mix came whirling by the
grand stand and lassoed Van Loan out of a box--dragging him along by the
heels through the dirt--a joke which failed to make a hit with Mr. Van Loan.
I mention this because, so far as I know, these Van Loan stories were
the very first of the innumerable works of fiction whose scenes have been
laid in Hollywood. Movie fiction began with a Van Loan story about a cowboy
(Tom Mix) who proudly invited his best girl to the theater to see him on the
screen, then found that he had been cut out of the picture.
With the advent of the movie cowboys, the "yes men" at the studios
inaugurated the custom of sending cavalcades of punchers down to the depots
to welcome incoming and outgoing magnates. No magnate in good standing could
go the beach and back without a regiment to whooping vaqueros to send him off
and bring him back.
A story is told about the first time that delightfully quaint old "Uncle
Carl" Laemmle, the magnate of Universal, was greeted by such a Wild West
demonstration. His jaw dropped with amazement.
"This is a fine party," he said. "But may I ask who is paying for the
time of all these cowboy gentlemen?"
"Why--um--er--why you are, Mr. Laemmle."
"Take me back. I can go without all those cowboys."
It began to dawn upon me there really might be something in this motion
picture business on a certain day when Bill Keefe came into my office. I had
known him as a newspaper man. He disclosed that he was now a press agent and
had come in to announce to me that the name of the "Clansman" had been
changed to "Birth of a Nation." All I knew about the "Clansman" was that a
very crude novel had been written under that title by a preacher named Dixon.
The conversation ended by his asking me to go out on location and see
Griffith make a scene from "Birth of a Nation."
The field has long since become a populous real estate tract with near-
Spanish Hollywood houses. I can't even remember where it was. But at any
rate, Griffith was standing up on a high platform with a megaphone. All
around were troops, wagon trains, galloping cavalry.
I remember an old man with one arm who had been hired as a dynamite
expert. He was also expert in exploding everything at the wrong time.
Everything would be proceeding with high dramatic tension when Wham! The
landscape for a hundred feet around would go up with a crash. And the old
man would come out with a pleased air of satisfaction.
In spite of the disadvantage of being three hundred yards away from him,
Griffith would light into him; his words were also dynamite.
I suddenly became fascinated with the movies and went out another day to
see Griffith work. He was making that day what was to become one of the
classic scenes of the screen. Many capable critics have stated that the
finest single scene ever made on the screen was the one in which the Little
Colonel (Henry Walthall) comes back after the war to find his old home
wrecked. I think that no one on the set (least of all Walthall) realized
that movie history was being made.
We were, at the time, very much more interested in another event that
took place. Looking down from his perch on the platform, Griffith saw a girl
in the crowd of extras. His eye wavered from the Little Colonel. "Who is
that pretty girl? Have her step out to the front." Every eye turned to the
girl. I never shall forget the mingled looks of astonishment, hatred, and
jealousy that were turned upon her. The King had elevated another commoner
to the nobility. Every one realized what it meant. As I remember it the
girl was Seena Owen.
It was the first of many many stars I have seen tapped by the magic wand
in the Griffith studios. Afterward I worked with him on the sets for four
years as a production adviser and often I saw that incident repeated--Dick
Barthelmess, Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro, Douglas MacLean, Carol
Dempster, Clarine Seymour!
There is a little family secret about the "Birth of a Nation" that I
believe has never been told. Griffith's money gave out during the making.
He twisted and turned every way he could think of, but it was no use. Bill
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
quite!
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
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
"Lovey Marsh." One day she brought her little sister on location with her.
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
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
deck of a war submarine. When they made the scene, something went haywire
with the signals. The submarine started to dive, leaving Ralph clinging
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.
One day I came to the studio all warm and fussed with excitement.
"Dorothy," I said, "I have found your new leading man."
"That's funny," she said, "because I found one also."
"He is a fellow I saw in Ruth Chatterton's 'Moonlight and Honeysuckle'
last night. I have forgotten his name."
"That's the one I mean too," she said. "His name is James Rennie."
The sequel of this story is that Dorothy is now Mrs. James Rennie.
Another boy who came to the screen at this time, and I believe in one of
her comedies was Douglas MacLean. He had been an automobile salesman. I
remember that I had to go down on a hurry call to the newspaper office and he
took me down. He was a magnificent driver. And on the way he told me of his
tremulous ambitions. That was in 1919. [15] In the ten years that have
followed, he has become one of the best known comedy stars on the screen and
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.
He had brains and determination.
Bobby Harron was the one reliable old stand-by of the Griffith lot at
that time.
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.
In the war play which brought Clarine Seymour to the screen, Griffith
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)
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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.
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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
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