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Taylorology Issue 44
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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 44 -- August 1996 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
"Untold Tales of Hollywood" (conclusion)
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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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(continued from last issue)
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 also contains a few ethnic remarks which are offensive by
today's standards, but they are reprinted as originally published, for
historical reasons.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
March/May 1930
Harry Carr
SMART SET
Untold Tales of Hollywood
Part 4
In 1919 D. W. Griffith suddenly pulled up stakes and moved from
Hollywood to New York. For a while it looked as though the rest of Hollywood
might have followed suit.
Motion picture wiseacres have debated for years about this move. They
never guessed the real reason. A Los Angeles newspaper printed a cartoon
involving Griffith's private affairs. He decided they were getting too
snoopy. With one of those unaccountable whims to which all artists seem to
be subject, he loaded up a train with his company and studio baggage and
rolled out of Hollywood.
After looking at two or three studios, he picked out an old mansion on
fifty-two acres of ground at Mamaroneck, N. Y. The wife of the millionaire
who had lived there was insane. They had build a sort of cell de luxe for
her. It was palatial with plush, silk hangings and iron bars at the windows.
Griffith said he had at last found an appropriate place for a scenario
department. He put us in the insane cell.
The black finger of disaster seemed always to beckon to that studio. It
was a lovely place--outwardly--with great lawns, shaded by giant elms. On
three sides were the sparkling waters of Long Island Sound. But there was
something fatal about the place!
We arrived in October. The following New Year's day, some of us were
going to ride with Dorothy Gish in her car over the hard packed snow. Bobbie
Harron was to drive the car. Coming out of the garage, one of the car doors
flew open, hit against the garage door and shattered the glass. Dorothy's
Jap chauffeur, who was superintending the start, turned white as a sheet.
"Don't take the car out today, Miss Dorothy," he pleaded.
"Why not?"
"New Year's day--that broken glass--it means death for some one in this
party," he said anxiously.
We all laughed and went on--but within a few weeks Bobbie Harron was
dead; Clarine Seymour was dead; later Porter Strong died.
Bobbie Harron's death will always be one of the mysteries of motion
pictures. We, who were closest to him, actually knew as little about it as
anybody else.
Bob had been with Griffith since he was a little boy. He had been a
prop boy, an extra, and finally Griffith's leading man in a long list of his
finest pictures--from the old Biograph days to "Hearts of the World."
Naturally, he always looked forward to becoming a star with his name in
electric lights.
Finally Griffith consented and Chet Withey was chosen as Bobbie's
director in a story called "Coincidence."
They had a preview of the picture in a little town in Westchester
county. The officials of a great releasing company came in state. Upon
their verdict depended the fate of the picture and Bob's fate as a star.
"How was it?" he asked eagerly as I came out.
"All right," I answered faintly. I was not brave enough to tell him
that the magnates did not like the picture and were going to turn it
down. [1] That was about eleven o'clock. Sometime between that time and one
A. M. he probably found out. At that hour, he was unpacking a suitcase.
A revolver fell out of it--they said--and shot him. He died two days later.
Bobbie had been in love with Dorothy Gish since she was fifteen years
old. About the time of his death it had become apparent to all of us that
Dorothy had fallen in love with someone else--James Rennie.
The first big picture that Griffith made in Mamaroneck was "Way Down
East." He did not want to make it. He had no sympathy with New England
stories, but the exhibitors saw in it a big clean-up.
I have already told how Griffith rehearsed his stories before taking the
scenes--with chairs for waterfalls and marks on the floor for precipices.
He rehearsed that story until every one was saddle sore and weary.
One day I met little Clarine Seymour as she was coming out of a
rehearsal--a breathing space between scenes. "My Gosh," she said, "I'd
rather die than rehearse this darn thing any more." She never had to.
In a week she was dead.
She had been taken to the hospital for a minor operation to which no
importance was attached. Her mother was smiling as she saw Clarine wheeled
from the operating room.
"Everything all right?" she asked, smiling.
"Your daughter has not more than twenty minutes to live," was the grave
reply.
In finding a successor to Clarine Seymour, Griffith started a great
romance. Mary Hay, who had been a star of the Follies, was chosen.
I believe she and Dick Barthelmess had known each other for some time, but
this picture caused the romance to progress considerably.
A young lady of the Follies is supposed to be pretty well sophisticated.
Dick had been a matinee hero long enough to have grown a little case-hardened
to romance. But I never saw two lovers more thoroughly enveloped in the
tender passion. If I am going to be frank about it I might was well say that
they were just plain mushy. Like many other romances with such a fast start,
this one did not last long. Dick and Mary were married--and now each is
married to somebody else.
The next time you see "Way Down East," notice closely the shot of the
girl who is supposed to be Mary Hay--the one where she walks across the snow
near a tree. It is, in reality, the picture of Clarine Seymour who was dead
when the picture was shown. Some of the picture had been filmed while they
were still rehearsing.
More pipe dreams have been written about Griffith pictures than any
others. Two stories have been printed about a million times:
That Griffith pulled the cleverest press agent stunt in the world by
pretending to be lost in a sea cyclone.
That Lillian Gish nearly lost her life by being swept over the waterfall
in "Way Down East," but that the blizzard in the picture was a pretty poor
fake.
The truth is that Griffith did narrowly escape death in that sea
cyclone. And Lillian Gish narrowly escaped being swept into a puddle of
water about two feet deep, but had a real escape from being frozen to death
in that "fake" blizzard.
The scenes of the ice floe on that river were taken partly in the studio
with the fake ice. The brink of the falls was made to order on location near
Stamford, Connecticut.
The picture of Lillian Gish in the blizzard was made in the most awful
winter storm I have ever seen. Three men had to be down in the snow and hold
each of the legs of the camera. I had to quit the set four times and take
refuge in the studio to keep from freezing. Lillian stayed out in the storm
until the scene was shot. Then she collapsed and had to be carried into the
house.
New York society people suddenly "went movie" during the taking of this
picture. One of the enthusiasts was Mrs. Morgan Belmont. She got herself a
job as an extra and was promoted to a part. She was in the ballroom scene
where the innocent country girl (Lillian) was enticed by the wicked villain.
Mrs. Belmont brought in some of her society friends. At one of the
bridge tables in the movie set was Mrs. Belmont's father, one of the leading
architects of New York, and Miss Evelyn Walsh who was supposed to be the
richest unmarried girl in the world. Vincent Astor and Miss Ann Morgan were
also Griffith fans and used to come to the studio.
They were all good sports. Mrs. Belmont used to talk prizefights with
the stage hands and borrow their Bull Durham to roll her own.
Through their influence Griffith got a chance to photograph one of the
scenes in the drawing room of a millionaire's home on Fifth Avenue. He sent
me to look it over. I was obliged to report against it. It was not
luxurious enough. To a movie public raised on movie millionaire homes, this
would have looked like a railroad boarding house.
To jump ahead of my story, this reminds me of a time when a movie
director in Hollywood was making "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and decided to
be realistic. Instead of using a movie dance hall "percentage girl," he sent
to Tiajuana for the most famous percentage girl on the border. He had to
fire her because he couldn't make her act like a percentage girl: she was too
refined and ladylike.
When Griffith made "Orphans of the Storm" he needed a new type of actor
who could look and act the part of a gallant of lace and swords. Joseph
Schildkraut was at that time knocking New York end over end in "Lilliom."
Griffith persuaded him to take a part in the movie.
Persuaded is the right word. Joseph--as I think he will cheerfully
admit now--was about the cockiest young man who ever peered into a studio.
He wanted to tell Griffith how to direct the picture before he had been on
the set an hour. He simply would not be directed himself.
Some one with high genius got Joseph to invite his old father to come to
see him play-act. Rudolph Schildkraut was at that time starring in a Yiddish
stock company. He was--and is--one of the finest actors in the world.
Old Rudolph watched his son and heir for one full scene in which
Griffith labored with his rebelliousness. When the scene was over the old
actor beckoned Joseph into a vacant projecting room. They were there for a
long time. Then old Rudolph waddled out, snorting and still indignant.
After a long time, Joseph came out. He was almost crying when we met.
"Papa says I'm a rotten actor," he said.
Afterward Joe got to be a royal good fellow. In fact, he tried to show
his good fellowship once and made a life long enemy.
You will remember the scene in that picture where Danton gallops to the
rescue just in time to save Lillian Gish from a guillotine knife that
proceeded downward with the blinding speed of a slow canal boat. Monte Blue
was Danton.
An extra woman ran the wrong way and found herself in the path of a
hundred horses galloping like mad. Knowing she was lost and without hope of
escape, the woman collapsed in a frightened heap on the prop cobblestones.
Along came the thundering hoofs of the cavalry horses. Leaning out of his
saddle at a full gallop, the way he had learned to do on the cattle ranges of
Montana, Monte Blue picked the woman up off the ground. His horse staggered
on for a few feet and went reeling to his knees. It was the greatest feat of
horsemanship I ever expect to see. Among those who congratulated Monte on
his skill and daring was Joseph Schildkraut--but his choice of language was
unfortunate.
"Oh, Mr. Blue," he said, "I am so sorry you fell off your horse."
To say to a range cowboy that he fell off a horse was like saying to
General Pershing, "Oh, General, I am so sorry you were afraid to fight that
battle."
During the rest of the picture, we had always tactfully to arrange to
keep them apart. Joe knows more about cowboys now.
"Orphans of the Storm" was never the great crashing hit of "Way Down
East"--although as a stage play it had been equally successful. The reason
was that Griffith became so fascinated with his researches into the history
of the French Revolution that these episodes ran away with him. Mary
Pickford told me what was the matter when she and I saw the picture. "In the
face of all that avalanche of blood," she said, "what did the lives and
troubles of those two little girls matter?" A shrewd girl--Mary!
During the taking of the picture, Griffith had a lot of trouble trying
to find a woman who looked as though she were starving. New York must have
been too prosperous. All the extra women who reported looked like the
"before" picture of an eighteen-day-diet advertisement. Finally the perfect
type turned up. She was haggard, gaunt, piteous. I made up my mind that I
would see that the poor creature had a good square meal at the luncheon time.
I abandoned this charitable idea when she turned to her French maid and said,
"Marie, go out to the yacht and get my other make-up box." She was one of
D. W.'s society friends.
One of the frequent visitors to the studio at that time was Joseph
Hergesheimer who was the only big author I ever met who did not think he knew
everything about motion pictures. Another frequent visitor was F. Scott
Fitzgerald, at that time the darling author of the flappers. I never met any
other authoring young man so hard boiled. When you would try to get him
enthused over the idea of writing a story for the delectable Dorothy Gish, he
would ask coldly, "How much?"
About that time, Lillian Gish turned director. Dorothy needed one. Her
director, Mr. Elmer Clifton, had resigned form the company. He went to New
Bedford to make a whaling picture called "Down to the Sea in Ships." On the
eve of his going, he told me about a little kid he had found in Brooklyn,
through a motion picture magazine where she had won a contest. He felt
confident she had something in her, despite her rough, hoydenish ways.
I guess she had. It was Clara Bow.
Lillian was to direct Dorothy in Clifton's place and she had to have a
story. Griffith and I made one up during luncheon in a little delicatessen
cafe on Forty-fourth Street. We finished it all--plot, gags and some of the
sub-titles in about half an hour. It has always made me laugh to go into the
big studios in Hollywood where a scenario writer is allowed five weeks to
make the first rough draft of a story.
Dorothy needed a leading man; so we sent for James Rennie whom Dorothy
and I had jointly discovered on the coast. It was to be a real romance as
well as a screen one and Bobbie Harron--who was still alive then--faded out
of Dorothy's life.
Lillian showed herself a great director in that comedy. They wanted her
to go and direct other pictures. She declined. She said that she would
never direct another one--the worry would make lines in her face. Lillian
always discussed her beauty with the calm matter-of-factness of a plumber
talking about a pipe wrench that helped him in his business.
In that picture, Dorothy discovered a girl who had a long screen career
afterward. I had been to a studio dinner at the home of Jimmie Abbey, the
stage photographer. The one other guest was a little French girl named
Pauline Garon--then working in a stage play--just out of a Montreal convent.
I took her over to the office to meet Dorothy who engaged her on the
spot.
"Legs like hers," said Dorothy, "ought not to be lost to the world."
Oddly enough Mr. Griffith engaged Mr. Lowell Sherman as the star villain
in "Way Down East" and started him on the screen career in which he was to
meet Miss Garon. They were afterward married and divorced.
All kinds of actors, since famous, used to come to the studio. There
was one little girl whose name I have forgotten. She had just joined the
Follies and used to tell us about them. She was a Southern girl of
distinguished family and breeding. She said the reason the Follies girls
never lasted more than a few seasons was that they ate themselves out of
jobs. She told us of one Follies star who always went out to a big dinner
with some John. Then right after the show she went out to a big supper.
To fill the terrible gap of two hours between these meals, she had lunches
sent to her dressing room. Her bill for these snacks was about forty dollars
a week.
She told us also that while Nickie Arnstein was a fugitive from justice
(ostensibly) he used to come to the show every night with his wife, Fannie
Brice, and sit in her dressing room. He wore the very obvious disguise of a
colored maid. She said every policeman in New York new perfectly well he was
there.
One girl who used to come to see us with her husband, was Florence
Vidor. She was always in nervous terror for fear she would disturb
Mr. Griffith by standing on the sets.
Another was Louise Fazenda. I invited Louise to have luncheon with
Mr. Griffith. That usually witty and brilliant young woman never opened her
mouth.
"Well, say," she retorted indignantly, when I taxed her with not having
done her stuff, "do you think if a child suddenly found Santa Claus sitting
on the hearth rug with him on Christmas morning, he would have much to say?"
The hardest picture Griffith ever did was "Dream Street." Carol
Dempster was inexperienced and had to be made into an actress. Ralph Graves
was eager but a green actor. He had to unlearn many crude ways. It was a
terrible ordeal for Griffith.
One of the difficulties was in finding an actor to take the part of
Graves' younger brother. Nearly every prominent juvenile-lead in New York
was tried out--and flopped. While they were waiting for the next one to come
out and flop, Griffith used to press into service a good natured prop boy, to
rehearse the part. His name was Charles Mack. He would hang his carpenter's
hammer in the loop of his overalls and act the part. Then he would go back
and move the chairs around into their places. In the end--to the prop boy's
utter bewilderment--Griffith told him to play the part.
It was the beginning of a successful screen career--which ended in a
fatal automobile accident when Mack was riding out to location in Riverside,
California.
Mack's wife was a lovely young Italian girl, whom he had met by chance
on a train as he commuted in and out of New York. She was left almost
destitute by his death. They got up a benefit for her in Hollywood and a
tender-hearted treasurer stole the money and decamped.
They say that words suggest the idea, but "Romance" did not suggest the
idea. That picture was one long tale of grief.
Doris Keane had starred in that lovely and appealing play for--three
years in New York and five years in London. Naturally it was expected that
on the screen it would be a riot. It was far from such.
Miss Keane's director was Chet Withey. They got along with all the
sweet dulcet harmony of a black dog and a monkey. When Chet would tell her
what to do, Miss Keane, who was a woman of great power and dignity, would fix
him with a glare and say, "Young man, are you aware that I played this part
for three years in New York and five years in London? Kindly do not try to
tell me how to act it."
I have seen the same thing happen in at least two other instances. Miss
Laurette Taylor resented being told how to act Peg O' My Heart. She told me
by the way that the success of this amazing record-breaking play was a
complete surprise to her and to her husband Hartley Manners, who wrote it.
She said that she was playing in a California stock company and a manuscript
failed to arrive from New York. Hartley just threw this play together, never
imagining it would more than last the week.
Another star who ruined herself was Nazimova. When she first went into
pictures, she was going great guns. But one day she looked into a camera
finder and was lost. After that she tried to tell the director what to do;
and that was the finish of a brilliant career. She was so sure of herself
that she pushed all the producers away and--with her own money--made an "art"
version of "Salome."
Her art director who planned the "new art" sets was Natacha Rambova, who
married Valentino. She made another art one while married to Rudy called
"What Price Beauty." It wrecked Rudolph's bank account and their marriage.
Ince had made many famous stars; but the only one of particular note in
the studio at the time was Madge Bellamy. In some ways she was the most
beautiful girl I had ever seen then--or have ever seen since. And she was
just about as easy to manage as a flock of young turkeys.
She had one of the most horrifying escapes from death I have ever seen.
It was an animal romance in which Miss Bellamy was cast as a circus
rider and animal trainer. She had to work with an elephant named Minnie.
Minnie was--and is--a perfect love. A child can handle her.
In this scene, Miss Bellamy had to lie down at full length between
Minnie's front feet and Minnie was to sit down on her haunches like a big
dog. Something went hay wire and a drunken trainer gave the wrong signal.
Minnie was ordered to lie down flat, which of course would have crushed Madge
Bellamy to death. The old girl trumpeted and weaved from side to side in
protest. But the cruel jabber went into her ear as the drunken fool repeated
the order for her to lie flat.
Miss Bellamy told me that she felt the great bulk of several tons
settling down on top of her; and gave up her life for lost. Suddenly a long
snakey trunk fastened itself about Madge's body and she felt herself thrown
out to the front like an old hat. She was badly bruised but Minnie had saved
her life.
Two of the stars who had been with Ince were out on their own--trying to
make their own pictures--Bill Hart and Charlie Ray. Both ended in tragedy.
Bill Hart's is a long, complicated story. Charlie Ray was wrecked by
overambition. I knew what was going to happen to Charlie when he made "The
Courtship of Miles Standish." He was surrounded by "Yes" men. They all sat
at a long luncheon table and when Charlie made a joke they cracked their ribs
laughing. If some one interrupted him by mistake they all glared at him in
horror. Naturally the picture was a flop that broke Charlie Ray hopelessly
and irrevocably. Which was a pity. Lubitsch says he was one of the finest
actors America ever produced.
In the next installment, Lubitsch finds Pola Negri, and I help to make a
great but ill-fated picture--Abraham Lincoln
Part 5
The year I returned from New York to Hollywood was the year of the
"foreign invasion"--when stars and directors poured in from Europe.
It brought me two new friends, who were among the most interesting and
extraordinary characters I have ever known--Pola Negri and Ernst Lubitsch.
Pola has known life in every phase--the highest and the lowest--yet she
remains as naive and direct as a child. I made a friend of her by panning
the tar out of her in a newspaper.
Pola arrived in Hollywood as arrogant as a newly rich bootlegger's
bride. She was pretty awful. One of the first articles printed about her in
Los Angeles failed to please her regal fancy. Imperiously summoning the
studio publicity man, she said, "Send for the newspaper critics. I am going
to tell them what I think of them."
The publicity director let the fact filter through to her cosmic
consciousness that the critics might be like the spirits of the Vasty Deep.
She might summon them; but would they come? She found that they wouldn't.
When Pola was shown over the Paramount studio for the first time, she
saw a bungalow dressing room--the first of such elegancies that Hollywood had
known.
"What is that?" she demanded.
"A dressing room," said the producer nervously.
"Whose dressing room?"
"Gloria Swanson's."
"Who is she?"
"Who--um--er--she is one of our greatest stars."
"Get me a dressing room just like it," ordered Pola briefly.
They had to throw the whole scenario department out of their quarters to
obey the edict.
She and Gloria--as was inevitable--promptly "mixed it." It might have
been over anything. It happened to be over cats. Pola was superstitious
about cats.
"Take those cats out of the studio or I refuse to act," said Pola.
"Leave those cats in the studio or I refuse to act," said Gloria. It
was finally settled by a frenzied compromise.
Pola did not like the stories they gave her. At that time the mania in
all the studios was for pure heroines. They even tried to purify her as the
heroine of Robert Hichen's "The Garden of Allah." Pola had brains enough to
realize what it was going to do to her. One day she had an attack of
screaming tantrums on the set. "I won't do it," she cried. "I don't want to
be beautiful. I don't want to be sweet. I want to act."
At length Pola got to the place where she needed sitting upon. I let
her have it with both barrels in a newspaper. It tamed her at once. The
first time I met her after that savage "roast," she came up with gracious
sweetness. "Let us forget it," she said. "It belongs to our past."
One day we took a long automobile ride out through the country. She
told me, among other things, that she had had so much bitter sorrow in her
life that she would not be able to endure going on except for one thing. She
believed in reincarnation, and consoled herself that she was paying some
debt, wiping out the sins of some past life by her present suffering. In the
next life, she would have happiness.
I liked Pola. She was a brilliant woman with the eager interest of a
child. She peppered you with questions. "When you were at the war front in
Germany how did you manage without speaking the language? Were the officers
arrogant? How many prisoners did you see? How did you get your articles
home?"
There was no bunk about Pola. I sat in a projection room one day with
her. Every time she saw herself in a good scene she frankly applauded with
naive delight. I asked her what was the best scene she had ever acted. She
said it was in "Gypsy Blood" where she told Don Jose that if he didn't like
the way she lived, he could get out--and there was the door. "And," she
added, "that was one of the best scenes anybody ever acted."
Norma Talmadge is a great booster for Pola. She told me that the best
acting she ever saw on the screen was in that same picture.
I once asked Charlie Chaplin what he considered to be the best acting he
ever did in his life. He said it was in "The Gold Rush," where he thought
the girl on the balcony was flirting with him, then found it was somebody
else she was vamping.
Pola's diversions were going to fortune tellers and having love affairs.
There was a famous crystal gazer at Santa Monica whom she consulted every day
of her life, until he guessed wrong on her love affair with Rudolph
Valentino.
Her first great passion in this country was Charlie Chaplin; it was the
only affair of the heart that didn't cost him anything. Charlie was
interviewed by a Los Angeles newspaper. He said he did not think he would
marry Pola because she might prove to be too expensive. Pola did not
appreciate the joke and sent his presents back.
With great glee Pola told me the sequel. The manager of the studio
begged her to let Charlie come to her house to square himself. She
consented.
"When he came up the walk," said Pola, "he was accompanied by the
manager of the studio; and a herd of reporters and newspaper camera men.
I fled upstairs to my bedroom. Finding me gone, Charlie wept on the shoulder
of the manager. I happened to look out of my window and saw the newspaper
men all lined up, taking in the weeping through the open window. I refused
to go down to take part in the free show. Finally Charlie burst into my
bedroom--alone this time. I was very angry until I saw his nose all red from
crying. He looked so funny I had to laugh, and then of course I could not
stay mad. I had to forgive him.
A bewildering succession of suitors followed that affair. Rudolph
Valentino fairly galloped into her heart.
One day, talking to a young actor who happened to be the current swain,
I suggested that we go to lunch together. "I think I have an engagement for
luncheon," he said. "Pola seems to be making mighty preparations in her
bungalow."
An hour later, I met him, grinning but rueful. "She called me in," he
said, "but not to luncheon. She pointed over to a corner of the room and
said, 'Anthony, I now love him'."
The gentleman thus elevated to high romance was Valentino!
Just before his fatal illness I said to her one day, "Pola you look so
lovely everything must be O. K. with you."
"Business--very good; love--very bad," she said. She had quarreled with
Rudolph!
A state secret--which I doubt if Pola ever knew herself--was that her
heart-broken trip across the continent to Valentino's death bed and her
subsequent mourning, was encouraged by some wise-cracking film magnates who
wanted to keep the affair on the front pages of the newspapers long enough to
hustle out some of Valentino's most famous pictures.
One of the most courageous things I have ever known was Mary Pickford's
bringing Lubitsch from Germany to direct her in "Rosita." The first German
pictures since the war had just been shown in Los Angeles. The police had
had to fight the mob which wanted to tear down the theater. In the face of
that, Mary announced that her next picture would be made with the most famous
director in Germany.
Lubitsch arrived--scared, nervous, depressed--very much a stranger in a
strange land. I think I was one of the first friends he made her. He is one
of the most charming and lovable men I have ever known--in a studio or
outside.
He is one of the most infallible judges of pictures I have ever known.
When I was stuck in my work as a critic I used to go to him.
One of the times I was stuck was when Douglas Fairbanks made "The Thief
of Bagdad." There was something the matter with it and I simply couldn't
tell what it was.
Lubitsch took me off behind the laboratory. "Confidential?" he
stipulated, pronouncing it "Gonfee-denshawl? Jess?"
"Sure, confidential," I said.
"It is those beautiful sets which cost him so much money. Bagdad, she
should ought to be all queer musty smells. Jess? How you going to make
audiences think it is musty with those so bootifool white sets? No?"
In one of his early American pictures Lubitsch plumped Clara Bow on to
the map. She had been hanging around Hollywood quite a while, but nobody
took her seriously. She was just a little mad-cap. The directors liked to
have her around--not for what she did in the pictures, but for what she did
on the sets. She kept the stars good-natured with her antics. Lubitsch saw
at once what she had. This time he took me around behind the scenery. "Dos
leetle girl with all that foolishnesses--she vill be one of the greatest
stars pictures has ever known." [2]
Clara told me, only the other day, that everything she knows about
acting she learned from Lubitsch in that picture. "Before that," she said,
"I spread it on too think. When I winked in a picture I all but cracked my
eyelids. He showed me that there was really more wink in a little wink."
Somewhere around this time I was drawn--by a set of curious
circumstances, into a company that was making "Abraham Lincoln."
It was there that I first met Frances Marion and her husband, the late
Fred Thomson, who were to become my closest friends.
One day the Rockett brothers, who were producing the picture, came out
to her house with a man to play Lincoln. He looked exactly like him; it was
an astounding experience to plan a play about Abe Lincoln with Abe Lincoln
sitting there. The man's name was Billings. He said he had once been on the
stage. As I remember, he had been the hind legs of a prop mule.
He had an astonishing view of the ancient art of acting. One day he and
I went to lunch, and the told me of his life's ambition which was to become a
contractor and builder. "Of course," he said, "you can't get one of them
jobs right off; so I might have to keep on acting for a while."
I reminded him that he was considered an acting genius. "Huh," he
snorted scornfully. "You know why I am a good actor, Mister? Because I am a
failure in life. Do you think that anybody who hadn't been licked by life
could let some feller tell him, 'Now you are sad; cry,' and leak tears all
over the place? And then say, 'Now you're happy; smile,' and turn it on to
order?"
He gave one of the greatest performances in the history of the screen.
It was naturally to be supposed that it would lead to fame, fortune and
stardom. It was his finish. He looked too much like Lincoln. No casting
director can steel himself to the point of asking Abraham Lincoln to act the
part of a gangster in a tough saloon.
It would seem to be some distance from Lincoln to Baby Peggy but I
worked with that illustrious infant next. I was studio manager or something
for Sol Lesser, who had made a young fortune starring Jackie Coogan, and was
trying to do the same thing with Baby Peggy.
I mention this experience only that I may comment upon an eccentricity
of the American theater-going public. They make fortunes for little-boy
stars of the screen--Wesley Barry, Junior Coghlan, Jackie Coogan, Ben
Alexander, and the little fellow who played with Al Jolson, but they turn up
their noses at little-girl stars. [3]
There has never been a girl infant prodigy on the screen who got to
first base. On the speaking stage it is just the reverse. They adore little
girls but will have none of little boys. Mary Pickford, Elsie Janis, Helen
Hayes, Della Fox, Lillian and Dorothy Gish--all won fame as child actresses.
If you can figure this out, the crossword puzzle belongs to you.
My time at this studio was not, of course, taken up exclusively with
Baby Peggy. We were making a picture from one of the novels of Harold Bell
Wright. I had known him many years before when he was a green country
circuit-riding preacher, just beginning to write unsophisticated novels.
I took him to the first vaudeville show he had ever seen. It was one of
those terrible bills that make shivers crawl down your spine, and suggest to
you the propriety of laying for the actors at the stage entrance with a club,
to kill them as they come out. Mr. Wright was simply entranced and wanted to
go again the next night.
He was hard to work with in later years. His opinion of the film
business was about forty degrees below zero. Try as I might, I couldn't
figure the motive that lay behind the hero of "When a Man's a Man." We asked
Mr. Wright and, after some embarrassment, he confessed that he couldn't
remember the motive himself.
While making the picture, we discovered a new star. One day I saw a
little extra girl in a one-reel prize-fight picture and persuaded Mr. Lesser
to send for her.
She said her name was Grizelda Gotten. With the exception of Lucille
Langhanke, this was the most unpromising name I had ever heard for screen
purposes.
Miss Langhanke changed her name to Mary Astor; we changed Miss Gotten's
for her to June Marlowe. She proved to be one of the most charming girls I
have ever worked with in any studio, although like Fay Wray, Carol Dempster
and several others, her great problem at first was to learn to let herself
go. [4]
Baby Peggy was a nice little girl--about like nine million other nice
little girls. She was a wreck and calamity as a screen star.
Miss Peggy and I parted without mutual sorrow and I was loaned to the
Norma Talmadge company to help Constance and Norma make a couple of pictures.
I must have been a glowing inspiration. They were the two worst pictures
either of them ever made.
Norma's was that desert thing--"Song of Love," in which she tried to be
a wild desert Bedouin dressed up like a Follies star.
Joe Schildkraut was her leading man. The wild Sahara sheik who did all
the rough riding in that picture was a girl--wrapped up in an Arab sheet.
When Joe was introduced to her he kissed her hand in the usual foreign
way. To him, it was just saying, "Howdy do? How's your grandmother?" She
never had had her hand kissed before and her immediate ambition was to shoot
him. Finding this was not etiquette, she spent her leisure hours plotting
what she would do with him when she got him on a horse.
Her most brilliant plan, as I remember, to get him on a horse (she owned
all the horses used in the picture) that would buck him off on the edge of a
precipice. To her great disgust, Joe declined to mount any horse.
At that time, Norma had one of the most promising love affairs I have
ever witnessed--with her own husband. We all used to have lunch together in
the bungalow--Joe, Norma, sometimes Constance and Buster Keaton.
Every time Norma made a little joke, you would have thought Mark Twain
was talking. "Oh, Daddy, I want to do it that way," from Norma was enough to
knock the director's best laid plans sky-highing. Since then this romance
has gone glimmering like many others.
The picture Constance made at that time was terrible. She experienced
the mortification of having an actress in a minor part walk away with it.
Zasu Pitts was the girl. As an actress Zasu is so original, adroit and
finished that all she needs is to get one foot in through the door. [5]
Mickey Neilan discovered her through a lark.
Mickey was directing Mary Pickford in "Stella Maris." It became
necessary to find a little girl who looked exactly like Mary for one of the
scenes.
Mickey happened to be going through the casting office when he saw Zasu
waiting hungrily outside. Zasu was a gorgeous little girl when she grew up,
but at that time, she was a homely, skinny, scrawny, underfed woe-begone
child. She looked like a famine waiting for somewhere to light.
Mickey seized upon her, and took her in to Mary Pickford. "Here is your
double, Mary," he said. Everyone yelled with laughter; and the little girl
ran away.
Frances Marion found her crying her heart out. "Now look what you've
done, Mickey Neilan," she said indignantly.
Of course, that was enough for Mickey's tender Irish heart. He made a
bully part for her in the picture; and Zasu began a brilliant career.
An almost identical thing made Wesley Barry a boy star. Mickey was
making a picture in which there was a kid circus scene. He had found this
little freckled boy, the son of a corner grocer. He tried to make the boy do
a loop-the-loop in a toy express wagon, spilled him, and nearly broke his
head in two.
With instant inspiration, Mickey sent a prop boy for a little plug hat;
a tiny whip; and a pair of little top boots. Before Wesley had stopped
crying, he found himself a ringmaster.
None of these boys survive the gawky age in pictures. The last I heard
of Wesley Barry, he was married to a nice girl, a good deal older than
himself, and living on a little ranch across the street from a week-end place
I have at Tujunga, fifteen miles out of Los Angeles.
Later I met another girl who might have been one of the great stars of
the screen, Lucille Ricksen. She died just as she was coming into
prominence. It is an open secret that her death was the foundation for Jim
Tully's scorching novel, "Jarnegan."
In hoarse whispers any one will tell who the villain of Jarnegan was,
but no two hoarse whispers agree. Anyhow it made Mr. Tully about as popular
in Hollywood as a Hopi Indian is at a Navajo ceremonial dance.
About this time Madame Elinor Glyn drifted into Hollywood. There have
been hundreds of high-priced authors in subjection in Hollywood studios, from
Gertrude Atherton to Sir Gilbert Parker. Very few of them have made good.
Madame Glyn was one of the very few.
She was a good sport. You could pan her in the papers until your
typewriter caught fire, but she never let on that she read it. She always
went to all the parties and danced with the young sheiks. One time I asked
her if she was intending to give Hollywood its first grand romance.
"Romance?" she said. "My dear Mr. Carr, you forget I am a grandmother."
Elinor discovered two big stars--Jack Gilbert and Aileen Pringle. No
matter what they tell you, no one realized Jack Gilbert until Mrs. Glyn used
him in that gorgeous Cossack uniform in "His Hour."
I remember going to one of the parties at which Mrs. Glyn shone. They
played charades, and tickets could have been sold for the performance in the
open market at one hundred dollars a seat.
These were the actors: Charlie Chaplin, his then wife, Lita Chaplin,
Marion Davies, Jack Pickford, Bebe Daniels, Joseph Hergesheimer, the
novelist, Howard Chandler Christie, the artist, King Vidor, Eleanor Boardman,
Mrs. Glyn.
Charlie Chaplin gave an imitation of Napoleon so striking that he has
ever since had a yen to put on a picture of Napoleon and Josephine. At one
time, he and Pola Negri had such a project--seriously. I suppose every one
knows Charlie has a Napoleon complex and has busts of the Little Corporal all
over his house. I imagine, at that, there was a good deal of Charlie Chaplin
in the late General Bonaparte.
Among the foreigners who came to Hollywood at this time was Mauritz
Stiller who had been making some corking pictures in Sweden. He brought with
him a little bedraggled, sad, thin, shabby, tired-looking girl. He said that
her name was Greta Garbo and he wanted to get a job for her.
The enthusiasm of the producers was about equal to that of a shop girl,
waiting on a lady customer who is trying to match seventeen ribbons at ten
minutes before 5 p.m. But they gave her a job: had to.
Stiller was a failure in Hollywood. The producers broke his heart.
He want back to his native land--licked. Nothing more was heard of him in
Hollywood until word came of his death.
Garbo went back to Sweden when he died. I had a letter from Sweden
telling me of a pathetic, silent, ignored little figure who went back there
to pay him the last tribute of her tears. No one recognized her.
A strange, sardonic character--Garbo. One day she came to a garden
party given by one of the big guns of Hollywood. The other girls looked like
a Paris fashion show. Garbo had on a pair of boy's shoes and a boy's
overcoat, from the sleeves of which her thin wrists thrust pathetically. She
wandered away to the riding stables. She was standing in the corral, looking
at the sunset when her hostess joined her. "Say," said Garbo suddenly. "Do
you know what I like? I like to smell horses and look at sunsets."
Jack Gilbert's pursuit of Garbo was the sentimental sensation of
Hollywood for years. I think Jack got an enormous kick out of being a broken-
hearted, rejected lover. When the reporters rushed to tell Garbo of Jack's
sudden marriage to Miss Ina Claire, she sniffed and said, "Yeah?"
So many events come crowding in that I can only mention them in passing.
One is still discussed with furious indignation.
One day Sam Goldwyn returned from Europe with a little Hungarian girl he
had found in Budapest; her name was Vilma Banky. I was invited to a dinner
to meet her. Sitting opposite me at the long table was a frightened, shabby
young girl. All the other girls gleamed with scarlet lips; but hers were
pale and colorless. I addressed one remark in her general direction. "Here
is Hollywood," I said. "They invite you to meet a celebrity and she never
appears." The girl looked at me with sad, reproachful eyes and looked down
again at her plate. I found out afterward I had been talking to Vilma Banky.
She was the ugly duckling who was to turn into the beautiful swan."
Two other girl stars came to the front under interesting circumstances
along in this period.
The Lasky company had decided to make "Peter Pan." About every girl in
Hollywood was considered for the part. Lillian Gish and Bessie Love seemed
to be in the lead for the honor. In the test that she made in Long Island,
Lillian appeared in tights for the first time before a camera. To the
astonishment of every one, an unknown girl--Betty Bronson got the part, but
she never got another real chance.
The other girl of whom I am thinking is Mary Philbin. Von Stroheim dug
her out of a line of extra girls for one of his early days--"The Merry Go
Round," I believe. At his suggestion I went out to interview her. It was a
funny interview. Mary was so scared I thought she was going to faint. She
sat on the edge of her chair and never raised her eyes. When I asked her a
question, she replied in a little faint frightened voice, "Yes Sir," or, "No,
Sir."
"The Merry Go Round" was one of the hilarious chapters of Hollywood.
Von Stroheim was fired from his job in the middle of a scene and Rupert
Julian was made director. With some chagrin, Rupert told me of his
adventures. Having taken over the megaphone, he walked over to an actor on
the set and introduced himself.
"May I ask your name?" The actor replied he was Norman Kerry.
"I trust, Mr. Kerry, that we shall get on well together," was Rupert's
diplomatic beginning. Norman's shoulders began to heave. "I--I loved him
so," he said, beginning to cry.
He then passed to Mary Philbin who began to boo hoo at the top of her
voice.
In the next chapter I am going to tell about "Old Ironsides" and its
adventures; working with Von Stroheim in the tumultuous Wedding March; and my
experiences in the De Mille studios.
Part 6
Looking back over my long years in the film colony, these seem to be the
high spots:
The best picture I have ever seen was "The Birth of a Nation." It had
the best theme, the most stirring action, the greatest dramatic situations.
The best single scene I have ever seen done by a man was the return of
the "Little Colonel" (Henry Walthall) in that picture.
The best one by a woman was Lillian Gish in the closet scene in "Broken
Blossoms." This because her terror was always that of a child.
The best single moment I have seen on the screen, by a woman, was Pola
Negri in "Forbidden Paradise"--where the Czarina gives that deadly look at
the officers who are bursting with laughter because a green young lieutenant
has toasted her as a pure woman.
The best single moment I have seen a man do was when Sessue Hayakawa
gave Fannie Ward the dirty look in "The Cheat."
The greatest artist I have seen in Hollywood is Charlie Chaplin; he is
by long odds the greatest satirist in any of the seven arts of his
generation.
The one star who has preserved his head and kept his Lindbergh modesty
is Harold Lloyd.
The most consistently good actor in Hollywood is Jean Hersholt.
The most striking personality is Von Stroheim.
The luckiest--and sweetest--is Colleen Moore.
The wittiest is Dorothy Mackaill.
The soundest mentality is Louise Fazenda.
The most beautiful is Florence Vidor.
The most temperamental is Jetta Goudal.
The most thoroughly disillusioned is--the writer.
Nothing short of a world revolution will ever again bring so much wealth
and such sweeping power into the hands of so many men of humble origin as the
movies have.
Napoleon was a piker by comparison. He changed the boundaries of
Europe; but he did not set the pattern for the thoughts, words and actions of
the world--from flappers' clothes to farm methods and table manners. The
movie magnates alone have done that.
I have come into intimate contact with all the men of this amazing
group.
"Uncle Carl" Laemmle, of the great Universal Film Co., is an amiable
little fellow who watches the world go by with inquisitive interest. He
thinks of his millions of film fans as cash customers and figuratively chucks
all the children under the chin and takes an interest in all the family
quarrels.
Joe Schenck, of United Artists, is dictatorial and tenderhearted,
ruthless and affectionate. He can wreck a rival film company without mercy--
and yet be really distressed because little Camilla Horn hadn't a fur coat to
wear to her first Hollywood party. Schenck started as a drug clerk.
Louis B. Mayer is brilliant, violent and soft-hearted. He rose by sheer
force and brains. He gets a kick out of seeing actors cringe before him--and
admires those who don't.
Irving Thalberg, "the young Napoleon of the films," was the head of a
cotton exporting firm at twenty. He is hard-boiled and a brilliant analyst;
motion pictures are just cotton bales to him.
The Warner Brothers do not take themselves very seriously, in spite of
their millions. They play with life as though it were a roulette wheel.
I once had an unusual opportunity to "get" the psychology of three of
the film giants.
It was in Washington, during the summer of 1925. I was browsing around
the Division of Archives and Records in the Navy Department, while waiting to
go on a yachting trip with the Secretary of the Navy who was an old friend of
mine. One of the officers brought me a little old weather-beaten, water-
stained volume about the size of a ten-cent memorandum book. It was the log
book of the U. S. frigate Constitution--"Old Ironsides." The navy was at
that time planning to send out an appeal to the school children of the United
States for money to save the old hulk that was then rotting in the Boston
Navy Yard.
Later, on returning to New York, I found that the Paramount Company was
trying to find an epic story to follow "The Covered Wagon." I suggested "Old
Ironside."
Sidney R. Kent stopped me before I was through telling him about it.
He said, "Any picture that has twenty million school children financially
interested in the chief 'prop' is good enough for me."
Adolph Zukor's eyes filled when I told him about the gallantry of
Stephen Decatur. "It is a very affecting story," he said, in his gentle
abashed way.
Jesse L. Lasky was about equally impressed by the fact that I had told
the whole story on half a sheet of paper and by the toast of Stephen Decatur:
"My country--may she always be right; but, right or wrong--my country."
Which, by the way, is some philosophy!
As a picture, "Old Ironsides" was a financial failure. This was partly
due to a weak story; partly to bad luck with the weather--twenty-one days
without sunshine at an expense of $25,000 a day, and with a fleet of fourteen
ships loafing around Catalina.
I had nothing to do with the production. About that time, Von Stroheim
began working on "The Wedding March." At his request I was detailed to help
him finish the story and to supervise the production.
It was a wild experience. Von and I began to write the story at La
Jolla in a summer cottage; we finished it in Pat Powers' mansion at Flint
Ridge. If there was any variety of heebeejeebees to which I was not a
witness, then somebody forgot to put it in the book. Von is a lovable and
charming fellow; but with all his great genius, he is a spoiled child.
There came a certain Saturday. We had to deliver the story on the
following Wednesday. It was not half done. Von suddenly discovered that his
life was ruined; that he couldn't write plays anyhow. He swore he wouldn't
write another line. He was going back to Lake Tahoe and be a boatman again.
Nothing that I could say would dissuade him.
Finally I said: "Von, if you're through with this play, can I have it?"
"Certainly," he answered, with a stiff Austrian army bow, clicking his heels.
"All right then; sign this." I wrote out a formal assignment of all the
rights to his play. He signed it without the slightest hesitation and his
secretary signed it as a witness.
I then retired to my room and began banging on the typewriter.
Presently Von came wandering in like a lonely little boy and lay on my bed.
He always carried a big cavalry sabre when writing, and now he lay there on
my bed making cuts with his snicker-snee: "Right cut!" "Left cut!" "Right
cut against Infantry!"
Presently he inquired in a small, meek voice, "What are you doing?"
"Writing my play," I replied with a very large accent on the "my." As a
matter of fact, I was industriously and furiously writing "X.Y.Z.X.Y.Z.
X.Y.Z."
After a while he asked with an embarrassed cough, "What scene are you
doing now?"
"Von," I snapped, "how can I write this play if you keep interrupting
me?"
"Excuse me," he said faintly.
Finally I relented and let him come in on it.
Von Stroheim is a slow worker. He has a regular pace at which he writes-
-so many scenes a day. That night--between five o'clock in the afternoon and
seven o'clock the next morning--I made him do fourteen days' work. We
finished the story.
When we had breakfast that afternoon, he glared at his plate of ham and
eggs sourly and observed: "It's a pity that America ever had a civil war."
"Why?"
"Because," he growled, "I know who would have been a better slave-driver
than Simon Legree!"
I have worked with a lot of people in the movies. Some of them were
four-flushers; some were brilliant. But I have never known any other with
the prodigal genius of Von Stroheim. That is what wrecked his career. He
couldn't be poured into the movie mold.
When he was making "Greed" I saw him waste a whole day calling an actor
names because the Thespian objected to standing up in front of a wall while a
professional knife-thrower tossed a razor-sharp Bowie within half an inch of
his neck. To show him how safe it was, Von pinned up an ace of spades and
had the knife-thrower use it as a target. The knife artist missed by half a
mile. But that didn't convince Von that the actor wasn't an ungrateful dog.
"The Wedding March" produced a new star. Von wanted to use Mary Philbin
for the part of Mitzi, but he couldn't get her. He tried Mary Brian, but was
not enthusiastic. Finally he picked Fay Wray from a photograph and gave her
the part without seeing her.
One of the normal events of that picture was for Miss Wray to be led off
the sets in hysterics. On one occasion, Von became indignant because the
young lady did not leak tears in proper profusion. He said she had no heart;
he would see if she had any emotions in her stomach. Thereupon he made her
eat half a bottle of those fiery little Mexican chilis!
Von stormed and raved at all of them; but they adored him. They
realized that--after the suffering was over--their reputations would be made.
Von was always broken-hearted by the end of the day, at the thought that
he might have hurt their feelings.
One day he was making a scene in an imitation hail storm on a "prop"
mountain and that day housewives at all points west of Denver, Colorado,
called in vain upon their grocers for pearl tapioca. None was to be had in
any hotel or any store. Von had cornered the market; bought all the pearl
tapioca in the West. He insisted that nothing else would bounce like hail
stones--and he "just hadda have hail that would bounce!" As I remember it,
he had five tons of that delectable dessert. It bounced wonderfully.
"The Wedding March" will go down in movie history as one of the great
unfinished symphonies. After it had been running a year, the Lasky Company,
in despair, stopped it. That part which the public finally saw was intended
only as the part to come before the intermission.
My next motion picture connection was with Cecil B. De Mille. I went to
his studio as a supervisor and writer.
I will be frank about De Mille. He is the only man in pictures I never
could fathom. I had known him with a certain degree of intimacy for years;
but the closer I got to him the less I knew him.
It is a tradition of Hollywood that everyone has to say "Yes" to
De Mille. One of the stock jokes of the film colony tells how Nita Naldi
came late to rehearsal one day. She made a deep salaam to him--sitting in
the midst of his admiring company--and said: "YES, Mr. De Mille." Yet, on
the other hand, I have never known anyone to accept hard criticism more
graciously.
The first time I remember seeing De Mille, he was making a big scene
from "Joan the Woman" in which Geraldine Farrar was starred. Geraldine was a
good sport with not too many grand opera airs.
That day a herald with a trumpet went round the studio announcing
regally that "The Chief" was about to take one of his big scenes, and that
the hoi polloi might attend. Preparatory to the scene, Mr. De Mille viewed
the set through a frame made of his hands to get the perspective--as artists
do.
Doug Fairbanks was working in that same studio at that time. He and
Bull Montana put a kitchen chair out in the middle of a bare set and walked
around it, imitating De Mille--getting the perspective. The joke was not
appreciated.
Before every picture, De Mille would assemble his whole staff to hear
the story. The audience numbered perhaps fifty--actors, technical experts
and the like. De Mille read the play aloud. Then, without giving you time
to think, he demanded your frank reaction.
I always told him the truth. If I hadn't quite made up my mind. I told
him it was punk--on general principles. He always took it like a sport.
With Rod La Rocque, Lupe Velez and Jetta Goudal, the De Mille studio was
hot with tantrums. Jetta was the proprietor of the grandest temperament in
Hollywood. Her Dutch blood gave her a blind obstinacy; her Javanese
ancestors contributed a diabolical finesse and subtlety. She did not rave.
She argued. In a slow patient way she would argue a director into emotional
insanity. I remember one foreign director who rushed off the set--almost
into my embrace. "That woman," he shrieked. "She is worser as ten lions!"
Jessa was making a picture called "Three Faces East" under the direction
of Rupert Julian, of "Merry Go Round" fame. They had a row that lasted a
week over a dress. He had a blue regal affair made for her. She wanted to
wear a gown of simple white. Driven almost frantic, he shouted at length:
"You are going to wear the BLUE ONE; you can't have a WHITE ONE!"
Jetta bowed herself out with quiet dignity. The next day when the
cameras were ready and the lights were set, the director called for Miss
Goudal. With magnificent serenity, she came out--in a white dress. She had
sat up all night and made it herself. She wore it.
"Why, Mr. Carr," said Jetta reproachfully, "I am not obstinate. It is
they who are obstinate; I am right."
'Sa fact. Two thirds of the time Jetta WAS right. She was
intellectual, keen and artistic.
Lupe Velez was not an entire stranger to me--although she didn't know
it. I had been in Mexico a good deal and knew of her reputation on the West
Coast, where she had been a belle of the cafes. I was prepared for
surprises. I got them.
Both Lupe and Jetta moved over to the Griffith studio to take part in a
little French picture. They say that two tigers, on being put into one cage,
will advance upon each other but will never fight. One will stare the other
down, and the vanquished one will slink back into his corner, thereafter to
surrender the best piece of horsemeat to the victor. I am now in a position
to announce that this is an error. What tigers say to each other is
something fierce. And neither one ever gives in.
Lupe, I think, won the fight when she appeared on the program of a
public preview of one of the Warner Brothers pictures and gave an imitation
of Jetta being upstage, for the edification of the packed house.
That wasn't all; Lupe out-gamed Griffith. This is a little secret.
Griffith's method is to acquire complete domination over every actress.
If he can't accomplish this complete surrender of will in any other way, he
wears them down physically.
He started in with Lupe early one morning. From breakfast time on, he
put her through hard, difficult close-up scenes. When noon came, Griffith
was tired; the camera man was plumb tuckered out, but Lupe was frolicking
around. They went through the whole afternoon, and ended staggering on their
feet--all except Lupe. Late that night--after midnight--Griffith fairly
collapsed in his chair. His face was white and drawn; his voice was sagging
with utter weariness. For a moment he stopped, and in the pause, Lupe leaped
up and said to the exhausted orchestra: "Play some jazz; I want dance." [6]
I used to ask Lupe about her love affairs.
"I don't got no beaux," she insisted. "I flirt but I don't love
nobody."
And then she fell head over heels in love with Gary Cooper--and fairly
megaphoned it to the world. In all my years in Hollywood I have seen no
other romance as frank and unabashed--except the one between Joan Crawford
and young Doug Fairbanks.
The latter was a strange romance. Joan was a little ex-chorus girl who
had known hunger and disillusionment and bitterness. Doug is utterly
unsophisticated--a dreamer and a poet. Joan took him in hand with the fierce
protection of a wild mother. She keeps his poems in a little locked diary--
copied in her own angular hand.
Joan was one of the very few stars discovered during this phase of the
movies--Joan, Anita Page, Alice White, Janet Gaynor and perhaps a few others.
The truth is, a singular thing was happening. Instead of discovering
new stars, they were re-discovering old ones.
Perhaps the most sensational of these instances was the re-arrival of
Phyllis Haver. After leaving the Sennett bathing pool, she had been hanging
around Hollywood for years. She becam
e famous in a single scene--in the
first episode of "What Price Glory"--where she jilted the United State army
and announced her engagement to the Marine Corps.
Another girl dragged out of the scrap heap was Marie Prevost. She was
never under suspicion of being anything greater than a bathing girl until
Lubitsch suddenly found her; and then she became a star.
Perhaps the most striking instance of all was the case of Betty Compson.
She had slipped so badly as a star that she had slid out of pictures
entirely. She had married Jimmie Cruze and was resignedly managing her
house. The reason was not mysterious in her case; Betty was a punk actress.
She had two facial expressions--the meaning of which was not clear--even to
Betty. I don't know what happened to her in her home in Flintridge. Anyhow,
she came back to the screen a new Betty. She came back in a small part in a
picture at the Universal in which Mary Philbin starred. No one remembers
Mary. Betty stole the picture. [7]
I am rather inclined to think that those Cinderella days of the screen
are over.
The majority of stars now coming to the screen are women of established
reputation on the stage--notably Ann Harding and Ruth Chatterton. They will
never have the same hold on the public. Little girls will never burn candles
in front of their pictures, nor old ladies send them sweet letters. They
will be thought of only as skilled artists.
Hal Roach, the producer, became a millionaire because, while working as
a forest ranger, he happened to see a thrown-away Sunday supplement
describing a studio and went to visit it on a day when the director needed
somebody to play faro.
I have seen women like Maude George achieve artistic triumphs as she did
in "Foolish Wives"--and then never be able to get work.
Mary Pickford once told me that the strain of getting to the top is
nothing compared to the agony of staying there. There is only room for one
on the peak. Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin are all
faced with one dreadful dilemma. Each of their pictures must be better than
the last one.
Meanwhile, the talkies are rasping and squeaking in a new Hollywood that
none of us know--perhaps will never know.
Looking back over my fifteen years of screen experience, it seems as
though I had been living in a sort of fairyland of unreality. Only it has
not been an altogether happy fairyland.
Success or failure in pictures depends too much upon fortuitous
circumstance; it's too much a matter of getting the breaks.
Ramon Novarro once told me: "Every time I am standing in front of the
camera, I look down at the mob of extras and see dozens of boys just as
capable, just as good-looking and perhaps better actors than I am. Only they
didn't get the breaks. And they never will."
(The End)
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NOTES:
[1] After Harron's death, the film was eventually released by Metro.
[2] The Clara Bow film directed by Lutitsch was "Kiss Me Again" (1925).
[3] Needless to say, Shirley Temple was just on the horizon!
[4] June Marlowe's real name was Gisela Goetten, not Grizelda Gotten.
[5] The film with Constance Talmadge and Zasu Pitts was "The Goldfish"
(1924).
[6] The D. W. Griffith film with Jetta Goudal and Lupe Velez was "Lady of the
Pavements" (1929).
[7] The film with Mary Philbin and Betty Compson was "Love Me and the World
is Mine" (1928).
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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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