Part 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Chapter Eighteen_

POLA NEGRI

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

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

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

During the course of the dinner Mrs. Fitzmaurice remarked:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lena nodded emphatically.

“What you geev them?” inquired her mistress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Chapter Nineteen_

THE TWO TALMADGES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And how about Natalie?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Talmadge, so Schenck wrote, was aghast at this disclosure of her cramped style in benevolence. “And, pressed as she was for time,” he concluded, “nothing would do but that she should go out early the next morning and hunt the fellow she had wronged by her twenty-five-cent donation. When she did find him--believe me, he got something real.”

From a being so swayed by the claim of the moment--a being, too, so young and beautiful--you would predict perhaps a less stable domestic situation. Mr. Schenck, one of the finest men I have ever known is some years older than his wife and, in addition to this, he is what is known as a practical type. Yet Miss Talmadge’s devotion to him is one of the salients in her life. The evening when she could hardly wait to tell him of her triumph over Clara Kimball Young is, indeed, indicative of her whole attitude. Everything, both in pictures and out, is talked over with Mr. Schenck, and her manner when she is with him reflects always that deep content which an emotional nature feels often in stability.

Yet Mr. Schenck represents much more than a mooring for this brilliant personality. Remembering his efforts in her professional behalf from the moment when he so proudly showed me that bracelet on his office desk; acquainted, too, with the absolute devotion which he has subsequently given to her career, I often wonder how it would have fared with Miss Talmadge had this element in her life been lacking. Certainly she would have risen by sheer force of her talent and her beauty and her enthusiasm without any such concentrated interest. But I very much doubt if her ascent would have been either so swift or so dazzling had this one great constructive force been absent.

_Chapter Twenty_

GOOD OLD WILL ROGERS