Part 12

It is a far cry from the greatest emotional actress of the films to one of the world’s most infectious comedians. Yet I have set aside chronological considerations in order to save for last my recollections of a man whose comedy touches brightened the Goldwyn lot almost as much as they did the Goldwyn screen.

It was Rex Beach and I who brought Will Rogers into pictures. After our approach he confided to us that he had been somewhat mystified by the delayed recognition of his talents on the part of the picture world.

“I used to think it was funny,” said he in his own inimitable way. “Here motion-pictures were booming along. They were getting in trained dogs and trained cats and grand-opera singers and everybody in the world but me. I couldn’t make it out, and now after all these years you fellows have come to.”

Rogers still loves to dwell on these fictitious pangs of a slighted talent, and he always adds, “Well, there was a movement on foot for making fewer and worse pictures and so they hired me.”

Certainly if his coming into picture activities was the result of any such urge, we were woefully misled. For his “Jubilo” was one of the best pictures ever produced by the Goldwyn Company.

Around his selection for the chief character of this story Will weaves one of his choicest monologues. “Sam had bought a tramp story,” he relates, “and he was looking around the lot one day for somebody who could play the tramp. Well, he happened to see me in my street clothes and he said, ‘There is the very fellow to play the tramp!’ Of course,” he adds, “I love to play a tramp--you can act so natural and never have to dress for it.”

Whether this story is historically correct or not it does bring out one of Will’s claims to distinction in the Hollywood community. An old slouch hat pulled down over his eyes and some kind of nondescript trousers uncreased as a child’s brow--this is his inveterate costume. Clad in this wise, he used to stand around the Goldwyn lawn and, surrounded by a crowd of cowboys and extras, would amuse himself by throwing the lariat at our “Keep off the Grass” signs.

The reader may imagine what a personality like this did for a studio somewhat overcharged with the artistic temperament. Temperament itself seemed to find relief in those droll remarks with which Rogers meets almost every issue of the day. Numerous times I saw Miss Farrar and Miss Frederick talking with the comedian, and both gave every sign of an unshadowed enjoyment in his conversation. It was one of the two, I think, who asked Will one day whether he liked pictures as well as he did the stage.

“Oh, sure,” drawled he with the unsmiling face which always makes his verbal twist the more irresistible. “Why, up to the time I went into pictures I had never annoyed more than one audience at a time. This is the only business in the world where you can sit out front and applaud yourself. Now I was getting to that place on the stage where that feature appealed to me.”

Incidentally, one of Rogers’ most amusing memories of the stage implicates Miss Farrar. I shall let him sketch this with his own pungency of style. “I made one picture _Doubling for Romeo_,” he relates. “The reason we made it was that we could use the same costumes that Miss Geraldine Farrar and a friend of hers (at that time) had worn in some costume pictures--all these Shakespearian tights and everything. I don’t say this egotistically, but I wore Geraldine’s.”

There may be those in the screen world who are overridden by emotions, who are played upon by gusts of alternate personal attraction and repulsion. Not so Rogers. He is essentially a home man, and the first thing he did when he came to Hollywood was to invest the savings of years in a house for his family. This residence of Bill’s is on Beverly Hills, and its location imposed upon its owner a heavy social responsibility.

“You know,” I heard him telling somebody the other day, “my principal occupation in California is not making pictures--it is official guide. I live on the same hill as Uncle Doug and Aunt Mary--only I live much lower down the hill than they do--in fact, I live at the foot of the hill in a swamp. It’s right at the forks of two streets, and all I do all day long is to tell tourists where Mary Pickford lives. I will be out in the yard going through my daily work--maybe licking my second kid--when some Iowa car will drive up and say, ‘Can you tell us where Mary Pickford lives?’ So I stand and point it out--just point and say, ‘Mary Pickford lives right up there.’

“You want to know why I came back to the stage for a while--why, just to get a rest. I was so tired pointing. Now, I have played for every charity affair that was ever held in Los Angeles, and their people are very appreciative, so when I die they are going to give me a benefit and take the money and erect a statue of me with the arm pointing toward Mary’s and a sign on it, ‘Mary Pickford lives right up there.’”

There is nothing waspish about Rogers’s fun-making. Such a quality of humour as his implies, in fact, a true sense of life’s values, a very wise and mellow spirit. Nothing shows this more clearly than a communication I received from him not very long ago.

“Dear Sam,” it read, “when you first announced that you were going to write this book of memoirs I must say it didn’t create much of a stir in movie circles till they learned what memoirs were. Then when they found it meant truths, everybody, including myself, commenced to get leery and wondered if you were going to remember _everything_. Now, I don’t know what you are going to put into this catalogue of yours, but I do hope for the salvation of the Infant Industry you don’t tell all--especially not what some of my pictures grossed.

“But if you’ve got to say something about me, say this--they were the two happiest years of my life that I spent on the old Goldwyn lot. We had some great troops there in those days--all of them good fellows. There was Miss Frederick, whom everybody that ever met her liked; Miss Madge Kennedy, than whom we have no sweeter character of stage or screen; Mabel Normand, the ‘kidder’ and good fellow, friend of every soul on earth, whose quiet and not-seen charity has helped many a poor soul in need; Tom Moore, as good an Irishman as ever lived, and not stuck on his looks either.

“Also say this: I made in the two years I was on the lot twelve consecutive pictures--all with one director, Clarence Badger. That, I think, is a record--to be with the same director. And if there is anything worth while in any of them, it was certainly due to his efforts, as I am no actor. But he is patient, capable, and the finest man I ever met.”

I have saved this communication because nothing else could reveal more forcibly the tolerance, the modesty, and the quick appreciation of anything good in us frail mortals which form the source of Will Rogers’s ever-welling humour.

_Chapter Twenty-one_

SOME AUTHORS WHO HAVE TRAVELLED TO HOLLYWOOD

From previous chapters of mine it is evident that Mr. Emerson’s suggestion about hitching your wagon to a star is fraught with certain dangers. I had harnessed the Goldwyn Company to that steed, and my ride had been anything but a smooth one. Is it any wonder, indeed, that after the various disappointments attending my exploitation of “big names,” I began to distrust the wisdom of my course? Gradually there grow up within me a belief that the public was tiring of the star and a corresponding conviction that the emphasis of production should be placed upon the story rather than upon the player. In the poverty of screen drama lay, so I felt, the weakness of our industry, and the one correction of this weakness which suggested itself to me was a closer co-operation between author and picture-producer.

In 1919 this idea eventuated in an organization for which I must claim the virtue of absolute novelty. This organisation, under the name of “The Eminent Authors,” included such popular American writers as Rex Beach, who assisted me in the development of my literary fusion; Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Rupert Hughes, Basil King, Gouverneur Morris, and Leroy Scott. Under the terms of my contract with each individual of the group the author was to come to Hollywood to write in direct co-operation with the Goldwyn studios.

So great was the publicity attending this movement for the production of more inspired screen dramas that the Famous Players-Lasky Company followed our lead by organising a similar literary service. Whereas, however, we had been content with local talent, our competitors imported their authors from Europe. Elinor Glyn, Sir Gilbert Parker, Edward Knoblock, Arnold Bennett--these were the high spots in the rival camp. When you consider that Gene Stratton-Porter and Zane Grey had both been signed up by other California producers and that ultimately Kathleen Norris, Rita Weiman, and Somerset Maugham joined the cohorts of the pen, you will see why Hollywood was temporarily transformed from a picture colony to a picture-book colony.

Among all the literary names which have impressed Hollywood tradition that of Elinor Glyn is undoubtedly the most spectacular. One evening before dining at the Fairbanks home Douglas took me out for a walk through his beautiful grounds. As we came to the famous swimming-pool I caught sight of a woman seated on one of the stone benches and gazing pensively into the water. The evening sun caught in reddish hair--whether these tresses are a gift or an acquirement is often a theme of speculation--and in girlish folds of sea-green chiffon. And as the woman lifted her eyes I saw that these, too, were sea-green.

“That’s Elinor Glyn,” whispered Fairbanks; “she’s dining with us to-night.”

In a spirit of great curiosity I began my conversation with the Circe-looking woman to whom sun and pool and sea-green chiffon lent an atmosphere of which she herself was perhaps not altogether unconscious. She was exceedingly gracious and cordial, but as she talked I could not help making a few inward observations on her manner of speaking. She has the trick, so I found, of convincing you that her voice is some far-away, mysterious visitant of which she herself supplies only a humble and temporary instrument of escape.

For example, when she remarked, “Isn’t this pool beautiful?” it sounded like some lonely Buddha’s prayer echoing down through the ages from the far heights of Tibet.

After the dinner was over our host and hostess offered their customary method of release from “the cares that infest the day.” Pictures were turned on, and in this case the selection happened to be Mrs. Glyn’s story, “Her Husband’s Trademark,” in which Gloria Swanson took the leading rôle. I can truthfully say that never in my life have I enjoyed any film so heartily. This was due, not to the character of the performance, but to the remarks which garnished its entire unfoldment.

“See that frock,” whispered the author eagerly as, sitting beside me, she pointed to one of Gloria’s creations; “I designed that gown.”

Another second and she was calling attention to the finish of a certain setting. “Do you see that? An exact copy of my rooms in London. Do you suppose they would have known how to arrange a gentlewoman’s rooms if it hadn’t been for me?”

But there were other times when this robust major of self-congratulation shifted to a minor chord. “Ah, how terrible, how shocking!” I heard her moan several times. “All wrong, all wrong--they’ve ruined that scene. I might have known it. I was away that day, you see.”

Verily that evening the “silent drama” renounced its salient characteristic!

Apropos of this incident, it may be interesting to learn that Mrs. Glyn took the greatest personal interest in Miss Swanson. True, her first comment upon this screen celebrity, a comment quoted uproariously by many of the picture colony, indicated that she found Gloria lacking in that subtlety which she considered essential for the portrayal of her heroines. If that comment was made and not merely attributed to the author, her later attitude to Miss Swanson would seem to reflect the joy of any creator in the challenge offered by apparent intractability of material. Be that as it may, I am informed that Mrs. Glyn started in with a right good-will upon the task of guiding the young actress in her literary taste, her clothes, her deportment, and her speech.

During that Summer when I first met Mrs. Glyn I had a house on the beach in California. Here I did a great deal of entertaining, and among these entertainments a dinner which I gave for Nina Wilcox Putnam represents the enthusiasm with which Hollywood took up the game of authors. For Elinor was only one of the many writers who mingled that evening with the luminaries of screen and stage. That she was not the most retiring of her craft is a statement bound to be accepted immediately by those familiar with her talent for being a dinner-guest. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Glyn is one of the greatest social assets I ever knew. Not only may she be relied upon always to wear the most exquisite of gowns, but her narratives and her comments usually keep a whole roomful of people in an uproar of mirth.

That evening I discovered that she is an ardent believer in the transmigration of souls, and her theories regarding the former bodily tenements of some of the individuals present caused constant flurries of laughter. I think her psychic inquests began with Mrs. Kathleen Norris. For a long time she fixed upon this celebrated author a gaze which informed the rest of us how completely she had retired into realms where we could never follow her. Then abruptly, with the familiar effect of a voice which had journeyed far, far before it chose Elinor Glyn for its channel, she said:

“Now I know--centuries ago you were a man--strong, valiant, resolute. I see you leading your armies--bravely you led a forlorn hope. Perhaps at the last they turned against you--they stabbed you, who had brought them to the heights of victory.”

We had hardly convalesced from this revelation of Mrs. Norris’s masculine and unfortunate past when the psychic Boy Scout began to turn up old trails in Charlie Chaplin’s consciousness.

“An old, old soul,” she pronounced, emerging from the same sort of trance which had redeemed Mrs. Norris’s former earthly abode from the mists of obscurity. “You--you were a princess. Thousands of years ago you reigned over many in some far Eastern land. You loved the music played by your slaves on their stringed instruments, the soft scent of flowers brought to you by the winds, the moonlight as it fell on the oars of your galleys----”

Charlie may have had a number of similar tastes back in that remote incarnation of his, but I don’t think they were brought to light. For the roars of merriment which greeted this presentment stilled the voice of the seer. To this laughter Charlie himself contributed most heartily. In fact, I don’t believe any one ever laughed at Chaplin quite so hard as Chaplin laughed that evening at Elinor Glyn.

Regarding the introduction of these two an amusing story is current in California. It is reported that on this occasion Mrs. Glyn said to the comedian, “Dear, dear, so this is Charlie Chaplin! Do you know you don’t look nearly so funny as I thought you would?” To this reassuring message Chaplin is said to have responded promptly, “Neither do you.”

To go back to my dinner. After Mrs. Glyn had concluded her report upon previous abodes of the ego, our conversation drifted toward the profession engrossing our present incarnations. Pictures! The topic was started, I believe, by Miss Elsie Ferguson, who at that time was working with the Famous Players-Lasky Company. To her announcement that she did not like her leading man of the moment, Mrs. Glyn turned a swiftly sympathetic ear.

“My dear,” said she, “what do they know about soul, about art, about poetry? Blind, absolutely blind! The other day I took the loveliest young man to see them--he had the most beautiful eyes--but they didn’t see it--they didn’t appreciate it.”

This verdict regarding my competitors’ callousness to the finer issues of life is not to be taken too seriously. For Mrs. Glyn was then in the midst of that period of disillusionment which seems almost inevitable in the career of the author who tries to adapt his manuscripts to the screen. Out of the depths of my own experience I can speak of the friction which arises among author, producer, star, and director.

I thought that I had encountered some eminent difficulties before I organised the Eminent Authors; but when the Goldwyn Company introduced this literary faction in the fold, I was to look back on other days as being comparatively placid. This fact does not reflect upon the personalities of those writers whom we engaged. Socially, each one of them is a delightful being; but when the tradition of the pen ran athwart the tradition of the screen I am bound to say that I suffered considerably from the impact.

The great trouble with the usual author is that he approaches the camera with some fixed literary ideal and he can not compromise with the motion-picture view-point. He does not realise that a page of Henry James prose, leading through the finest shades of human consciousness, is absolutely lost on the screen, a medium which demands first of all tangible drama, the elementary interaction between person and person or person and circumstance. This attitude brought many of the writers whom I had assembled into almost immediate conflict with our scenario department, and I was constantly being called upon to hear the tale of woe regarding some title that had been changed or some awfully important situation which had either been left out entirely or else altered in such a way as to ruin the literary conception.

Nor did this end the difficulty. For often the author and the star became hopelessly entangled in similar controversies. This latter situation is deftly suggested by Will Rogers when he says, “I was on the lot the last year of the reign of the Eminent Authors and, while I helped spoil none of their stories, I made various ones for the near-Eminents and lost the friendship of every living one of whose stories I made. So now,” adds Will, “I have made Washington Irving’s _Ichabod Crane_. I am off all living authors’ works--me for the dead ones!”

Undoubtedly the warfare which so frequently wages between star and author is to be attributed many times to the inflexibility and prejudice of the former. Thus I remember hearing Miss Rita Weiman tell of an interchange of thought between Nazimova and herself regarding the production of a certain story in which the one figured as author, the other as actress.

“I hope the time is coming,” concluded Nazimova haughtily, “when the great actress may find great stories.”

“Ah, yes,” rejoined Miss Weiman, “I hope, too, the time is coming when the star may write her own stories.”

In contrast to this attitude of the Russian actress is the humility which Norma Talmadge displayed in her interpretations of Benavente’s “The Passion Flower.” I have been told that everybody, including her husband and her director, advised against the screen preservation of the drama’s tragic end. They urged upon her the fact that the picture audience demands a happy ending and that she would lose thousands of dollars by adhering to the story. By all such practical arguments she was absolutely unaffected.

“No,” said she firmly, “this is the story of the greatest living playwright. He knew what he wanted to say and who am I to spoil a great man’s story?”

Among the writers whom the Goldwyn Company brought to Hollywood Rupert Hughes was notably successful. His story of “The Old Nest,” grossed our organization nearly a million dollars, and since the production of this tale he has been actively engaged on our lot as both author and director. For both Mr. Hughes and his wife I feel a warmth of friendship quite independent of the profitableness of our business association, and some of the happiest hours of my life have been spent in their home. They, together with Mr. and Mrs. Rex Beach, represent two of my most valued associations.

Mr. Hughes’s success in photoplays is to be ascribed to his prompt recognition of the gulf between those two channels of expression, literature and screen, and to his determination to master both the technicalities and spirit of the latter. In addition to this receptiveness of mind he has a capacity for work which I have never seen excelled. Many times I have known him to arrive in the studio early in the morning, direct all day, go home that evening to work on a scenario, and then, after perhaps a dinner or a dance, write several chapters of his new novel.

Mrs. Glyn showed much the same zeal in her co-operation with the Famous Players-Lasky Company. Unlike numerous authors who have invaded Hollywood, she was not easily diverted from the set. So excessively did she superintend every detail of production that “Grips” and “Props” longed, so they say, for a more casual type of literary lady.

“She ain’t a bit like them other authoreens we’ve had around here,” one of the manual assistants is reported to have grieved. “They’ll go off and leave you alone. But she--sure an’ it’s twelve times this day she’s had me move that one bloody bureau in the set and still she ain’t satisfied.”

I have quoted Mrs. Glyn’s remark anent the “beautiful young man” in whose behalf she had made such unavailing efforts with the Famous Players-Lasky Company. From all I have heard this story represented with her a habitual type of altruism. I am told that every now and then while she was working in the studio she would approach some good-looking chap whom perhaps she had never seen before.

“My dear boy,” she was likely to address him, “you’re really very charming, you know. Now I want you to take the leading part in my new story.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Glyn,” the other would falter, “but you see So-and-So is already cast for that part.”

“Oh, what a shame!” would rejoin the author. “But surely you’ll take the second part--in _my_ play?”

Torn between pleasure at this avidity of interest and the pang inflicted upon any handsome actor by the supposition that he could possibly appear in a secondary rôle, the Adonis of the hour would then probably retreat to some lonely grotto where he could meditate upon the embarrassment of great beauty.

In one of the most amazing encounters of beauty and the author, the late Wallace Reid was cast for the leading part. Friends of Reid report that one day while he was coming off the set he was hailed by Mrs. Glyn.

“My dear boy”--thus she is said to have greeted him--“you’re really very wonderful to look at. And, besides, you know you have--It.”

“It?” Reid murmured confusedly, wondering perhaps what his press-agents and admirers could possible have overlooked. “What do you mean, Mrs. Glyn?”

“Oh, that is my word. It!” she repeated in that contralto voice which soughs through Mrs. Glyn like the lonely wind through the pine-trees. “Don’t you see, that one syllable expresses everything--all the difference there is between people. You either have It or you haven’t.”

Reid was still considering himself in this new light of special privilege when he noticed that the writer’s brows were puckered.