Part 7

So engrossed were we both in the impersonal that it was at least an hour before I attacked the real purpose of my call. When I finally broached the subjects of pictures I told her, of course, how eager the Goldwyn Company was for the honour of first presenting her on the screen. She responded to this tribute very graciously. There was quite evidently not one moment’s doubt on her part that she could do pictures. Her only misgiving, frankly revealed, was that I might not pay her enough to justify her in making them.

I must say that for some time I, too, shared this misgiving. For the sum on which she stood firm was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for ten weeks’ work.

However, a discussion of the matter with my associates, Edgar Selwyn, Arthur Hopkins, and Margaret Mayo, brought out the fact that they were all in favour of engaging her even at that sum. I took their advice, and, triumphantly conscious that I was taking Miss Garden from the numerous other film-producers who had been competing for her services, I signed my name to the enormous contract. The news that Mary Garden was at last to appear in pictures created a sensation throughout the country and, as the newspapers carried the story in big type, the Goldwyn Company profited by an enviable publicity. Seeing the importance attached to her appearance, I grew more and more hopeful that in the celebrated operatic star I was going to offset the various hardships attending my foundation of the Goldwyn Company.

Naturally it was “Thais,” the most widely known of her operatic rôles, which suggested itself as her first vehicle. This story, although uncopyrighted in America, obligated the purchase of foreign rights, and I paid M. Anatole France, its author, ten thousand dollars for these. In so doing I felt sure that the French exhibitors alone would more than return my expenditure. Just how little this belief was realised is brought out by the conclusion of this episode.

No sooner had the actual production of “Thais” begun than I was beset by grave fears. Miss Garden, feeling rightfully that her operatic presentation of the rôle was authoritative, did not recognise the difference of medium involved, and her first days on the set showed her, as the studio people expressed it, “acting all over the place.” That which was art in opera was not art on the screen, where the secret of achievement is emotional restraint. Watch Charlie Chaplin, the great exponent of motion-picture art, and you will see that he gets his effects by suggesting rather than by presenting an emotion.

Those days when we were producing “Thais” remain with me as among the most troubled of my history. Harassed by financial adjustments and by production difficulties, assailed by complaints of scenarios and directors from my various stars, I now had this supreme anxiety regarding the outcome of my enormous investment in Mary Garden. Indeed, I was constantly called upon to mediate between the singer and her director.

The death of “Thais” was almost the death of Mary Garden. She had fought bitterly the scenario’s departure from the original text here in this scene. She asserted that the screen version, presenting as it did the triumph of _Thais_, the woman, over _Thais_, the saint, was an intolerable falsification. And she could, indeed, hardly be persuaded to act in it at all.

When she saw the rushes of this scene, which so violated her artistic conception, her rage and grief knew no bounds. “I knew it!” she cried. “Oh, I knew it! Imagine me, the great _Thais_, dying like an acrobat!”

A moment later she rushed from the projection-room down to the office. Here she found Margaret Mayo. “Did you see it,” she stormed to this other woman. “That terrible thing? Did you see the way they made me die? Imagine a saint dying like that!”

The actress looked her up and down and then she responded in a tone of studied insolence, “You would have a hard time, Miss Garden, proving to any one that you were a saint.”

Some time later when I came up on the set I found Miss Garden weeping hysterically. “Oh,” said she, “that terrible woman! Have you heard what she just said to me.”

Miss Garden never forgave this gratuitous insult.

At last, after such stormy sessions, “Thais” was completed. The finished picture was not reassuring. But, even though I recognised its shortcomings, I still hoped that Mary Garden’s name would carry the production to triumph. If it went over it meant a lift from the deep trough of the sea in which the Goldwyn Company had been weltering. If it failed--but I did not dare allow myself to dwell upon this.

* * * * *

With the full sense of that evening’s significance, I went to the opening of “Thais” at the Strand Theatre in New York. A woman friend of mine went with me and as we walked out of the theatre her face told me everything. “Oh,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “I just hate to tell you--knowing how much it means to you--but--well, you can see for yourself how they took it.”

I had indeed seen it--the heart-breaking coldness with which that first New York audience had received the picture on which I had staked so much. Even then, however, I did not realise the enormity of the failure. I did this only when a day or so later telegrams began pouring in from cities all over the country where “Thais” had appeared simultaneously with New York. These telegrams rendered, with few exceptions, the same verdict as the metropolis. Nor were foreign countries more enthusiastic.

Miss Garden herself was quite as overwhelmed by this failure as was the company. It had certainly been through no lack of diligence on her part that the story went as it did, for she had arrived at the studio early each morning and was often the last to leave it.

Certainly we were most unwise in selecting for her first picture a story in which her operatic tradition was so ingrained. This was brought out by the comparative success of her second film, “The Splendid Sinner.” Had this only been produced first we should have done on it three or four times the business which we actually did. As it was, “Thais” had been such a complete “flop” that exhibitors had their fingers crossed when it came to Mary Garden.

The Garden experience cost the Goldwyn Company heavily. Disastrous as it was, however, it did not compare with the two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar contract which the Famous Players-Lasky organization made with the late Caruso. I was at Graumann’s Theatre in Los Angeles when the first of the two pictures involved in this contract was released, and its reception was even more virulent than that accorded “Thais.” After playing two days it was, in fact, hissed off the stage. What was more, this experience was echoed all over the country. Nor was a rival’s venture with the beautiful Lina Cavalieri more productive of confidence in the wisdom of transplanting the operatic star to the screen firmament.

Aside from the unfamiliarity of the stage and operatic star with the medium of motion-pictures, a difficulty enhanced by the arrogance with which they usually approach the new field, there is another fundamental obstruction in the path of the film-producer who exploits them. Although their names may be on the lips of every inhabitant of a large city, many a small town knows them not. Main Street, which counts enormously in pictures, is apt to be much more familiar with some comparatively obscure film actress than with Farrar or Garden. This fact was brought home to me when, some months after signing my contract with Miss Garden, I was talking with a small-town exhibitor who had come with his lawyer to see me about signing a contract for Goldwyn films.

“Ah,” remarked the lawyer, looking at some photographs on my desk, “I see you have engaged Mary Garden. That ought to be a great card.”

“Mary Garden!” exclaimed the exhibitor at this point. “Why, what’s new about her. I showed her five years ago and charged five cents admission.” Evidently he had confused the prima donna with Mary Gardner, a screen actress.

One of the incidents which stands out from that Winter in the Fort Lee studio was the meeting which I effected between Mary Garden and Geraldine Farrar. The two rivals had never been introduced. But neither apparently had found acquaintance necessary to the formation of a firm opinion. In the days when Miss Farrar used to be working in the Lasky studio I would sometimes talk to her while De Mille was taking other scenes. The conversation usually drifted toward people, and its current bore us almost inevitably to Mary Garden. It was quite patent, however, that the fascination which this theme seemed to possess for Geraldine was that of professional rivalry, which always exists, and the greater the prima donnas the more vehement the feeling.

When I came to meet Miss Garden I found the sentiment strikingly reciprocal. Yet on that famous day when I brought Miss Farrar over to the Fort Lee studio to meet her rival I wish that the world might have shared with me the effusiveness of that greeting. Never were two women more glad to see each other. The affectionate cadences of their voices, the profound appreciation of the privilege of this moment expressed by each--these ended at last in a farewell kiss. But the kiss, I discovered later, had worked no psychological change. Both felt exactly the same after the meeting as they had before.

My experience with Miss Garden was costly. It was not, however, so ill-fated as was the Goldwyn Company’s engagement of Maxine Elliott.

With this episode I shall begin my next chapter and shall follow it with the story of Pauline Frederick, the Goldwyn Company’s engagement of Geraldine Farrar, and with my memories of Charlie Chaplin.

_Chapter Eleven_

MAXINE ELLIOTT AND PAULINE FREDERICK

It was one day just after the Goldwyn Company’s inception that Arch Selwyn and Roi Cooper Megrue came to me in great excitement. “Maxine Elliott’s arriving to-morrow from England,” announced Megrue.

“Yes, Sam,” added Selwyn, “and we think it would be a great thing if you signed up with her. Right this minute the Shuberts are after her for pictures.”

When, a few days later, Miss Elliott came to my office I thought I had never seen a human being more radiantly lovely. When I considered, too, that in addition to this glorious beauty she had a reputation for these looks in every hamlet in America, the one anxiety which assailed me was, Can I possibly get her away from the other fellow? As a matter of fact, I did secure her only after long arduous negotiations.

Never was a picture surrounded by more care than Miss Elliott’s first production. Irvin Cobb and Roi Cooper Megrue wrote the story. Both names should have assured the excellence of the vehicle, Alan Dwan, one of our most celebrated directors, assumed charge of the production. Hugo Ballin, the portrait-painter, designed the sets. In spite of all this perfection of detail, “Fighting Odds” was an abject failure. Never, indeed, was any Goldwyn film criticised so ferociously as this. Not only did we lose on the picture itself, but the “flop” was so conspicuous that it resulted in the cancellation of other pictures of ours.

All this was far from heartening to further performance, yet in the midst of the storm called forth by her first picture Miss Elliott was busy on her second. She was now under the direction of Arthur Hopkins, who, although he had been studying studio methods for some months, had never before assumed full sway of a production. Probably nothing on the screen was more amusing than that inner drama of inexperience and bewilderment revealed in the making of this second picture.

One day Miss Elliott, her throat swathed in yards of tulle--a protective measure of which she, like Bernhardt, often availed herself--was wheeling around and around on the set.

“Good gracious!” whispered somebody impishly as she looked at this futile and pathetic whirling of the statuesque woman, “isn’t she ever going to run down?”

Poor Miss Elliott, she evidently didn’t know what to do when she stopped turning! And I doubt if Mr. Hopkins was more inspired!

At this point the reader may wonder why I, a producer of experience, would confide so much in two people who had so little screen experience. The answer to this is that I have always wanted to enrich motion-pictures by assured talent from outside fields. This involved experimentation, and it was natural that a few of my experiments should fail. Others, on the contrary, have proved the wisdom of bringing in new blood.

That Mr. Hopkins, a theatrical producer of such merit and reputation, did not justify my selection of him was due to his indifference to the new environment. He never regarded pictures seriously, and after directing the Maxine Elliott story he came to me and told me that he could not get his mind sufficiently detached from the stage ever to be successful in a studio.

A beauty of the stage with whom I had a more fortuitous contact was Pauline Frederick. Miss Frederick was with Zukor when I founded the Goldwyn Company. That she transferred to me was due to her husband, Willard Mack, the playwright and actor. Coming up to me one night at the Directors’ Ball at the Biltmore, he said:

“See here, Sam, Polly’s contract with Famous is just about to expire. How about it, anyway? Now I’d like to see her go with you, for you’re a young company and I’m sure you would take a bigger interest in her.”

I fell in immediately with this line of thought, and some evenings later he phoned me to see him at the Lyceum Theatre, where he was then appearing with Lenore Ulric in “Tiger Rose.” When I got to his dressing-room I found Miss Frederick there. Together we three discussed the possibility of the star’s transference to the Goldwyn Company, and after some weeks of conference the possibility crystallised into a fact.

Needless to say, Mr. Zukor did not take the news of her deflection any too kindly. For at this time Miss Frederick’s large American following was reinforced by great popularity in other countries. In England, for example, she was as much of a drawing-card as was Mary Pickford. In his irritation at her loss it was, I suppose, quite natural for my competitor’s sentiment to overflow to me. Normal or not, it certainly did so. Meeting me at a ball soon after the news of the contract came out, Mr. Zukor began overwhelming me with reproaches for my treacherous conduct in weaning his star away from him. In vain I explained that the advance had been made from her side, not from mine. He refused to believe me. Finally the discussion became so heated that Alice Joyce came running over to us.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” said she laughingly, “I don’t know anything in the world worth so much discussion--especially a motion-picture star!”

At this time we were just on the point of moving our studio from Fort Lee to California. This involved, of course, moving Miss Frederick. A gentle theory this, but its execution threatened danger. For Miss Frederick was devotedly attached to her husband and he was playing in New York.

I am not overrating the emotional pressure of this situation. Compared to Pauline Frederick Mrs. Micawber gave a wavering brand of devotion. She never would desert Mr. Mack--not for an hour. I have related that the first time I talked to her regarding a change, I found her in her husband’s dressing-room. This was no coincidence. It was a habit. After working hard all day on the set, she spent every evening back of the scenes with Mack.

In consideration of such strongly marked feeling on her part I obviously was compelled to do something about Mack. The fact of it is that, far from wanting him on the basis of agreeable surroundings for his wife, I was most anxious to shift him from theatrical work to our organisation. A playwright of skill, an actor of experience--why should I not have supposed that he would be a valuable addition to the Goldwyn Company?

The position which I offered him finally was head of the scenario department. Although he was making more on the stage, he accepted my appointment at five hundred dollars a week, for the salary was accompanied by the promise that if he made good I would raise his salary and give him a long-term contract. He started his new duties in the Fort Lee studio and they were achieved so satisfactorily that we transferred him together with his wife to the California establishment. Thereby hangs a tale.

In the old days when Zukor and I used to exchange confidences regarding our respective disagreements with various screen performers, he was always emphatic in his praise of Pauline Frederick. “Now, there’s a girl that anybody could get along with,” he would say. “Easy to handle, likes her stories, always on time on the set.” So consistent were his comments on the model star that I looked forward to Miss Frederick’s presence in my studio much as does a motorist to a stretch of glossy asphalt after innumerable rough detours.

Alas for such expectations! By the time that “teacher’s pet” reached me she had begun to share some of the characteristics of less exemplary performers. That this was so may be traced chiefly to her husband’s position in the studio. For it was on the question of scenarios that I found her most captious.

“I don’t like this story!” she would say to me after reading something that I had considered especially suited to her.

“What don’t you like about it?”

She was always able to assign a reason, but underneath this alleged objection I discovered gradually the vital source of prejudice. The rejected scenario had not been written by Willard Mack!

There was, too, another cause for the beautiful star’s departure from that ideal course of conduct hymned by Zukor. In the Summer following my formation of the Goldwyn Company I had engaged Geraldine Farrar. The latter and Pauline Frederick met in the Fort Lee studio. From that time forth the business of picture-production became more complicated.

“Of course,” Miss Frederick would say, “this story is nothing so good as the one you’ve given Geraldine Farrar.”

Miss Farrar, on the other hand, seemed to assume that Mack’s position in the editorial department gave Pauline a decided advantage in the choice of scenarios. Between two such fixed and divergent view-points there was only one course to steer. This was a Machiavellian one.

“I don’t like this story,” began Pauline one day.

“Very well,” retorted I equably, “we’ll give it to Miss Farrar. She wants it badly.”

Mysteriously, magically, these words seemed to overcome my star’s objections. She not only took the story, but ran away with it.

Meeting with such marked success in one direction, I was encouraged to extend the application of my guileful principle. The very next story, I showed Miss Farrar I accompanied with the confidence that Pauline Frederick was crazy to get it. Magic again! Here was the one scenario at which my prima donna never demurred.

The passage of time has enabled me to smile at such incidents. Then, however, I was less susceptible to the humour of the situation. This was hardly strange. For here was I attempting to do a big, constructive piece of work and at every turn I was met by trivial jealousies, trivial obstructions.

The worst of it is that the star’s warfare against a scenario does not end the struggle. Once he or she has been persuaded of its merits the director is next called in. Often, of course, this personage thinks that the one obstacle in his career of authorship is lack of time. Consequently when the drama is put into his hands he starts to rewrite it. The result is that before long star, director, and editorial department are embroiled in a long and bitter conflict. Naturally, in these days of which I am speaking the case was appealed to me by each of the combatants.

The wear and tear of all this are felt by the scenario as well as by the producer. Is it any wonder that of the original story bought by the editorial department, perhaps one idea survives the general assault? For by the time that you have wheedled your actress into accepting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” the director decides that a goat possesses infinitely greater revenues of humour. Then the editorial department, conceding the goat, insists on an alteration in the type of heroine. She becomes “Hildegarde, the girl with a punch.” After this everybody thinks up so much business for the goat while he is on the road that, of course, he never gets to school at all. He probably lands at Coney Island or, better still, in the lobby of a fashionable hotel. Of one thing at least you may be certain: the terminus will be some place where Hildegarde can wear all her latest Paris gowns and wraps.

If I had really submitted “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to some of my stars I think it would have been accepted more readily than many more mature dramas. For Mary was very young, and if there is one thing upon which the average screen performer insists it is a youthful part. In real life she herself may be the mother of an eighteen-year-old girl. No matter! On the screen she must appear “teenful.”

I remember one such experience in connection with Pauline Frederick. She had read a story in which she was very anxious to appear. The heroine of that story was a girl in her teens. Mr. Lehr had a long talk with her in which, as gently and diplomatically as was possible, he pointed out that such an extremely youthful rôle would accentuate rather than diminish the discrepancy between her own age--not that this was formidable--and that of the screen heroine. She looked a little crestfallen at first. Then with a very sweet smile she yielded.

“Ah, well,” she sighed, “I suppose you’re right!”

One of the most amusing bases of rivalry in my studio was that of orchestral accompaniment. A word of explanation is required at this point. When Miss Farrar first came to make pictures for the Lasky Company we provided a small orchestra for her inspiration on the set. This unprecedented luxury, now an almost universal feature behind the screen, was thereupon exacted by other performers. Furthermore some of them did very accurate bookkeeping on the subject.

One day Pauline came to me with a very injured expression. “I’m not pleased!” announced she.

I believe I managed to act as if I were meeting an entirely fresh situation. “Well, well,” asked I, “what’s the trouble now?”

“Why, it’s this: How can you expect me to do my best work--I ask you--how can you expect it? I have only one violin--one poor little violin----”

“But, Miss Frederick,” I interrupted her, “you had no music at all while you were with Zukor. How about that? Yet you were doing your best work there.”

She reflected for a moment, and I saw then that I had not reached the root of the matter. This was quite evidently the fact that Geraldine Farrar had two or three violins. I tried to point out that the latter’s operatic tradition demanded this excess of string stimulation, but I was not successful. The number of pieces each actress should have became, in fact, one of those absurd bones of contention on which I, as a producer, was compelled to throw away much vital energy. Finally my studio became a three-ring band. When I entered it in the morning I wandered from the jazz selections which were toning up Mabel Normand’s comedy to the realm where sad waltzes deepened Pauline Frederick’s emotional fervour. The circle was surrounded by the classic themes infolding Geraldine Farrar. It was hardly strange that outsiders used to gather every day to share in these free airs.