WARDROBE--AND A FEW PERSONALITIES
The “Jones” pictures became very popular. Many persons well known in
the movies to-day, played “bits” in them. Jeanie Macpherson, author
of “The Ten Commandments” was “principal guest” in “Mr. Jones at the
Ball.” Miss Macpherson, who for many years has been and still is chief
scenario writer and assistant to Cecil B. DeMille, got her first movie
job on the strength of a pale blue crepe-de-chine evening gown.
How funny we were when we moved in the world of brilliant men and
beautiful women only we, who represented them, knew. Dress suits of all
vintages appeared. Any one with “clothes” had a wonderful open sesame.
A young chap whom we dubbed “the shoe clerk”--who never played a thing
but “atmosphere”--got many a pay-check on the strength of his neat,
tan, covert cloth spring overcoat--the only spring overcoat that ever
honored the studio. (An actor could get along in the spring with his
winter suit and no overcoat!)
Clothes soon became a desperate matter, so Biograph consented to spend
fifty dollars for wearing apparel for the women. Harry Salter and I
were entrusted with the funds and told to hunt bargains. We needed
negligees, dinner dresses, ball gowns, and semi-tailored effects. The
clothes were to be bought in sizes to fit, as well as could be, the
three principal women.
In that day, on Sixth Avenue in the Twenties, were numbers of shops
dealing in second-hand clothing, and Mr. Salter and I wandered
among them and finally at a little place called “Simone,” we closed
a deal. We got a good batch of stuff for the fifty--at least a
dozen pieces--bizarre effects for the sophisticated lady, dignified
accoutrements for the conventional matron, and simple softness for
young innocence.
How those garments worked! I have forgotten many, but one--a brown silk
and velvet affair--I never can forget. It was the first to be grabbed
off the hook--it was forever doing duty. For it was unfailing in its
effect. Arrayed in the brown silk and velvet, there could be no doubt
as to one’s moral status--the maiden lady it made obviously pure; the
wife, faithful; the mother, self-sacrificing.
Deciding, impromptu, to elaborate on a social affair, Mr. Griffith
would call out: “I can use you in this scene, Miss Bierman, if you can
find a dress to fit you.” The tall, lean actresses, and the short ones
found that difficult, and thus, unfortunately, often lost a day’s work.
Spotting a new piece of millinery in the studio, our director would
thus approach the wearer: “I have no part for you, Miss Hart, but I can
use your hat. I’ll give you five dollars if you will let Miss Pickford
wear your hat for this picture.” Two days of work would pay for your
hat, so you were glad to sit around while the leading lady sported your
new headpiece. You received more on a loan of your clothes, sometimes,
than you did on a loan of yourself. Clothes got five dollars always,
but laughter and merry-making upstage went for three.
Jeanie Macpherson had recently returned from Europe with clothes the
like of which had never been seen at Biograph. From the chorus of
“Hello People” at the Casino Theatre little Jeanie entered the movies
and even though she had a snub nose and did not photograph well, what
could Mr. Griffith do but use her?
Jeanie proved to be a good trouper; she was conscientious and
ambitious. Though only extras and bits came her way, David encouraged
her. She was rather frail, and one time after remaining ill some days
when on a picture up in the country, Mr. Griffith thought he should
give her good advice. So he told her to live on a farm for some months,
and drink milk and get strong, there being no future without health; he
certainly could not use her in parts were she to faint on him thus. But
Jeanie confided she’d have to overcome fainting without “months on a
farm”--that luxury she couldn’t afford.
Since Biograph Miss Macpherson has carried on in every department of
picture making except the acting. She early took stock of herself and
recognized that her future would not be in the ranks of the movie
stars. Just where it would be she did not then know--nor did any one
else.
On a day in this slightly remote period Jesse Lasky and Cecil DeMille
were lunching at Rector’s in New York--music, luscious tidbits, and Mr.
Lasky casually remarking: “Let’s go into the moving picture business.”
“All right, let’s,” answered Mr. DeMille with not the slightest
hesitation.
Mr. Lasky, thus encouraged, suggested more “Let’s,” to each of which
Mr. DeMille as promptly agreed “Let’s.”
Along came brother-in-law Sam Goldfish, married to Blanche Lasky,
sister to Jesse. Mr. Goldfish (now Goldwyn) was in the glove business
up in Gloversville, New York, and he was very grouchy this day because
the Government had taken the duty off gloves, and he was eager to
listen in on this new idea of Mr. Lasky’s.
By the time that lunch was finished this is what had happened: Mr.
Goldfish had put up $5,000, Mr. Lasky $5,000, and Arthur Friend $5,000,
and with the $15,000 Cecil DeMille was to go out to California to make
movies. He begged his brother William to put up $5,000 and become a
partner but William said: “No, one of us had better be conservative
and keep the home fires burning.” So when William later went into the
movies, he went to work for his brother Cecil, and he has been doing so
up to this time.
Mr. Cecil DeMille became Director General of the new Jesse Lasky
Pictures, and Mr. Oscar Apfel, General Manager. Out on Vine Street,
Hollywood, Mr. DeMille took over a stable, and began to make movies.
It was a crude equipment, but the company fell heir to some beer kegs
from which they viewed their first picture “The Squaw Man” released
sometime in 1913. The stable is still a part of the Hollywood Famous
Players-Lasky modern studio, but the beer kegs have vanished.
Pictures kept on radiating from the stable with quite gratifying
success. In time along came Jeanie Macpherson intent on an interview
with Mr. C. B. DeMille. Jeanie now knew so much about the movies and
C. B. so little, he just naturally felt the Lord had sent her. Miss
Macpherson’s presentation of ideas always got over to Cecil. So Jeanie
signed up with the new firm on that rather long ago day and now she
gets one thousand a week, I understand, for writing Mr. DeMille’s big
pictures.
We must go back now and rescue Jeanie from Mr. Jones’s Ball, for in
“Mrs. Jones Entertains,” she has duties to perform. In that picture
she was not “principal guest” but the “maid.” Flora Finch was a guest.
Miss Finch in another Jones movie becomes a book agent soliciting Mr.
Jones in his office. In “Mr. Jones has a Card Party,” Mack Sennett
appears as one of husband’s rummies, and in yet another “Jones,”
Owen Moore, first husband of Mary Pickford, is seen as “atmosphere”
escorting a lady from a smart café. So chameleon-like were our social
relations in the “Jones Comedy Series.”
A Flora Finch tidbit here comes to light. Though fifteen years have
elapsed, they have not dimmed the memory of the one hundred and
eighty-five feet of “Those Awful Hats.” The exhibitor was told: “It
will make a splendid subject to start a show with instead of the
customary slides.”
The “set” represented the interior of a moving picture theatre. The
company was audience. Miss Finch was also “audience,” only arriving
late she had a separate entrance. Miss Finch wore an enormous hat. When
she was seated, no one at the back or side of her could see a thing.
But out of the unseen ceiling, soon there dropped an enormous pair of
iron claws (supposedly iron) that closed tightly on the hat and head
of the shrieking Miss Finch, lifting her bodily out of her seat and
holding her suspended aloft in the studio heaven.
How many times that scene was rehearsed and taken! It grew so late and
we were all so sleepy that we stopped counting. But pay for overtime
evolved from this picture.
The members of the stock company that had grown up worked on a guaranty
of so many days a week. Now with so much night work our director felt
that the actors not on “guaranties” should be recompensed and it was
ruled that after 7 P.M. they would receive three extra dollars. So
when 6 P.M. would arrive with yet another scene to be taken, the
non-guaranty actors became very cheery. More money loomed, and more
sandwiches, pie, coffee, or milk, on the company. Frequently those not
on the guaranteed list made more than those on it, which peeved the
favored ones.
Along about now Mr. Herbert Yost contributed some artistic bits. Once
he was Edgar Allan Poe and he wrote “The Raven” while his sick wife,
poor little Virginia, died. We were a bit afraid of being too classic.
The public might not understand--we must go slowly yet awhile, but not
all our days.
Mr. Yost was one actor who used a different name for his picture work.
He called himself “Barry O’Moore” in the movies. Not that he felt the
movies beneath him, but he was nervous about the future reaction. He
showed good foresight. For as soon as the big theatrical producers
got wind of the fact that their actors were working in moving picture
studios, they decided to put a crimp in the idea. The Charles Frohman
office issued an edict that any actor who worked in moving pictures
could not work for them. But the edict was shortly revoked. Even so
long ago had the power of the little motion picture begun to be felt.