IN CALIFORNIA AND ON THE JOB
We would not have been true to the traditions of the Golden State had
we not used a Mission in our first picture. We meant to do our very
best right off and send back a knock-out.
So to San Gabriel we went to get the lovely old Mission atmosphere in a
picture called “Threads of Destiny.”
We spread ourselves; we took the Mission front, back and sideways,
inside and out; we used the worn old stairway, shaded by a fragrant
pepper tree, that led to the choir loft: we even planted lilies--or
rather, Mary Pickford as _Myrtle_, the orphan girl of San Gabriel,
planted lilies--along the adobe wall of the old cemetery where slept
baptized Indians and Mexicans.
It was pleasant sprawling about in the lazy sunshine. We who were
“atmosphere” wandered about the cemetery, reading the old tombstones,
and had the priest guide us through the Mission showing us its
three-hundred-year-old treasures. And across the way we visited the
curio shop where we bought pretty post-cards and ate _tamales_, real
Mexican _tamales_.
We would experiment on this Mission picture. We wanted a dim, religious
light, and here it was, and we wanted to get it on the screen as it
looked to us, the real thing. One little window let in an afternoon
slant of soft sunshine that fell directly upon the pulpit where
Christie Miller, playing an old priest, was to stand and bless the
congregation. If we could light up Christie, the devout worshipers
could be mere shadows and it would look fine--just what we wanted.
Billy Bitzer would “get” it if it could be got, that we knew. So while
Billy was tuning up his camera, Bobby Harron came and gathered in the
congregation from the curio shop and cemetery, and we quietly took
our places in the chapel and did our atmospheric bit. We did pray--we
prayed that it would be a good effect.
We rather held our breath at the picture’s first showing until his
tricky scene was flashed on the screen. Then we relaxed; it was all
there!
Spanish California was not to be neglected this trip, and our next
picture, a romance of the Spanish dominion, called “In Old California”
is historical as the first Biograph to be taken in Hollywood. The
Hollywood Inn was at this time the only exclusive winter resort between
the city and the ocean. We needed rooms where we could make up and
dress, and Mr. Anderson, the genial young proprietor, welcomed us
cordially.
Marion Leonard was playing the beautiful Spanish señorita in this movie
and Frank Grandin the handsome young lover who afterwards became the
governor of California. As we came out of the hotel in our make up and
Spanish finery and quietly drove off into the foothills, guests were
lolling on the broad front porch. With a start they came to. Whatever
in the world was happening! “Did you see those people? What is it?
What’s going on? Let’s get our motor and follow them and see,” said
they.
We had selected what we thought a remote and secluded spot in the
foothills, but soon in ones and twos and threes the guests appeared.
For a time they seemed well-behaved spectators; they kept quiet and
in the background. But Miss Leonard’s dramatic scenes proved too much
for them. They resented the love-making and began making derogatory
comments about movie actors, and one “lady” becoming particularly
incensed, shouted loudly, “Well, I wouldn’t dress up like a fool like
that woman and act like her, no, not for all the money in the world.”
That off her chest, she turned on her heel, and left us flat.
Paul de Longpré, the famous flower artist, lived only a few blocks
from the Inn on Hollywood Boulevard. Many years ago he had left his
native France and built a lovely château in the broad stretches of
young Hollywood. In his gardens he had planted every variety of rose.
A tangled profusion of them covered even the walls of his house. We
offered fifty dollars a day for the use of the gardens. M. de Longpré
went us one better. He offered to let us work if we’d buy a corner lot
for three hundred dollars. But what could we do with a corner lot? We
had no idea we would work six days and pay the three hundred dollars
just in rental. But that we did. What we didn’t do, was, take title
to the corner lot. Had we done so we would have laid a foundation for
fortune.
I recall M. de Longpré as the first person we met on location in
California who seemed to appreciate that we were at least striving for
something in an art line. To him we were not mere buffoons as we were
to the ladies of the Hollywood Inn.
“Love Among the Roses” we aptly called the picture in which Marion
Leonard played a great lady residing in the Kingdom of Never-never Land.
Monsieur de Longpré’s lovely house and gardens--a show place for
tourists some twelve years ago--has long since been cut up into
building lots on which have been erected rows of California bungalows.
For when motion picture studios began to spring up like mushrooms in
this quiet residential district, actors had to be domiciled and the
boulevard was no longer desirable as a restful home locality. Also, the
financial return on property thus manipulated was not to be lightly
regarded. The town council voted a memorial to the kindly French
artist. So Hollywood has a de Longpré Avenue.
The day we lunched at the Hollywood Inn marked an event for Hollywood.
Few motion picture actors had desecrated the Inn’s conservative grounds
until that day. A few years later only motion picture actors lived
there, and they live there now, though the old-maid régime is coming
along rapidly. Aside from the movie intrusion, Mr. Anderson foresaw the
changes that were to come. In due time he built the now famous Beverly
Hills Hotel. But the movie actor, who has now achieved a social and
financial standing that equals that of other professions, he still has
with him.
* * * * *
Goodness gracious, how could we ever get all the scenic beauty on the
screen! It was too distracting, what with Missions, desert, mountains,
ocean, beaches, cliffs, and flowers. We wanted to send enough of it
back in our pictures to ensure our coming again next winter.
We had a scenario that called for a wealthy gentleman’s winter home.
We hied ourselves out to Pasadena, to Orange Grove Avenue, Hillside
Avenue, Busch’s sunken gardens, Doheny’s, and other famous show places.
We found a place with gardens and pergolas, just the thing. Asked
permission to use the house and grounds, from very charming ladies
wintering within, possibly a bit bored, for they seemed delighted with
the idea.
It was not the custom in those days to explain the nature of the story
for which one desired a place; and the ladies being so keen on seeing
moving pictures being made, the matter ended right there. The scenario
which had been selected for our pioneer work in Pasadena was called
“Gold is Not All.”
The day came to start work on the picture. We were all packed up in our
motor car outside the Alexandria Hotel getting an early start, for the
earlier we got to work, the fewer the days we would need to trespass on
the borrowed property.
“Gold is Not All” was a story of contrasts. There were very wealthy
people in it and very poor people. And the poor faction was so poor
that mother, little mother, had to take in washing to help out, which
washing she returned to the rich people’s houses.
Like many other fallacies that have become identified with motion
picture characterization, rich people are invariably represented as
being unkind, selfish, penurious, and immoral--oh, always immoral. And
the poor are loving, kind, true, surfeited with virtue. The poor mother
idolized her children, worked and slaved for them; father always loved
mother, never strayed from home. But the rich man, drat him, ah, he had
sweethearts galore, he was dishonest on the stock market, he put marble
dust in the sugar, his wife was something merely to be exploited, and
his children were always “poor little rich boys and girls.”
So we were primed for action and quite ready to make our wealthy
gentleman sojourning in his winter mansion an utter rake, a miserable
specimen of the middle-aged debauchee who treated cruelly a
long-suffering wife. But the little poor families were such models of
all the virtues, they hadn’t missed one; and their days were full of
happiness.
The hostess of this charming home with some friends watched our
performances. There was no limit to their hospitality. They brought
out tables and a tea-service and they loaned us their “bestest”
butler--there was a lawn party in the story. When the picture was
finished, Mr. Griffith invited the owner and his family and their
friends to the studio to see the picture.
The projection over, we noticed a strange lack of enthusiasm; and
then Monsieur took Mr. Griffith aside and asked him if it would be
absolutely necessary for him to release the picture.
“Really,” said the gentleman, “we are a very happy family, my wife
and I and the children, we like each other a lot. All my friends have
been told about the picture and they’ll watch for it--and I just don’t
like it, that’s all. You know a person can have money and still be a
respectable citizen in the community.”
And that was that. But we learned something.
And here comes little Jack Pickford in his first leading part, a comedy
directed by Frank Powell, and called “The Kid.” It was full of impish
pranks of the small boy who does not want his lonely daddy to bring him
home a new mama, but he comes across in time and soon is all for her.
Two more pictures, “The Converts,” and “The Way of the World,” finished
us at San Gabriel. Both were Christian preachments, having repentant
Magdalenes as heroines, and were admirably suited for portrayal
against the Mission’s mellow walls.
Sleepy old San Gabriel, where dwelt, that first winter, but a handful
of Mexicans and where no sound but the mocking bird was heard until the
jangling trolley arrived and unloaded its cackling tourists!
Mission atmosphere got under the skin; so we determined on San Fernando
for “Over Silent Paths,” an American Desert story of a lone miner and
his daughter who had come by prairie-schooner from their far-away
Eastern home.
San Fernando Mission was twenty-two miles from Los Angeles, with
inadequate train service, and the dirt road, after the first winter
rains had swelled the “rivers” and washed away the bridges, was often
impassable by motor.
The desertion and the desecration of the picturesque place was
complete. For more than two hundred years the hot sun and winter rain
had beat upon the Mission’s adobe walls. It boasted no curio shop, no
lunch room, not even a priest to guard it. A few Japs were living in
the one habitable room--they mended bicycles. We were as free to move
in as were the swallows so thickly perched on the chapel rafters. An
occasional tourist with his kodak had been the only visitor until we
came. Then all was changed.
It was in San Fernando that we first met up with the typical California
rancher. This man, whose name I recall as “Boroff” had been one of the
first settlers in the valley. On a “location hunt” we had spied Mr.
Boroff’s interesting-looking place with its flowers and its cows, and
had decided to pay our respects and see if we could get the ranch for a
picture, sometime. One of the “hands” brought Mr. Boroff to us. Rangy
and rugged, oh, what health-in-the-cheeks he had! He swung us about
the place and then suddenly we found ourselves in a huge barn drinking
tall glasses of the most wonderful buttermilk.
“Do you know,” said Mr. Boroff, downing his, “I drink a quart of
whiskey every day to pass the time away, and a gallon of buttermilk so
I’ll live long.”
* * * * *
Squatted one afternoon on the edge of the roadway in front of the
Mission, I began idly scratching up the baked dirt with an old Mexican
stiletto we were using in a picture. A few inches below the surface
I noticed funny little round things that did not seem to be rocks.
I picked up a few, broke off pieces of dry dirt, cleaned the small
particles on my Mexican shawl, and found them to be old Indian beads,
all colors, blue, red, and yellow. Through the leisure hours of that
day I dug beads until I had an interesting little string of them. The
Indians from whose decorated leather trappings the beads had fallen had
been sleeping many years in the old cemetery back of the Mission.
Now there are grass and flower beds growing over my little burial place
of the beads, for the Mission has been restored; but even were it not
so, the movie actress of to-day would surely rather lounge contentedly
in her limousine than squat on old Mother Earth, digging up Indian
beads.
* * * * *
The third and last of the Missions we visited was romantic San Juan
Capistrano, seventy miles south of Los Angeles, nestling in the
foothills some three miles from the Pacific.
Our scenario man, Mr. Taylor, had prepared a Spanish story of the padre
days, and this lovely rambling Mission with its adjacent olive ranches,
live-oak groves, silvery aliso trees, and cliffs along the seashore,
was to afford stacks of local color.
Our one automobile deposited its quota--Mr. Griffith and party--in San
Juan Capistrano in the late afternoon. The evening train brought the
rest of the actors.
There was one little Inn, the Mendelssohn--now fixed up and boasting
all modern conveniences; then merely an airy wooden structure evidently
built under the prevailing delusion that southern California has
a tropical climate. There was a tiny office; the only parlor, the
proprietor’s personal one, which he was kind enough to let us use. He
had a stove and it felt mighty good to get warmed up nights before
turning in.
The bedrooms were upstairs. To reach them you had to go out in the
yard, the back-yard, climb the rickety stairs to the porch, on to
which each little bedroom by means of its own little door, opened. The
bare-floored bedrooms were just large enough to hold a creaky double
bed, wash-bowl and pitcher, and a chair.
We must see the Mission before dinner. The idea of dinner didn’t thrill
us much, and the thought of going to bed thrilled us less. But why
expect the beauty of old things and modern comfort too? The thought
of seeing old San Juan in the dim light of early evening should have
sufficed.
Beautiful old ruin! The peace and the silence! We might have been in
the Sahara.
Every member of the company was to work in this picture. There were no
more than ten little bedrooms in the hotel. Actors slept everywhere,
two and three in a bed; even the parlor had to be fixed up with
cots. Miss Leonard and others of the women had been domiciled in a
neighborly Spanish house--the only other available decent quarters.
Dell Henderson, who had put himself wise to the arrangement of sleeping
partners, had copped little Jack Pickford as his bedfellow. Dell was
one of our very largest actors and Jack being about as big as a peanut,
Dell had figured that with the little fellow by his side he might be
able to catch forty winks during the night.
Few of us managed to get unbroken winks. Between the creaking of one’s
own bed and the snores from other rooms down the line (the walls were
like paper) and the footsteps on the shaking porch, of actors going
from room to room looking for something better than what had been
allotted them, it was a restful night! All through it, at intervals,
Charlie Craig kept calling to his bedfellow, “Don’t squash me--don’t
squash me.” But the most disgruntled of all was Sennett. To every room
he came calling “Hey, how many in this bed? Who’s in there? Got three
in my bed; I can’t sleep three in a bed.” But responses were few and
faint, and from Dell Henderson’s room came only silence. So after
waiting in vain for help in his difficulty, and thoroughly disgusted,
Mack returned to what must have been very chummy quarters.
There had been engaged for this picture a bunch of cowboys,
rough-riders, headed by Bill Carroll, for we were to pull some
thrillers in the way of horse stuff. The riders with their horses were
leaving Los Angeles on the midnight train, due to reach Capistrano at
2 A.M.
It was all so weird and spooky that midnight had arrived before I had
summoned sufficient courage to let myself go to sleep. No sooner had I
dozed off than out of the black and the silence came a terrific roar,
yells, and loud laughter, and pistol shots going zip, zip, zip.
These hot-headed Mexicans! Things happened here, and something dreadful
was going to happen right now. I heard horses; and soon horses and
riders galloped madly into the back-yard, right to the foot of our
stairs, it seemed.
But it was only our cowboys who had arrived, feeling good, and full
of the joy of life. Old Colonel Roosevelt knew all about this sort
of thing, and would have appreciated the celebration. No thought
had been given the boys’ slumber places, and so after a look around
they docilely crawled up into the barn and were soon asleep in the
sweet-smelling hay.
“The Two Brothers,” the picture we were to do, told the story of the
good and bad brother. Good brother marries the pretty señorita in the
Mission chapel.
An experienced and cultured gentleman was the French priest in charge
of this Mission. He was most obliging and told us we could use whatever
we liked of the wedding ceremonial symbols, which we did, but which we
shouldn’t have done on this particular day of days--Good Friday.
The wedding was some spread. There were Spanish ladies in gay satins
and mantillas, and Spanish gentlemen in velvets and gold lace, and
priest and acolytes carrying the sacred emblems. They paraded all over
the Mission grounds. Then the camera was set up to get the chapel
entrance. While all was going happily, without warning, from out the
turquoise blue sky, right at the feet of the blushing bride and the
happy groom, fell the stuffed figure of a man! Right in the foreground
the figure landed, and, of course, it completely ruined our beautiful
scene.
On Good Friday in these Spanish-Mexican towns of California a
ceremonial called “burning Judas” used to take place (and may still,
for all I know). Old carts and wheels and pieces of junk in the village
are gathered in a heap outside the Mission grounds, and old suits of
clothes are stuffed with straw, making effigies of Judas. The villagers
set fire to this lot of rubbish and to the Judases as well, and the
evil they have brought during the year is supposed to disappear in the
smoke from their burning bodies. The handsomest Judas, however, is
saved from the conflagration for a more ignominous finish. A healthy
young bull is secured and to his formidable horns this Judas is
strapped. Then the bull is turned loose, so annoyed by this monstrous
thing on his horns that he madly cavorts until Judas’s clothes are torn
to shreds and his straw insides are spilled all over the place, and he
is done for, completely.
Now while we had been rehearsing and taking the wedding scenes, the
sacristan, a little old man to whom life meant tending the Mission and
ringing the bells at the appointed hour, had been covertly taking us
in, and when he saw our gay though holy processional start into the
very sanctum of the Mission on Good Friday, his soul revolted. No, that
he would not stand for!
Something even worse than riding the bull’s horns could happen to
Judas; and that was to be thrown at movie actors. So the sacristan
picked the prize Judas, and at the climactic scene he dropped him on
us, and then broadcasting a roar of Mexican oaths he went on his way,
his soul relieved and his heart rejoicing.
[Illustration: Mary Pickford as a picturesque Indian, before “curls”
and “Mary” had become synonymous terms.
(_See p. 168_)
]
But we felt differently. There was no telling now what these San Juan
hot-heads might do to us. But the seeming lack of reverence of our
procession was explained to the little sacristan by the understanding
priest.
[Illustration: The Hollywood Inn, the setting for “The Dutch Gold
Mine,” with Mack Sennett and Eddie Dillon. The players were thrilled
at being received in such a hostelry, and the guests amazed at seeing
picture actors.
(_See p. 158_)
]
[Illustration: From “Comrades,” the first picture directed by Mack
Sennett, with Mack Sennett and Dell Henderson.
(_See p. 204_)
]
The next day we did the abduction. We took ourselves miles from the
Mission. We chose a treacherous-looking road along the ocean cliffs.
In a ramshackle buggy the bride and groom were speeding on their
honeymoon, but bad brother and his band of outlaws were hot on the
trail to steal the bride. Our cowboys bringing up the rear were
cavorting on their horses; the horses were rearing on their hind legs;
and the director was yelling, “A dollar for a fall, boys, a dollar for
a fall!” The boys fell, on all sides they fell; they swung off their
horses, and they climbed back on, and they spilled themselves in the
dust, their horses riding on without them. Some of the boys made ten
and some twenty dollars that day, just for “falls.” And not one was
even scratched.
The next day was Easter Sunday, and our work being finished, in the
gray dawn we folded our tents and silently slunk away.
But the curse of Judas was upon us. When the picture was projected, all
was fine--scenic effects beautiful--and photography superb, until--we
came to the wedding procession!
Judas, to our surprise, was nowhere to be seen; he had fallen out of
focus evidently, but the effect of his anathema was all there. The
scene was so streaked with “lightning” we could not use it. At San
Gabriel we retook it later, but it never seemed the same to us.
* * * * *
Sierra Madre was another of our choice locations this first trip.
Here were wonderful mountains with fascinating trails and canyons
deep and long. From Sierra Madre, Mount Wilson was climbed, by
foot or donkey, for no magnificent motor road then led to its
five-thousand-and-something-foot summit.
At the quarter-mile house we did “The Gold-seekers,” a story of
California in the days of ’49, with Henry Walthall striking pay dirt in
the west fork of the San Gabriel canyon.
Mary Pickford did one of her Indians here, “A Romance of the Western
Hills.” David thought Mary had a good face for Indians on account of
her high cheek bones, and usually cast her for the red-skinned maid or
young squaw. A smear of brown grease paint over her fair face and a wig
of coarse straight black hair made a picturesque little Indian girl of
“our Mary.”
Curls and Mary Pickford were not yet synonymous. She played, besides
Indians, many character parts with her hair smacked straight back; and
she “did” young wives with her hair in a “bun” on the top of her head
to make her look tall and married. When Mary wore curls, it meant an
hour of labor at night. The curls necessitated three distinct kinds of
“curlers,” the ones for the wave on top, others for the long curls, and
little curlers for the shorter hair around the face. I often thought
Mary Pickford earned her slim salary those days for the time and effort
she spent on her hair alone.
It was an unhappy Mary on that first trip to Los Angeles, Owen Moore
having passed up his little sweetheart on account of the weekly ten
dollars he thought Mr. Griffith should have added to his salary. The
day’s work over, came her lonesome hour. On the long rides home from
location, cuddled up in her seat in the car, she dreamed of home and
dear ones. And one day passing the eastbound Santa Fé Limited, out of a
deep sad sigh the words escaped, “God bless all the trains going East
and speed the one we go on”--the Irish in her speaking.
An urge to do “Ramona” in a motion picture possessed Mr. Griffith all
the while we were in California, for the picturesque settings of Helen
Hunt Jackson’s deep-motived romance were so close at hand. Several
conferences had been held on the subject in New York, before we left.
But in order to make a screen adaptation of this story of the white
man’s injustice to the Indian, arrangements would have to be made with
the publishers, Little, Brown & Company. They asked one hundred dollars
for the motion picture rights and the Biograph Company came across like
good sports and paid it, and “Ramona” went on record. It was conceded
to be the most expensive picture put out by any manufacturer up to that
time.
To Camulos, Ventura County, seventy miles from Los Angeles, we traveled
to do this production of “Ramona.” For Camulos was one of the five
homes accredited to the real Ramona that Mrs. Jackson picked for her
fictional one. She picked well.
What a wealth of atmosphere of beautiful old Spain, Camulos’s far-famed
adobe offered! Scenes of sheep-shearing; scenes in the little
flower-covered outdoor chapel where Ramona’s family and their faithful
Indian servants worshiped; love scenes at Ramona’s iron-barred window;
scenes of heartache on the bleak mountain top but a few miles distant
where Alessandro and Ramona bury their little baby, dead from the white
man’s persecutions; and finally the wedding scene of Ramona and Felipe
amid the oranges and roses and grass pinks of the patio. Even bells
that were cast in old Spain rang silently on the screen. The Biograph
Company brought out a special folder with cuts and descriptive matter.
The picture was Mr. Griffith’s most artistic creation to date.
Nor did we neglect the oil fields, for oil had its romance. So at
Olinda, that tremendous field, we “took” plungers innumerable and
expensive oil spilling out of huge barrels into little lakes, all black
and smooth and shiny. The picture, called “Unexpected Help,” had Arthur
Johnson and little Gladys Egan as star actors. One other oil picture we
did, “A Rich Revenge,” a comedy of the California oil fields, with Mary
Pickford and Billy Quirk.
We had located a picturesque oil field. A crabbed-looking man in dirty
blue jeans seemed the only person about. We asked him would there be
any objection to our working, and he gruffly answered in the negative.
So we “set up,” and got our scenes; and, work finished, looked about
for our man, wishing to thank him. Feeling sorry for him, we went one
better and tendered him a twenty-dollar gold piece. When he saw that
money, he began to curse us so hard that we were glad when we hit the
highway.
At the garage in the village we made inquiries and were enlightened.
The man of the dirty blue jeans was none other than the millionaire
owner of the oil well, an oil well that was gushing one fair fortune
per day. And though he refused our money as though it were poison,
three times a week that man walked to Santa Ana, ten miles distant,
where he could buy a ten-cent pie for five cents.
Still more atmosphere we recorded in a picture called “As It Is In
Life”--the famous old pigeon farm located near the dry bed of the San
Gabriel River. Shortly after the time of our picture, the winter
storms washed away this landmark and we were glad then that we had so
struggled with the thousands of fluttering pigeons that just wouldn’t
be still and feed when we wanted them to, and insisted upon being good,
quiet little pigeons when we wished them to loop the loop.
It seems we paid little attention to sea stories. Perhaps because we
had our own Atlantic waiting for us back home, and we had done sea
stories. We produced only one, “The Unchanging Sea,” suggested by
Charles Kingsley’s poem, “The Three Fishers.”
Charlie Ogle, who had worked in a few old Biographs but had been signed
up with Edison before Mr. Griffith had a chance to get him, said to me
one day out at the Lasky lot last winter--1924:
“What was that wonderful sea picture you played in? My, that _was_ a
picture, and you did beautiful work. I’ll never forget it.”
“You couldn’t remember a sea picture I played in, Mr. Ogle. Heavens,
that was so long ago you must mean some one else.”
“No, I don’t, and I remember it very well. What was the name?”
“Enoch Arden?”
“No.”
“Fisher Folk?”
“No, now what _was_ that picture?”
And at that moment we were interrupted in our game of guess as Leatrice
Joy, whom we had been watching, came off the scene to revive from the
heavy smoke of a café fire, before doing it over again.
“I’ve got it--‘The Unchanging Sea.’”
“That’s it, that’s the one. I’ll never forget that picture.”
“As I remember, it was considered quite a masterpiece.”
The fishing village of Santa Monica was the locale of this story. At
this time there was but a handful of little shacks beyond the pier,
places rented for almost nothing by poor, health-seeking Easteners. No
pretentious Ince studio as yet meandered along the cliffs some nine
miles beyond. The road ran through wild country on to Jack Rabbit Lodge
where a squatter had a shack that tourists visited occasionally and for
twenty-five cents were shown an old Indian burial ground.
The only fellow movie actors we met this first winter in Los Angeles
were two members of the Kalem Company, beautiful Alice Joyce and
handsome Carlyle Blackwell, who often on fine mornings trotted their
horses over Santa Monica’s wet sands.
Occasionally, we met Nat Goodwin, who had cantered all the way from his
home in Venice-by-the-Sea.