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.
When not guarding her studio rights Miss Frederick is the most
delightful of women. I have told in a previous chapter of her gift of
getting along with only a few hours’ sleep. This same vitality sparkles
in every look of her eyes, in every sentence she utters. It leads her
to a deep interest in literature--she is one of the best-read women I
have ever known--and to a hundred phases of human activities outside
her own province. Altogether, a magnetic and bracing and colourful
human being!
_Chapter Twelve_
A MARRIAGE OF TWO MINDS
While I was having difficulties with Pauline Frederick I was not
enjoying an untroubled business relationship with the star whose
supposed advantage she so much resented. Earlier in my story I have
told of how Geraldine Farrar’s first invasion of our field brought to
our ears nothing but delighted comments on her director, her stories,
and her general environment. Sadly I am now compelled to ascribe
this first fine, careless rapture to her inexperience in pictures.
For when she came to work for the Goldwyn Company she had acquired
enough information about the screen to make her critical of stories,
directorship, and various other production details.
Now, too, a personal element in her life contributed to her attitude
toward pictures. For since she worked on the Lasky lot she had married
Lou Tellegen.
At the same time that Pauline Frederick was discontented with
any scenario not written by Willard Mack, Geraldine Farrar was
discontented with any leading man who was not Lou Tellegen.
The second Summer of her engagement with us we deferred to this
longing. We brought Mr. Tellegen on to play with his wife. He did more
than that. He frequently played against her.
About this time, I believe Mr. Howard Dietz, the brilliant young chief
of my publicity department, gave out an interview with Tellegen to the
effect that he was delighted to be back in pictures, particularly when
under such ideal conditions and when they afforded him the opportunity
of playing with Miss Farrar, who “was as excellent an artiste as she
was a wife.” This sentiment warranted a smile from those who saw how he
embraced that privilege.
To be concrete: While they were playing together on a set Tellegen
would frequently try to arrogate to himself the most advantageous
focussing of the camera.
He was apt to become sulky if this campaign was frustrated, and, seeing
this, we hit at last upon a harmless method of humouring him.
“Take him that way,” we whispered to the director, “and then we’ll
throw away the negatives. The ones we’ll keep will be those where
Farrar is played up.”
He was almost equally insatiable of “close-ups.” “You haven’t made a
single one of me yet,” he would complain after a careful computation
of his wife’s advantages in this respect.
And she, the beautiful Farrar, hitherto so much the conqueror in
love--did she realise the rivalry, the antagonism back of these
efforts? She certainly did. Time and again she tried to bring him into
the conspicuous position he so much desired. When she failed her look
was all for the pain of his hurt, not for that which she might so
reasonably have felt at such an attitude on the part of a beloved human
being.
Tellegen did not seem much more appreciative of her off the set. Often
when they were lunching together, for example, you overheard some
teasing reference on his part to the fact that she was some years older
than he. She never replied angrily to such remarks. Indeed, the general
criticism of her behaviour was that she was entirely too nice for him.
“Watch him! He’s as sure of her as he is of the ice-man coming around.
Why doesn’t she make him wonder a little?” So remarked one of a group
watching the famous pair as they sat together one day in the studio
café. The objection was well taken. Geraldine was bending toward her
husband with her accustomed look of rapt absorption. She was talking
to him eagerly with a frequent flash of the perfect white teeth. He,
on his part, was silent, absent-minded, even a little sulky. When he
answered her at all it was in monosyllables.
Time and again, in fact, studio folks beheld this metamorphosis of
the romantic and ardent lover of another California Summer into the
indifferent husband of this. And when it came time for the great prima
donna to leave, what a saddening contrast to that former day when
Tellegen had run madly beside the train bearing his love toward the
East! A recent Summer Miss Farrar stood beside her special train. The
fourteen personal attendants she had brought with her were running
hither and thither with her baggage and possessions. She, however,
seemed to know nothing of what was going on around her. For Lou
Tellegen stood before her, and she was looking into his eyes.
At last, just before the train started, she threw her arms about him.
All her dread of separation was in that embrace. You could see what it
meant to her to leave him even for a few weeks. And he? Listlessly,
with hardly one responsive gesture, he stood encircled by his wife’s
arms.
Yet such apparent indifference never seemed to quench the fire
kindled by that first glance of Tellegen’s on the Lasky lot. It was
almost unbelievable--the reckless lengths to which she, this careful,
methodical business woman, was driven by one despotic emotion. I am
giving now what was perhaps her most tempestuous departure from usual
standards.