the time of Miss Negri’s arrival.
As she was busy with photographers and newspaper interviewers, Lena
attended to the placing of the trunks.
When Pola reached her suite and smiled on the assembled porters, she
was greeted with frowns.
“Did you teep them?” she inquired of Lena, having learned enough about
America by this time to interpret the bad humour of the porters
correctly.
Lena nodded emphatically.
“What you geev them?” inquired her mistress.
“The piece with the cow on,” replied Lena.
Hastily consulting her chart Pola discovered to her chagrin that the
maid had given the porters each a Buffalo nickel. It took but a moment
to change the frowns to smiles with a different kind of gratuity.
Miss Negri was anxious to come to America, because it seemed to her,
like to every other foreigner, to be the Land of Promise. Also, America
was the place where she would again see Charlie Chaplin.
Her first meeting with Chaplin has always interested me. It happened
during Charlie’s last European trip, over a year ago. He had arrived
in Germany one afternoon, and at dinner time had gone to the Palais
Heinroth to dine. No one recognised him at first, until Al Kaufman, an
American film executive came in with a large party given in honour of
Pola Negri. Chaplin was invited to join them, introduced to Pola, and
given a seat by her side.
He could speak no German, she no English. In spite of this difficulty
it was plain to see that a mutual admiration sprang up between them.
That night they met again at a friend’s.
Mr. Blumenthal, knowing he was to take Miss Negri to America, arranged
to have photographers take pictures of Charlie and Pola. This created a
sensation in the hotel, where the pictures were taken.
A large crowd gathered to watch the farewell outside the hotel, for
Charlie was leaving the city that day.
As “Good-byes” were being said, Mr. Blumenthal said to Pola, “Give
Charlie a kiss.”
And Pola did, while the cameras clicked, and a dozen or more
impressions were made.
“Good-bye until we meet in Los Angeles,” she said.
The following week this incident was featured in a London paper as
“Chaplin’s welcome in Germany.”
It was apparent in the ensuing days that the impression Charlie made
on her was not a fleeting one. Her mind was already set on seeing him
again. It was plain that she thought of him always, and part of her
eagerness to reach America was due to this interest.
Therefore, it is not at all unusual that this interest should develop
into a beautiful romance when she met him again in California.
I saw these artists together a great deal during my visit there. In
fact they are inseparable.
A great many people have asked me if I think they will marry. Judging
the depths of a woman’s feelings and her intentions from the way she
acts, which of course, is not an easy thing to do, I believe Miss Negri
intends to marry Charlie.
While Chaplin does not admit he is in love, I have never seen a man so
devoted to a woman as he is to Pola. In fact I think she is the one
woman who has ever interested him completely. Stories are circulated
to the effect that Miss Negri announces her engagement to Chaplin in
the morning papers and Charlie denies it in the evening papers and vice
versa. I know these are not authenticated or authorized by either of
them, for they are both sincere.
Both are great artists, and therefore misunderstandings are bound to
happen. Whatever I am asked about the combination I say it is a great
one, but that there exists perhaps a little too much temperament.
At the present moment, however, Miss Negri’s career is occupying her
most vital thoughts. I believe that she, like every great artist, puts
her career before her personal desires, no matter how strong they
may be. She is working to establish her American reputation as she
established her European one, with a thoroughness and intensity coupled
with tireless energy and indefatigable attention that makes her an
extremist in everything.
I learned at the studio that if she has music to work with she will be
satisfied with nothing less than ceaseless playing of funeral dirges
throughout the entire day. She is known to make twice as many scenes
each day as is normally required. Her first day at Famous-Players
studio was a record breaker. She made thirty-nine scenes, whereas
twelve scenes are considered a good day’s work. She not only learns her
own rôle, but the rôles of all the others acting in the picture with
her.
She objects strongly to visitors being brought to the “set” where she
is working. It interferes with her mood, she declares, and she is
right. The making of moving-pictures is a business, just as the making
of steel, or the growing of flowers, or the sculping of a great statue,
and there is no reason for it being made a curiosity shop.
If she studies fashions, she studies them with this same indefatigable
zeal that marks her every effort. She has every fashion magazine
published in Europe and America, and pores over them for hours. She is
an incurable enthusiast in everything she does.
There is probably no other woman in pictures to-day who is endowed with
more of the basic elements required to make a great dramatic actress
than Pola Negri.
_Chapter Nineteen_
THE TWO TALMADGES
I accompanied Schenck to the Rivoli to see his fiancée on the screen,
and I was very forcibly struck with the beauty and talent of Miss Norma
Talmadge.
“Very lovely--very gifted,” was my verdict as we left the theatre.
“Isn’t she, though?” he responded eagerly. “I tell you that girl is
bound to go far.” He hesitated for a moment, and then turning toward me
abruptly he asked, “How about it, Sam? Wouldn’t you like to have her
for your company? She’d come with you for a thousand a week.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Joe,” I replied, “but you know what
the situation is. It’s the big name that counts nowadays, and Miss
Talmadge, beautiful and talented as she is, hasn’t enough fame for a
man trying to put over a new company. But why don’t you try Zukor? He’s
better established and could afford to take a chance.”
“No,” answered he, “I might as well tell you that he’s turned her down
already.”
This dialogue was destined to be an illuminating comment upon both my
competitor and myself. In refusing to heed the knock of opportunity
we both lost many thousands of dollars. Indeed, I might as well admit
here, in these annals of a life so crowded with errors of judgment,
that in my case Opportunity was lenient. Once again, a year or so after
this episode, she again knocked at my door. And once again I was deaf
to the golden visitor.
On this second occasion Schenck, who had in the meanwhile married Miss
Talmadge, came to me with a proposition.
“Sam,” announced he, “I’ve started producing Norma’s pictures and of
course I realise that I’m not so awfully experienced. Now, what I want
to know is this: Won’t you let her work over in your studio and get the
benefit of your advice? If you do I’ll give you twenty-five per cent.
of the receipts of her pictures.”
I hesitated for a moment and then I told him I didn’t see my way clear
to any such arrangement. I was too busy, I explained, to give her the
attention meriting any such returns. Nowadays in looking down the long
road over which I have come I often pause at this point. For I realise
to-day that had I accepted this offer I should have made enough to
balance many costly experiments.
The realisation of my blunder came to me not long afterward when I was
dining with Schenck at his home. After dinner we sat talking together
in the living-room, and it must have been almost midnight when the door
was flung open and Miss Talmadge stood before us. Her eyes were shining
with excitement; the cheeks above the full collar of her gorgeous
evening wrap were the color of a Jacqueminot rose. Never in all my life
have I seen a more vivid apparition of beautiful, victorious youth.
There was only a second for me to record that impression, for Miss
Talmadge just hesitated there on the threshold, and then with a
tumultuous gesture she threw herself into her husband’s arms.
“Oh, Daddy,” she cried, clinging to him and looking up into his eyes,
“I could hardly wait until I got home to tell you! They all said I drew
bigger crowds than Clara Kimball Young. Think of it! Oh, isn’t it just
too wonderful! I’m the happiest girl in the world.”
I had heard from Joe previously that his wife was making personal
appearances that evening at the Loew theatres; but I was certainly as
unprepared for the result as was the heroine of the incident herself.
For in those days the beautiful Clara Kimball Young was one of the
most popular women on the screen, and the announcement that she was
going to make a personal appearance at any New York theatre was almost
equivalent to calling out the police reserves.
But, struck as I was by the professional significance of her
speech, I was even more impressed by its personal bearing. It was
so evident--Miss Talmadge’s eagerness to share any triumph with her
husband--she was so exactly like a child returning to its home with the
ten gilt stars won from her recitations in geography or history--that
all later memories of her are overshadowed by this one touching
revelation of the real Norma Talmadge.
To understand the woman whose glowing attitudes have so enriched
screen art you must think of her, not as a single figure, but as part
of a pattern. True, her career is the most brilliant thread in this
tapestry, but it is dependent for its brilliance and effect upon the
somewhat less glittering but equally firm threads of its background
and intermingling figures. The fabric of which I speak is family life.
This includes not only Miss Talmadge’s husband, but her mother and two
sisters. They would appear as a unit in any field of endeavour, but,
as it happens, pictures have supplied the hand weaving them into their
fixed and arresting design.
As a very young child, so Schenck has told me, Norma displayed her
histrionic gifts. The talent was promptly encouraged by her mother, and
it was undoubtedly due to Mrs. Talmadge’s influence that her eldest
daughter entered the employ of the old Vitagraph Company. Unlike many
others whose names have added lustre to the screen, Miss Talmadge was
never an extra performer. At the very first she was given a small
part. Yet at this time she was a girl in her early teens. Young as
she was, however, she contrived to have a sister even younger. This
sister, Constance, used to come to the studio with her almost every day
and, wide-eyed over the importance of her more mature relative, would
fasten Norma’s frock and help her put on her make-up. At last this
career of self-effacement was rewarded by a chance for more individual
enterprise. Constance became an extra in the Vitagraph studios.
On the part of neither Norma nor Constance is there any effort to
suppress these humble days from the stranger’s consciousness. Quite
the contrary. Once they were dining at the Ritz with a friend of mine
who has decidedly less command of this world’s resources than have the
Talmadge girls.
“Oh, how wonderful!” exclaimed this friend. “Think of being able to
order like you, Norma--without ever looking at the expense side of the
menu!”
Miss Talmadge laughed merrily. “Well,” she retorted, “it hasn’t always
been like this, has it, Constance? Remember the old Vitagraph days
when we always had to eat inside a quarter? It wasn’t a question with
us of soup to nuts, but of soup or nuts.”
I happened to be at a dance several years ago which was attended by
both the sisters. Norma Talmadge took that evening only several turns
about the room. Constance, on the other hand, danced every number. I
myself was lucky enough to benefit by this protracted exercise and as I
did so I caught over Constance’s shoulder the eyes of Norma following
her sister’s figure through the ebb and flow of dancers. The quality
of that glance will always linger with me. Why, indeed, should it not?
For here she was--young, beautiful, an idol of the screen--and she was
surveying this sister only a few years younger with the fond, admiring
glance which some dowager might bestow on one of the younger generation.
My interest was so piqued by this matter of the self-appointed
wallflower that I asked a close friend of the Talmadges if this were a
habitual attitude of Norma’s.
“Oh, dear, yes!” replied she. “Norma’s always like that. Very seldom do
you find her dancing more than several times an evening. What she just
loves is to think of Constance as the belle of the ball.”
[Illustration: CONSTANCE TALMADGE
Dainty sister of Norma and Natalie and aunt of Buster Keaton’s
solemn-faced baby.]
[Illustration: NORMA TALMADGE
In private life, Mrs. Joseph Schenck. A noted screen leader.]
“And how about Natalie?” I asked.
“Indeed, yes. Norma and Constance are as devoted to her as they are to
each other, and they all three unite in worshipping their mother.”
“A close corporation,” I commented. “Yet Buster Keaton and Joe
Schenck seem to come in for almost as high dividends as the original
stockholders.”
“Of course,” assented my informer, “a Talmadge-in-law is all right
so long as he is also an in-picture. For you’ve got to remember that
pictures are the leading interest of the whole family. In fact, I think
that was largely the trouble between Constance and her husband. He was
not only outside the profession, but I understand that he objected to
Constance going on with her work on the screen.”
I have been told by those who have worked with Miss Norma Talmadge on
the set that, in contrast to her sister Constance, who is exceedingly
even-tempered, she displays many of the characteristics popularly
associated with a great emotional actress. Gusts of impatience followed
immediately by the most radiant, sunshiny laughter; flurries of
annoyance; ripples of amusement--these are the manifestations of a
nature which, in the words of one admirer, is “as big and sweet as all
outdoors.” Thoroughly consistent with such a nature is Miss Talmadge’s
type of generosity. This functions more conspicuously through some
concrete human appeal than through official solicitation. Testimony to
this is offered by a letter from Joe Schenck to a friend of mine.
The letter, written by Schenck while he and Miss Talmadge were on a
recent visit to Germany, records how Norma was followed by a beggar
in the streets of Berlin. Old and emaciated and dirty, he fell on
his knees before the radiant young American and begged her for help.
Miss Talmadge thereupon emptied the entire contents of her purse into
his hands. “It was a nice little gift,” commented Miss Talmadge in
reporting the incident to her husband, “but it made me happy to do it,
for I never saw a human being so grateful as he was.”
“And how much did you happen to have in your bag?” questioned her
husband.
“Oh, it was all of a thousand marks,” answered she.
Her husband rocked with merriment. “And do you realize that you gave
him all of twenty-five cents?” he said.
Miss Talmadge, so Schenck wrote, was aghast at this disclosure of her
cramped style in benevolence. “And, pressed as she was for time,” he
concluded, “nothing would do but that she should go out early the next
morning and hunt the fellow she had wronged by her twenty-five-cent
donation. When she did find him--believe me, he got something real.”
From a being so swayed by the claim of the moment--a being, too, so
young and beautiful--you would predict perhaps a less stable domestic
situation. Mr. Schenck, one of the finest men I have ever known is some
years older than his wife and, in addition to this, he is what is known
as a practical type. Yet Miss Talmadge’s devotion to him is one of the
salients in her life. The evening when she could hardly wait to tell
him of her triumph over Clara Kimball Young is, indeed, indicative of
her whole attitude. Everything, both in pictures and out, is talked
over with Mr. Schenck, and her manner when she is with him reflects
always that deep content which an emotional nature feels often in
stability.
Yet Mr. Schenck represents much more than a mooring for this brilliant
personality. Remembering his efforts in her professional behalf
from the moment when he so proudly showed me that bracelet on his
office desk; acquainted, too, with the absolute devotion which he has
subsequently given to her career, I often wonder how it would have
fared with Miss Talmadge had this element in her life been lacking.
Certainly she would have risen by sheer force of her talent and her
beauty and her enthusiasm without any such concentrated interest. But
I very much doubt if her ascent would have been either so swift or so
dazzling had this one great constructive force been absent.
_Chapter Twenty_
GOOD OLD WILL ROGERS
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