with Maeterlinck, persuades me that this creator of reverent prose and
mystic drama is afflicted with the same economic fixation--I borrow the
term from psychoanalysis--which manifests itself so often among those
whom some art has enriched. Screen stars and actresses, comedians and
tragedians, singers and writers--often in thinking over those whom
I have met I have been struck by the number who would be capable of
instructing Benjamin Franklin in the ways of thrift.
I remember that once I asked a man who had long been associated with
Ben Turpin, the widely known cross-eyed comedian, what sort of chap
Turpin really was.
“Well,” said he laughingly, “he’s this sort of a chap. He makes a lot
of money and he keeps almost as much. He has an unpretentious little
home manned with not more than one servant, and in the home there is
a suite of parlour furniture. It’s gilt, I think--anyway it’s quite
showy, and the Turpins are very much concerned over its welfare. They
keep it covered up except when somebody calls, and even then they’re
not reckless. For they say that when the door-bell rings some one
always peeps out of the window to see who is there. If it’s a stranger,
off come the furniture-coverings. But if it’s a friend, the insurance
is kept on.”
This amusing story is always linked in my mind with the one which Will
Rogers is fond of telling on Chaplin. “A girl went riding up in the
Hollywood mountains,” says he, “and was thrown and lost for two days.
When it was thought they weren’t going to find her, Charlie offered a
reward of a thousand dollars in all the papers. It looked at that time,
mind you, as if they weren’t going to find her. But they did. So the
people that found her offered five hundred of the thousand to anybody
that would find Charlie.”
For me one of the most amazing revelations regarding M. Maeterlinck
concerns his indifference to music. It was in this country and while
he was with the Goldwyn Company that he heard for the first time a
rendition of the opera “Pelléas et Mélisande.” One of my publicity men
sat near him in his box at this performance, and he reported that from
the large placid face those ethereal strains which Debussy wove about
his own play drew not a sign of response. It was quite evident that the
Belgian author perhaps considered Dr. Johnson somewhat too broad-minded
when he said that music was a sound more agreeable than other noises.
When I was in England several years after the formation of the Goldwyn
Company I made a memorable call upon another playwright whose pen moves
in a different tempo from that of Maeterlinck. I had long been an
admirer of Mr. Bernard Shaw and, in spite of the fact that the quality
of his plays rather repudiates the suggestion of screen adaptation, I
was interested in conducting the experiment.
Mr. and Mrs. Shaw entertained me at their London apartment with much
brilliant talk and the inevitable tea. The playwright’s wife, a very
cordial hostess indeed, is one of those fresh-coloured, vigorous
types of womanhood which you meet at every turn of Hyde Park. She was
deeply engrossed that day in the Irish question, and her sympathies
were brought into relief by a call from Sir Horace Plunkett, then just
returned from a visit to the United States.
I recall that during the course of the talk Mrs. Shaw told a story of
an Irish lad sentenced to be hanged in the Tower for his revolutionary
activities. Before his execution they came to him and promised that if
he would give the authorities information regarding certain leaders
in the movement his life would be spared. To this the lad, only about
eighteen years of age, replied, “Gentlemen, you are wasting your time
and mine.”
Mrs. Shaw quoted this speech with great fire. “How,” she concluded,
“can you conquer a people with a spirit like that?”
When we drifted away from the Irish situation Mr. Shaw and I had a
chance for a talk about motion-pictures. To my surprise I learned
then that he was a picture enthusiast. He told me that there were two
people whose films he never missed--Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford.
Regarding the former, he was especially enthusiastic. I found, in fact,
that he was as familiar with Chaplin’s work as am I myself.
The affectionate courtesy displayed toward each other by the playwright
and his wife is bound to impress any one familiar with some of Shaw’s
iconoclastic utterances upon the domestic situation. Certainly the
atmosphere surprised me. The pair did not address each other as
“Father” and “Mother,” but, aside from this failure, they seemed to be
as tolerant and contented and settled as a hardware merchant of Topeka
and his wife.
Toward the latter part of the afternoon I saw Mr. Shaw look frequently
at his wrist-watch. Ultimately he mentioned that he was due to deliver
a lecture that evening.
“And have you decided yet what you are going to speak about?” queried
Mrs. Shaw when at last her husband rose to depart for this engagement.
“Not yet,” he retorted; “I dare say I shall decide on the platform.”
I always think of Mr. Shaw as he looked when he made this reply. His
eyes, which are, I think, the clearest and most living blue I ever saw,
so sparkled with merry perversity, his figure was so erect and spare
and vigorous--there was so much spring in both face and physique--that
he seemed to me--this man past middle age--the very embodiment of
electric youth.
I suppose that he had that same expression of merry perversity when
on the following day he told a newspaper reporter who called upon him
to learn the outcome of his conversation with me, “Everything is all
right. There is only one difference between Mr. Goldwyn and me. Whereas
he is after art I am after money.”
Whatever the explanation, Mr. Shaw never came to America, nor did he
do any work for the Goldwyn Company. I was no more fortunate in the
result of my call upon Mr. H. G. Wells. He, like Mr. Shaw, had me at
his home in London for tea. Here, however, the conversation focussed,
not upon Ireland, but upon India, a direction determined by the fact
that a young East-Indian was calling upon the author that afternoon.
The foreigner was very earnest in his expressions of admiration for
Mr. Wells’s “Outlines of History,” and it was indeed a privilege
to me, who had just read this presentment of history, to hear such
first-hand comments by both the author and a representative of that
mellow civilisation which Mr. Wells has compared so favourably with our
Western achievements.
During the course of this conversation the Indian told the author that
no other English writer held so high a place in his country as the one
occupied by Mr. Wells. Although the latter must have spent many hours
of his life in listening to similar tributes, he responded to it as
gratefully as if this were a fresh experience.
When we came to talk of pictures I suggested to Mr. Wells that he visit
California and write some stories for our company.
“Oh,” said he, “I should like to come, for I know I should enjoy the
California sunshine and meeting Charlie Chaplin. The only trouble with
me is that I never could write on order. I haven’t been able to do it
for magazines or publishers and I should certainly fail abjectly when
it came to doing it for the screen.”
I thereupon urged him to come to California as my guest, look over the
situation. But, although I assured him that such a visit would leave
him perfectly free to decide whether or not he cared to enter the
picture lists, Mr. Wells did not accept my invitation.
As I left his home that day I remembered suddenly that twenty-five
years before, I, who had just been entertained by the most celebrated
of the younger English novelists, had wandered without home and
without money through these very London streets. There was no
self-congratulation in that swift contrast of present and future, but
there was a deep wonder at the mysterious flux of life.
Another feeling dominated this wonder. It was my gratitude to the work
which has so shaped and coloured my destiny. To motion-pictures I owe
all the wide range of contacts which have made up to me for a boyhood
handicapped by so many unfavourable circumstances. To it I owe also
the greatest blessing which can befall any one of us--an impersonal
interest so vivid and compelling that it survives any personal grief or
maladjustment.
Almost every one who has been connected with picture-production
understands the fascination which it exerts. I always think, indeed, of
the answer which Charlie Chaplin once made to somebody who asked him
what he most wanted from the future.
“More life,” said Chaplin promptly. “Whether it comes through pictures
or not--more life.” And then he added half sadly, “Still I can’t think
of myself out of pictures. Whatever I do, I find myself wondering,
‘Now, will that be good for my work or not?’”
Although, in comparison with this great creative artist, my own sphere
is so humble, my understanding of this one dominating interest is
sufficiently complete to justify me in applying his words to myself.
Like Chaplin, I can not think of myself out of pictures. For to do that
would be to turn my back on the far horizon which has always called me
to it.
In the ten years since I entered that little Broadway motion-picture
theatre with its static Western drama, its player-piano, and its
far-flung peanut-shells, giant changes have taken place. Then
film-production attracted few men and women of real intellectual
capacity. To-day we see a former member of the United States Cabinet
presiding over its destinies. Then the motion-picture theatre was as
sporadic as it was stunted and disfigured. To-day the smallest hamlet
puts up its first motion-picture theatre at the same time that it
erects its first church, and in the larger communities costly edifices
have followed in the wake of the costly picture. Eight years ago the
twenty thousand dollars which the Lasky Company expended upon “Carmen”
was considered a vast sum. To-day the Goldwyn Company is investing
nearly a million in its production of “Ben Hur.”
With the development of our industry has come a corresponding
development in the life of the country. Motion-pictures are, in truth,
the magic travelling carpet on which those in the most remote village
may fly to distant lands, to other ages, to realms of romance hitherto
denied them. No other agency, not even the automobile, has combated so
successfully the isolation of the rural communities. When I think of
the glow which pictures have brought to so many lustreless lives all
through the world, I am tempted, indeed, to overlook all the defects of
the industry and to dwell only upon its perfections.
Yet defects there certainly are. Undoubtedly the ten years to come
will do much to remove them. My own faith in the next decade is a firm
one, and to this new era of expansion I wish to dedicate whatever of
ability, whatever of judgment I have gained from the experiences set
down in these chapters.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Some simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.