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!