Meanwhile, of course, I had been negotiating with various other stars. Among this number was Marguerite Clark. Miss Clark, you remember, had stirred the public deeply by her beautiful performance in “Prunella,” and this success of the speaking stage resulted in a competition between Mr. Zukor and ourselves for her services on the screen. Our final compromise indicates how ably we lived up to the friendly-enemy ideal of conduct.

“See here,” called Mr. Zukor over the phone, “I hear you’re negotiating with Marguerite Clark. Now I want to tell you something. I’m going to get her, no matter what I have to pay. So you’ll do me a favor if you don’t bid me up any higher.”

I agreed to withdraw, but upon one condition only. The Lasky Company had just secured the rights to Harold McGrath’s “The Goose Girl,” and we had been thinking for some time that Marguerite would be ideal for the part. My final understanding with my competitor accordingly was that he should lend us the coveted star for this single picture. In this arrangement, however, we reckoned without Marguerite herself. “What, Marguerite go all the way out to California!” exclaimed the star’s sister when I called at the Clark apartment that first evening.

An Astor or a Vanderbilt ordered to go out and hoe potatoes, a Russian nobleman sentenced to Siberia—neither of these could have expressed more profound emotion. Nor was the prejudice of Miss Clark’s sister an isolated one. I quote this exclamation, indeed, as significant of an almost universal obstacle I encountered in those early days. Stars did not want to leave New York for California.

I soon suspected that in Marguerite’s case the prejudice was a more deep-seated one than could be explained by climate or landscape. The very morning after she agreed to go out to the Lasky studios a young man in the employ of Mr. Zukor came to my office. His name was Harold Lockwood and he will be remembered for his work in some of Mary Pickford’s earlier stories, and later as a famous star for the Metro Company.

After a little preliminary clearing of his throat the handsome Harold suggested the purpose of his call. “Ahem,” began he, “I hear you’ve engaged Miss Clark to do a picture for you?” “Yes, yes, so I have,” retorted I, leafing over a pamphlet.

More pronounced symptoms of nervousness by Harold before he could proceed. “Ahem—well—I just thought—of course you may not be looking for anybody—but——”

We did not take advantage of Harold’s willingness to share Miss Clark’s banishment, but there are numerous parallel situations where we found the pressure more forceful. Sometimes, in fact, we have been obliged to take a constellation in order to secure the services of the one particular star which graced it. Our engagement of Blanche Sweet, of Pauline Frederick, and later experiences with Geraldine Farrar—these episodes to which I am coming presently—reveal the extent to which some emotional preference influences the contract of the feminine star.

Well, Miss Clark did go to California and she made for the Lasky Company its successful play of “The Goose Girl.” The performance was not, however, devoid of friction. From the studio across the continent to my office in New York came constant mutterings of disagreements between Miss Clark and her director, Fred Thompson. Once I wired to De Mille to ask him how the play was coming along, and his answer to the telegram was as follows: “Don’t know much about the play, but geese and photography both looked great.”

I have mentioned that Marguerite’s sister met me that evening I went up to her apartment. This sister, who was some years older than her celebrated relative, was almost as constant a phenomenon as was Mary Pickford’s mother. Indeed, many feminine luminaries of the screen possess one of these adhesive relatives. There is nearly always a mother or brother or sister or husband standing around back of the screens to see that justice is administered.

There was one time when Mary Pickford’s supremacy was seriously threatened by the success of this other Famous Players’ star. “Is Mary jealous of Marguerite?” I asked Mr. Zukor at this period.

He shook his head. “No,” said he. And then he added swiftly, “But it comes to the surface through Mrs. Pickford and Marguerite’s sister.”

From this remark I gathered that the two doughty supporters of opposing causes used to look at each other about as pleasantly as did the Montagues and Capulets. And if you possess any flair, like Landor, for imaginary conversations, you can easily construct a dialogue between the twain based on their respective claims to the most mail, the most unappeasable demands of exhibitors, the most appreciation from Mr. Zukor. Yet Mary long outlasted her fair rival. Why was this? Marguerite Clark was beautiful, she was exquisitely graceful, and she brought to the screen a more finished stage technique and a more spacious background than did Miss Pickford. My answer to this question, so often propounded to me, applies not only to Miss Clark, but to all the other actresses who have flashed, meteor-like, across the screen horizon. First of all, she did not have Mary Pickford’s absorbing passion for work. Secondly, she did not possess the other artiste’s capacity for portraying fundamental human emotion. Simple and direct and poignant, Mary goes to the heart much as does a Foster melody. Herein is the real success of a popularity so phenomenally sustained.

Previous to engaging Miss Ward and Miss Clark, the Lasky Company had secured the services of Blanche Sweet. The performance of this actress in Griffith’s “Judith and Bethulia” had lingered in my memory, and almost as soon as we organized I took Lasky to see that film. He was so much impressed that we wired at once to De Mille to negotiate with Miss Sweet, then working under Mr. Griffith in California.

From the first she did not seem satisfied with her new environment. After some days, in fact, she came to me and begged that she be allowed to leave us. She wanted to go back to New York.

“But why?” I pressed her.

After some hesitancy she finally confided the reason of her unrest. Marshall Neilan, whom I have mentioned as playing with Mary Pickford, had been unable to find work in Los Angeles and was taking the train back East the very next day. The result of this conversation was that I sent for Mr. Neilan, and so impressed was I by his intelligence that I engaged him as a director at two hundred and fifty dollars a week. His success was marked from the first and I have already indicated his rapid ascent to fortune.

As to Blanche, who eight years later became Mrs. Marshall Neilan, it was not until she began to work under Mr. Neilan’s direction that she justified our expectations of her. I shall never, indeed, forget my disappointment at seeing her first Lasky film.

“What!” thought I. “Can this be the same girl who was so effective in that Griffith picture?”

It was my introduction to a recurrent tragedy in my career as producer. Various times I have been attracted by Griffith successes only to find that they could not thrive in another environment. Just like Trilby when no longer confronted by the hypnotic baton of Svengali, so many of the men and women who have worked under Mr. Griffith can not perform when deprived of his inspiring force.

Meanwhile the Lasky Company had been expanding tremendously. Like an octopus it clutched at all the landscape available in the vicinity of the original livery-stable. New buildings kept going up. New people were being added. So swift was the pace of progress that De Mille’s brother William, whom we had sent out meanwhile as a scenario-writer, frequently voiced his leading plaint. He liked to work by himself in a little building away out in a field, but to save his life he could not move that little building fast enough. “I wake up in the morning after I’ve just staked a fresh claim,” he used to say, “and the doggone studio has caught up with me in the night!”

A tremendous impetus was given to both Mr. Zukor and the Lasky Company by an organisation of the distributers who had been handling our films. About six months after Lasky and I went into business these functionaries decided that in order to make themselves a real force they would have to guarantee to theatrical managers throughout the country a larger number of pictures. Their organization, under the name of the Paramount Pictures Corporation, requisitioned one hundred and four films a year, of which our company agreed to supply thirty-six. As this was just three times the number we had planned to produce, you will see the urgency of growth. It is equally evident why our capitalisation now increased from the original twenty thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

But the domestic market by no means exhausted our outlet. Always I have been penetrated by a sense of international possibilities in the film industry. That this Esperanto of the stage could be communicated to foreign countries—here was the idea which in the early Summer of 1914 sent me speeding to Europe.

I was interested in placing not Lasky products alone, for before my departure Mr. Zukor had asked me if I would not look after his interests also.

Until this time we had engaged in no concentrated drive of the sort. For, although Mr. Zukor had a representative in London, the agency waged only a haphazard, picture-by-picture campaign. Nor was my first important interview pregnant with hope of more systematic sales.

Great Britain had always been active in picture-production and her leading distributer was William Jury, who has since been knighted. Mr. Zukor’s London representative arranged my meeting with this personage, and from almost the minute I began talking to him I saw that Mr. Jury believed that Britannia rules the films as well as the waves. After he had listened to my enthusiastic praise of both Zukor and Lasky products, he told me that no American company could possibly be as great as I said we were going to be. To this I retorted that no one so lacking in confidence in a product could possibly be able to sell it. Having thus clarified our views, Mr. Jury and I parted. Almost immediately afterward I helped finance Mr. J.D. Walker to handle both Famous Players and Lasky Films in Great Britain. Under my contract with him he was to take the output of both studios and to pay us ten thousand dollars advance against sixty-five per cent. gross.

After this my progress was comparatively easy. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark promised to buy all the pictures we made at something in the neighbourhood of three thousand dollars each. I closed a deal with Australia guaranteeing to take our complete output at thirty-five hundred dollars a film; Germany put in the same large order at an even higher rate—four thousand each; Belgium and Switzerland contributed their quota, and although France represented our poorest customer, even she did not withhold her mite.

Is it any wonder that as I rode from Berlin to Paris my head reeled with the magnitude of our success? Could this really be I, the poor boy who a short time before had wandered over these very countries with hardly a sou in his pocket?

Yet mine was no miracle of success. I traveled in Europe day and night. I pitted all my enthusiasm against many citadels of prejudice and scepticism. When, indeed, I finally sailed from Liverpool I was physically prostrated by the long strain of it all.

Even the triumph which I have just chronicled was doomed to only a partial realisation. I could not anticipate, of course, on that Summer day when, riding from Berlin to Paris, I counted up my thousands, that in a few short weeks a bomb would explode in Sarajevo which would change the map and the psychology and the industrial conditions of the whole world. And I certainly could not foresee, therefore, the broken contracts and the difficulty of obtaining ships to fulfil contracts which followed the declaration of war.

While in Europe I was constantly on the lookout for actors, and one of the results of my search was Edna Goodrich. Miss Goodrich had three assets at this time. She was beautiful; she had created a sensation on the London stage, and she had recently joined the famous recessional of wives of the late Nat Goodwin. Eventually Miss Goodrich made a picture for us at five thousand dollars, with the understanding that if it were successful we should have the first option on her second venture.

Too bad for Miss Goodrich! Too bad for the Lasky Company! Almost the minute De Mille started to work with her he wired me, “Goodrich too cold.”

In the film world this is an epitaph. Nor did Miss Goodrich live down her obituary. Time refused to thaw her, and I was then initiated into the profound truth that many an actress whom individuality of voice and beauty of colouring render glowing on the stage are absolutely calcimined by the camera.

However, my interview with Miss Goodrich resulted profitably in another way. While dining with her at the Carlton in London I was introduced to a tall, broad-shouldered, manly-looking chap with a mop of chestnut-brown curls. From the moment that I saw him I was struck with Tommy Meighan’s possibilities for the screen, and when he came to America I wired Lasky to look him over. We engaged him, and Tommy went to California to make his first picture, “The Fighting Hope.”

“Tommy no good”; this was the telephoned verdict which De Mille rendered after this initial performance. I was then in San Francisco, and when I arrived in Los Angeles the defendant got to me before the prosecutor.

“See here,” announced Tommy ruefully, “they say I’m no good around this place, so I guess I’ll clear out. The Universal has made me an offer, anyhow.” “Do nothing of the sort,” I commanded. “Wait until I see your picture first.”

My view of that picture convinced me that our chief director’s opinion had been conceived too hastily. And the outcome of my intercession was a very distinct gain. A year or so planted this star on terra firma. To-day he is one of the most popular actors of the screen.

All this happened in 1914. The next year was one especially significant in motion-picture circles. Among the events contributing to its impressiveness was that Titanic conception of the silver-sheet, “The Birth of a Nation.” This Griffith picture which, by the way, was the first screen performance where two dollars a seat was asked, might also have been called “The Birth of Numerous Stars.” Mae Marsh, the Gish girls, perhaps a dozen luminaries who have since flashed across the public consciousness, owe their success to parts in the giant canvas.

It was during this year that De Mille and I went to a dinner given to Raymond Hitchcock, at Levy’s CafÉ in Los Angeles. We were half-way through when we were attracted simultaneously by a young man who had just sat down at an adjacent table. One look at the clear-cut face and we exclaimed in unison, “Isn’t he attractive! Wouldn’t he be wonderful in pictures!”

He was wonderful in pictures. For his name was Wallace Reid. The very next day we engaged him at a salary of one hundred dollars a week, and it was not until this first meeting that we discovered he had already worked at pictures under Mr. Griffith’s direction. The untimely death of this gifted and attractive young man, whose future held so much of promise, brought to his profession an irreparable loss.