Well, I left my company and I was then not quite thirty-five years of age. I was accustomed to a life where every working hour was inspired by the one thought, “How can I make the Lasky Company more significant?” You can imagine, therefore, the terrible blankness of those days following my resignation. Feverishly I cast about me for a new outlet for my organising energy, and in the Autumn of 1916 I, together with my friends Archie and Edgar Selwyn, the theatrical producers, Margaret Mayo, and Arthur Hopkins, the theatrical producer, founded the Goldwyn Motion Picture Company.

The beginning of this second film venture of mine involved conditions very different from those which attended the start of the Lasky Company three years before. Then the story was supreme and the Lasky Company was successful without any really overshadowing personalities. True, the field presented some great celebrities such as Mary Pickford, but the emphasis was not placed upon the player to the degree which afterward swayed the producer. Constantly this emphasis became more irresistible, and by the time that I started the Goldwyn Company it was the player, not the play, which was the thing.

Every theatre-owner in the country wanted personalities. Stars were now made over night. New names came out in electric light almost every evening. Obviously, therefore, the only guarantee for the success of a new motion-picture organisation was the assemblage of a list of big names.

Hence it was upon an array of planets that the Goldwyn Company concentrated its initial energy. The first star we engaged was Mabel Normand; the second, Mae Marsh; the third, Madge Kennedy. Add to these such towering figures from other histrionic firmaments as Mary Garden, Jane Cowl, and Maxine Elliott, and you will see why our competitors were warranted in feeling a deep uneasiness. For the engagement of these people was attended by enormous publicity. Newspapers featured many of our stellar connections and, added to this, huge posters blazoned with the names of our trophies carried promise of greatness to every hamlet in America. The first thing that I did, in fact, was to scatter these posters broadcast.

Perhaps at first I did not quite realise that in building up the Lasky name I had been in reality creating a Frankenstein. Later, however, the full force of this figure was to occur to me, for at every turn I was met by the ruthless competition of the Famous Players-Lasky Company. This was particularly acute in the engagement of stars.

Added to obstructions of bitter rivalry came a personal misfortune. While playing hand-ball at the Athletic Club one day I broke my ankle. This kept me away from our studio for three months and, as my associates were inexperienced in picture-production, my absence meant a loss to the company of thousands of dollars. It was, indeed, a maddening situation for one attempting to launch a new business where the odds were already sufficiently against him.

It would seem as if the Greek dramatists had not overdrawn things. When the gods decide they want to make things hard for you, they are thorough, they overlook no executive detail. The first Goldwyn film was just being released when America announced her participation in the War. Heretofore the conflict had spelled advantage rather than disaster to the American producer, inasmuch as our films had become the rage in all neutral countries. But with America’s precipitation came a new set of conditions. These, oppressive enough to picture industries long established, almost succeeded in crushing our new venture. First on the list were transportation difficulties. We were now unable to procure space on ships to move our products. This handicap was accompanied by shortage of fuel, conservation of light, and scarcity of labor. The second obstacle of this group became so acute that we were sometimes obliged to use four studios in order to complete a day’s production. Obviously, therefore, our only chance of survival lay in removing our establishment from the Fort Lee studio, where we had been operating, to a California one. This we did in the Summer of 1918.

Somewhat less than two years after America’s entrance into the War our pay-roll was ninety thousand dollars. How to meet it—here was the question which tortured every waking hour. At last I felt it incumbent upon me, as the largest single stockholder in the company, and as the individual in our group personally responsible for loans amounting to eight or nine hundred thousand dollars, to lay the whole situation frankly before my associates. With one accord they advised that the company should go into the hands of a receiver.

I could not sleep that night when everything which I had been building for the past years threatened to go down with the morrow. Money, credit, my reputation as a producer—how, how was I to save them? Spent by my vigil I arrived in my office the next morning.

Here after a talk with Mr. Schay, the controller of our company, it seemed to me that the one reprieve of which I had thought during the night was really available. The reprieve was this. We had branches in twenty-five different cities. Each branch represented two or three thousand dollars of ready money. By removing the total amount from all of them we should be enabled to meet one week’s pay-roll.

“And how about next week?” asked the controller.

I shrugged my shoulders. But inside I was thinking fiercely that something had to happen.

It did. The very next week the armistice was signed. From this moment the entire complexion of the picture situation changed. Shipments to Europe came about almost immediately. Other difficulties cleared away. It was not long before the Du Ponts, of Wilmington, and other prominent financiers invested seven million dollars cash in the Goldwyn Company.

With this new capitalisation all my financial struggles ended. To-day the organisation which bears my name is one of the three largest companies in the world.

One day, while the receivership was threatening, Mabel Normand came up to my desk and handed me a long envelope. “What is this?” I asked her.

“My Liberty bonds,” she answered, “There are only fifty thousand dollars worth of them, but if they will tide you over you may have them.”

Those interested in the personality of Mabel Normand can receive no more illuminating introduction to her than the incident just sketched. There are a hundred tales of this characteristic response to any human appeal clustering about the name of Mabel Normand. One which came directly under my observation relates to a poor girl with a dependent family. This girl was stricken with tuberculosis and, although Mabel did not know her, she became interested in her condition through a friend of hers. Immediately she went to see her, and when she left she pressed something into the sick girl’s hand. It was only after she had gone that the other realised what her caller had left. It was a check for a thousand dollars.

Nor does Mabel wait for the large demand upon her sympathy. Gifts from her come unprovoked as manna. She is likely to go out and buy a hundred-dollar beaded bag for a stenographer in the organization, and just as likely to invest a corresponding amount in remembering somebody whom she has met once and happened to like. I used to find it very hard to get Mabel to a set when the set was early in the morning. Extras and other members of the cast would have been waiting there for hours. The director would be fuming. At last somebody would be sent to investigate the whereabouts of the missing luminary. More than likely she would be found writing letters in her dressing-room.

“But I don’t feel in the humour this morning,” she would sometimes say to me, pleadingly. “How can I go down there and act that way?”

My associate, Mr. Abraham Lehr, made frequent attempts to correct this habit of Mabel’s. He found himself forever frustrated—indeed disarmed—by the charm of manner, the delightful playfulness which Mabel possesses so abundantly.

Once, I remember, when she was exceptionally tardy, Lehr, met her in the studio with his face fixed in lines of righteous indignation. She approached him with one hand behind her back and the other uplifted in a gesture of the gayest, most irresistible command.

“Wait,” cried she, “before you say anything!”

With that she brought forward a new and very beautiful photograph of herself and presented it to him with a curtsey. On the photograph were written these lines:

She watched him while he read these words and then, her big brown eyes dancing with merriment, she said coaxingly: “That’s the reason I was late, you see. I was thinking up something nice to write on your photograph. I didn’t want to say just ‘Yours sincerely,’ or something stupid like that.”

I do not need to say that Lehr’s face softened perceptibly or that he forgot all about the judicial rebuke which he had evidently planned. For the pictured collection of stage and screen celebrities which he has had mounted under the glass top of his office-desk represents a hobby, and this contribution of Mabel’s still occupies an honoured place in the gallery.

I do not mean for a moment to convey the idea that Miss Normand is an isolated example of tardiness. Many screen favorites heave in sight as slowly as Lohengrin’s swan. This is particularly true of comedians. Chaplin, for example, often keeps his associates waiting for hours—indeed, there are entire days when he is absolutely unable to work. The fact of it is that the efficiency engineer will never be able to control a picture studio.

Such an expectation is as vain as the belief that you could obtain a poet’s best work by snapping your fingers over him and crying, “Come, come, we want another sonnet and a gross of couplets before lunch.” For the best screen acting is naturally inspirational.

True, some performers are able to turn on their emotional faucets at any time. Mary Pickford, as I have related, rings up early every morning. But then she is a systematised human being who presents in temperament the opposite pole from Mabel Normand. The latter is a creature of impulse. She never calculates the moment ahead for fear that the moment itself might calculate something she liked better. When she works she works hard, but she can’t do it in step with the hour-hand.

Mabel has a really fine talent and she knows picture-production from every angle. But the screen does not absorb all of her amazing vitality. Eagerly she turns to people, books, gaiety, strange scenes. She does not want to miss one glint of “this dome of many-colored glass.”

The difference of degree in the attitude of Mary Pickford to pictures and that of Mabel Normand is indicated by their varying response to European travel. Chaplin once said to a friend of mine, “You know, I was in Paris with Mary and Doug and often they really seemed lost without their pictures.” Far from this state of mind, so familiar in the American business man temporarily implicated with a gondola or a ruined temple, is the eagerness with which Mabel Normand returned last Autumn from her first trip abroad.

“Oh, how I enjoyed every minute of it!” she told me. “Pictures, music, all the funny outdoor cafÉs, all the funny people!”

She has always been an inveterate reader. This, of course, is at present one of the fashionable claims of the screen star, and in some cases I am obliged to say that the claim rests on very flimsy foundations. Right here, indeed, I feel compelled to anticipate by telling a story illustrative of this point:

One day Charlie Chaplin went with me to a Los Angeles hospital where a friend of mine was recuperating. Left alone in the corridor, he wandered into a little sitting-room. It was filled with books representing the most advanced taste in fiction, poetry, and criticism.

“Whose room is this?” asked Chaplin of the nurse hovering over the scene.

Quite evidently she did not recognise him, for she replied without a vestige of embarrassment, “Oh, this belongs to Mrs. Mildred Harris Chaplin.”

Charlie’s face underwent a number of changes.

“Oh, indeed? And is she reading these books,” he finally inquired. “Oh, no,” returned the nurse in a matter-of-fact tone. “The books she really reads are in a little closet in her bedroom.”

Mabel Normand, however, does not regard books merely for their furnishing value. She really gets into action on “literachoor.”

Many people who are generous with money and material possessions are not equally so when it comes to that more difficult gift of time and thought. No such limitation exists in Mabel’s nature. The thing which makes her beloved is that going out of herself to others, that real love of people irradiating her most casual contact.

Once, I remember, she was eating lunch in the Goldwyn studio restaurant. The apple-pie struck her as being especially successful and she asked to see the cook. A few moments later this functionary, an ample old Irishwoman in a gingham apron and with her sleeves rolled up, appeared behind the counter. Visibly she was overcome with awe at the summons from the brilliant young star. It did not take Mabel long to remove such oppressive sentiments. Only a moment and she had literally vaulted over the counter and had grabbed the astounded old woman in her arms.

“Bless your heart,” we heard her cry, “it’s the best apple-pie I’ve had since I left home.” And as she left the scene she tucked one of her inveterate bills into the cook’s hand.

Nor is her response to people merely an emotional one. It is practical as well. She keeps a book in which are written the birthdays of all of her friends, and she never fails to react to these dates with a letter, a telegram, or a gift.

It was when she was in the Goldwyn studio that the death of Olive Thomas occurred in Paris. Never have I seen such a passion of pity as Mabel showed for the unfortunate girl, such a passion of indignation as she expressed for those whom she believed responsible for the tragedy. Nor did she stop there. The mother of Olive Thomas was in this country and there was hardly a day when Mabel did not go to see her or take her on a drive or send her some remembrance.

To a nature like this, so alive with human sympathy and understanding, it is easy to forgive much.

There was one person from whom, so I always suspected, Mabel withheld much of her usual kindliness. This was Madge Kennedy. I had engaged the latter actress soon after making my contract with Mabel and the two worked simultaneously, therefore, in the Fort Lee studio. That they did not always work harmoniously is scarcely puzzling, for the fact that they were both comÉdiennes represented perhaps the only likeness between them. Indeed, that very similarity constituted in itself a ground for conflict.

They each had the habit of slipping into the projection-room to look at the rushes of the other. And the comment with which they greeted the rival performances became fairly familiar to the studio.

“Hmph,” announced Mabel to her group, “she saw me do it and she quickly did it first.”

“Hmph,” duplicated Madge to her group, “she saw me do it and she quickly did it first!”

Mabel behind the screens is as full of pranks as she is on the screen. Madge Kennedy’s professional manner, on the contrary, is decorous to the point of primness.

My contract with Mabel Normand contained one clause providing that she should pay half for the clothes worn in her stories and that the company should pay the other half. Time went by, however, and brought us no bill from the star for our share of her stage wardrobe.

“How’s this,” I asked her one day.

She looked very much embarrassed. “Well, you see,” she replied, “I’ve ordered so many clothes that I don’t feel right about letting you pay anything at all.”

It was quite true. She did order lavishly. Instead of buying one hat at a time she bought twelve. With frocks and other accessories it was the same. To be sure, there are other stars whose expenditures in this direction are equally impressive. Pauline Frederick, for example, once got an exemption of fifty thousand dollars from her income-tax on the basis of an investment of that amount in her wardrobe. I am sure, however, that only a few of this number would have been halted by any such scruples as those revealed by Mabel Normand.

I had the same wardrobe arrangement with Madge Kennedy. In her case, however, developments were slightly different. One day my studio manager came to me in a towering rage.

“See here, Mr. Goldwyn,” he began truculently, “Miss Kennedy has been ordering a whole lot of clothes——”

“Sure,” interrupted I. “They always are.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t need them for her picture. She needs them for her Autumn—that’s what!”

It was with difficulty that I persuaded him of the fact that Miss Kennedy would never be guilty of such an imposition. Indeed, my success was only temporary. For almost every picture which she made revived this supposition that Madge was ordering more clothes than she needed.

Madge Kennedy was always prompt on the set and was most conscientious in her efforts to do good work. No moods, no sharp edges, obtruded themselves into any business relation with her. I ascribe this to the regularising influence of a very happy marriage. Obviously she was very much in love with her husband, a young New York business man who frequently drove over to the Fort Lee studio to take her back to town.

From a being so well disciplined as Madge you would expect the relentless care with which she guarded her health. At any party she was apt to go off unseasonably as an alarm-clock. Once, I remember, I invited her to a dinner-party in Los Angeles to meet Mr. and Mrs. Rex Beach. The dinner had just ended and the party had hardly begun when Madge rose to depart.

“What!” exclaimed Pauline Frederick, another of the guests, “you don’t mean to say you’re going?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Madge, “I told Mr. Goldwyn that if I came at all I should have to leave early. You see, I have a call for eight-thirty in the morning all made up.”

Pauline looked bewildered. In her mind there was absolutely no connection between early to bed and early to rise. One of those rare people who, like Edison and Bernhardt, thrive on a few hours’ sleep, she never took 10 P.M. as anything more serious than the start of an evening. Yet when she appeared in the studio the next morning her eyes were glowing with health, her whole frame snapping with vigour. The third member of the trio of feminine stars with which I began work in the Goldwyn studio was Mae Marsh. One of the luminaries of whom I have spoken in connection with “The Birth of a Nation,” Mae had also played a leading rÔle in Griffith’s “Intolerance.” Both of these performances had inspired me with great confidence in her ability, and I looked forward eagerly to her first Goldwyn venture.

I have spoken of my disappointment when Blanche Sweet, another Griffith product, made her first picture for the Lasky Company. I was doomed to the same experience now with Mae Marsh. She, too, seemed incapable of any notable achievement when removed from the galvanising influence of Griffith. To be sure, her Goldwyn pictures were not failures, but comment on these pictures usually failed of any reference to Mae Marsh.

Take, for example, “Polly of the Circus,” the first vehicle we provided for her. People spoke highly of the story, but Mae’s work in it created no flurry of excitement. I was not, however, discouraged by this initial experience, for it often happens that the very story which you suppose exactly adapted to a performer’s personality fails to evolve her best. So it was with unimpaired belief in her more sensational possibilities that I made preparations for “The Cinderella Man.” These included the engagement of George Loan Tucker, the celebrated director of “The Miracle Man.” Here again Mae failed to strike twelve. For the comedy which brought Tom Moore’s acting into such bold relief again evoked only lukewarm appreciation of its star, Mae Marsh.

I can not say that Mae’s presence in the studio was invariably a sunny one. She had a habit of balking at something which the director suggested, and the terms of her objection were always the same.

“Oh,” she would say rather scornfully, “that isn’t at all what Mr. Griffith would do. He would do so-and-so.”

Naturally such continued harping upon the one standard of artistic merit did not exactly enlist the sympathy of the director thus reminded of his limitations. Friction marked all subsequent relations between the two.

There was one type of service in the Goldwyn studios which did inspire her admiration. It was the thing removed from her own special sphere of activity. She always liked the director assigned to the other stars. She had a corresponding esteem for their stories.

Right here I wish to introduce one of the thorny elements of any film-producer’s life. First of all, he buys at the advice of his editorial staff some particular story. The purchase is made, of course, with some one star in mind. But when the story is submitted to that star there is hardly a chance in a hundred that she will like it. Sometimes she may be convinced of its merits. In other cases she remains obdurate. Either termination involves, of course, precious time and money.

Mae Marsh was not, as I shall establish later, distinguished by her captiousness in this regard. But she was exceedingly able in the performance of rejecting scenarios.

“I don’t like this—it doesn’t suit me,” she would report after reading something our editorial department had just bought for her. We would then concede a new scenario, only to have it dismissed in the same arbitrary fashion.

In this way weeks went by, weeks during which of course her salary of more than several thousands was being regularly paid to her. Was it any wonder that I began to feel uneasy as a man who sees his meter jumping while his cab remains perfectly motionless?

In the beginning of these reminiscences of mine I said that it was always the far horizon which had haunted me. While I was with the Lasky Company I had tried always to march in its direction. Now that I was head of the Goldwyn Company I was determined upon really catching up with it. Far from limiting myself to those who, like Mabel Normand and Mae Marsh, were representative screen stars, I reached out toward the far lights of opera and the legitimate drama. To draw to the screen the most finished histrionic ability, the names of deepest import in the world of art—to this ambition may be traced the great disasters of my professional career.