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.”

“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.