BEHIND THE SCREEN
It wassomething more than nine years ago that I walked into a little motion-picture theatre on Broadway. I paid ten cents admission. As I took my seat a player-piano was digging viciously into a waltz. Upon the floor a squalid statuette lay under its rain of peanut-shells.
And all around me men, women, and children were divided between the sustained comfort of chewing-gum and the sharp, fleeting rapture of the nut.
Only a decade ago! Yet this was a representative setting and audience for motion-pictures. Likewise typical was the film itself. For, as were practically all productions of that day, this was only one or two reels. And, faithful to the prevailing tradition, the drama of to-night was Western.
I looked at the cowboys galloping over the Western plains, and in their place there rose before me Henry Esmond crossing swords with the YoungPretender, wiry young D’Artagnan riding out from Gascony on his pony to the Paris of Richelieu, Carmen on her way to the bull-fight where Don José waited to stab her.
Why not? Here was the most wonderful medium of expression in the world. Through it every great novel, every great drama, might be uttered in the one language that needs no translation. Why get nothing from this medium save situations which were just about as fresh and unexpected as the multiplication tables?
When I went into that theatre I had no idea of ever going into the film business. When I went out I was glowing with the sudden realisation of my way to fortune. I could hardly wait until I told my idea to my brother-in-law, Jesse Lasky.
“Lasky, do you want to make a fortune?” With these words I burst in upon him that evening.
Lasky, who was at that time in the vaudeville business, indicated that he had no morbid dread of the responsibility of great wealth.
“Very well, then,” I continued. “Put up some money.”
“In what?”
“In motion-pictures,” I answered.
“Motion-pictures!” scoffed he. “You and I would be a fine pair in that business—me, a vaudeville man, and you, a glove salesman! What do weknow about the game? Besides, how about the trust?”
ELSIE FERGUSONDignified stage star who lost none of her lustre on the screen.
ELSIE FERGUSONDignified stage star who lost none of her lustre on the screen.
ELSIE FERGUSON
Dignified stage star who lost none of her lustre on the screen.
MR. GOLDWYN, MABEL NORMAND AND CHARLIE CHAPLIN
MR. GOLDWYN, MABEL NORMAND AND CHARLIE CHAPLIN
MR. GOLDWYN, MABEL NORMAND AND CHARLIE CHAPLIN
His last words touched upon a vital issue in the screen industry of that period. The truth of it was that motion-picture theatres throughout the country were practically at the mercy of ten companies which, for the privilege of showing pictures, collected a weekly license fee of two dollars each, from fifteen thousand theatres. I shall not enter here into the argument by which the combine justified their taxation. I shall merely remark that the existent system presented an obstacle worthy of consideration. However, all the way home I had been preparing an answer to this protest of Lasky’s, and now I eagerly put it forth.
“Give the public fine pictures,” I urged. “Show them something different from Western stuff and slap-stick comedies and you’ll find out what will become of the trust. And why should your entertainment have to be so short? If it’s a good story there’s no reason why it couldn’t run through five reels. I tell you the possibilities of the motion-picture business have never been touched. We could sell good films and long films all over the world.”
Eventually Lasky was convinced that my idea presented at least a good betting proposition, and he agreed to add ten thousand dollars to the equalamount which I put up, provided he be relieved of any active management. Considering that in those days many of the two-reelers were made for less than a thousand dollars, our original capital seemed not only adequate to the immediate cost of production, but to a handsome margin for recovery from a possible first failure. With this assumption of strength we took our next logical step. We hunted for somebody who would make our pictures for us.
It was natural that the first person of whom we should think in this connection was Mr. D. W. Griffith. He was then directing for the Biograph Company, one of the units of the motion-picture trust, and he had already experimented with the longer picture in “Judith of Bethulia.” Indeed, I wish to say right here that I lay no claim to pioneer thought in realising that the screen was susceptible of longer and more varied treatment, for, in addition to our American “Judith of Bethulia,” one or two foreign pictures had heralded the new era. Any possible credit to me, therefore, must be accorded to my conception of the new sort of photoplay as a systematic performance rather than as a sporadic spectacle. Indeed, I was to find out later that even this idea was not an exclusive visitation. Lasky and I had supposed that we were the only ones in the field, but it was not long before we discoveredthat even previous to us another man had acted on the same idea.
But to go back to my interview with Mr. Griffith. I met him for lunch, and I was impressed immediately by the personality which has since lifted him into his place as the greatest of screen directors. Tall and spare and quite stooped, Mr. Griffith’s figure suggests by its very lack of erectness that reserve of energy which transforms him in the studio to the tireless, almost demoniacal worker. His features are clear-cut, and to the suggestion of the eagle in his profile the clear blue eyes—eyes which you could never possibly mistake for gray even across a room—contribute a final authority. These eyes while he is at work, so people tell me, glow with enthusiasm, but during the chance interview they join with the mouth in a look of amused observation.
With this expression he heard me make my proposition that day. When he finally spoke it was to quench any hope that Mr. Griffith might ever become associated with Lasky and me.
“A very interesting project,” he commented, “and if you can show me a bank deposit of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars I think we might talk.”
I did not betray the meagre conversational basis which I had to offer. Instead, Lasky and I nowapproached a friend of ours, Cecil de Mille. Mr. de Mille, although very little more than thirty years of age at this time, was already known as a playwright of considerable skill. His father had been Belasco’s partner and he himself had been associated with the celebrated theatrical producer in writing “The Return of Peter Grimm.” With all of his dramatic tradition and achievement Mr. de Mille had one limitation. At this time he had never directed a picture. More than this, he had never even seen one directed.
However, neither he nor we were daunted by this slight flaw in his equipment. And after a day or two spent in the Edison studios Mr. de Mille went out to California to “shoot” our first picture. For his services he was paid one hundred dollars a week and was promised, in addition, some stock in the company. When you reflect that to-day he receives approximately five thousand dollars a week, together with a large percentage of the returns on every production, it helps you to realise that the jinnee of the screen has functioned almost as well as did his ancestor of the “Arabian Nights.”
And in no place is the magic more apparent than in California. When De Mille went out to Los Angeles to look around for a site, Hollywood promised nothing of its present pomp. The vast studios, the beautiful villas, the famous pleasure-places—allhave arisen in the past decade. It needs, indeed, only a flash-back from the Famous Players-Lasky studios of to-day to our humble residence of nine years ago to give you a complete sense of the growth of the industry.
The site which we finally selected was one floor of a livery-stable. Here in this space, out of which had been created, in addition to the studio, five small dressing-rooms, our director made that first film. The elaborate sets were then undreamed of. Painted backgrounds achieved their duties, and our scenic equipment consisted of four canvas wings and two pieces of canvas. Likewise absent was the modern complicated system of lighting. The sun was our only electrician in those days. And with the aid of three or four men De Mille set to work in a studio where the weekly pay-roll now numbers eleven hundred and fifty people.
Yet, in spite of such simplified conditions, it cost us forty-seven thousand dollars to make that first picture. Nowadays that sum is inadequate for any long production, but in those times it was unprecedented. Of course the cost of the motion-picture rights of our first drama accounted for this expenditure. This drama was “The Squaw Man,” recently revived by Mr. William Faversham, and for it we guaranteed royalty rights of ten thousanddollars. Ten thousand, and our capital was only ten thousand more!
On the twenty-ninth of December, 1913, De Mille began making the picture. But before he had even touched it I had got enough orders on that unmaterialized merchandise to insure the production of the second picture. I represented the executive end of our enterprise, and my first move had been to make newspaper announcement of the fact that the Lasky Company, as we had decided to call our organisation, was going to produce a yearly series of twelve five-reel pictures, beginning with “The Squaw Man.”
In New York I awaited results. Which would prevail—the trust or the new kind of picture?
I was not kept long in suspense. Almost immediately theatre managers and letters from theatre managers began to pour in. These functionaries had been partially paralysed by the trust, and their quick response to our announcement indicated just how eager they were for an opportunity to regain their prestige. Although I had, of course, counted upon such reaction, the swiftness and volume of those first orders overwhelmed me with incredulous joy.