Chapter Twenty-oneSOME AUTHORS WHO HAVE TRAVELLED TO HOLLYWOOD
Fromprevious chapters of mine it is evident that Mr. Emerson’s suggestion about hitching your wagon to a star is fraught with certain dangers. I had harnessed the Goldwyn Company to that steed, and my ride had been anything but a smooth one. Is it any wonder, indeed, that after the various disappointments attending my exploitation of “big names,” I began to distrust the wisdom of my course? Gradually there grow up within me a belief that the public was tiring of the star and a corresponding conviction that the emphasis of production should be placed upon the story rather than upon the player. In the poverty of screen drama lay, so I felt, the weakness of our industry, and the one correction of this weakness which suggested itself to me was a closer co-operation between author and picture-producer.
In 1919 this idea eventuated in an organization for which I must claim the virtue of absolute novelty. This organisation, under the name of “The Eminent Authors,” included such popular Americanwriters as Rex Beach, who assisted me in the development of my literary fusion; Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Rupert Hughes, Basil King, Gouverneur Morris, and Leroy Scott. Under the terms of my contract with each individual of the group the author was to come to Hollywood to write in direct co-operation with the Goldwyn studios.
So great was the publicity attending this movement for the production of more inspired screen dramas that the Famous Players-Lasky Company followed our lead by organising a similar literary service. Whereas, however, we had been content with local talent, our competitors imported their authors from Europe. Elinor Glyn, Sir Gilbert Parker, Edward Knoblock, Arnold Bennett—these were the high spots in the rival camp. When you consider that Gene Stratton-Porter and Zane Grey had both been signed up by other California producers and that ultimately Kathleen Norris, Rita Weiman, and Somerset Maugham joined the cohorts of the pen, you will see why Hollywood was temporarily transformed from a picture colony to a picture-book colony.
Among all the literary names which have impressed Hollywood tradition that of Elinor Glyn is undoubtedly the most spectacular. One evening before dining at the Fairbanks home Douglastook me out for a walk through his beautiful grounds. As we came to the famous swimming-pool I caught sight of a woman seated on one of the stone benches and gazing pensively into the water. The evening sun caught in reddish hair—whether these tresses are a gift or an acquirement is often a theme of speculation—and in girlish folds of sea-green chiffon. And as the woman lifted her eyes I saw that these, too, were sea-green.
“That’s Elinor Glyn,” whispered Fairbanks; “she’s dining with us to-night.”
In a spirit of great curiosity I began my conversation with the Circe-looking woman to whom sun and pool and sea-green chiffon lent an atmosphere of which she herself was perhaps not altogether unconscious. She was exceedingly gracious and cordial, but as she talked I could not help making a few inward observations on her manner of speaking. She has the trick, so I found, of convincing you that her voice is some far-away, mysterious visitant of which she herself supplies only a humble and temporary instrument of escape.
For example, when she remarked, “Isn’t this pool beautiful?” it sounded like some lonely Buddha’s prayer echoing down through the ages from the far heights of Tibet.
After the dinner was over our host and hostess offered their customary method of release from “thecares that infest the day.” Pictures were turned on, and in this case the selection happened to be Mrs. Glyn’s story, “Her Husband’s Trademark,” in which Gloria Swanson took the leading rôle. I can truthfully say that never in my life have I enjoyed any film so heartily. This was due, not to the character of the performance, but to the remarks which garnished its entire unfoldment.
“See that frock,” whispered the author eagerly as, sitting beside me, she pointed to one of Gloria’s creations; “I designed that gown.”
Another second and she was calling attention to the finish of a certain setting. “Do you see that? An exact copy of my rooms in London. Do you suppose they would have known how to arrange a gentlewoman’s rooms if it hadn’t been for me?”
But there were other times when this robust major of self-congratulation shifted to a minor chord. “Ah, how terrible, how shocking!” I heard her moan several times. “All wrong, all wrong—they’ve ruined that scene. I might have known it. I was away that day, you see.”
Verily that evening the “silent drama” renounced its salient characteristic!
Apropos of this incident, it may be interesting to learn that Mrs. Glyn took the greatest personal interest in Miss Swanson. True, her first comment upon this screen celebrity, a comment quoted uproariouslyby many of the picture colony, indicated that she found Gloria lacking in that subtlety which she considered essential for the portrayal of her heroines. If that comment was made and not merely attributed to the author, her later attitude to Miss Swanson would seem to reflect the joy of any creator in the challenge offered by apparent intractability of material. Be that as it may, I am informed that Mrs. Glyn started in with a right good-will upon the task of guiding the young actress in her literary taste, her clothes, her deportment, and her speech.
During that Summer when I first met Mrs. Glyn I had a house on the beach in California. Here I did a great deal of entertaining, and among these entertainments a dinner which I gave for Nina Wilcox Putnam represents the enthusiasm with which Hollywood took up the game of authors. For Elinor was only one of the many writers who mingled that evening with the luminaries of screen and stage. That she was not the most retiring of her craft is a statement bound to be accepted immediately by those familiar with her talent for being a dinner-guest. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Glyn is one of the greatest social assets I ever knew. Not only may she be relied upon always to wear the most exquisite of gowns, but her narratives andher comments usually keep a whole roomful of people in an uproar of mirth.
That evening I discovered that she is an ardent believer in the transmigration of souls, and her theories regarding the former bodily tenements of some of the individuals present caused constant flurries of laughter. I think her psychic inquests began with Mrs. Kathleen Norris. For a long time she fixed upon this celebrated author a gaze which informed the rest of us how completely she had retired into realms where we could never follow her. Then abruptly, with the familiar effect of a voice which had journeyed far, far before it chose Elinor Glyn for its channel, she said:
“Now I know—centuries ago you were a man—strong, valiant, resolute. I see you leading your armies—bravely you led a forlorn hope. Perhaps at the last they turned against you—they stabbed you, who had brought them to the heights of victory.”
We had hardly convalesced from this revelation of Mrs. Norris’s masculine and unfortunate past when the psychic Boy Scout began to turn up old trails in Charlie Chaplin’s consciousness.
“An old, old soul,” she pronounced, emerging from the same sort of trance which had redeemed Mrs. Norris’s former earthly abode from the mists of obscurity. “You—you were a princess. Thousandsof years ago you reigned over many in some far Eastern land. You loved the music played by your slaves on their stringed instruments, the soft scent of flowers brought to you by the winds, the moonlight as it fell on the oars of your galleys——”
SAMUEL GOLDWYN AND SEVEN FAMOUS AUTHORS HE WON TO THE SCREENLeft to right standing: Leroy Scott, Gouverneur Morris, Samuel Goldwyn, Rupert Hughes. Sitting: Gertrude Atherton, Katharine Newlin Burt, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Rita Weiman.
SAMUEL GOLDWYN AND SEVEN FAMOUS AUTHORS HE WON TO THE SCREENLeft to right standing: Leroy Scott, Gouverneur Morris, Samuel Goldwyn, Rupert Hughes. Sitting: Gertrude Atherton, Katharine Newlin Burt, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Rita Weiman.
SAMUEL GOLDWYN AND SEVEN FAMOUS AUTHORS HE WON TO THE SCREEN
Left to right standing: Leroy Scott, Gouverneur Morris, Samuel Goldwyn, Rupert Hughes. Sitting: Gertrude Atherton, Katharine Newlin Burt, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Rita Weiman.
GOUVERNEUR MORRISOne of the noted authors won to the screen by Mr. Goldwyn.
GOUVERNEUR MORRISOne of the noted authors won to the screen by Mr. Goldwyn.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
One of the noted authors won to the screen by Mr. Goldwyn.
Charlie may have had a number of similar tastes back in that remote incarnation of his, but I don’t think they were brought to light. For the roars of merriment which greeted this presentment stilled the voice of the seer. To this laughter Charlie himself contributed most heartily. In fact, I don’t believe any one ever laughed at Chaplin quite so hard as Chaplin laughed that evening at Elinor Glyn.
Regarding the introduction of these two an amusing story is current in California. It is reported that on this occasion Mrs. Glyn said to the comedian, “Dear, dear, so this is Charlie Chaplin! Do you know you don’t look nearly so funny as I thought you would?” To this reassuring message Chaplin is said to have responded promptly, “Neither do you.”
To go back to my dinner. After Mrs. Glyn had concluded her report upon previous abodes of the ego, our conversation drifted toward the profession engrossing our present incarnations. Pictures! The topic was started, I believe, by Miss Elsie Ferguson, who at that time was working with theFamous Players-Lasky Company. To her announcement that she did not like her leading man of the moment, Mrs. Glyn turned a swiftly sympathetic ear.
“My dear,” said she, “what do they know about soul, about art, about poetry? Blind, absolutely blind! The other day I took the loveliest young man to see them—he had the most beautiful eyes—but they didn’t see it—they didn’t appreciate it.”
This verdict regarding my competitors’ callousness to the finer issues of life is not to be taken too seriously. For Mrs. Glyn was then in the midst of that period of disillusionment which seems almost inevitable in the career of the author who tries to adapt his manuscripts to the screen. Out of the depths of my own experience I can speak of the friction which arises among author, producer, star, and director.
I thought that I had encountered some eminent difficulties before I organised the Eminent Authors; but when the Goldwyn Company introduced this literary faction in the fold, I was to look back on other days as being comparatively placid. This fact does not reflect upon the personalities of those writers whom we engaged. Socially, each one of them is a delightful being; but when the tradition of the pen ran athwart the tradition of the screenI am bound to say that I suffered considerably from the impact.
The great trouble with the usual author is that he approaches the camera with some fixed literary ideal and he can not compromise with the motion-picture view-point. He does not realise that a page of Henry James prose, leading through the finest shades of human consciousness, is absolutely lost on the screen, a medium which demands first of all tangible drama, the elementary interaction between person and person or person and circumstance. This attitude brought many of the writers whom I had assembled into almost immediate conflict with our scenario department, and I was constantly being called upon to hear the tale of woe regarding some title that had been changed or some awfully important situation which had either been left out entirely or else altered in such a way as to ruin the literary conception.
Nor did this end the difficulty. For often the author and the star became hopelessly entangled in similar controversies. This latter situation is deftly suggested by Will Rogers when he says, “I was on the lot the last year of the reign of the Eminent Authors and, while I helped spoil none of their stories, I made various ones for the near-Eminents and lost the friendship of every living one of whose stories I made. So now,” adds Will, “I have madeWashington Irving’sIchabod Crane. I am off all living authors’ works—me for the dead ones!”
Undoubtedly the warfare which so frequently wages between star and author is to be attributed many times to the inflexibility and prejudice of the former. Thus I remember hearing Miss Rita Weiman tell of an interchange of thought between Nazimova and herself regarding the production of a certain story in which the one figured as author, the other as actress.
“I hope the time is coming,” concluded Nazimova haughtily, “when the great actress may find great stories.”
“Ah, yes,” rejoined Miss Weiman, “I hope, too, the time is coming when the star may write her own stories.”
In contrast to this attitude of the Russian actress is the humility which Norma Talmadge displayed in her interpretations of Benavente’s “The Passion Flower.” I have been told that everybody, including her husband and her director, advised against the screen preservation of the drama’s tragic end. They urged upon her the fact that the picture audience demands a happy ending and that she would lose thousands of dollars by adhering to the story. By all such practical arguments she was absolutely unaffected.
“No,” said she firmly, “this is the story of thegreatest living playwright. He knew what he wanted to say and who am I to spoil a great man’s story?”
Among the writers whom the Goldwyn Company brought to Hollywood Rupert Hughes was notably successful. His story of “The Old Nest,” grossed our organization nearly a million dollars, and since the production of this tale he has been actively engaged on our lot as both author and director. For both Mr. Hughes and his wife I feel a warmth of friendship quite independent of the profitableness of our business association, and some of the happiest hours of my life have been spent in their home. They, together with Mr. and Mrs. Rex Beach, represent two of my most valued associations.
Mr. Hughes’s success in photoplays is to be ascribed to his prompt recognition of the gulf between those two channels of expression, literature and screen, and to his determination to master both the technicalities and spirit of the latter. In addition to this receptiveness of mind he has a capacity for work which I have never seen excelled. Many times I have known him to arrive in the studio early in the morning, direct all day, go home that evening to work on a scenario, and then, after perhaps a dinner or a dance, write several chapters of his new novel.
Mrs. Glyn showed much the same zeal in herco-operation with the Famous Players-Lasky Company. Unlike numerous authors who have invaded Hollywood, she was not easily diverted from the set. So excessively did she superintend every detail of production that “Grips” and “Props” longed, so they say, for a more casual type of literary lady.
“She ain’t a bit like them other authoreens we’ve had around here,” one of the manual assistants is reported to have grieved. “They’ll go off and leave you alone. But she—sure an’ it’s twelve times this day she’s had me move that one bloody bureau in the set and still she ain’t satisfied.”
I have quoted Mrs. Glyn’s remark anent the “beautiful young man” in whose behalf she had made such unavailing efforts with the Famous Players-Lasky Company. From all I have heard this story represented with her a habitual type of altruism. I am told that every now and then while she was working in the studio she would approach some good-looking chap whom perhaps she had never seen before.
“My dear boy,” she was likely to address him, “you’re really very charming, you know. Now I want you to take the leading part in my new story.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Glyn,” the other would falter, “but you see So-and-So is already cast for that part.”
“Oh, what a shame!” would rejoin the author. “But surely you’ll take the second part—inmyplay?”
Torn between pleasure at this avidity of interest and the pang inflicted upon any handsome actor by the supposition that he could possibly appear in a secondary rôle, the Adonis of the hour would then probably retreat to some lonely grotto where he could meditate upon the embarrassment of great beauty.
In one of the most amazing encounters of beauty and the author, the late Wallace Reid was cast for the leading part. Friends of Reid report that one day while he was coming off the set he was hailed by Mrs. Glyn.
“My dear boy”—thus she is said to have greeted him—“you’re really very wonderful to look at. And, besides, you know you have—It.”
“It?” Reid murmured confusedly, wondering perhaps what his press-agents and admirers could possible have overlooked. “What do you mean, Mrs. Glyn?”
“Oh, that is my word. It!” she repeated in that contralto voice which soughs through Mrs. Glyn like the lonely wind through the pine-trees. “Don’t you see, that one syllable expresses everything—all the difference there is between people. You either have It or you haven’t.”
Reid was still considering himself in this new light of special privilege when he noticed that the writer’s brows were puckered.
“Yes,” he heard her reflect after a moment of such pained scrutiny, “you have It—but, ah, my dear boy—your boots and your hair! If I could only send you to my London bootmaker and have some one wise cut your hair!”
Although I do not vouch for the authenticity of this tale, I do say Mrs. Glyn’s part in it is thoroughly consistent with several other incidents of which I have first-hand knowledge. Does she really mean such things or does she say them for effect? I myself believe that she plans her personality quite as carefully as she does her stories. When, for instance, arrayed in the most superb evening attire and accompanied by the handsomest man she has been able to find in the assemblage, Mrs. Glyn sweeps slowly through a ball-room; when she murmurs soulfully, “Orange, orange, how I love it! Often I sit in a room by myself and think orange. I fill my whole soul with its beautiful, warm rays—I drink them down into my heart—ah, orange!”—then she is showing her supreme ability, not only as the writer who can tell a popular tale, but as the writer who knows how to get herself constantly before the popular mind. I once said of her thatshe was a great showman, and when she heard my comment she was exceedingly gratified.
But underneath all this pageantry of manner is a heart overflowing with the warmest interest in her fellow beings. One of the waitresses at the Hollywood Hotel, where Mrs. Glyn lived for some time, once said to me, “Of all the people I ever waited on Mrs. Glyn was the nicest and kindest and most considerate. I never knew her to be cross—not even at breakfast.”
And, after all, the only trustworthy epitaph is composed by the person who serves us our breakfast.
* * * * *
It was after this flock of authors had alighted in Hollywood that M. Maurice Maeterlinck came to America. He brought with him the pretty little wife who had supplanted in his affections Mlle. Georgette le Blanc. Also, a lecture. Neither of these impedimenta prepossessed this country in his favour. Most Americans were ranged solidly with Mlle. le Blanc, abandoned at the peak of fame to which she had faithfully encouraged the Belgian author. As to his lecture, the delivery of this in English, a language of which M. Maeterlinck knew scarcely a word, still lives in the memory of many New Yorkers who went to pray and stayed to laugh.
In spite of the criticism attached to Maeterlinck’s visit to the United States, there was so much publicity inherent in this criticism that I felt the Goldwyn Company might benefit through a professional association with the distinguished foreigner. So, arranging an interview through M. Maeterlinck’s American manager, I had my first talk with the visiting author in the Goldwyn’s Company’s New York offices.
As he entered I was struck by the placidity of that rather large face. It was round and calm as a lake on a still August day. All our conversation was conducted through an interpreter, and in this manner I gathered that M. Maeterlinck viewed the cinema with enthusiasm and was confident that he would be able to convert his art to its uses.
“Very well, M. Maeterlinck,” responded I, “I am anxious that we should procure exclusive rights to your works, and I am willing to make the same contract with you that I have previously made with Mary Roberts Rinehart.”
The Belgian lifted his eyebrows in childlike bewilderment. It was quite evident that the name of our American novelist aroused no slumbering chord of memory.
“The same then as Gertrude Atherton’s,” I ventured.
This effort at impressiveness failed as ignobly asmy first. Indeed, mention of all the writers we had assembled called from him only that vacant smile, that politely groping gaze of a man being addressed in Choctaw or Sanskrit.
It is sad but it is true that the eminence of our Eminent Authors had never been detected by M. Maeterlinck. He had not heard of a single name on our list.
“Very well, then,” I surrendered at last: “I mean I’ll give you —— thousand dollars.”
And then at last M. Maeterlinck’s face beamed with intelligence. The dollar was one contemporary American author with the works of which he seemed thoroughly familiar. Indeed, I am compelled to record that invariably in all our subsequent intercourse the utterance of this word dollar acted very much as a pebble thrown upon that lake-like expanse of countenance. It created widening circles of comprehension and cheer.
Apart from the work which we hoped M. Maeterlinck might do for us, we featured him in a brilliant publicity scheme. We procured a special car for him and on this we sent him and his pretty little wife speeding to California. The verb used here is rather misleading. As a matter of fact, the lingering element in his journey was the essence of our calculation. For at every city and important town the special train stopped and the populace wasafforded a glimpse of the celebrated author. Needless to say, the advertising which we obtained through the news columns of papers in visited localities was quite overwhelming.
When M. Maeterlinck finally arrived at his destination his train of thought proved even more halting than the one which had brought him. From this latter, indeed, he never landed at all—not on the screen. His first attempt at camera material revolved about a small boy with blue feathers and, as I remember, a feather bed. While admitting the importance of “trifles light as air,” the scenario department rejected this absolutely.
“Write us a love-story, Monsieur,” suggested my associate, Mr. Lehr, “You see for some reason or other the fairy-story has never been popular on the screen.”
Mr. Lehr’s information, I may interpolate, is rooted in professional fact. The screen adaptation of M. Maeterlinck’s most popular fairy-tale was, for example, not a success. As for financial returns it was certainly not the “blue bird for happiness.”
The foreign author thereupon set himself to a less fanciful theme. This time he submitted a love-story, but alas! the type was anything but censor-proof. When we called his attention to this flaw he looked at us with a pained, bewildered, almost shocked expression.
“You ask me to write a love-story,” he remonstrated, “and then you object because my hero or my heroine is married. Yet how can you write about love when you have no triangle?”
And I don’t think we were ever quite successful in shaking him from this Continental orthodoxy. I dare say he will always think of two parallel lines as exceedingly provincial.
While he was in Hollywood M. Maeterlinck had a home with a tennis-court in the rear. To this court clings one of the most cherished memories of Hollywood, for on it frequently appeared Mme. Maeterlinck, and on Mme. Maeterlinck always appeared, not a skirt, but bloomers. She is a charming little dark thing, years younger than her husband, this Mme. Maeterlinck. The pair seemed always very happy together, but one day I heard something which opened up an inevitable vista before me. On that day the American manager of the foreign author came to Mr. Lehr and asked him if there was not some employment in the studio for Mme. Maeterlinck.
“Why, no,” responded Mr. Lehr; “I can’t think of a thing she would do.”
“Not some little job?—it really doesn’t matter how small,” urged the other.
“But, my dear fellow, why should the wife of M. Maeterlinck be wanting any kind of a job?” questionedmy associate, still untouched by this new plea for Belgian relief. “Her husband is far from poor, you know. Hasn’t he an estate and investments abroad—those and all the royalties he is getting? Besides, of course, he have given him an advance on his contract with us.”
The manager shrugged and then he smiled—a sapient smile. “To be sure. But madame—well, there are times perhaps when she longs for a little money of her own so she can snap her fingers at Monsieur.”
This dialogue, taken in connection with other phases of my association with Maeterlinck, persuades me that this creator of reverent prose and mystic drama is afflicted with the same economic fixation—I borrow the term from psychoanalysis—which manifests itself so often among those whom some art has enriched. Screen stars and actresses, comedians and tragedians, singers and writers—often in thinking over those whom I have met I have been struck by the number who would be capable of instructing Benjamin Franklin in the ways of thrift.
I remember that once I asked a man who had long been associated with Ben Turpin, the widely known cross-eyed comedian, what sort of chap Turpin really was.
“Well,” said he laughingly, “he’s this sort of achap. He makes a lot of money and he keeps almost as much. He has an unpretentious little home manned with not more than one servant, and in the home there is a suite of parlour furniture. It’s gilt, I think—anyway it’s quite showy, and the Turpins are very much concerned over its welfare. They keep it covered up except when somebody calls, and even then they’re not reckless. For they say that when the door-bell rings some one always peeps out of the window to see who is there. If it’s a stranger, off come the furniture-coverings. But if it’s a friend, the insurance is kept on.”
This amusing story is always linked in my mind with the one which Will Rogers is fond of telling on Chaplin. “A girl went riding up in the Hollywood mountains,” says he, “and was thrown and lost for two days. When it was thought they weren’t going to find her, Charlie offered a reward of a thousand dollars in all the papers. It looked at that time, mind you, as if they weren’t going to find her. But they did. So the people that found her offered five hundred of the thousand to anybody that would find Charlie.”
For me one of the most amazing revelations regarding M. Maeterlinck concerns his indifference to music. It was in this country and while he was with the Goldwyn Company that he heard for the first time a rendition of the opera “Pelléas et Mélisande.”One of my publicity men sat near him in his box at this performance, and he reported that from the large placid face those ethereal strains which Debussy wove about his own play drew not a sign of response. It was quite evident that the Belgian author perhaps considered Dr. Johnson somewhat too broad-minded when he said that music was a sound more agreeable than other noises.
When I was in England several years after the formation of the Goldwyn Company I made a memorable call upon another playwright whose pen moves in a different tempo from that of Maeterlinck. I had long been an admirer of Mr. Bernard Shaw and, in spite of the fact that the quality of his plays rather repudiates the suggestion of screen adaptation, I was interested in conducting the experiment.
Mr. and Mrs. Shaw entertained me at their London apartment with much brilliant talk and the inevitable tea. The playwright’s wife, a very cordial hostess indeed, is one of those fresh-coloured, vigorous types of womanhood which you meet at every turn of Hyde Park. She was deeply engrossed that day in the Irish question, and her sympathies were brought into relief by a call from Sir Horace Plunkett, then just returned from a visit to the United States.
I recall that during the course of the talk Mrs.Shaw told a story of an Irish lad sentenced to be hanged in the Tower for his revolutionary activities. Before his execution they came to him and promised that if he would give the authorities information regarding certain leaders in the movement his life would be spared. To this the lad, only about eighteen years of age, replied, “Gentlemen, you are wasting your time and mine.”
Mrs. Shaw quoted this speech with great fire. “How,” she concluded, “can you conquer a people with a spirit like that?”
When we drifted away from the Irish situation Mr. Shaw and I had a chance for a talk about motion-pictures. To my surprise I learned then that he was a picture enthusiast. He told me that there were two people whose films he never missed—Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. Regarding the former, he was especially enthusiastic. I found, in fact, that he was as familiar with Chaplin’s work as am I myself.
The affectionate courtesy displayed toward each other by the playwright and his wife is bound to impress any one familiar with some of Shaw’s iconoclastic utterances upon the domestic situation. Certainly the atmosphere surprised me. The pair did not address each other as “Father” and “Mother,” but, aside from this failure, theyseemed to be as tolerant and contented and settled as a hardware merchant of Topeka and his wife.
Toward the latter part of the afternoon I saw Mr. Shaw look frequently at his wrist-watch. Ultimately he mentioned that he was due to deliver a lecture that evening.
“And have you decided yet what you are going to speak about?” queried Mrs. Shaw when at last her husband rose to depart for this engagement.
“Not yet,” he retorted; “I dare say I shall decide on the platform.”
I always think of Mr. Shaw as he looked when he made this reply. His eyes, which are, I think, the clearest and most living blue I ever saw, so sparkled with merry perversity, his figure was so erect and spare and vigorous—there was so much spring in both face and physique—that he seemed to me—this man past middle age—the very embodiment of electric youth.
I suppose that he had that same expression of merry perversity when on the following day he told a newspaper reporter who called upon him to learn the outcome of his conversation with me, “Everything is all right. There is only one difference between Mr. Goldwyn and me. Whereas he is after art I am after money.”
Whatever the explanation, Mr. Shaw never came to America, nor did he do any work for theGoldwyn Company. I was no more fortunate in the result of my call upon Mr. H. G. Wells. He, like Mr. Shaw, had me at his home in London for tea. Here, however, the conversation focussed, not upon Ireland, but upon India, a direction determined by the fact that a young East-Indian was calling upon the author that afternoon.
The foreigner was very earnest in his expressions of admiration for Mr. Wells’s “Outlines of History,” and it was indeed a privilege to me, who had just read this presentment of history, to hear such first-hand comments by both the author and a representative of that mellow civilisation which Mr. Wells has compared so favourably with our Western achievements.
During the course of this conversation the Indian told the author that no other English writer held so high a place in his country as the one occupied by Mr. Wells. Although the latter must have spent many hours of his life in listening to similar tributes, he responded to it as gratefully as if this were a fresh experience.
When we came to talk of pictures I suggested to Mr. Wells that he visit California and write some stories for our company.
“Oh,” said he, “I should like to come, for I know I should enjoy the California sunshine and meeting Charlie Chaplin. The only trouble withme is that I never could write on order. I haven’t been able to do it for magazines or publishers and I should certainly fail abjectly when it came to doing it for the screen.”
I thereupon urged him to come to California as my guest, look over the situation. But, although I assured him that such a visit would leave him perfectly free to decide whether or not he cared to enter the picture lists, Mr. Wells did not accept my invitation.
As I left his home that day I remembered suddenly that twenty-five years before, I, who had just been entertained by the most celebrated of the younger English novelists, had wandered without home and without money through these very London streets. There was no self-congratulation in that swift contrast of present and future, but there was a deep wonder at the mysterious flux of life.
Another feeling dominated this wonder. It was my gratitude to the work which has so shaped and coloured my destiny. To motion-pictures I owe all the wide range of contacts which have made up to me for a boyhood handicapped by so many unfavourable circumstances. To it I owe also the greatest blessing which can befall any one of us—an impersonal interest so vivid and compelling that it survives any personal grief or maladjustment.
Almost every one who has been connected with picture-production understands the fascination which it exerts. I always think, indeed, of the answer which Charlie Chaplin once made to somebody who asked him what he most wanted from the future.
“More life,” said Chaplin promptly. “Whether it comes through pictures or not—more life.” And then he added half sadly, “Still I can’t think of myself out of pictures. Whatever I do, I find myself wondering, ‘Now, will that be good for my work or not?’”
Although, in comparison with this great creative artist, my own sphere is so humble, my understanding of this one dominating interest is sufficiently complete to justify me in applying his words to myself. Like Chaplin, I can not think of myself out of pictures. For to do that would be to turn my back on the far horizon which has always called me to it.
In the ten years since I entered that little Broadway motion-picture theatre with its static Western drama, its player-piano, and its far-flung peanut-shells, giant changes have taken place. Then film-production attracted few men and women of real intellectual capacity. To-day we see a former member of the United States Cabinet presidingover its destinies. Then the motion-picture theatre was as sporadic as it was stunted and disfigured. To-day the smallest hamlet puts up its first motion-picture theatre at the same time that it erects its first church, and in the larger communities costly edifices have followed in the wake of the costly picture. Eight years ago the twenty thousand dollars which the Lasky Company expended upon “Carmen” was considered a vast sum. To-day the Goldwyn Company is investing nearly a million in its production of “Ben Hur.”
With the development of our industry has come a corresponding development in the life of the country. Motion-pictures are, in truth, the magic travelling carpet on which those in the most remote village may fly to distant lands, to other ages, to realms of romance hitherto denied them. No other agency, not even the automobile, has combated so successfully the isolation of the rural communities. When I think of the glow which pictures have brought to so many lustreless lives all through the world, I am tempted, indeed, to overlook all the defects of the industry and to dwell only upon its perfections.
Yet defects there certainly are. Undoubtedly the ten years to come will do much to remove them. My own faith in the next decade is a firm one, andto this new era of expansion I wish to dedicate whatever of ability, whatever of judgment I have gained from the experiences set down in these chapters.
THE END