CHAPTER XWARDROBE—AND A FEW PERSONALITIES
The“Jones” pictures became very popular. Many persons well known in the movies to-day, played “bits” in them. Jeanie Macpherson, author of “The Ten Commandments” was “principal guest” in “Mr. Jones at the Ball.” Miss Macpherson, who for many years has been and still is chief scenario writer and assistant to Cecil B. DeMille, got her first movie job on the strength of a pale blue crepe-de-chine evening gown.
How funny we were when we moved in the world of brilliant men and beautiful women only we, who represented them, knew. Dress suits of all vintages appeared. Any one with “clothes” had a wonderful open sesame. A young chap whom we dubbed “the shoe clerk”—who never played a thing but “atmosphere”—got many a pay-check on the strength of his neat, tan, covert cloth spring overcoat—the only spring overcoat that ever honored the studio. (An actor could get along in the spring with his winter suit and no overcoat!)
Clothes soon became a desperate matter, so Biograph consented to spend fifty dollars for wearing apparel for the women. Harry Salter and I were entrusted with the funds and told to hunt bargains. We needed negligees, dinner dresses, ball gowns, and semi-tailored effects. The clothes were to be bought in sizes to fit, as well as could be, the three principal women.
In that day, on Sixth Avenue in the Twenties, were numbers of shops dealing in second-hand clothing, and Mr. Salter and I wandered among them and finally at a little place called “Simone,” we closed a deal. We got a good batch of stuff for the fifty—at least a dozen pieces—bizarre effects for the sophisticated lady, dignified accoutrements for the conventional matron, and simple softness for young innocence.
How those garments worked! I have forgotten many, but one—a brown silk and velvet affair—I never can forget. It was the first to be grabbed off the hook—it was forever doing duty. For it was unfailing in its effect. Arrayed in the brown silk and velvet, there could be no doubt as to one’s moral status—the maiden lady it made obviously pure; the wife, faithful; the mother, self-sacrificing.
Deciding, impromptu, to elaborate on a social affair, Mr. Griffith would call out: “I can use you in this scene, Miss Bierman, if you can find a dress to fit you.” The tall, lean actresses, and the short ones found that difficult, and thus, unfortunately, often lost a day’s work. Spotting a new piece of millinery in the studio, our director would thus approach the wearer: “I have no part for you, Miss Hart, but I can use your hat. I’ll give you five dollars if you will let Miss Pickford wear your hat for this picture.” Two days of work would pay for your hat, so you were glad to sit around while the leading lady sported your new headpiece. You received more on a loan of your clothes, sometimes, than you did on a loan of yourself. Clothes got five dollars always, but laughter and merry-making upstage went for three.
Jeanie Macpherson had recently returned from Europewith clothes the like of which had never been seen at Biograph. From the chorus of “Hello People” at the Casino Theatre little Jeanie entered the movies and even though she had a snub nose and did not photograph well, what could Mr. Griffith do but use her?
Jeanie proved to be a good trouper; she was conscientious and ambitious. Though only extras and bits came her way, David encouraged her. She was rather frail, and one time after remaining ill some days when on a picture up in the country, Mr. Griffith thought he should give her good advice. So he told her to live on a farm for some months, and drink milk and get strong, there being no future without health; he certainly could not use her in parts were she to faint on him thus. But Jeanie confided she’d have to overcome fainting without “months on a farm”—that luxury she couldn’t afford.
Since Biograph Miss Macpherson has carried on in every department of picture making except the acting. She early took stock of herself and recognized that her future would not be in the ranks of the movie stars. Just where it would be she did not then know—nor did any one else.
On a day in this slightly remote period Jesse Lasky and Cecil DeMille were lunching at Rector’s in New York—music, luscious tidbits, and Mr. Lasky casually remarking: “Let’s go into the moving picture business.”
“All right, let’s,” answered Mr. DeMille with not the slightest hesitation.
Mr. Lasky, thus encouraged, suggested more “Let’s,” to each of which Mr. DeMille as promptly agreed “Let’s.”
Along came brother-in-law Sam Goldfish, married to Blanche Lasky, sister to Jesse. Mr. Goldfish (now Goldwyn) was in the glove business up in Gloversville, NewYork, and he was very grouchy this day because the Government had taken the duty off gloves, and he was eager to listen in on this new idea of Mr. Lasky’s.
By the time that lunch was finished this is what had happened: Mr. Goldfish had put up $5,000, Mr. Lasky $5,000, and Arthur Friend $5,000, and with the $15,000 Cecil DeMille was to go out to California to make movies. He begged his brother William to put up $5,000 and become a partner but William said: “No, one of us had better be conservative and keep the home fires burning.” So when William later went into the movies, he went to work for his brother Cecil, and he has been doing so up to this time.
Mr. Cecil DeMille became Director General of the new Jesse Lasky Pictures, and Mr. Oscar Apfel, General Manager. Out on Vine Street, Hollywood, Mr. DeMille took over a stable, and began to make movies. It was a crude equipment, but the company fell heir to some beer kegs from which they viewed their first picture “The Squaw Man” released sometime in 1913. The stable is still a part of the Hollywood Famous Players-Lasky modern studio, but the beer kegs have vanished.
Pictures kept on radiating from the stable with quite gratifying success. In time along came Jeanie Macpherson intent on an interview with Mr. C. B. DeMille. Jeanie now knew so much about the movies and C. B. so little, he just naturally felt the Lord had sent her. Miss Macpherson’s presentation of ideas always got over to Cecil. So Jeanie signed up with the new firm on that rather long ago day and now she gets one thousand a week, I understand, for writing Mr. DeMille’s big pictures.
We must go back now and rescue Jeanie from Mr. Jones’s Ball, for in “Mrs. Jones Entertains,” she has dutiesto perform. In that picture she was not “principal guest” but the “maid.” Flora Finch was a guest. Miss Finch in another Jones movie becomes a book agent soliciting Mr. Jones in his office. In “Mr. Jones has a Card Party,” Mack Sennett appears as one of husband’s rummies, and in yet another “Jones,” Owen Moore, first husband of Mary Pickford, is seen as “atmosphere” escorting a lady from a smart café. So chameleon-like were our social relations in the “Jones Comedy Series.”
A Flora Finch tidbit here comes to light. Though fifteen years have elapsed, they have not dimmed the memory of the one hundred and eighty-five feet of “Those Awful Hats.” The exhibitor was told: “It will make a splendid subject to start a show with instead of the customary slides.”
The “set” represented the interior of a moving picture theatre. The company was audience. Miss Finch was also “audience,” only arriving late she had a separate entrance. Miss Finch wore an enormous hat. When she was seated, no one at the back or side of her could see a thing. But out of the unseen ceiling, soon there dropped an enormous pair of iron claws (supposedly iron) that closed tightly on the hat and head of the shrieking Miss Finch, lifting her bodily out of her seat and holding her suspended aloft in the studio heaven.
How many times that scene was rehearsed and taken! It grew so late and we were all so sleepy that we stopped counting. But pay for overtime evolved from this picture.
The members of the stock company that had grown up worked on a guaranty of so many days a week. Now with so much night work our director felt that the actors not on “guaranties” should be recompensed and it was ruled that after 7P.M.they would receive three extra dollars.So when 6P.M.would arrive with yet another scene to be taken, the non-guaranty actors became very cheery. More money loomed, and more sandwiches, pie, coffee, or milk, on the company. Frequently those not on the guaranteed list made more than those on it, which peeved the favored ones.
Along about now Mr. Herbert Yost contributed some artistic bits. Once he was Edgar Allan Poe and he wrote “The Raven” while his sick wife, poor little Virginia, died. We were a bit afraid of being too classic. The public might not understand—we must go slowly yet awhile, but not all our days.
Mr. Yost was one actor who used a different name for his picture work. He called himself “Barry O’Moore” in the movies. Not that he felt the movies beneath him, but he was nervous about the future reaction. He showed good foresight. For as soon as the big theatrical producers got wind of the fact that their actors were working in moving picture studios, they decided to put a crimp in the idea. The Charles Frohman office issued an edict that any actor who worked in moving pictures could not work for them. But the edict was shortly revoked. Even so long ago had the power of the little motion picture begun to be felt.