Casper Daily Tribune Newspaper, July 10, 1921, Page 8

Meets the : “J ~ “ a o pe Mary never intended to make a living out of the movies. — In fact she politely told David Wark Griffith that she did not have a very high opinion of moving pictures. ; She intended to merely work for them during the summer months and then go back to the legitimate stage. But fate raled otherwise. Mary was “made” but she did not realize it then. In her personally dictated story to Hayden Talbot, the tells of the rough and ready state of affairs that existed in the studios in the carly days of the infant industry. ik “MY LIFE” As Told By MARY PICKFORD To HAYDEN TALBOT Te man at the door who blocked my way asked me if I would ar tell him what it was | wanted before | changed my mind. “Why should I tell you anything?’ I countered. know you. I came to see the manager. I'll thank you to let me pass. Y could feel that everybody in the room was watching. us.with hawklike eyes. “! am the manager,” very serious. ‘‘Won't yo opened the gate in the woc and still 1 that he h it as if said the little man quite simply, come into my office?”” And wi | railing and bowed me thr The little man with the pierc- ing eyes—David Wark Grif- fith—the guiding genius of a great new art. 1 were a queen! { HIS office I told him briefly that I I was prepared to become part of his company—for the summer months—as a stop gap between the regular theatrical seasons. I know my tone was patronizing. I couldn’t help letting him see how cheaply I held motion pic But he didn’t take offence. Whatever he may hare felt about me and my pre- posterous assurance that the great new art of which he was to prove the one guiding genius was at best noth- ing but a peep-show thing—the mask-like gravity of h!s countenance gave no indication of it. The Conversation That “Made” Mary “Have you had any experience?” iked when I had finished. xperience?"” I echoed “Ten years of experience, that’s all! The last three seasons with Mr. Belasco!” “I mean experience before the camera,” the little man said—quite unimpressed by my own announce- ment “Ob,” I sald, “ T've had no ex perience of that kind.” My tone implied that I was rather glad I could say it. “Then you look upon motion- pictures,” he was saying, ‘‘as merely an easy way of earning money dur ing the summer months—a stop-gap, I believe you said.” My common sense began to re- assert itself. After all it was his business I had been ridiculing. And I did want s job. And of course all I really knew about pictures was what I had seen in the dirty, over- crowded, cheap Nickelodians I had vistted. It is true I had hated to have Lottie and Jack go into the plac not so much because we cou!dn’t af- ford the nickels they had to have to buy admission, as because of the pictures, The cheap, lurid melodramas that were screened in those days were not the kind of things for children to see. But, even so, pictures was this man’s business. I had no right to show my contempt—in his office where after all I had come seeking work! “I don't wish to be rude,” I said. “But I haven't a very high opinion of motion pictures,” and I tried very hard to make him understand that I was really sorry for what had gone he compare him with Mr. Belasco. They wets utterte, Gia As I walked to the street car, al- was destined to become the greatest Yet here was th Most absent-mindedly I tore the of all motion pictu before ite about whom 1 etecn an say transfer, into bits and threw It away, It, fap reta ne aettre Dyogucers made C smiled. I've never seen.a face that kind of forceful manece ee Hadi I questioned: myselt I should with mene te discouraged by the so completely transformed. Every which T'coula Gone ape VErpEas Loe have known.why I did it. I did it for undeniable sordidness of the situa. mind disappeared like m whom to lean and with whom the same reason I had signed the con- tion. For Mr. Grifith was: able to magic before that smile. then I had done him a tre! injustice. tract. That reason was my haying come to know a very great man—the little I knew mendous A man with a smile like that was a good man. He had to be. to go up and up and up to great height—in a new realm of art that one day the world would accept as a inspire us all with a conviction that one day the art we were so feebly bringing into being would come! to a2 : lasting, noble f. ft tats man with the pierei: Ww be recognized as wort! ist Doesn't it occur to you,” he aa 4 form of expression! i ng eyes, whose enizer a worthy sister of i c you,” he said, me appeared at the bi the spoki ma— ed that possibly your opinion of motion | Why She Tore Up The Transfer. Contract. sa pease tatariperigear <6 Pictures may be due seriously as an art. to the fact that You klow nbeclute: And so finally that first int The name was David W. As I look back on those days and yoni olutely nothing about eame to an end. erview Grimth! So picture in my mind's eye ap ind I admitted it might be possible. All I had had in my hand when My original dislike of “the ties of what we did-then for transla- “And if not pictures, what would Went,into that old building was the ™ovies” was not quickly dissipated. tion onto the screen I realize just aoe work at this summer?” he ot transfer. When I walked out into Unne I told him how I had put had t! previous ‘three summers ‘at ihe country fairs in New England Considering the state of affairs that he street I had a year’s contract existed in those days in the them ine calling for me to appear in leading fant industry, it is not stranee thot roles in motion picts, T should have felt the: legitimate It meant not going back to r. theatre was infinitely Belasco in the fall! ut: ig Aad ae why Mr. Griffith was able to inspire us as he did. It was because he him- self had the gift of going further in the development of the art than any other man who since has figured in “You don’t hold that kind of wor In_Mr. Griffith's co: Producing “Dictires: very high, do you?” he asked. “Gem tnaty meant Saying goodbye to the old Biograph studio the actos whe .And yet today there are many men ridering the fact that you don'trons ‘eatre for a whole year! owned 2 dress suit was a veritable “70S the motion picture producers your stage name?” to what it hed host 28 interruption sod among men—and by the mere Hose fortuines—made-out of “the net nen T admitted the impeachment, {2 What it had been my set purpose Possession of. such priceeln’ amine Gith'a ea aty Digger than Mr. g,becan a little sermon that I've“ perpems athe soken drama! won the right to play leading roles! GTi! this. And this, in spite of the never forgotten the poeibihans peiad fully realized “The appearance at the studio of a making’ fin ove ee tit contract—it meant that woreneqstne Sirl with a new hat, however cheap, conceived vdivected aay eee eee r soul and strer r sa 5 i * AD- @ billions of profits 1 Sob ore Se | s =. n. Above all you must ened, (3s the folk: of the stage would Have rained doo Wet ntwe Since Take “The Birth of a Natiag,”" for youte aoe st sarels sear in the Tthould) be- iotion picture producers were de yet Cambie. Lam not in a position: to come by a year in the “movies,” Yet I had done it! And it hadn’t n because of the salary—only $ more than I should have h r. Be No, it wasn’t the the difference the theatre and had not become so State definitely the exact total this pisare! has earned, but I under- stand it is something in excess $8,000,900. . oe Of this amount more than $1,000,- 000 went to a man fm LosAngeles to whom Mr. Griflth had to go after his own funds were exhausted for r enough to complete t' yet the genius of the little man who man—who atvaneed 4 ee ges he OPS y sure that while and it ts undreamed of, Motion pictures tn those days were shown in di; little makeshift theatres called “Nickel- odia ‘with a nickel the maximem able. 5-year- sponded to his every cccurred to me to not at all like what I had come to know in the Teal theatre under Mr. Belasco’s tutelage. And Copyright, 1921, by The McClure Newspeper Syndicate and Hayden Talbot. “Little Man” Who fo on in films, but very soon would have wandered back to the spoken drama—to have become perhaps just one of many near-successes behind the footlights. Tempted t. Run Away. Even as it was, there were many occasions when the temptation to flee from the unattractive studio and the nerve-racking click of the camera —back to the warm lights and re- sponsive audiences of the theatre— was almost irresistible. Those were the times, when Mt. Grifith would prove his possessiic of a psychic intuition which now, ac I look back on it it, was little short of miraculous. He would take me to one side and talk gently and kindly to me, ex- Mary may be small, but she has to be measured whenever the “second Mary” has to be used to double up for the real Mary. sd shown This measuring process and ihe apresiinsat of the dummy are ve. thousands of dollars—is today one of the richest men among motion pic- ture exhibitors in America. With the million he obtained from ‘The Birth of a Nation” he acquired control of a big theatre in Los Angeles, seating 500 people, and out of it has made @ second fortune. Mr. Griffith, like the late Charles Frohman, cares nothing at all for money—except in so far as it is nec- essary for him to have it in order to make new pictures, How great a part of his share of the profits of “The Birth of Nation” went into the filming of “Intolerance” I don’t suppose even he himself knows. But “Intolerance” was unquestionabiy the most expensive picture ever made —and, unhappily, was never a very great financial success. . I dwell at length on the subject of Mr. Griffith because I am very sure that when the day comes for a history of the beginnings of the art to be written it will be his name that will occupy first place in the list of film pioneers. And besides, there ts the element of heartfelt gratitude in- volved. If it had not been for David Wark Griffiths I am very sure I shoiid never had had the couraze to NS oy SWART A plaining how foolish it would be for me to desert the new art in which he Was positive I would win great suc- cess—ift only I had the patience to stick to it. And when he would sense my con- tempt for the tawdriness of the thing —the flimsy scenery, the cheap cos- tumes, the general poverty of every body connected with “‘the movies’— he would very patiently show me how a similar state of affairs had existed in the spoken drama a very few years earlier. It was from him I got my first knowledge of the English theatre in Shakespeare’s time—and I shall never forget how forcefully he pointed the moral—asking me simply if I thought the magnificence of “Midsummer Night’s Dream” or the beauty of “Romeo and Juliet” de- pended on lavishness of scenery or gorgeousness of wardrobe. For a busy man, beset by a hun- dred pressing Cares, to take the time to instill courage and common sense in a slip of a 15-year-old git). is, in my mind, a*matter that justifies the feeling I have for him today—a feel- ing which fs only feebly expressed when I say he has my unbounded TD AES ESS d SANG ra xe =< SS . = ais admiration and everlasting gratitude. MR. TALBOT’S NOTE.—At this Point, it may: be interesting to d!- verge from Miss Pickford’s own re- eftal long enough to give the @ glimpse of her surroundings, per- sonal and physical, in order that an idea may be xained of the way sho lives a greater part of each year. To speak of the “Pickford Studio” is, in_a sense, misleading, because Miss Pickford has no studio of her own. She Is a part of the newest idea in filmdom—her organization one of 4 dozen complete units renting space in a big enclosure equipped with the last word in motion picture facilities and presided over by an Englishman. Robert Brunton, himself one of the most picturesque figures in the screen world. Brunton, for many years, was a scene painter at one of the Los Angeles theatres in which “stock” held the board’. When Los Angeles began to attract motion picture pro- ducers from New York and plants began to be erected all about the out- skirts of the town, Brunton turned his back on the theatre and dived into the production end of pictures— becoming technical director at Tri- angle, at that time the most flour- ishing of ail the film concerns—with GriMth and Ince and all the other biggest producers of the day com- bined: in its management. Miss Pickford refers to Triangle and the tremendous studio expenses in the next paragraph, as she re- sumes her story. The one awful thing about big picture companies, such as Triangle was, is the tremendous overhead ex- pense. Not only is the original in- vestment very large—-the money rep- resented by the purchase of the, land and the building of the stages and the rest of it—but then come the operating expenses. t One big producing organization today has a weekly payroll of almost $500,000—$26,000,000 a year pald out in wages! This frightful over- head compels quant™y in production of pictures—and almost every con- cern thus far has come a cropper by reason of this necessity. For theex- pense goes on whether pictures are being made or not. Directors and stars and most of the principal actors—not to mention the hundreds of men and women in the technical departments—are al! epgaged by the ye: Whether they work or not they receive weekly sal- aries. And to obtain worth while stories in sufficient quantities to keep them all busy has generally proved an ‘impossibility. Mr. Brunton recognized this defect in the big producing. idea—quite as soon as Mr. Griffith and Mr. Ince and the others realized it. And so when Mr. Griffith led the way. and began producing on his .own--setting an example that is becoming more and more popular every day—Mr. Brun- ton conceived the idea which finally he has succeeded in putting into effect. As one of Mr. Brunton’s tenants, I am in a position to say that the idea is immense—not only from hfs viewpoint but from mine. \The Brua- ton Studios cover acres—how many I haven’t the least idea, but there is room enough and to spare for any possible picture purposes. In the matter of es and tech- nical equipment there is nothing Tf know of in the motion picture world that can equal this plant. Generaliy from 15 to 20 independent producers are at work, rghting space from Mr. Brunton. All the producer needs to furnish 1s his scenario and actors. Mr. Brun- ton furnishes everybody and every- thing else. Cf course some producers have their own camera men and, fn my own case, I have a compiets arganization of my own—but it: fs not necessary. “A producer can get from Mr. Brunton even such service as expert publicity campaigning, art advertising—and, in fact, everything dealing with the making and explolt- ing of the film. For this service the producer pars a fiat weekly rental—plus charges for actual construction of scenes and use of furnishings and “properties”. The Brunton property department is amazing. In it is almost every: thing in the world. It makes no dit. ference what the producer requires— a Chinese antique or a club dating from the Stone Age-—-he can get it from the Brunton property depart- ment—and when he gets it, it will be authentic. The rental charged for these properties and furnishings {s 10 per cent of their value. In a big independent plant, erery picture is charged with its pro-rata of the overhead expense duting the time of the making of the picture. Thus it happens that a picture which actually costs $50,000 to film may appear on the books of the concern as having cost twict this sum, the additional amount representing over- head. At the Brunton Studios a producer knows to within a very small sum just what his production is going to be—before he begins. My expert!- ence is that the saving {s so great 3 to make this community plan of in- dividual picture making the next diz step forward in the growth of the industry. — Sv = & — ys Al ll Nill IPA eae | SLAW, iy —— | FETE 2h SG —< er =e 75 Us Se ay iS SY 5 Sa ) oT ae owes aS [FS = en is S o a3 a amon “) SZ JN Zs JZ