I’d dip my fancy into tubes which held
Life’s colors—pure, of sheerest loveliness,
Then—I’d paint—you.
I’d borrow of the Lily its perfume,
Of day—the misty beauty of its dawn;
Then of the world I’d take a tear—a smile,
And I’d have—you.
VIII
“WIND”
There had appeared an anonymous novel (later acknowledged by Dorothy Scarborough), a tale of sickening horror, entitled “Wind.” It was the story of a young, refined Southern girl, who goes to Texas in an earlier day; is made desperate by the wind and blowing sand and hard human circumstance; marries a rough cowboy; is violated by a man she had met on the train; murders him and goes mad—a category of black disaster.
It was regarded as fine material for a picture, well-suited to motion photography, because of the wild, tireless wind—perfect symbol of motion, and of the fierce action of the story. A director, Clarence Brown, was highly enthusiastic over the possibilities of “Wind” on the screen, but a favorable decision might have been less quickly reached had all the conditions been foreseen. For making the picture was an experience nearly as desolating as the story. When the studio scenes were finished, a trek of wagons, trucks and motor busses, loaded with paraphernalia, an entire company of actors, a big crew of technical assistants, mechanics, etc., the whole accompanied by eighty mounted cowboys, invaded the blistering Mojave Desert, in the cause of art.