Lillian was unsettled as to what she should do. Again, Griffith agreed with her that she should be making more money, and perhaps it did not seem to either of them that any picture they could do together would make enough for both. He was an extravagant producer, and her financial obligations had become very heavy. In March she wrote:
“My next picture, if all goes well, will be made by myself, so if it makes money I may get some of it.”
She had been negotiating with the Tiffany Company, considering an offer of $3,500.00 a week, to make four or five pictures a year, when her representative, Frederick Newman, was approached by the president of a new producing company, a meeting which marked the beginning of an episode wholly different from anything she had known.
Her old fellow-player, “Dick” Barthelmess, was already with the new company, and had produced “Tol’able David,” directed by Henry King, a success of which all his friends were proud. Lillian had not been much impressed by the Tiffany offer, mainly for the reason that they seemed to be doing circus pictures, and she did not fancy the idea of being cast for something with a slack-wire, or a trapeze, in it. She agreed with Newman to meet the chief official of the new company, and a few days later, lunching at the Ritz, the three discussed picture possibilities and terms. The new producer was a convincing talker. Lillian was favorably impressed, especially as he agreed to take Dorothy, who would play with Barthelmess in two pictures, with Lillian in two pictures, after which she would be given a contract of her own.
Lillian’s contract, which she signed that summer (1922), gave her $1,250.00 a week, and an added 15% after a certain amount had been earned. She thought this a highly satisfactory arrangement, as it made her returns depend largely upon the quality and success of the pictures. Recently, she said:
“All that summer I was looking for material for my first picture. We had two women read all the heap of things submitted. Whenever they found something they thought Dick or I might use, we read it. I nearly read my eyes out. One of the women, Lily Hayward, one day brought me Marion Crawford’s ‘White Sister.’ It struck me immediately as good picture material.
“Ever since my winter at the Ursuline School in St. Louis, I had thought of the nuns as earnest women, hard-working and kindly. My memory of them was an affectionate one—romantic. There had been a time when I fancied I might have a vocation for the veil. The cloister has appealed to so many who later became actresses. I have regretted, sometimes, that I did not follow that early inclination.
“There was another special reason why the book appealed to me as picture material: I saw a chance to get in a scene showing the ceremony of taking the veil—a scene not really in the book at all.”
She met with plenty of opposition. Everybody, it seemed, objected to the story, on the ground that it was a religious picture, “the one thing motion pictures would be wise to let alone”—everybody but Griffith, in whose studio she made some tests. Griffith thought it a beautiful story. Her producer also believed in it, because, as he said, he had faith in her judgment. Henry King, who had directed Barthelmess, was not enthusiastic, at first, but warmed to the prospect of a trip to Italy.
By October they were ready to go—all the players engaged except the leading man. James Abbe, a photographer, gave up a good business in New York to become their “still” man, and to assist in other ways. Abbe was valuable. One morning, quite excitedly, he called up Lillian, saying he believed he had found a man for the lead. His name, he said, was Ronald Colman, playing with Henry Miller and Ruth Chatterton, in “La Tendresse.”