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, New York, 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 duties to 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.”