In the smaller American cities, the motion picture public was of middle-class homey folks who washed their own supper dishes in a hurry so as to see the new movie, and to meet their neighbors who, like themselves, dashed hatless to the nickelodeon, dragging along with them the children and the dog.
Things like this happened, when dinner hour was approaching, and mother was anxiously awaiting her child: the neighborhood policeman would casually saunter over to the picture house, poke his head in at the door, spy the wanted child, tap her little shoulder, gently reproving: “Jennie, your mother wants you”—whereupon Jennie would reluctantly tear herself away so that the family could all sit down together to their pot-roast and noodles.
Yes, Browning would need courage.
“Pippa Passes” being ever in Mr. Griffith’s mind these days, he scanned each new face in the studio as he mulled over the needed characters. The cast would be the best possible one he could get together.
CHAPTER XIV
MARY PICKFORD HAPPENS ALONG
It was a bright May morning in 1909. When I came off the scene, I noticed a little girl sitting quietly in a corner near the door. She looked about fourteen. I afterwards learned she was nearing seventeen. She wore a plain navy-blue serge suit, a blue-and-white striped lawn shirtwaist, a rolled brim Tuscan straw sailor hat with a dark blue ribbon bow. About her face, so fresh, so pretty, and so gentle, bobbed a dozen or more short golden curls—such perfect little curls as I had never seen.
A timid applicant usually hugged the background. Bold ones would press forward to the camera and stand there, obtruding themselves, in the hope that the director would see them, like their look, and engage them for a day’s work.
But Mary Pickford tucked herself away in a niche, while she quietly gave us “the once over.” The boss’s eagle eye had been roving her way at intervals, the while he directed, for here was something “different”—a maid so fair and an actress to boot! Pausing a moment in his work, he came over to me and said, “Don’t you think she would be good for Pippa?”
“Ideal,” I answered.
Before we closed shop that day, he had Mary make up—gave her a violin, and told her to walk across the stage while playing it so that Billy Bitzer could make a test.