The day Harriet Quimby flew the English Channel brought sad news to the world, for that appalling disaster—the sinking of the Titanic—occurred. It also brought a personal sadness to the Biograph, for Mr. Marvin’s youngest son, who was returning from his honeymoon, was lost. Before the happy couple had sailed, a moving picture of the wedding had been taken in the studio.
It was not long after his initiation that Mr. Kirkwood brought a fellow Lamb, Mr. Walthall, to the studio. He had been one of the three “bad men” with Mr. Kirkwood in “The Great Divide,” which play had just finished its New York run. Mr. Griffith, an Italian costume picture on the ways, was snooping around for an actor who not only could look but also act an Italian troubadour. When he met Henry Walthall of the dark, curly hair, the brown eyes, the graceful carriage, he rested content. “The Sealed Room” was the name of the screened emotion that put Mr. Walthall over in the movies. Wally’s acting proved to be the most convincing of its type so far. He was very handsome in his silk and velvet, and gold trappings, with a bejeweled chain around his neck, and a most adorable little mustache.
It was foreordained that the Civil War should have a hearing very soon. There was Kentucky, David Griffith’s birth state, calling, and there in our midst was the ideal southerner, Henry Walthall. And so after a few weeks the first “Stirring Episode of the Civil War”—a little movie named “In Old Kentucky”—was rushed along. In the picture were Mary Pickford, Owen Moore, Kate Bruce, and many lesser lights. It was a long time back that Mr. Walthall started on his career of “Little Colonels.” He portrayed many before he climaxed them with his great “Little Colonel” in “The Birth of a Nation!”
A remarkable trio—Frank Powell, Jim Kirkwood, and Henry Walthall—such distinct types. Though they all owned well-tailored dress suits, Frank Powell’s was featured most often. Henry Walthall, suggestive of romance, had fewer opportunities; and rugged Jim Kirkwood only occasionally was permitted to don his own soup-and-fish and look distingué.
With the acquisition of the ten-dollar-a-day actor, we seemed to acquire a new dignity. No doubt about recruits fresh from Broadway lending tone—although the original five-per-day actors, who were still getting the same old five, looked with varying feelings of resentment and delight at their entrance. We old ones figured that for all our faithfulness and hard work, we might have been raised right off to ten dollars, too. But at least there was hope in that ten per—the proposition looked better now with salaries going up, and actors coming to stay, and willing to forego the dazzling footlights and the sweet applause of the audience.
Having reached ten-dollars-a-day, it didn’t take so long to climb to twenty—undreamed extravagance—but good advertising along the Rialto and at the Lambs Club. “Twenty dollars a day? It listens well—the movies must have financial standing, anyway,” the legitimate concluded.
Occasionally, Frank Craven, since famous as the author of many successful Broadway plays, came down and watched pictures being made. While he personally didn’t care about the movies, through him Jack Standing came down and jobbed at twenty per. Through friendship for Mr. and Mrs. Frank Powell, with whom he had acted in Ellen Terry’s company, David Powell entered the fold for twenty per. Even though money tempted, the high-class actor came more readily through friendship for some one already “in” than as a cold business proposition. Our movie money was talking just the same.
But hard as it was to get men, it was much harder to get women. They would not leave that “drammer” (how they loved it!) to work in a dingy studio with no footlights, no admiring audience to applaud them, and no pretty make-ups.
Only occasionally did I accompany my husband on a tour of the dramatic agencies, for our manner to each other was still a most unmarried one. I’d wait in the taxi while he went up to the different offices to see if he could entice some fair feminine. But, after each visit, back he’d plump into the taxi so distressed, “I can get men, but I cannot get women; they simply won’t come.”
Well, if he couldn’t lure ladies from the agencies, he’d grab them off the street. With Austin Webb, an actor friend who has since left the stage for promotion of oil and skyscrapers, he was strolling along Broadway one day when a little black-haired girl passed by accompanied by her mother.