BARBARA LA MARR
Whose work in “The Eternal City” stamped her as an actress of stellar size.
Mary Pickford has a real sweetness of spirit. Furthermore, it is a woman’s sweetness. You find it in the look she bends upon her mother, in her greetings to those who work with her, in her love of children and of animals. It was that which led her to write to Mr. Zukor when, after their long career of contract-making, she finally left his organisation, the most affectionate and appreciative of letters. It was certainly that which made the first words I ever heard her utter seem not just a commercial inquiry, but the appealing wonder of a child.
Not only this. She possesses all a woman’s capacity for lyric response fused with her man’s capacity for epic response. The great romance of Mary Pickford’s life is undoubtedly Douglas Fairbanks, and upon this I shall touch when I come to speak of Fairbanks himself.
Chapter Four
FASCINATING FANNY WARD
Before I happened into Adolph Zukor’s office that evening, of which I had spoken previously, when Mary Pickford was consulting him about the proper recompense for her indorsement of the cold-cream, I was, of course, already launched on my own adventures with the stellar world.
Through my account of the difficulties experienced by Mr. Zukor and Mary Pickford in arriving at a mutual understanding of a satisfactory wage, the reader may perhaps have gathered that the intercourse between producer and star is often clouded by the individual view-point. A story of my own contacts will not weaken that impression. In fact, before the Lasky Company was six months old I had discovered that the need for adjustment between these two supreme functionaries of the motion-picture world covers a wide ground, where salary represents only a limited space.
Among the first of the stars whom I engaged was Fanny Ward. It was shortly after we made our first picture that I chanced to meet this widely known actress in the elevator of the Hotel Claridge, New York. Fanny was not in her first youth. There was nothing, however, except her birth certificate to indicate this fact. If Ponce de Leon in his search for the Fountain of Youth had seen her that day he surely would have cried, “Ho, man, we’re getting warm!”