At this dinner-party Miss Farrar turned to me almost at once with her habitual question. “And now surely,” she pleaded, “you’re going to tell me who is to be my Don José?”
De Mille and I exchanged a haggard glance. Many, many times had we shuddered together over the thought, “What if she doesn’t like him?” Our previous experience with stars had taught us not to minimise that possible calamity.
“Tell me,” repeated our great planet. “Not another minute will I wait!”
I was just about to reply when I looked up. A tall young man had entered the door and was now walking toward us. He was only twenty-three. His evening clothes were by no means faultless, but the face above them was flushed with excitement. The blue eyes shone. I had never seen Wallace Reid look more like the beautiful and romantic young man of the daguerreotype collection.
“There,” I whispered, watching her tensely, “there is your leading man.”
She had already noticed him and as he moved slowly toward us she never took her eyes from his face. At last, just before he reached us, she began slowly nodding her head. “Very good,” she whispered, and the smile with which she said it lingered as she repeated the encomium. “Very, very good.”
I do not need to dwell upon the relief afforded to us by that smile. I venture to suggest, however, that it may have brought corresponding heart’s ease to Wallace himself. For he was then young and inexperienced and I have no doubt that for many days previous he, too, had been quailing before that grim possibility, “What if she doesn’t like me!”
A number of the screen people were inspired with awe of Miss Farrar’s reputation. “I bet anything she’s up-stage,” several of them predicted before meeting her. That evening disarmed all such fears. So simple and friendly, so gay and unaffected, was the Metropolitan star that everybody went away singing her praises. I soon found, indeed, that the ancestry of the Irish seas had dowered her with more than that flowering vigour of look and manner. She has the warmth of personal approach, the ability to get along with folks of all descriptions, that characterise the Irish race.
This element in her character was brought out particularly in the studio. It was not long before everybody there, including “Grips” and “Props”—the local terms by which are designated respectively the electricians and the property men—were calling her “Jerry.” This intimacy of reference was a token of real affection and it was deserved, for she seldom passed the most humble worker in the studio without a smile or a friendly word.
