Miss Farrar whooped with merriment over this historical discrepancy, and to-day the incident supplies her with a favorite motion-picture story. I may mention casually that this mistake is eloquent with the possibilities of waste involved in a single wrong performance of a single extra performer.
In this case we used up a thousand feet of film and the hundreds of dollars involved in wages, lights, and other expenses on a scene which, of course, had to be entirely remade.
The eminent singing actress often showed back of the screens that impulsive generosity which has endeared her to so many people. Once she did not like the gown worn by a certain extra. Neither did the extra.
Quick as a flash Miss Farrar sent her maid to her residence in Hollywood to obtain a costume from her own personal wardrobe. And when she put this raiment into the extra’s hand it was for keeps. She sometimes lent her fine jewels to people in the cast, and her frequent “small” gifts to those about her were what most of us would call large. Such donations were always performed with a certain splendour of gesture that made one think of a mediæval prince taking off the gold chain around his neck to give to somebody who had chanced to say, “What a beautiful piece of jewelry you are wearing.”
If, indeed, Miss Farrar is a captain of industry, she belongs to that particular branch which flourished in the Florence of the fifteenth century.
While she was making “Maria Rosa” there befell Miss Farrar the great romantic adventure of which the world has heard so much. As a result of my interview with Mr. Lou Tellegen he was engaged by the Lasky Company to go to Hollywood during the Summer of 1915. He was not playing in Miss Farrar’s productions and it was not until after some days spent in California that the two met.
Mr. Fred Kley was responsible for the introduction. Here at this widely known figure of the film world I feel bound to pause for a few words of tribute. Kley, who now occupies an important position in the organization of the Famous Players-Lasky organization, had gone to California with Cecil de Mille. He it was who had selected the original site of the livery-stable, and after the Lasky Company moved there he had attended to a wide variety of details.
He kept books—often on the back of stray envelopes; he hired extra performers; he assembled properties, and when De Mille imported several rattlesnakes for the production of “The Squaw Man” it was he, I believe, who ministered to these pets. I am sure that Briareus with his hundred hands never accomplished more than did honest, faithful, Fred Kley with his limited equipment.
I shall give Mr. Kley’s own account of the introduction, for certainly nothing could be more vivid. “Mr. Tellegen happened to be with me one day,” he recounts, “when Miss Farrar, still in the Spanish costume she had been wearing in ‘Maria Rosa’ walked across the lot. ‘I want to meet Miss Farrar,’ said Mr. Tellegen, ‘Won’t you take me over?’ I did and I’ve never seen anything like it before nor since. It was just as if a spark came from his eyes and was met by one from hers.
“They began speaking in French right away,” adds he, “and of course I couldn’t understand. But, believe me, there’s a whole lot in a tone, and their tones gave them away as much as their eyes did. He walked across the lot with her, then to her dressing-room. And after that you’d see them together all the time just the minute they could get away from a set.”