Madge Kennedy was always prompt on the set and was most conscientious in her efforts to do good work. No moods, no sharp edges, obtruded themselves into any business relation with her. I ascribe this to the regularising influence of a very happy marriage. Obviously she was very much in love with her husband, a young New York business man who frequently drove over to the Fort Lee studio to take her back to town.
From a being so well disciplined as Madge you would expect the relentless care with which she guarded her health. At any party she was apt to go off unseasonably as an alarm-clock. Once, I remember, I invited her to a dinner-party in Los Angeles to meet Mr. and Mrs. Rex Beach. The dinner had just ended and the party had hardly begun when Madge rose to depart.
“What!” exclaimed Pauline Frederick, another of the guests, “you don’t mean to say you’re going?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Madge, “I told Mr. Goldwyn that if I came at all I should have to leave early. You see, I have a call for eight-thirty in the morning all made up.”
Pauline looked bewildered. In her mind there was absolutely no connection between early to bed and early to rise. One of those rare people who, like Edison and Bernhardt, thrive on a few hours’ sleep, she never took 10 P.M. as anything more serious than the start of an evening. Yet when she appeared in the studio the next morning her eyes were glowing with health, her whole frame snapping with vigour. The third member of the trio of feminine stars with which I began work in the Goldwyn studio was Mae Marsh. One of the luminaries of whom I have spoken in connection with “The Birth of a Nation,” Mae had also played a leading rôle in Griffith’s “Intolerance.” Both of these performances had inspired me with great confidence in her ability, and I looked forward eagerly to her first Goldwyn venture.
I have spoken of my disappointment when Blanche Sweet, another Griffith product, made her first picture for the Lasky Company. I was doomed to the same experience now with Mae Marsh. She, too, seemed incapable of any notable achievement when removed from the galvanising influence of Griffith. To be sure, her Goldwyn pictures were not failures, but comment on these pictures usually failed of any reference to Mae Marsh.
Take, for example, “Polly of the Circus,” the first vehicle we provided for her. People spoke highly of the story, but Mae’s work in it created no flurry of excitement. I was not, however, discouraged by this initial experience, for it often happens that the very story which you suppose exactly adapted to a performer’s personality fails to evolve her best. So it was with unimpaired belief in her more sensational possibilities that I made preparations for “The Cinderella Man.” These included the engagement of George Loan Tucker, the celebrated director of “The Miracle Man.” Here again Mae failed to strike twelve. For the comedy which brought Tom Moore’s acting into such bold relief again evoked only lukewarm appreciation of its star, Mae Marsh.
I can not say that Mae’s presence in the studio was invariably a sunny one. She had a habit of balking at something which the director suggested, and the terms of her objection were always the same.
“Oh,” she would say rather scornfully, “that isn’t at all what Mr. Griffith would do. He would do so-and-so.”
Naturally such continued harping upon the one standard of artistic merit did not exactly enlist the sympathy of the director thus reminded of his limitations. Friction marked all subsequent relations between the two.