There was one type of service in the Goldwyn studios which did inspire her admiration. It was the thing removed from her own special sphere of activity. She always liked the director assigned to the other stars. She had a corresponding esteem for their stories.
Right here I wish to introduce one of the thorny elements of any film-producer’s life. First of all, he buys at the advice of his editorial staff some particular story. The purchase is made, of course, with some one star in mind. But when the story is submitted to that star there is hardly a chance in a hundred that she will like it. Sometimes she may be convinced of its merits. In other cases she remains obdurate. Either termination involves, of course, precious time and money.
Mae Marsh was not, as I shall establish later, distinguished by her captiousness in this regard. But she was exceedingly able in the performance of rejecting scenarios.
“I don’t like this—it doesn’t suit me,” she would report after reading something our editorial department had just bought for her. We would then concede a new scenario, only to have it dismissed in the same arbitrary fashion.
In this way weeks went by, weeks during which of course her salary of more than several thousands was being regularly paid to her. Was it any wonder that I began to feel uneasy as a man who sees his meter jumping while his cab remains perfectly motionless?
In the beginning of these reminiscences of mine I said that it was always the far horizon which had haunted me. While I was with the Lasky Company I had tried always to march in its direction. Now that I was head of the Goldwyn Company I was determined upon really catching up with it. Far from limiting myself to those who, like Mabel Normand and Mae Marsh, were representative screen stars, I reached out toward the far lights of opera and the legitimate drama. To draw to the screen the most finished histrionic ability, the names of deepest import in the world of art—to this ambition may be traced the great disasters of my professional career.
Chapter Ten
THE MAGIC OF MARY GARDEN
While I was still with the Lasky Company I had been attracted by the reputation of Mary Garden, the most consummate of “singing actresses” (I borrow the phrase from that famous musical critic, H. T. Parker of Boston), and at the beginning of the War I wired our London representative to see her. She was then in Scotland, where she was connected with a hospital for war-relief, and all efforts of our organisation to interest her in pictures failed absolutely. She refused to leave her humanitarian work. When, however, two or three years after this she came to America to sing in opera, I was prompt to get in touch with her.
My first talk with the celebrated artiste was at her apartment at the Ritz. As she swept in upon me I remember thinking that she looked even taller than she does on the stage. With her clear blue eyes and her finely modelled features and her heroic mould, a real Valkyr! Not for one moment did she suggest any of those rôles to which her exquisite art lends itself. Thais, Melisande, Louise, Le Jongleur—I thought of these and was bewildered. I had never realised before how completely the mind can transpose the entire meaning of a face.