One day Miss Elliott, her throat swathed in yards of tulle—a protective measure of which she, like Bernhardt, often availed herself—was wheeling around and around on the set.
“Good gracious!” whispered somebody impishly as she looked at this futile and pathetic whirling of the statuesque woman, “isn’t she ever going to run down?”
Poor Miss Elliott, she evidently didn’t know what to do when she stopped turning! And I doubt if Mr. Hopkins was more inspired!
At this point the reader may wonder why I, a producer of experience, would confide so much in two people who had so little screen experience. The answer to this is that I have always wanted to enrich motion-pictures by assured talent from outside fields. This involved experimentation, and it was natural that a few of my experiments should fail. Others, on the contrary, have proved the wisdom of bringing in new blood.
That Mr. Hopkins, a theatrical producer of such merit and reputation, did not justify my selection of him was due to his indifference to the new environment. He never regarded pictures seriously, and after directing the Maxine Elliott story he came to me and told me that he could not get his mind sufficiently detached from the stage ever to be successful in a studio.
A beauty of the stage with whom I had a more fortuitous contact was Pauline Frederick. Miss Frederick was with Zukor when I founded the Goldwyn Company. That she transferred to me was due to her husband, Willard Mack, the playwright and actor. Coming up to me one night at the Directors’ Ball at the Biltmore, he said:
“See here, Sam, Polly’s contract with Famous is just about to expire. How about it, anyway? Now I’d like to see her go with you, for you’re a young company and I’m sure you would take a bigger interest in her.”
I fell in immediately with this line of thought, and some evenings later he phoned me to see him at the Lyceum Theatre, where he was then appearing with Lenore Ulric in “Tiger Rose.” When I got to his dressing-room I found Miss Frederick there. Together we three discussed the possibility of the star’s transference to the Goldwyn Company, and after some weeks of conference the possibility crystallised into a fact.
Needless to say, Mr. Zukor did not take the news of her deflection any too kindly. For at this time Miss Frederick’s large American following was reinforced by great popularity in other countries. In England, for example, she was as much of a drawing-card as was Mary Pickford. In his irritation at her loss it was, I suppose, quite natural for my competitor’s sentiment to overflow to me. Normal or not, it certainly did so. Meeting me at a ball soon after the news of the contract came out, Mr. Zukor began overwhelming me with reproaches for my treacherous conduct in weaning his star away from him. In vain I explained that the advance had been made from her side, not from mine. He refused to believe me. Finally the discussion became so heated that Alice Joyce came running over to us.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” said she laughingly, “I don’t know anything in the world worth so much discussion—especially a motion-picture star!”