I remember one such experience in connection with Pauline Frederick. She had read a story in which she was very anxious to appear. The heroine of that story was a girl in her teens. Mr. Lehr had a long talk with her in which, as gently and diplomatically as was possible, he pointed out that such an extremely youthful rôle would accentuate rather than diminish the discrepancy between her own age—not that this was formidable—and that of the screen heroine. She looked a little crestfallen at first. Then with a very sweet smile she yielded.
“Ah, well,” she sighed, “I suppose you’re right!”
One of the most amusing bases of rivalry in my studio was that of orchestral accompaniment. A word of explanation is required at this point. When Miss Farrar first came to make pictures for the Lasky Company we provided a small orchestra for her inspiration on the set. This unprecedented luxury, now an almost universal feature behind the screen, was thereupon exacted by other performers. Furthermore some of them did very accurate bookkeeping on the subject.
One day Pauline came to me with a very injured expression. “I’m not pleased!” announced she.
I believe I managed to act as if I were meeting an entirely fresh situation. “Well, well,” asked I, “what’s the trouble now?”
“Why, it’s this: How can you expect me to do my best work—I ask you—how can you expect it? I have only one violin—one poor little violin——”
“But, Miss Frederick,” I interrupted her, “you had no music at all while you were with Zukor. How about that? Yet you were doing your best work there.”
She reflected for a moment, and I saw then that I had not reached the root of the matter. This was quite evidently the fact that Geraldine Farrar had two or three violins. I tried to point out that the latter’s operatic tradition demanded this excess of string stimulation, but I was not successful. The number of pieces each actress should have became, in fact, one of those absurd bones of contention on which I, as a producer, was compelled to throw away much vital energy. Finally my studio became a three-ring band. When I entered it in the morning I wandered from the jazz selections which were toning up Mabel Normand’s comedy to the realm where sad waltzes deepened Pauline Frederick’s emotional fervour. The circle was surrounded by the classic themes infolding Geraldine Farrar. It was hardly strange that outsiders used to gather every day to share in these free airs.
When not guarding her studio rights Miss Frederick is the most delightful of women. I have told in a previous chapter of her gift of getting along with only a few hours’ sleep. This same vitality sparkles in every look of her eyes, in every sentence she utters. It leads her to a deep interest in literature—she is one of the best-read women I have ever known—and to a hundred phases of human activities outside her own province. Altogether, a magnetic and bracing and colourful human being!