However, neither he nor we were daunted by this slight flaw in his equipment. And after a day or two spent in the Edison studios Mr. de Mille went out to California to “shoot” our first picture. For his services he was paid one hundred dollars a week and was promised, in addition, some stock in the company. When you reflect that to-day he receives approximately five thousand dollars a week, together with a large percentage of the returns on every production, it helps you to realise that the jinnee of the screen has functioned almost as well as did his ancestor of the “Arabian Nights.”

And in no place is the magic more apparent than in California. When De Mille went out to Los Angeles to look around for a site, Hollywood promised nothing of its present pomp. The vast studios, the beautiful villas, the famous pleasure-places—all have arisen in the past decade. It needs, indeed, only a flash-back from the Famous Players-Lasky studios of to-day to our humble residence of nine years ago to give you a complete sense of the growth of the industry.

The site which we finally selected was one floor of a livery-stable. Here in this space, out of which had been created, in addition to the studio, five small dressing-rooms, our director made that first film. The elaborate sets were then undreamed of. Painted backgrounds achieved their duties, and our scenic equipment consisted of four canvas wings and two pieces of canvas. Likewise absent was the modern complicated system of lighting. The sun was our only electrician in those days. And with the aid of three or four men De Mille set to work in a studio where the weekly pay-roll now numbers eleven hundred and fifty people.

Yet, in spite of such simplified conditions, it cost us forty-seven thousand dollars to make that first picture. Nowadays that sum is inadequate for any long production, but in those times it was unprecedented. Of course the cost of the motion-picture rights of our first drama accounted for this expenditure. This drama was “The Squaw Man,” recently revived by Mr. William Faversham, and for it we guaranteed royalty rights of ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand, and our capital was only ten thousand more!

On the twenty-ninth of December, 1913, De Mille began making the picture. But before he had even touched it I had got enough orders on that unmaterialized merchandise to insure the production of the second picture. I represented the executive end of our enterprise, and my first move had been to make newspaper announcement of the fact that the Lasky Company, as we had decided to call our organisation, was going to produce a yearly series of twelve five-reel pictures, beginning with “The Squaw Man.”

In New York I awaited results. Which would prevail—the trust or the new kind of picture?

I was not kept long in suspense. Almost immediately theatre managers and letters from theatre managers began to pour in. These functionaries had been partially paralysed by the trust, and their quick response to our announcement indicated just how eager they were for an opportunity to regain their prestige. Although I had, of course, counted upon such reaction, the swiftness and volume of those first orders overwhelmed me with incredulous joy.

Chapter Two
RECORDS THE SUCCESS OF AN IDEA

I am compelled to say right here that life had not led me to expect any such facility. For I had been a poor boy—poor and often homeless. Of formal schooling I had practically none. At the age when most boys take arithmetic and a roof and three square meals as a matter of course I was fending for myself. When I got these things it was through odd jobs in blacksmith-shops and in glove-factories. Sometimes, of course, I did not get them at all. For example, I remember how once as a boy of twelve I wandered for a whole week through the streets of London with no more ardent guaranty of the future than a loaf of bread.