She objects strongly to visitors being brought to the “set” where she is working. It interferes with her mood, she declares, and she is right. The making of moving-pictures is a business, just as the making of steel, or the growing of flowers, or the sculping of a great statue, and there is no reason for it being made a curiosity shop.
If she studies fashions, she studies them with this same indefatigable zeal that marks her every effort. She has every fashion magazine published in Europe and America, and pores over them for hours. She is an incurable enthusiast in everything she does.
There is probably no other woman in pictures to-day who is endowed with more of the basic elements required to make a great dramatic actress than Pola Negri.
Chapter Nineteen
THE TWO TALMADGES
I accompanied Schenck to the Rivoli to see his fiancée on the screen, and I was very forcibly struck with the beauty and talent of Miss Norma Talmadge.
“Very lovely—very gifted,” was my verdict as we left the theatre.
“Isn’t she, though?” he responded eagerly. “I tell you that girl is bound to go far.” He hesitated for a moment, and then turning toward me abruptly he asked, “How about it, Sam? Wouldn’t you like to have her for your company? She’d come with you for a thousand a week.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Joe,” I replied, “but you know what the situation is. It’s the big name that counts nowadays, and Miss Talmadge, beautiful and talented as she is, hasn’t enough fame for a man trying to put over a new company. But why don’t you try Zukor? He’s better established and could afford to take a chance.”
“No,” answered he, “I might as well tell you that he’s turned her down already.”