This dialogue was destined to be an illuminating comment upon both my competitor and myself. In refusing to heed the knock of opportunity we both lost many thousands of dollars. Indeed, I might as well admit here, in these annals of a life so crowded with errors of judgment, that in my case Opportunity was lenient. Once again, a year or so after this episode, she again knocked at my door. And once again I was deaf to the golden visitor.
On this second occasion Schenck, who had in the meanwhile married Miss Talmadge, came to me with a proposition.
“Sam,” announced he, “I’ve started producing Norma’s pictures and of course I realise that I’m not so awfully experienced. Now, what I want to know is this: Won’t you let her work over in your studio and get the benefit of your advice? If you do I’ll give you twenty-five per cent. of the receipts of her pictures.”
I hesitated for a moment and then I told him I didn’t see my way clear to any such arrangement. I was too busy, I explained, to give her the attention meriting any such returns. Nowadays in looking down the long road over which I have come I often pause at this point. For I realise to-day that had I accepted this offer I should have made enough to balance many costly experiments.
The realisation of my blunder came to me not long afterward when I was dining with Schenck at his home. After dinner we sat talking together in the living-room, and it must have been almost midnight when the door was flung open and Miss Talmadge stood before us. Her eyes were shining with excitement; the cheeks above the full collar of her gorgeous evening wrap were the color of a Jacqueminot rose. Never in all my life have I seen a more vivid apparition of beautiful, victorious youth.
There was only a second for me to record that impression, for Miss Talmadge just hesitated there on the threshold, and then with a tumultuous gesture she threw herself into her husband’s arms.
“Oh, Daddy,” she cried, clinging to him and looking up into his eyes, “I could hardly wait until I got home to tell you! They all said I drew bigger crowds than Clara Kimball Young. Think of it! Oh, isn’t it just too wonderful! I’m the happiest girl in the world.”
I had heard from Joe previously that his wife was making personal appearances that evening at the Loew theatres; but I was certainly as unprepared for the result as was the heroine of the incident herself. For in those days the beautiful Clara Kimball Young was one of the most popular women on the screen, and the announcement that she was going to make a personal appearance at any New York theatre was almost equivalent to calling out the police reserves.
But, struck as I was by the professional significance of her speech, I was even more impressed by its personal bearing. It was so evident—Miss Talmadge’s eagerness to share any triumph with her husband—she was so exactly like a child returning to its home with the ten gilt stars won from her recitations in geography or history—that all later memories of her are overshadowed by this one touching revelation of the real Norma Talmadge.
To understand the woman whose glowing attitudes have so enriched screen art you must think of her, not as a single figure, but as part of a pattern. True, her career is the most brilliant thread in this tapestry, but it is dependent for its brilliance and effect upon the somewhat less glittering but equally firm threads of its background and intermingling figures. The fabric of which I speak is family life. This includes not only Miss Talmadge’s husband, but her mother and two sisters. They would appear as a unit in any field of endeavour, but, as it happens, pictures have supplied the hand weaving them into their fixed and arresting design.