The Argosy, April 1916 — page 80: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

_ “Jim hardly had anything to say. I don’t blame him very much. Speech seems to be an effort to him, his voice is so heavy; and he’s always hoarse. “Well, he sort of heaved himself up. **‘T don’t know how to direct,’ he said. ““T know you don’t,’ I replied, ‘but you know how to take orders, and you’ve always been a wonder when it came to wrangling that sort of stock.’ “Jim sort of grunted. The race was on. “Ill never forget the first time that Jim and Lollie got acquainted. I was the offi- cial introducer. I had got Jim fixed up somewhat for the occasion—a fresh shave, lots of bayrum, a red necktie, the biggest pair of patent-leather shoes in New York. I got him to keep his glasses in his pocket. _ “T hauled one of the throne-chairs out of the property room and installed Jim in it in a corner of my office. I had just given him his final instructions when Lollie breezed in. “T had been feeding her up quite a little with the kind of talk she liked—all about her temperament, and exactly why the pub- lic was crazy about her, and how jealous the other girls in the studio were every time she showed up. “T was getting her ready for the jolt that meeting Jim was bound to give her. She ot the jolt, all right. ‘Oh, Miss Goodelle,’ I said, ‘this is Mr. Welcher, your new director. He’s the one who discovered Pavlowa and also Mary Garden. Griffith is a pupil of his. Daniel Frohman wanted him, but when he found out that you were to be the star—’ “She was looking at Jim without any great enthusiasm, but with interest enough, as if he had been some sort of a wild animal. Jim broke in on me. - “‘<What’d you say her name was?’ he asked, in that deep, hoarse voice of his. “That’s the way it began. And when I went out of the office and left them together I sort of had the feeling that the affairs of the Daguerre Moving Picture Corporation were not as black as they had been before Jim came on. _ “There were still enough hopeless fea- tures of the case, though, to drive any one to the verge of insanity. “Lollie could be tamed, all right, but no power on earth could make an actress of her. No power on earth could make those shifty eyes of hers register. She looked like sin. ‘“‘We were still wasting good material. THE ARGOSY. We were as far from turning ‘The Maid from Afar’ into a successful feature as ever. Some pretty rotten films get over in the course of the year, take it by and large, but I knew where the limit was. And, be- sides, I wasn’t looking for that sort of a limit either. “T was thinking of Arnitz, and I was thinking of my own future. Likewise, I was thinking of the Daguerre. If there ever was a producing corporation in need of a success it was the Daguerre just then. “Jim did a lot of thinking and grunting; but, as usual, he had nothing to say, not even when I jumped on him. My con- science hurt me whenever I did jump on him, too; for Jim was doing his best. Not only that. He was taking all sorts of pun- ishment from Lollie Goodelle herself. ‘You never saw a lady in a temper unless you saw Lollie in one of her favorite moods. She shied a property-rock at Jim one day and came within an ace of braining him. “Great comedy stuff, if we could only have got it; but it was just like Lollie to pull all this up in the office, or while the camera-man had his back turned, or was changing films. She was that kind. ‘Jim worked several innovations in the directing profession which I have never seen tried elsewhere. ‘“‘We can use only two walls of a set in a dark studio. That’s why you often see such a breeze blowing the tablecloth around in a kitchen scene or the papers blowing off of the desk when the desperate broker commits suicide. It isn’t because the window is open. It’s because the two walls of the room you don’t see aren’t there at all, their place being required for the lights and the camera. -“Jim’s first innovation was to have that throne-chair installed in every set; only, it was out of the picture and for him to use. He’d sit there, silent and glum, making Lollie pose for him. It was just her vanity that made her do it at first, but I guess that by the time she wanted to cut it out she had already lost something of her in- dependence. | “Tt was when Jim tried to get her to do real work that the excitement got tense. “The first time that Lollie went through a whole scene and discovered that there hadn’t been any camera there she began to pick at her spangles and twitch and hiss. It was the signal for Jim to spring his second innovation. OOOLK nn) C@