For the opening scene of Family Honor, John Collins, the studio manager, who also designed the sets, and was going to marry a Broadway actress, Viola Dana, made a model of the battleship Maine with little electric lights that flashed on and off on one of the mast-heads to show her semaphore was in operation. He built a tank in the studio and Mr. Rough, the scenic artist, painted Morro Castle on a rock behind it. When you looked at the scene through the camera everything appeared very realistic and everyone said it was, and a twenty-five foot test was made of it. On the screen the lights on the mast-head did not show up, so John Collins said it would be better to make it a night scene, which he began to prepare for. And then someone asked if the Maine had been blown up at night. Nobody seemed to know, and the studio space was needed the next morning. Fortunately, Sumner William's father had been in the Navy Department, and Sumner was up on naval matters and put us straight. So the cameraman made a Cuban night effect and John Collins blow up the Maine, and at the same time, part of the studio roof off, and the eyebrows and one side of his moustache off Mr. Rough, who was standing too close to the Maine.
On the screen the scene looked fine and Mr. Ridgely said:
"Well, we start off with a bang and end with a punch—when you're shot off the horse—which is more than most pictures do."
Sol Harrison, the head of the casting office, had been living with Mr. Ridgely's assistant. They shared a four dollar a week room on Decatur Avenue, near the studio. When the assistant got a better job at the Vitagraph Sol asked me if I wanted to move in with him. He said four dollars a week was more than he could afford.
I was very glad to do so as the Lincoln Arcade was a long way from the studio.
Sol introduced me to Mrs. Breen, a widow who had a boarding house where some of the artists lived, and she agreed to let me eat lunch and dinner there for 25 cents a meal because I lived with Sol and could remind him to call her when there were any society scenes, as she had very stylish dresses, she said, and knew how to wear them, and a couple of diamond rings and some aigrettes. She was very stout and wall-eyed too. She said she chould not figure out why Sol did not call her oftener, for she was the only one they could get who looked and dressed like a lady. I spoke to Sol and he said he would do his best, but that Mrs. Breen always got sore when the directors did not put her down in the foreground, and when they did, even if she was not, she always seemed to be looking in the camera on account of being wall-eyed. He said, too, the last time she worked she got down in the foreground next to Ben Wilson, the leading man, and dropped her fan and got her aigrettes in his eye picking it up, and they had to do the scene over again.
When Family Honor was screened Mr. Ridgely thought it was the best picture he had made, and he was congratulated by everyone. He asked me my opinion and I said what I had said all along, that the players were too old for their parts and Richard Tucker who played the cowardly young brother of the heroine was so much bigger than his sister that his uniform would have made her look like a scarecrow, and anyone could see they were not his clothes she wore.
Mr. Ridgely, being an excitable man, got very angry and said I was the only one who did not like the picture, and I was an incompetent judge. I mentioned that I happened to be the author. When Mr. Ridgely had bounced off John Collins said:
"You were a fool to say that to Dick, he's very sensitive."
Mr. Ridgely must have told the artists what I said, for they were very cold to me the next day, all of them but Charles Ogle, who said I was right; but that as far as he was concerned he would make up for Moses in the bullrushes as long as he drew his pay envelope on Saturday, which seemed to be a very logical point of view.
Mr. Ridgely vas excitable because he was artistic. But he never sulked for long. He just said a lot of angry words and walked off in a huff. The next day he passed me in the studio and said good-morning to me, and John Collins who was there said I had better square myself with him. I said:
"What can I say to him, everyone was too old for their parts and Charles Ogle admits he was, so what can I say?"
"Well," John said, "Dick has to use everyone in stock who's not working, and who could he have got anyway?"
"Ben Wilson or Richard Tucker for Ogle's part and Eddie Clark for the young brother," I said.
"I guess you're right," said John, "but Mabel can troup circles round anyone we have here except Miss Sawyer."
I said I thought the photography was bad and the only scene Mabel Trunelle looked good in was the scene where she took the dispatches out of her brother's room. John said I was crazy, and the negative of that scene was so thin they would have taken the scene over if there had been time.
"Well," I said, "I'm going to make a picture myself some day, and I'll make the negative too thin in all the scenes, and then the faces will look as if they were modelled instead of being flat."
John Collins began to laugh and said I was crazy but to keep that way for my story was swell.
I got to Mrs. Breen's early that night for dinner and the only one in the dining room was Mr. Ridgely. He smiled at me and asked if I was working. I told him I was not. He told me he was going to make a three reel feature of Charles Read's Hard Cash and asked if I knew his work or anything about conditions in lunatic asylums in Great Britain. I said my father had an aunt who had been in a lunatic asylum in Ireland, but they had let her out a long time ago.
"Write to her at once," said Mr. Ridgely, "and have her send you all possible details regarding the life of the inmates, and let you know if she was brutally treated and how, and if she was really mad or only just put in there by relatives trying to get her money like the man in Hard Cash."
I thought it better not to mention that she was dead, and said I would write at once, and Mr. Ridgely promised to find something for me to do in Hard Cash. I said I hoped Mr. Plimpton would let him choose his cast himself this time as he was so artistic it was a shame to handicap him by making him take anyone in stock who was not working, whether they suited the parts or not. He said Mr. Plimpton meant well, but he had been a carpet salesman before he came to the studio, so too much could not be expected of him when it came to art. He mentioned that John Collins had said I thought Family Honor had been directed in a very artistic way. I was going to ask him what he thought I could do in Hard Cash when Mrs. Breen bounced in shaking a little all over as she was in her dressing gown and had no corsets on.
"Oh Dick!" she cried, "I'm just dressing to go out to dinner with Reggie and I heard you're going to make a society drama and I've got the most beautiful clothes and my aigrettes and if you need me in any ballroom scenes be sure and let me know in time so I can get my hair waved."
Mr. Ridgely said:
"My dear, your dresses won't be in style"—but he got no further for Mrs. Breen cut him off right there, glaring at him and the lampshade at the same time.
"What do you mean, Dick?" she almost screamed. "My dresses are all the latest styles, and Reggie Morris says I'm a fool to waste my time at Edison, and Mr. Griffith wants to meet me because he needs some women who know how to dress elegant for his ballroom scenes."
"My dearest," said Mr. Ridgely, patting her hand, "I know your dresses are all perfectly charming and the latest word, but Hard Cash happens to be a costume picture."
"Well, I'd like to know who wants to see costume pictures," said Mrs. Breen, sitting down with a bump. She cooled off a little after bawling out the maid because there was egg on a fork, and said:
"Well, I always have my aigrettes and they go with any costume."
"And you shall wear them, my dear, if you wear nothing else, and you'll work in my picture even if I've got to put you in the lunatic asylum, so there!" said Mr. Ridgely.
After that he said nothing more as the maid brought him his soup.