Nick the Dimebender was contributing to the socialist Brooklyn Sunday Call in very picturesque English. I got him to introduce me to Julius, the editor, and from then on I often contributed myself: short stories which I illustrated, and verses.
Once Nick came with me to one of Mrs. Winthrop's Sunday at-homes in a velvet coat and a tie like I wore in Captain Lambert's picture, and very high heels. He recited the soliloquies of Hamlet in Russian, played a violent death scene from The Spider and bent a dime. Everyone was impressed and a little startled, and Nick felt so weak after bending the dime that he had to go and lie down. Mrs. Winthrop wanted to send for a doctor, but I told her if she had some brandy it would do quite well. Nick felt better after a few glasses and a heated argument with a gentleman who claimed to be a Russian prince and found fault with Nick's accent and the way he recited Hamlet. Each of them claimed the other was Jewish. I got Nick away before further complications arose.
We had a cameraman named Len Smith at the Vitagraph who spent his spare time reading plays, which he often passed on to me. Through him I first became acquainted with the work of Ibsen, Strindberg, Gorky and some of the leading French and English playwrights, among them Anatole France, Rostand, Brieux, Galsworthy and Shaw. Len read typescripts of American plays too, which he borrowed from the scenario department. I remember Paid in Full, The Yellow Ticket, The Great Divide and other Broadway successes. This course of play reading helped me a great deal, as I was always writing plots for scenarios when not actually working in a picture.
One day on location the company got caught in a thunderstorm and everyone took shelter in a roadhouse. Len was standing under a chandelier when lightning ran down it and killed him. He turned quite black. I still have the last play he loaned me, The Wild Goose.
After Len was killed I went to Sparkhill on the Hudson to make a picture with director Charles Gaskill and star Helen Gardner. They liked the place so much we stayed on there and made another picture. Sparkhill was one of the unspoiled places in those days. The old village and frame hotel on the river, the men poling flatbottomed scows up to their back doors, the stone cottages, the flowering chestnut trees and the deserted race track covered with meadow grass, the grandstand and casino falling to pieces, were all reminders of David Harum.
The second picture was called The Moonshine Maid and the Man. I was the man, and got shot at an illicit still. When I fell, my hat fell off and came near taking my wig along with it. Mr. Gaskill said nothing and I kept on dying until they faded out, though I knew the wig was only hanging on by a few hairs. I drew his attention to it, but he said if the audience watched my wig instead of me I was a bad actor, and he, a worse director.
I am afraid that is what the audience did.
When war broke out everyone was very upset and the English actors talked about the British Navy. One of them, who had been in the South African War, went back to join up again. A German who worked extra and had done his military service in Germany and later served in the 2nd Regiment in New York, went back at the same time. They were both good friends of mine and the night before they left we had a few drinks together at Chris's bar. Randolph and Nick the Dimebender were with us. When the Englishman mentioned that he understood the Russians were Mongolians Nick got sore and left us. Then Randolph got insulted because the German said there were better swordsmen in Germany than in Denmark, and walked off in a huff. I said I hoped all the Germans and English would kill each other so the Irish could take Ireland. The Englishman and the German resented that and quit the bar with their arms around each other, leaving me to pay for the drinks.
A.E. Smith thought the war was a good excuse to fire many of the people in stock and reduce the overhead. On the blue slips in their pay envelopes it was typed that he would be glad to re-engage them when it was over. Vic told me A.E. was very sore at the Germans for violating Belgian neutrality and had threatened to equip a battery at his own expense and send it overseas to help the Belgians with Vic, an old artilleryman, in command. I told him he could count on me if they paid me the same salary I had been getting in stock.
I had completed the scenarios of two original stories, one of them, exotically entitled Black Orchids, I was convinced I could make into a sensational three-reel film. When I brought these scripts to A.E. I showed him the blue slip I had found in my pay envelope and said I imagined there had been some mistake. He said there had been no mistake at all and to come back when the war was over like it said on the slip. I said that was all right with me, but that I had been in stock so long I thought it only fair to let him read these scenarios before giving another producer a chance to cash in on them. Their sale would be conditional, I explained. I intended to direct them myself.
"What makes you think you can direct?" he asked.
"All the directions are in the scripts," I said. "Let me pick my cameraman and I'll make as good a picture as ever came off the lot."
A.E. leaned back in his chair and glanced over the first page of Black Orchids. He turned to the next and read that too. Halfway down the fifth he said:
"I'll read them both and let you know in a couple of weeks."
As I knew all the directors on the lot, I worked nearly every day on a $5. check. A cowboy part with Mr. Marsden carried me for a week. But I kept thinking how much better I could have directed the scenes myself. I wondered why the directors always planted the camera slap up in front of the scenes with all the actors crowded onto a 9-foot foreground. I used to choose other angles from which I would have shot the scenes myself. The only director on the lot that showed any originality in this respect was Ralph Ince. When I was not working I hung around his set and watched. One day when he was getting ready to shoot, a carbon in one of the arcs burned out. The cameraman called an electrician to trim it. I noticed that the light was much better without this arc which was behind the camera and flattened out the faces. I said this to Ralph and he agreed with me and took the scene without it. He had already taken it the other way. He ordered a print of each take. I saw them the next day and Ralph chose the scene where the arc had gone out. I told him A.E. had two stories of mine and asked him to give me a boost and he said he would. I waited a month or so and nothing happened, but I did not worry since I was getting plenty of work.
A.E. was seldom at the studio these days. He was in New York most of the time organizing a combination of four of the big companies: Vitagraph, Lubin, Selig and Essany. It was called the VL.S.E. When at last I managed to see him he said my stories were good and he would let me make Black Orchids, but not right away. A couple of directors were leaving soon. There would be nothing doing till then.
"In the meantime how about putting me back on salary," I said.
"You've been back on salary for the last three weeks," he said. "Ask Walter Bunion for your checks, and get out of here now, I'm busy."
I collected $75. in back pay from the cashier, and then remembered I had been working on checks most of the time.
I spoke to Vic Smith about it and he said:
"Nobody said anything, did they?"
I shook my head.
"Wait till they do," he said.
A letter came from my father. My brother had been at Campbell College, but when war broke out had gone to Sandhurst at once. He was now in Belgium with the 3rd Leinster Regiment. My old friend Captain Montgomery had been killed at Mons. Things were looking pretty bad for the Allies, but my father placed a lot of faith in the British Navy and in the Irish regiments....From time to time I got cards from the trenches. They never said very much, but at least my brother was still alive.
In A.E's absence Vic took care of his productions. I asked him to put me in the scenario department where I could prepare other stories, and would not be at the beck and call of any director who wanted me. Vic thought it was a good idea, so from then on my time was my own.