Too bad for Miss Goodrich! Too bad for the Lasky Company! Almost the minute De Mille started to work with her he wired me, “Goodrich too cold.” In the film world this is an epitaph. Nor did Miss Goodrich live down her obituary. Time refused to thaw her, and I was then initiated into the profound truth that many an actress whom individuality of voice and beauty of colouring render glowing on the stage are absolutely calcimined by the camera. However, my interview with Miss Goodrich resulted profitably in another way. While dining with her at the Carlton in London I was introduced to a tall, broad-shouldered, manly-looking chap with a mop of chestnut-brown curls. From the moment that I saw him I was struck with Tommy Meighan’s possibilities for the screen, and when he came to America I wired Lasky to look him over. We engaged him, and Tommy went to California to make his first picture, “The Fighting Hope.” “Tommy no good”; this was the telephoned verdict which De Mille rendered after this initial performance. I was then in San Francisco, and when I arrived in Los Angeles the defendant got to me before the prosecutor. “See here,” announced Tommy ruefully, “they say I’m no good around this place, so I guess I’ll clear out. The Universal has made me an offer, anyhow.” “Do nothing of the sort,” I commanded. “Wait until I see your picture first.” My view of that picture convinced me that our chief director’s opinion had been conceived too hastily. And the outcome of my intercession was a very distinct gain. A year or so planted this star on terra firma. To-day he is one of the most popular actors of the screen. All this happened in 1914. The next year was one especially significant in motion-picture circles. Among the events contributing to its impressiveness was that Titanic conception of the silver-sheet, “The Birth of a Nation.” This Griffith picture which, by the way, was the first screen performance where two dollars a seat was asked, might also have been called “The Birth of Numerous Stars.” Mae Marsh, the Gish girls, perhaps a dozen luminaries who have since flashed across the public consciousness, owe their success to parts in the giant canvas. It was during this year that De Mille and I went to a dinner given to Raymond Hitchcock, at Levy’s Café in Los Angeles. We were half-way through when we were attracted simultaneously by a young man who had just sat down at an adjacent table. One look at the clear-cut face and we exclaimed in unison, “Isn’t he attractive! Wouldn’t he be wonderful in pictures!” He was wonderful in pictures. For his name was Wallace Reid. The very next day we engaged him at a salary of one hundred dollars a week, and it was not until this first meeting that we discovered he had already worked at pictures under Mr. Griffith’s direction. The untimely death of this gifted and attractive young man, whose future held so much of promise, brought to his profession an irreparable loss. _Chapter Six_