My first talk with the celebrated artiste was at her apartment at the Ritz. As she swept in upon me I remember thinking that she looked even taller than she does on the stage. With her clear blue eyes and her finely modelled features and her heroic mould, a real Valkyr! Not for one moment did she suggest any of those rôles to which her exquisite art lends itself. _Thais_, _Melisande_, _Louise_, _Le Jongleur_--I thought of these and was bewildered. I had never realised before how completely the mind can transpose the entire meaning of a face. Here in her apartment away from the footlights Miss Garden’s countenance expressed a keen intelligence directed toward the problems of the day. For a long time we talked about the War, and I was amazed at her grasp of every industrial and economic phase of the conflict. Her wide range of information, together with the vivid, forceful phrases in which she expressed it--these made it hard for me to realise that I was really talking to a prima donna, she who even in her business transactions is supposed to distil an atmosphere of feminine romance and caprice. If I had heard Miss Garden that evening without knowing who it was I should have thought I was listening to some keen-witted, able woman journalist. So engrossed were we both in the impersonal that it was at least an hour before I attacked the real purpose of my call. When I finally broached the subjects of pictures I told her, of course, how eager the Goldwyn Company was for the honour of first presenting her on the screen. She responded to this tribute very graciously. There was quite evidently not one moment’s doubt on her part that she could do pictures. Her only misgiving, frankly revealed, was that I might not pay her enough to justify her in making them. [Illustration: MARY GARDEN AND GERALDINE FARRAR Whispering gossip in Mr. Goldwyn’s ears.] [Illustration: WILL ROGERS BIDS PAULINE FREDERICK GOODBYE As she leaves Culver City, California, for a vacation in New York.] I must say that for some time I, too, shared this misgiving. For the sum on which she stood firm was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for ten weeks’ work. However, a discussion of the matter with my associates, Edgar Selwyn, Arthur Hopkins, and Margaret Mayo, brought out the fact that they were all in favour of engaging her even at that sum. I took their advice, and, triumphantly conscious that I was taking Miss Garden from the numerous other film-producers who had been competing for her services, I signed my name to the enormous contract. The news that Mary Garden was at last to appear in pictures created a sensation throughout the country and, as the newspapers carried the story in big type, the Goldwyn Company profited by an enviable publicity. Seeing the importance attached to her appearance, I grew more and more hopeful that in the celebrated operatic star I was going to offset the various hardships attending my foundation of the Goldwyn Company.