It was one day just after the Goldwyn Company’s inception that Arch Selwyn and Roi Cooper Megrue came to me in great excitement. “Maxine Elliott’s arriving to-morrow from England,” announced Megrue. “Yes, Sam,” added Selwyn, “and we think it would be a great thing if you signed up with her. Right this minute the Shuberts are after her for pictures.” When, a few days later, Miss Elliott came to my office I thought I had never seen a human being more radiantly lovely. When I considered, too, that in addition to this glorious beauty she had a reputation for these looks in every hamlet in America, the one anxiety which assailed me was, Can I possibly get her away from the other fellow? As a matter of fact, I did secure her only after long arduous negotiations. Never was a picture surrounded by more care than Miss Elliott’s first production. Irvin Cobb and Roi Cooper Megrue wrote the story. Both names should have assured the excellence of the vehicle, Alan Dwan, one of our most celebrated directors, assumed charge of the production. Hugo Ballin, the portrait-painter, designed the sets. In spite of all this perfection of detail, “Fighting Odds” was an abject failure. Never, indeed, was any Goldwyn film criticised so ferociously as this. Not only did we lose on the picture itself, but the “flop” was so conspicuous that it resulted in the cancellation of other pictures of ours. All this was far from heartening to further performance, yet in the midst of the storm called forth by her first picture Miss Elliott was busy on her second. She was now under the direction of Arthur Hopkins, who, although he had been studying studio methods for some months, had never before assumed full sway of a production. Probably nothing on the screen was more amusing than that inner drama of inexperience and bewilderment revealed in the making of this second picture. One day Miss Elliott, her throat swathed in yards of tulle--a protective measure of which she, like Bernhardt, often availed herself--was wheeling around and around on the set. “Good gracious!” whispered somebody impishly as she looked at this futile and pathetic whirling of the statuesque woman, “isn’t she ever going to run down?” Poor Miss Elliott, she evidently didn’t know what to do when she stopped turning! And I doubt if Mr. Hopkins was more inspired! At this point the reader may wonder why I, a producer of experience, would confide so much in two people who had so little screen experience. The answer to this is that I have always wanted to enrich motion-pictures by assured talent from outside fields. This involved experimentation, and it was natural that a few of my experiments should fail. Others, on the contrary, have proved the wisdom of bringing in new blood.