In consideration of such strongly marked feeling on her part I obviously was compelled to do something about Mack. The fact of it is that, far from wanting him on the basis of agreeable surroundings for his wife, I was most anxious to shift him from theatrical work to our organisation. A playwright of skill, an actor of experience--why should I not have supposed that he would be a valuable addition to the Goldwyn Company? The position which I offered him finally was head of the scenario department. Although he was making more on the stage, he accepted my appointment at five hundred dollars a week, for the salary was accompanied by the promise that if he made good I would raise his salary and give him a long-term contract. He started his new duties in the Fort Lee studio and they were achieved so satisfactorily that we transferred him together with his wife to the California establishment. Thereby hangs a tale. In the old days when Zukor and I used to exchange confidences regarding our respective disagreements with various screen performers, he was always emphatic in his praise of Pauline Frederick. “Now, there’s a girl that anybody could get along with,” he would say. “Easy to handle, likes her stories, always on time on the set.” So consistent were his comments on the model star that I looked forward to Miss Frederick’s presence in my studio much as does a motorist to a stretch of glossy asphalt after innumerable rough detours. Alas for such expectations! By the time that “teacher’s pet” reached me she had begun to share some of the characteristics of less exemplary performers. That this was so may be traced chiefly to her husband’s position in the studio. For it was on the question of scenarios that I found her most captious. “I don’t like this story!” she would say to me after reading something that I had considered especially suited to her. “What don’t you like about it?” She was always able to assign a reason, but underneath this alleged objection I discovered gradually the vital source of prejudice. The rejected scenario had not been written by Willard Mack! There was, too, another cause for the beautiful star’s departure from that ideal course of conduct hymned by Zukor. In the Summer following my formation of the Goldwyn Company I had engaged Geraldine Farrar. The latter and Pauline Frederick met in the Fort Lee studio. From that time forth the business of picture-production became more complicated. “Of course,” Miss Frederick would say, “this story is nothing so good as the one you’ve given Geraldine Farrar.” Miss Farrar, on the other hand, seemed to assume that Mack’s position in the editorial department gave Pauline a decided advantage in the choice of scenarios. Between two such fixed and divergent view-points there was only one course to steer. This was a Machiavellian one. “I don’t like this story,” began Pauline one day. “Very well,” retorted I equably, “we’ll give it to Miss Farrar. She wants it badly.”