Motion picture actors and actresses; Motion pictures
A MARRIAGE OF TWO MINDS
While I was having difficulties with Pauline Frederick I was not
enjoying an untroubled business relationship with the star whose
supposed advantage she so much resented. Earlier in my story I have
told of how Geraldine Farrar’s first invasion of our field brought to
our ears nothing but delighted comments on her director, her stories,
and her general environment. Sadly I am now compelled to ascribe
this first fine, careless rapture to her inexperience in pictures.
For when she came to work for the Goldwyn Company she had acquired
enough information about the screen to make her critical of stories,
directorship, and various other production details.
Now, too, a personal element in her life contributed to her attitude
toward pictures. For since she worked on the Lasky lot she had married
Lou Tellegen.
At the same time that Pauline Frederick was discontented with
any scenario not written by Willard Mack, Geraldine Farrar was
discontented with any leading man who was not Lou Tellegen.
The second Summer of her engagement with us we deferred to this
longing. We brought Mr. Tellegen on to play with his wife. He did more
than that. He frequently played against her.
About this time, I believe Mr. Howard Dietz, the brilliant young chief
of my publicity department, gave out an interview with Tellegen to the
effect that he was delighted to be back in pictures, particularly when
under such ideal conditions and when they afforded him the opportunity
of playing with Miss Farrar, who “was as excellent an artiste as she
was a wife.” This sentiment warranted a smile from those who saw how he
embraced that privilege.
To be concrete: While they were playing together on a set Tellegen
would frequently try to arrogate to himself the most advantageous
focussing of the camera.
He was apt to become sulky if this campaign was frustrated, and, seeing
this, we hit at last upon a harmless method of humouring him.
“Take him that way,” we whispered to the director, “and then we’ll
throw away the negatives. The ones we’ll keep will be those where
Farrar is played up.”
He was almost equally insatiable of “close-ups.” “You haven’t made a
single one of me yet,” he would complain after a careful computation
of his wife’s advantages in this respect.
And she, the beautiful Farrar, hitherto so much the conqueror in
love--did she realise the rivalry, the antagonism back of these
efforts? She certainly did. Time and again she tried to bring him into
the conspicuous position he so much desired. When she failed her look
was all for the pain of his hurt, not for that which she might so
reasonably have felt at such an attitude on the part of a beloved human
being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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