Of course she saw that it was infinitely better to be remembered by the pictures of her prime than to go on to a lustreless close. Here was another evidence of that reliable business judgment which nothing but her infatuation for Tellegen ever dimmed. But even though self-interest might have pointed to this conclusion, her utter lack of resentment, her failure to voice a single reproach of me, made this an experience absolutely unique in my career. My valedictory regarding Madame Farrar is that her word is as good as her bond. This characteristic fits in with that business morality which makes her hate to lose a single hour of her time. I never knew anybody with a keener sense of responsibility to the clock. When she first came to make pictures with the Lasky Company we provided her with a room in the studio where she could practice her music. The Goldwyn Company made the same provision for her. In this way she utilized the long waits between sets. More than this. Every day of her time was so arranged months beforehand that not a break occurred in the links of industry. On the day that she stopped grand opera she started to make records for mechanical players; from her records she went straight to California, and the day that she returned from California she went on a concert tour. This programme went on for years. I have already indicated that the prima donna’s last pictures were not a financial success. Fully conscious of the surprise that this later information may create in the minds of many people, I am going to add that even her first films, executed when she was in the prime of her beauty and at the height of her operatic fame, were not dazzlingly remunerative. Her “Joan the Woman,” a great artistic achievement, brought no commensurate financial returns. The fact of it is that Geraldine Farrar’s chief value to the picture-producer lay in the publicity she brought rather than in the films she sold. Not for a moment does this fact reflect upon the great Farrar. If reflection there be at all, it is upon the small town where, as I have asserted, some obscure little motion-picture actress may have a following which the world’s greatest singer can never hope to enroll. I can not emphasise this point too strongly. _Chapter Thirteen_ THE REAL CHAPLIN