Yet Mr. Schenck represents much more than a mooring for this brilliant personality. Remembering his efforts in her professional behalf from the moment when he so proudly showed me that bracelet on his office desk; acquainted, too, with the absolute devotion which he has subsequently given to her career, I often wonder how it would have fared with Miss Talmadge had this element in her life been lacking. Certainly she would have risen by sheer force of her talent and her beauty and her enthusiasm without any such concentrated interest. But I very much doubt if her ascent would have been either so swift or so dazzling had this one great constructive force been absent. _Chapter Twenty_ GOOD OLD WILL ROGERS It is a far cry from the greatest emotional actress of the films to one of the world’s most infectious comedians. Yet I have set aside chronological considerations in order to save for last my recollections of a man whose comedy touches brightened the Goldwyn lot almost as much as they did the Goldwyn screen. It was Rex Beach and I who brought Will Rogers into pictures. After our approach he confided to us that he had been somewhat mystified by the delayed recognition of his talents on the part of the picture world. “I used to think it was funny,” said he in his own inimitable way. “Here motion-pictures were booming along. They were getting in trained dogs and trained cats and grand-opera singers and everybody in the world but me. I couldn’t make it out, and now after all these years you fellows have come to.” Rogers still loves to dwell on these fictitious pangs of a slighted talent, and he always adds, “Well, there was a movement on foot for making fewer and worse pictures and so they hired me.” Certainly if his coming into picture activities was the result of any such urge, we were woefully misled. For his “Jubilo” was one of the best pictures ever produced by the Goldwyn Company. Around his selection for the chief character of this story Will weaves one of his choicest monologues. “Sam had bought a tramp story,” he relates, “and he was looking around the lot one day for somebody who could play the tramp. Well, he happened to see me in my street clothes and he said, ‘There is the very fellow to play the tramp!’ Of course,” he adds, “I love to play a tramp--you can act so natural and never have to dress for it.” Whether this story is historically correct or not it does bring out one of Will’s claims to distinction in the Hollywood community. An old slouch hat pulled down over his eyes and some kind of nondescript trousers uncreased as a child’s brow--this is his inveterate costume. Clad in this wise, he used to stand around the Goldwyn lawn and, surrounded by a crowd of cowboys and extras, would amuse himself by throwing the lariat at our “Keep off the Grass” signs.