“He went away and left us!” She was barely twenty-three. However well-versed she was in the technique of picture-making, she had never directed an entire picture. She was taking over a new and untried studio; she was assuming the responsibility of spending what was at least a modest fortune. Moreover, Griffith had never seen the script of the picture, for with Harry Carr to help, they made many incidents and scenes as they went along. The fact that Griffith was content to go away and leave the venture in her hands, implies two things: First, that his confidence in Lillian was large; second, that the motion-picture business is conducted on less rigid lines than other important enterprises. Both conclusions are warranted: Griffith did know Lillian, and the motion-picture industry is conducted like no other business on earth. To begin with, it is not really a business at all—not merchandising. You are not buying something which you are to sell again. You are creating something—painting a canvas, doing it with human beings. Your accessories are mechanical, but even here, the personal element is a chief factor—the enthusiasm and good-will of the photographers, the electricians, the stage-hands. Griffith believed that Lillian could shape these to her taste. On the set, they were her friends. She called them by their intimate studio names: “Slim,” “Whitey,” “Joe,” and so on, and never left a set that she did not go to each one, and in her grave, dignified little way, thank him for the help he had been to her. But let Lillian continue: “I believed that no director had brought out Dorothy’s sweetness, especially her comic sense. I believed I could do it. Of course, I had been in pictures a number of years, and knew something about directing, but nothing at all of practical mechanics. I knew nothing of the measurements for a set, and was afraid the company would lose respect for me if they found it out. I went home and paced the floor of my room, measuring the number of feet, to try to get some idea of what I wanted to talk about when I got back to the studio. As a result, I ordered a room that was too big for the height of it. The camera couldn’t get far enough away, without shooting over the back wall. The camera-man, who had come from the war with a case of shell-shock, would walk up and down and throw his hat on the floor, and declare he couldn’t stand it. But he was really very kind, and we learned something every day.