Having succeeded so well at Santa Monica, we decided to work other beaches this year. We became acquainted with them all--Redonda, Long Beach, Venice, and Playa del Rey. The No. 2 company became especially familiar with the beaches, for they did numbers of bathing pictures. Frank Powell was still directing the comedies, with Dell Henderson and Mack Sennett occasionally trying their hands at it. It was in these bathing pictures that Mabel Normand began winning admirers both on the screen and off. Even Mack Sennett began to take an interest in the beautiful and reckless Mabel, a slim figure in black tights doing daredevil dives or lovely graceful ones. Mabel was always ready for any venturesome aquatic stunt. But her work was equally daring on land, for she thought nothing of riding the wildest bucking broncho bareback. It took more than bucking bronchos to intimidate the dusky-eyed Mabel. All of this Sennett was noting--clever kid was Mabel--and if he ever should be a director on his own----! * * * * * On the beach by the old Redonda Hotel, which the passing years had changed from a smart winter resort patronized by Easterners to a less stylish summer one patronized by Angelenos, one balmy winter day, some bathing scenes were being taken. This type of stuff was new to me and I was all eyes. Working only with the Griffith company, there were lots of things I didn’t see. But this day there were two companies working on the same location, and that was how I first saw Margaret Loveridge, of lovely Titian hair and fair of face, sporting the most modern black satin bathing suit, and high-heeled French slippers. Imagine, right in the seashore sand! I was interested in this Loveridge girl, for she was pretty, and had a rather professional air about her. Sometimes when rehearsing we’d suddenly find ourselves in need of a little two- or three-year-older, which need would be supplied by Mr. Griffith or Mr. Powell or Dell Henderson calling right out at rehearsal: “Who’s got a kid?” Margaret Loveridge on one such occasion had replied affirmatively. And so we came to use her small son occasionally; and when Margaret was working and we needed the child, and Margaret couldn’t bring it or take care of it, she’d press her little sister into service. For Miss Loveridge had also a little sister. And it was some such situation that led little sister to the movies and to Redonda at this time. Little sister was a mite: most pathetic and half-starved she looked in her wispy clothes, with stockings sort of falling down over her shoe-tops. No one paid a particle of attention to the child. But Mr. Griffith popped up from somewhere and spied her, and gave her a smile. The frail, appealing look of her struck him. So he said, “How’d _you_ like to work in a picture?” “Oh, you’re just fooling--you mean _me_ to work in a picture?” “Yes, and I’ll give you five dollars.”