“Well, all right,” said Gertrude with tolerance, “but I must get on
home now. I have to have dinner with my family.” (If one so young could
be bored, Gertrude Bambrick was just that thing.)
“I’ll send you home in my car,” said Mr. Griffith, which frightened
little Gertrude almost to pieces and which would have frightened her
more had she known that the car was a gorgeous white Packard lined with
red leather. But in she hopped, nevertheless, and when she arrived
home, and her mother opened the door, and saw a huge touring car of
colors white and red, in the days when any kind of a touring car
was a conspicuous vehicle, mother said, “Now don’t you ever do that
again--come home here in a car like that for all the neighbors to talk
about.” Gertrude promised she wouldn’t.
That evening she went to her show like a good little girl and did her
bit, and Mr. Griffith and Eddie Dillon sat out front. To show how much
he liked her work, D. W. Griffith’s big white touring car next morning,
entirely unexpected, drove up again to the Bambrick home. Gertrude had
to forego her morning sleep that day--the neighbors must not see that
rakish motor car outside the house again any longer than was necessary.
“What kind of girls will the neighbors think I have, anyhow?” said Mrs.
Bambrick, very much annoyed at the insistent person who had sent the
car.
To such extremes Mr. Griffith went to land a new
personality--particularly if that personality was so wholly indifferent
to him and his movies as Miss Gertie was. But Gertie was pretty and
graceful, and pictures were just arriving at the place where it was
thought dancing could be photographed fairly well and cabaret scenes
might be introduced to liven things up, now that picture production was
advancing toward the spectacle.
The next day little Gertrude had her “test” and sat around, and looked
on, and felt lonesome, until she suddenly spied an old friend who had
been with her in Gertrude Hoffman’s dancing chorus. Gertrude called
out, “Oh, hello, Sarah.” But Sarah Sweet, since become Blanche Sweet,
only looked blankly at the new girl. Oh, the fear that gripped at
the possibility of a new rival! Mr. Griffith was “getting it,” and he
wasn’t going to stand for it, so emphatically he spoke, “Blanche, you
know Gertie Bambrick,” at which Blanche capitulated.
“Little Mary” returned to Biograph. From “Imp,” in the fall of 1911
she had gone over to the Majestic, where she and Owen put in a brief
season. Then back to Biograph she came, but without Owen. He went to
Victor with Florence Lawrence.
Mary Pickford was now so firmly entrenched that she had no fear of
bringing other little girls to the studio. And so, on her invitation,
one day came a-visiting two sisters, one, decidedly demure; the other,
decidedly not. Things were quiet in the theatre and Mary saw no reason
why, when they could find a ready use for the money, her little friends
shouldn’t make five dollars now and then as well as the other extra
people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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