On that picture I made twenty-eight dollars; oh, what a lot of money! The most to date. If pictures kept up like that! And the whole twenty-eight was mine, all mine, and I invested it at Hackett, Carhart on Broadway and Thirteenth in a spring outfit--suit, shoes, hat, oh, everything. The picture--the only one Mr. Taylor directed--lacked continuity. Upstairs in his executive office, Mr. Henry Norton Marvin was walking the floor and wondering what about it. Why couldn’t they get somewhere with these movies? Another man fallen down on the job. Genial Arthur Marvin, H. N.’s brother, and Billy Bitzer’s assistant at the camera, was being catechized as to whether he had noticed any promising material about the studio. “Well,” drawled the genial Arthur, “I don’t know. They’re a funny lot, these actors, but there’s one young man, there’s one actor seems to have ideas. You might try him.” “You think he might get by, eh?” “Well, I don’t think you’d lose much by trying him.” “What’s his name? I’ll send for him.” “Griffith. Lawrence Griffith.” * * * * * Later that day a cadaverous-looking young man was closeted with the vice-president in the vice-president’s dignified quarters. “My brother tells me you appear to be rather interested in the pictures, Mr. Griffith; how would you like to direct one?” Mr. Griffith rose from his chair, took three steps to the window, and gazed out into space. “Think you’d like to try it, Mr. Griffith?” No response--only more gazing into space. “We’ll make it as easy as we can for you, Mr. Griffith, if you decide you’d like to try.” More gazing into space. And finally this: “I appreciate your confidence in me, Mr. Marvin, but there is just this to it. I’ve had rather rough sledding the last few years and you see I’m married; I have responsibilities and I cannot afford to take chances; I think they rather like me around here as an actor. Now if I take this picture-directing over and fall down, then you see I’ll be out my acting job, and you know I wouldn’t like that; I don’t want to lose my job as an actor down here.” “Otherwise you’d be willing to direct a picture for us?” “Oh, yes, indeed I would.” “Then if I promise that if you fall down as a director, you can have your acting job back, you will put on a moving picture for us?” “Yes, then I’d be willing.” * * * * * It was called “The Adventures of Dolly.” Gossip around the studio had it that the story was a “lemon.” Preceding directors at the studio had sidestepped it. _Dolly_, in the course of the story, is nailed into a barrel by the gypsies who steal her; the barrel secreted in the gypsy wagon; the horses start off at breakneck speed; the barrel falls off the wagon, rolls into the stream, floats over a waterfall, shoots the rapids, and finally emerges into a quiet pool where some boys, fishing, haul it ashore, hear the child’s cries, open the barrel, and rescue _Dolly_.