“Pippa Passes” being ever in Mr. Griffith’s mind these days, he scanned each new face in the studio as he mulled over the needed characters. The cast would be the best possible one he could get together. CHAPTER XIV MARY PICKFORD HAPPENS ALONG It was a bright May morning in 1909. When I came off the scene, I noticed a little girl sitting quietly in a corner near the door. She looked about fourteen. I afterwards learned she was nearing seventeen. She wore a plain navy-blue serge suit, a blue-and-white striped lawn shirtwaist, a rolled brim Tuscan straw sailor hat with a dark blue ribbon bow. About her face, so fresh, so pretty, and so gentle, bobbed a dozen or more short golden curls--such perfect little curls as I had never seen. A timid applicant usually hugged the background. Bold ones would press forward to the camera and stand there, obtruding themselves, in the hope that the director would see them, like their look, and engage them for a day’s work. But Mary Pickford tucked herself away in a niche, while she quietly gave us “the once over.” The boss’s eagle eye had been roving her way at intervals, the while he directed, for here was something “different”--a maid so fair and an actress to boot! Pausing a moment in his work, he came over to me and said, “Don’t you think she would be good for Pippa?” “Ideal,” I answered. Before we closed shop that day, he had Mary make up--gave her a violin, and told her to walk across the stage while playing it so that Billy Bitzer could make a test. Before she left the studio that day, every actor there had a “line” on Mary. In the dressing-room, the word went around: “There’s a cute kid outside; have you seen her?” “No, where is she?” “She’s been sitting out there in a corner by herself.” “Guess I’ll take a look.” “She’s cute all right; they’re taking a test.” Something was impending. There was excitement and expectancy in the air. America’s Sweetheart was soon to make her first screen appearance. The test was O. K. and Mary was told to come to the studio on the morrow. David promised her five dollars a day for her first picture, and were her work good, he’d talk business with her. That satisfied Mary. As “Giannina,” the pretty daughter of Taddeo Ferrari, in “The Violin Maker of Cremona” Mary Pickford made her motion picture début. She was ideally suited to the part, and had good support from David Miles as the cripple Filippo. The studio bunch was all agog over the picture and the new girl, long before the quiet word was passed to the regulars a few days later: “Projection room, they’re going to run ‘The Violin Maker.’” After the showing, Mr. Griffith had a serious conversation with Mary and offered her twenty-five dollars a week for three days’ work. This Mary accepted. She felt she might stay through the summer.