Spanish California was not to be neglected this trip, and our next picture, a romance of the Spanish dominion, called “In Old California” is historical as the first Biograph to be taken in Hollywood. The Hollywood Inn was at this time the only exclusive winter resort between the city and the ocean. We needed rooms where we could make up and dress, and Mr. Anderson, the genial young proprietor, welcomed us cordially. Marion Leonard was playing the beautiful Spanish señorita in this movie and Frank Grandin the handsome young lover who afterwards became the governor of California. As we came out of the hotel in our make up and Spanish finery and quietly drove off into the foothills, guests were lolling on the broad front porch. With a start they came to. Whatever in the world was happening! “Did you see those people? What is it? What’s going on? Let’s get our motor and follow them and see,” said they. We had selected what we thought a remote and secluded spot in the foothills, but soon in ones and twos and threes the guests appeared. For a time they seemed well-behaved spectators; they kept quiet and in the background. But Miss Leonard’s dramatic scenes proved too much for them. They resented the love-making and began making derogatory comments about movie actors, and one “lady” becoming particularly incensed, shouted loudly, “Well, I wouldn’t dress up like a fool like that woman and act like her, no, not for all the money in the world.” That off her chest, she turned on her heel, and left us flat. Paul de Longpré, the famous flower artist, lived only a few blocks from the Inn on Hollywood Boulevard. Many years ago he had left his native France and built a lovely château in the broad stretches of young Hollywood. In his gardens he had planted every variety of rose. A tangled profusion of them covered even the walls of his house. We offered fifty dollars a day for the use of the gardens. M. de Longpré went us one better. He offered to let us work if we’d buy a corner lot for three hundred dollars. But what could we do with a corner lot? We had no idea we would work six days and pay the three hundred dollars just in rental. But that we did. What we didn’t do, was, take title to the corner lot. Had we done so we would have laid a foundation for fortune. I recall M. de Longpré as the first person we met on location in California who seemed to appreciate that we were at least striving for something in an art line. To him we were not mere buffoons as we were to the ladies of the Hollywood Inn. “Love Among the Roses” we aptly called the picture in which Marion Leonard played a great lady residing in the Kingdom of Never-never Land.