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an outright or partial use of it. So we acquired the rights of ComirC Thro' the Rye for a limited period to adapt it and produce it as a film. Blanche Macintosh again turned her art to the making of a working script — by no means an easy matter, but she was very successful — and I produced the film with Alma Taylor in the principal part. With the rather reluctant consent of Mrs. Reeves, I dealt with the story as up to the date of that time and dressed the characters in modern clothes; for I did not see the necessity of going to the extra trouble and expense of dating it back some fifty years and making it a 'costume' piece, which the cinema industry was never at all inclined to favour.
Perhaps I was wrong there, for many people objected to the introduction of a motor-car in a story that their children had known and loved very many years before such a thing was invented. But if you have heard at all of ComirC Thro' the Rye, it isn't this version of which you will be thinking. A much more ambitious film was produced many years later and of that I will tell when I come to it.
Nevertheless there were thousands of people who had no previous memories to inhibit them, who liked this film tremendously and our first venture into the market-place where sole rights are purchasable was such a pronounced success that there was no difficulty in the future in persuading me to venture again. Helen Mathers, the authoress, was particularly pleased with the film version of her book — I think she was rather inclined to 'see' herself in the part that Alma played so convincingly! Anyhow, she pulled some strings which were to her hand and Queen Alexandra commanded a performance of the film in her presence.
This took place, if I remember rightly, at Marlborough House, the scene of my first glimpse of royalty, when I was only a boy and she, this most beautiful lady — was the Princess of Wales. I do not know directly what she thought of it, but Helen Mathers, with shining eyes, reported that Her Majesty had been very pleased indeed with it. A week or two later I received the special tie-pin which goes to people in royal favour on these occasions, so I was duly gratified and I have kept the tie-pin ever since.
After the undoubted success of ComirC Thro' the Rye, which was a complete vindication of friend Baynes' contention about the purchase of film rights in currently popular books, I willingly agreed to the purchase of the rights of Iris, a very dramatic Pinero play with an almost unbearably pathetic ending. It
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