From under my hat (1952)

6 Bowing to WoLfie's wishes, I turned down several picture offers during our year in Hollywood— one from the great D. W. Griffith himself— but when our friend William Farnum pleaded that he couldn't find a leading lady for his next picture, my lord and master changed his mind and gave permission. That's how I got into my first film, Battle of Hearts. For me it was starting at the top. Farnum was William Fox's brightest, highest-paid star. His salary then was six thousand dollars a week; I got one hundred. Later Bill made so much money he paid for the land at Sunset and Western Avenue where the first Fox Studio was built. Farnum had more money then than Fox but, being an actor and not a financier, he never bothered to figure the difference between income and outgo. So he spent as fast as he made. Bill bought race horses and at one time owned three boats; the largest had a crew of eight men. How appalled I was when his first wife told me that when they returned from their first trip to Europe, Bill was presented with a feed bill of twelve thousand dollars— for his horses alone. I had visions of fluttering my eyelashes, languishing in a scented boudoir, and indulging in passionate love scenes with the handsome hero in my screen debut. But no! Battle of Hearts wasn't a picture; it was an obstacle course. Playing a fisherman's daughter, I wore a faded blue skirt or a pair of Pa's pants, a man's turtle-neck sweater, hip boots, and a stocking cap. The whole outfit was gussied up with oilskins and sou'wester to match. In my first scene I drove a yoke of oxen along the beach at Catalina Island and gathered driftwood for our cookstove. We waited on Catalina Island for our principal prop, an ancient three-masted schooner bought in San Francisco, which was being sailed down the coast 82