The House That Shadows Built (1928)

A DUEL 215 ing rumours of Hodkinson’s intentions reached Zukor and Lasky. First — Paramount, said the gossips, was flirt ing with the American Tobacco Company. That corporation had of late reached far afield, gathering up and financing enterprises which had nothing to do with Havana fillers or Connecticut leaf. Zukor and Lasky felt out a certain roving executive of the tobacco company. He talked of a combination, financed by his corporation, between Famous Players, Lasky, the Triangle Company of Chicago and Hollywood, and Paramount; and talked in such manner as to suggest an understanding with Hodkinson. Once, Goldwyn met him in the offices of Paramount. “And he had,” said Goldwyn a decade later, “the air of owning the place. Only a bluff maybe — but it was disquieting.” Zukor and Hodkinson were keeping suspiciously away from each other. Yet Paramount was the only system of distribution then available for Zukor’s large purpose. Looking over the fields, he saw a possible avenue of escape — that same Triangle Company which Tobacco had suggested as a partner. “ In those days,” says a veteran executive of Famous Players, “some competitor or other was forever pounding at our heels. Often, he even passed us on the turns.” The dangerous contender in 1916 was Triangle. Formed and expanded by a bewildering combination and recombination of several old companies, it had acquired Griffith, high in the glory of his epoch