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THE TIDE ROLLS ON
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In 1914, just when he was gaining a slippery foothold, Europe had gone to war. He must needs readjust all his relations with that foreign market now growing so important. At thirty-nine, when he bought the rights to Queen Elizabeth^ Zukor had still that full head of jetblack hair which came to a widow’s peak on his forehead; and his face retained so much of its youthful comeliness that he might have appeared as leading juvenile in one of his own films. When at forty-three he signed the agreement which took over the Paramount Company, his hair was thinning and whitening at the temples and his cheeks falling into weary masses.
The twenty-five millions with which the newspapers tagged the Famous Players-Lasky-Paramount merger measures the length and force of that tide whose crest Zukor was riding. In 1912, none would have offered such a sum, even in hypothetical money, for the whole moving-picture business of the United States. In 1916, the Zukor combination, while momentarily the largest in the field, represented only a small part of the “movingpicture interests.” The two principles which Zukor laid down when he entered production — full-length film performances and exploitation of actors — had succeeded even beyond his own imagination. The public clamoured for the longer films, and granted Mary Pickford, W. S. Hart, Charlie Chaplin, a dozen others, frenzied idolatry without parallel in the history of the world. John Drew or Mrs. Fiske or Lillian Russell showed their personal