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1: Silk Hat and Tails
RANGES were still the most important product of Hollywood; you could still see a movie for a nickel; Cecil B. De Mille had just made his first hit, The Squaw Man, starring Dustin Farnum; Francis X. Bushman, "The Most Handsome Man in the World," was every girl's ideal; Mary Pickford had been crowned America's Sweetheart; and neither Van Johnson nor Betty Grable had been born yet.
It was the winter of 1913 and I was working in my father's restaurant, the Maison Menjou, at Broadway and Ninety-first Street in New York City. I was a little of everything from cashier to captain, and Father foresaw a great future for me as a restaurateur. He knew that I yearned to be an actor, but he thought I would outgrow this youthful foolishness. It was something we seldom spoke of, like a skeleton in the closet, for Father didn't think much of actors. Of all the unpaid meal checks he had collected in a lifetime of operating restaurants those signed by actors and musicians were by far the greatest in number. Musicians he forgave; they were artists. But actors were only dead beats; he wanted no actors in the family.
One of the regular patrons at the Maison Menjou was a fellow named Robinson. He was a theatrical scene painter; but when he had gone to work for the Vitagraph Studios in Brooklyn, he had been given the newly conceived title of Art Director. This was probably the first serious effort on the part of movie moguls to connect motion pictures with art.
When I learned that Robinson was in show business, I quickly got better acquainted with him. One evening when he was finish
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