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SILK HAT AND TAILS
all from five in the evening till midnight, so my days were practically my own.
Early the next morning I trimmed and waxed my mustache, put on my best suit, and sneaked out without telling Father or Mother where I was going. Then I caught a subway to Brooklyn, changed to an el, and finally landed at Avenue M about a mile or two from Coney Island.
The studio was only a short walk from the el station. It consisted of a group of heterogeneous buildings covering about half a block. There was a parking space in front of the main entrance that was occupied by several expensive foreign motorcars— a Panhard, a Fiat, a Renault, and a couple of others.
I assumed, mistakenly, that these cars must belong to the leading actors who worked there— such stars as Earl Williams, Maurice Costello, Norma Talmadge, Anita Stewart, and John Bunny. But that was not the case. The cars belonged to the principal owners of Vitagraph, of whom the most prominent was J. Stuart Blackton, a motorcar and motorboat enthusiast.
At that time Vitagraph was the most active company in the business, and Commodore Blackton and his associates were turning celluloid into gold so fast that the United States Mint was working overtime to keep even with them.
I hesitated outside the door in the midst of all this four-wheeled luxury to adjust the angle of my hat and to give my mustache a fresh twist, then made an impressive entrance. But my histrionics were wasted, for I found myself in an empty hall from which a flight of steps ascended to the second floor. I mounted the steps and came upon a disinterested young lady behind a reception desk. She took my name and told me to wait.
I now expected to be ushered into the presence of Mr. Cozzine and was relaxing until the big moment arrived, when, to my embarrassment, that gentleman came quietly out of his office and discovered me pensively biting a broken thumbnail.
Instead of appearing poised and sophisticated, as I presumed an actor should, I must have looked like just what I was— a nervous