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THE DUKE OF BROOKLYN 39
When they wanted a villain who was just medium wicked, he would be the profligate son of a millionaire or maybe a society crook with designs on the daughter of the small-town banker as well as the upstairs maid. But when they cooked up a story with a real, low-down nasty, he was always a foreign nobleman, with hemophilia, three discarded mistresses, and a yen to marry an innocent and beautiful heiress. That was where I shone. Casting directors thought I looked the part.
I played my first aristocratic heavy with Norma Talmadge. The audience hated me so wholeheartedly that Vitagraph quickly made me a French viscount in a picture with Lillian Walker, known to the fans as "Dimples. "
When I realized that they had me pegged as a foreignnobleman type, I began to live the part. I bought a pair of white spats, an Ascot tie, and a walking stick; and I tried to look as decadent as possible. It paid off, too. I did so many of those parts for Vitagraph that my nickname in Brooklyn was "The Duke."
After a few weeks in the business I learned where the Edison and Biograph studios were located and began to play foreigners and dissolute heavies for them, too. It was while I was twirling my mustache at Anita Stewart, a favorite star of those days, that I heard about the war between the motion-picture trust and the independent producers.
One morning a fellow actor showed up in the dressing room at Vitagraph with a black eye, which he carefully painted out so that he could work that day.
"Swinging door?" I inquired cheerily.
"Independent picture," he replied. "A bunch of sluggers for the trust tried to stop the shooting and we gave them the bum's rush. It was some fight."
This was Greek to me, so I made further inquiries and learned a few of the facts of movie life. It seemed that Thomas Edison owned the basic patents on motion-picture cameras and projectors and that the Edison company with nine other producing