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JUST AN OLD MEANIE 101
who sneered at old ladies, kicked dogs, and slapped little children. I was so mean that most of the time the scenarists killed me in the last reel just to make the audience happy. Sometimes, if they wanted to make the audience very happy, they would shoot me in the second reel. In any case, if possible, they always bumped me off. They had to. Little children and even hardened criminals would have lost faith in all human precepts of heavenly justice if I had remained alive to continue my dastardly activities.
Obviously any actor who was so thoroughly hated bv his fellow men could never hope to rise above $350 a week. The public wouldn't stand for it, and the producers didn't care. If I were ever to land in those big brackets, people had to love me or at least sympathize with my weakness of character. Even my fellow actors began to feel sorry for me. Ernest Torrence advised me to stop acting and become a director.
"They have got you grooved for a second-rate heavy," he said. "You are a dead duck. The public will not pay money even to see you get killed in a very painful manner. You are just a necessary evil, and there is no money in being a necessary evil."
I was very discouraged. I went around with my chin on my belt buckle. I decided that I was a failure— thirty-two years old, earning a miserable $15,000 a year, and no future. I was so despondent that it was rumored I was thinking of retiring to a monastery.
Then came the day I was called for a part in Rupert of Hcutzau. On the way to the studio I made up my mind that if this was a part in which I had to be killed in order to please people I would turn it down. I had already heard rumors about this picture. It was to be produced by Lewis Selznick under the personal supervision of Myron Selznick, at that time just out of knee pants. They had hired a cast that sounded like the guest list at the Motion Picture Ball. The big names included Elaine Hammerstein, Bert Lytell, Lew Cody, Claire Windsor, Bryant Washburn, Marjorie Daw (later Mrs. Selznick), Irving Cummings, Hobart Bosworth, Elmo Lincoln, Nigel de Brulier, and Gertrude Astor.