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19: Getting the Girl
[T was about 1924 when I became a true native of movieland. It takes three or four years for this to happen. When you first arrive, you can't adjust yourself to a world that thrives on travesty. There are actors with swimming pools, cowboys who have never roped a steer, blockheads who are called geniuses, seven-year-old children earning more money than the President of the United States, and many more phenomena equally absurd. But one day you wake up and discover that all this nonsense seems perfectly normal. Not until then are you a bona fide citizen of Hollywood.
This happened to me in my first picture with Monta Bell, who had helped Chaplin write A Woman of Paris. One night he and his wife dropped in and Monta announced that he had just quit Chaplin and was going to become a director.
"But youve never directed a picture," I said. "How can you get a job as a director?"
"I have a great idea," he answered. "If youll give me an option on your services, I'll get a job as a director and I'll make you the star of my first picture."
Naturally I wanted to be a star, so I took a chance and gave Monta my word that for ten days I would accept no other picture assignment while he went out and tried to make a deal. The idea didn't seem fantastic, and in Hollywood it wasn't.
At that time Warner Brothers was in bad shape financially. It lacked both stars and directors. Monta went to Harry Rapf, one of its producers, and sold his bill of goods. A few weeks later we started shooting Broadway after Dark.
For the love interest in the picture, Monta found an unknown
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