We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
148 IT TOOK NINE TAILORS
Walter insisted that it took more skill to direct a dog than it did to direct an actor, but I was not convinced. A dog director! I was ready to go on strike again! They tell me I could be heard all over the Administration Building as I walked down the hall in search of Mai St. Clair's office. I was complaining loudly.
"What are they trying to do, turn me into another Rin-TinTin? I swallow my pride and come back to this jute mill, and what happens? They give me a dog director!"
At that moment a fellow 6 feet 6 inches tall and as thin as Theda Bara's nightgown stuck his head out of a doorway and looked at me with an amused grin on his face.
"Where," I inquired grimly, "will I find Mai St. Clair's office?"
"This is it," he answered, still grinning, "and I'm the guy you're looking for."
The famous Menjou aplomb failed me. I wished at that moment that I had had a script writer along to give me a smart answer. But the grin on Mai's face finally reassured me. I smiled back and we shook hands.
"Come on in and sit down," he invited. "We've got a great story and you'll love the part."
I sat down and in ten minutes Mai convinced me that he knew how to make pictures regardless of his canine past. We spent all of that first morning getting acquainted and exchanging ideas on the new picture; then we went out to lunch. By the time we came back we were practically ready to start shooting and Mai was my favorite Paramount director. A few months later he directed me in one of the best silent pictures I ever* made, entitled The Grand Duchess and the Waiter.
This picture boosted me up to the top rungs of the Hollywood ladder with such male stars as Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert, John Barrymore, Tommy Meighan, William Haines, and Emil Jannings.