Life and Lillian Gish (1932)

212 Life and Lillian Gish said. "He is like a boy. I remember Princess Bibesco and Anthony Asquith once came to Hollywood and were invited by Douglas and Mary to make a party to climb the mountain behind Pickfair, and go down on the other side, for camp breakfast. We had to start very early. I drove from the Beverley Hills Hotel and it was still dark when I got to Pickfair. I dressed in Doug's riding clothes to do the climbing. The Asquiths were to go on horseback, but Douglas made Mary and me walk. "We were well up the mountain before daylight, and the going was terribly scratchy. I had never climbed a California mountain. I did not know they would scratch one up so. I was a sight when we got down on the other side, and very happy to get breakfast." Irving Thalberg, head supervisor of the Metro-Goldwyn, Lillian said, let her choose from the directors and people on their lots. After seeing a number of scenes from "The Big Parade," then in production, she selected King Vidor, to direct, and asked to have John Gilbert and Renee Adoree. Roy d'Arcy and Edward Horton were also chosen, and Karl Dane. Vidor expected to finish "The Big Parade" very soon, but pictures have a way of not getting finished, and it was August before they were ready for rehearsal. Then she found that they did not rehearse any more — not in the old way she had learned from Griffith — not at all until they were ready to shoot the scene. Salaries had increased to a point where it was cheaper to make the scene, time and again, than to rehearse it for days in advance. Vidor said, however, that Lillian might do her scenes in the old way. She tried it, but found the others so unused to it that she gave it up.