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THE FIRST YEAR IN HOLLYWOOD, I922-I923 325
proved embarrassing. One newspaper went so far as to declare that I had flatly rejected the offer, which was news to me.
I was promptly beleaguered by callers and subjected to a barrage of messages from well-wishers, reporters, feature writers, and persons whom I had never met but who had free advice to give. There was also a lunatic fringe of those who wanted jobs in the movies, for themselves or for some talented brother-in-law, and who demanded that I use my mystic power to place them.
While I was still upset physically and mentally, Courtland Smith came to my rescue. He not only shielded me from the more importunate inquisitors but, perceiving that I was almost at the breaking point, forced me to take long walks with him through Rock Creek Park. It was December, and there was a wild and dismal beauty to many of its vistas which might have affected a more melancholy temperament adversely but which I found extremely relaxing. It seemed as if I were a million miles from the turmoil of telephone calls, questions, criticism, and flattery that the leak to the press had brought down about my ears.
Finally it was Courtland who decided I should get out of Washington earlier than planned and make what might be called, in a certain sense, a retreat. My hideaway for this purpose was the home of my great and good friend, Colonel William Boyce Thompson, at Yonkers, New York. I had sought his counsel on many previous occasions and valued it highly. This time he insisted that I take it easy, so literally that I spent the first few days in bed in a darkened room and was not even allowed to look at newspapers. I never knew a more kindly or solicitous host than Bill Thompson.
On Christmas Day in Sullivan I made up my mind. As I was sitting at breakfast, I overheard an argument in the next room. My boy Bill, who was six, and his two cousins, Charles and John, a little older and a little younger, were putting on the cowboy suits I had bought them.
"I want to be William S. Hart!" cried my boy.
"No, I'm going to be him!" contradicted one of my nephews.
"No, I am! You can be Doug, and Bill can be the bad guy," yelled the other.
The text from Scripture, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise" flashed through my mind. Thev wanted to be Bill Hart. Not Buffalo Bill. Not Daniel Boone. But William S. Hart! To these little boys and to thousands of others throughout our land, William S. Hart and Mary and Doug were real and important personages and, at least in their screen characters, models of character and behavior. And I may interject that if all of the pictures produced in Hollywood had been as wholesome as those in which Bill Hart, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks appeared there would never have been such a storm of public protest as developed.