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THE PATENT COMPANY CAUSES TROUBLE 227
stage coach still tethered its horses to a hitching rail, declined the privilege of handling Cecil B. De Mille's banking account with thanks.
The barn caught De Mille's eye. Its rent was cheap but the landlord wanted to retain half to house his horses and a trap. Accordingly, a bargain was struck, though every time the landlord washed his stables the water seeped under the partition and De Mille had to beat an ignominious retreat. One day he was entertaining a young man with money whom he was hoping to interest in the rocky company when the landlord carelessly threw a bucket of water right through the window, drenching the Croesus and effectually dampening all De Mille's hopes of obtaining new capital.
And capital was a pressing problem. In Hollywood, De Mille had free mountains, plains, rivers, deserts, palm trees, sunshine, and even snow-clad hills, but no money. In desperation he asked his star, Dustin Farnum, if he would forgo his salary and take five thousand dollars' worth of shares in the company instead. Farnum firmly said no. He had no means of knowing, of course, that only four years later he could have sold them for two million dollars.
Somehow the picture got under way. It took eighteen days to photograph, and employed twenty-two people, including ten actors. In all, it cost ten thousand dollars more to make than De Mille possessed, but Sam Goldfish had been busy in New York selling the picture to theatre owners simply by his powers of glowing description. His confidence was only partially misplaced. De Mille was a born showman. He knew how to cram movement, forceful drama and nerve-shattering sensation into every foot of film he turned out.
On The Squaw Man he expounded every ounce of this creative energy. His stage was a wooden platform built on the land behind the barn, his scenes of saloons and drawing-rooms were flimsy flats open to the blazing Californian skies except for butter-muslin stretched over the top to diffuse the light.
Yet, even when he had finished shooting the last scene of this story of a high-born Englishman in the Golden West who befriends an adoring child-like Indian maid and becomes a social pariah, he was still not out of the wood.
" Very soon after we started, trouble brewed with the Patent Company. They made desperate efforts to force us out of business by giving our employees bribes. Before I completed the last scene, an attempt was made to burn down my stage. Then, when that