A pictorial history of the movies (1943)

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BLIND HUSBANDS (1919) 89 Of the three Talmadge sisters— Norma, Constance, and Natalie— Norma was the most consistently successful. She obtained her first dramatic experience in posing for illustrated song slides and then went to Vitagraph, where she played small parts in several Maurice Costello pictures. In one of these, A Tale of Two Cities, she attracted the public's attention. Within four years she was a star. Here she is playing a scene, with Stuart Holmes, from The New Moon, made in 1919. BELOW Not so long ago a certain highly touted New York stage director was called to Hollywood, where he made a colossal picture that was an equally colossal failure. Did it ruin him? Far from it. As one Hollywoodian remarked, "Now he's one of the biggest men in the industry. He's just cost his company a million dollars." The fantastic assumption that the director who spends the most money must be the best is probably based on the career of Erich von Stroheim, whose autocratic methods, ruinous production costs, millions of feet of extraneous shots, and genuine acting and directorial ability combined to make him a famous screen villain and producer. Von Stroheim came to America in 1909, eked out a precarious existence as a salesman, gardener, dishwasher, and so on, and then played extra bits in the movies. In 1919, he induced Universal to let him produce Blind Husbands, which he had written and then proceeded to direct and act. The picture was a success and established his reputation. This scene shows (left to right): Gibson Gowland, Francelia Billington, Sam DeGrasse, and von Stroheim.