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Porter's The Great Train Robbery is mentioned whenever film history is discussed. Porter was to become my partner in launching feature pictures and later I was closely associated with Griffith.
In those early days adventurous young men went into film-making in much the same spirit others joined the gold rush. As a matter of fact, Jesse L. Lasky, one of the great figures, had been in the Alaska rush before entering films. Cecil B. De Mille has told me that it was nip and tuck with him whether to go into picturemaking or join a revolution somewhere south of the border.
De Mille and Lasky were eating dinner in the Claridge Grill one night, depressed and financially bent. De Mille, a son of playwright Henry Churchill De Mille, had recently directed a play which the public had not cherished. Lasky, a former cornet player in a family vaudeville act as well as gold hunter, had opened a plush cabaret. He is credited with bringing the cabaret to America, but he seems to have been ahead of his time. It failed.
"Perhaps," De Mille said, " we had better go down to Mexico and join a revolution."
Lasky had a different idea. "If it's excitement you want," he said, "let's make moving pictures."
They turned over a menu and began to form a company.
Sam Goldfish (later Sam Goldwyn) came into the restaurant, and it could readily be seen that he was not in a happy frame of mind either. Sam was in the glove business and at the moment he was angry because the