The public is never wrong (1953)

The Public Is Never Wrong dollars. Though tiny compared with the multimillion budgets of today, it was three or four times the sum ever spent on a picture in America. Most one-reelers were ground out on a budget of a few hundred to a thousand dollars. The fact that each of our five reels would run nearly ten times the top figure shows how much above the average we were paying for cast, authorship, scenery, costumes, and the rest. The morning we started shooting is vivid in my memory. Porter, cigar clenched in his teeth, strode moodily up and down, hands clasped behind his back. One of them held a script he had dictated. It consisted of a few pages of notes to himself, and would be of no value to the players. On the studio floor he had drawn chalk lines, mapping out lanes which ended in circles. These were to guide the players into camera range. Every once in a while Porter glanced apprehensively at the door through which Hackett would emerge from the dressing floor below. Finally he walked over to where Dan Frohman and I were standing. "You say this Hackett isn't temperamental?" Porter asked. "Not very," Frohman answered. "He may be a bit nervous, and it would be wise to handle him with kid gloves. But he will co-operate." Porter walked morosely away. Frohman said to me, "How about your man?" I shrugged. "More temperamental than he looks." "Let them work off the rough edges between them," Frohman said.