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And with the exception of Wally, no one paid the slightest attention to her. Hundreds of people rushed into the studio every day and rushed away every night, giving each other no more notice than people in an impersonal, passing crowd.
Blanche Sweet was on the lot making The Sowers with Tom Meighan. Mae remembered him from the hit play On Trial, written by a young lawyer named Elmer Reizenstein who was so thrilled with his first success that he'd given up law now and was writing more plays under the name of Elmer Rice. Marie Doro was on the lot making a film of her stage success Oliver Twist. Mae would have loved to see her, and Tully Marshall of the stage. She did catch sight one day of Pauline Frederick; walking rapidly across the lot, she vanished behind the truncated hull of a ship that stood leaning on an artificial palm tree. Although Mae quickened her own pace, there wasn't another glimpse of Miss Frederick. She kept her chin high, reminding herself that she had always liked being alone. But never like this, never like a rank outsider. In New York there was such a sense of shared vitality and play, everyone bustling along Fifth Avenue like smiling members of a corps de ballet! This Hollywood was all relentless business.
In a sense, she was right. Only three years ago, ex-cornetplayer, ex-vaudeville-producer Jesse Lasky had started a movie company with ex-glove-salesman Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn) and ex-actor Cecil B. DeMille. Their first production, The Squaw Man, had proved a gold mine. So had their second, Brewster's Millions. Now the company had merged with Zukor's Famous Players and their studio — Paramount — was the most successful in the business. They controlled a galaxy of stars; they had assumed direct control of the distribution of their pictures, the first momentous step in integration of production and distribution. None of these people had known anything about film-making; they were learning as they went along — everyone was learning, including the cameramen and crew. There was a sense of violent competition between companies, between actors, between directors; the cost of produc
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