Talking pictures : how they are made, how to appreciate them (c. 1937)

A Single-minded Community center. We see a huge, flat, open space, the first site of the big Paramount Studio, now situated two miles away, next to the big RKO plant. Today this ten-acre tract is surrounded by twelve-story skyscrapers. Fifteen years ago there were two straggling half-painted board buildings in the center of a profitable orange grove. In 191 3 two ambitious young men, Jesse L. Lasky and Cecil DeMille, had rented the carriage house which once stood at a corner of this grove. Here they established their studio. They had money enough to rent only half of the barn, and when the owner decided to wash his carriages in the other half, the water flooded under the partition into the "studio." But regardless of handicaps, DeMille and Lasky started what is, today, one of the greatest companies in the business. These men had imagination, energy, and foresight. They possessed the qualities which assert themselves in the face of handicaps, and they were pioneers in an industry which will always value pioneers. In fact, as one considers the early leaders in the motion picture industry, one sees a direct parallel to the men who made the first achievements in all the other great industries. The DeMilles, the Laemmles, the Warners of the early days of pictures, dared financial ruin because they saw a vision of the future in this strange new art development. We have said previously that most of the early day investors in film companies were cynical about the very business in which they were engaged. They saw in it only a chance to make a little "quick money" from a fad which would pass. [29]