When the movies were young (1925)

26 When the Movies were Young are interesting to-day, for they show how time has ambled apace since October, 1907. Said Hector Fuller, the critic: It may be said that the dramatist wanted to show where his hero's feet strayed; and where he found the girl he was afterwards to make his wife, but if one wants to tell the old, old and beautiful story of redemption of either man or woman through love, it is not necessary to portray the gutters from which they are redeemed. . . . One week in Washington and one in Baltimore saw on its jolly way to the storehouse the wicked Bull Pup Cafe and the Hop Fields, etc. And so back to New York. In the Sixth Avenue "L" with our little suitcases, we sat, a picture of woe and misery. In the Sixth Avenue "L," for not even a dollar was to be wasted on a taxi. But when the door to our own two rooms was closed, and, alone together, we faced our wrecked hopes, it wasn't so awful. Familiar objects seemed to try and comfort us. After all, it was a little home, and better than a park bench ; and the Century Dictionary — of which some day we would be complete owners, maybe — and the Underwood, all our own — spoke to us reassuringly. I do not recall that any job materialized that winter, but something must have happened to sustain us. Perhaps the belated receipt of those few hundred dollars of mine that were on deposit at the German Savings Bank at the time of the Disaster in San Francisco. To offset what might have been a non-productive winter, Mr. Griffith wrote "War," a pretentious affair of the American Revolution, which Henry Miller would have produced had it been less expensive. "War" had meant a lot of work. For weeks previous to the writing, we had re