When the movies were young (1925)

34 When the Movies were Young too, was a most valuable property and a rare specimen of wardrobe in the movies in those days. It came as pleasant news that a tabloid version of "When Knighthood Was in Flower,, to be called "When Knights Were Bold" was to be screened at Biograph. There were four, or perhaps five, persons in the cast of this premiere "Knighthood" picture. My husband was one; so was I. The picture commemorates our only joint movie appearance. I recall only one scene in this movie, a back-drop picturing landscape, with a prop tree, a wooden bench, and a few mangy grass mats, but there was one other set representing an inn. I never saw the picture and couldn't tell much about it from the few scenes in which I played. A one-reeler, of course — nine hundred and five feet. Now whether the cost of Biograph pictures was then being figured at a dollar a foot, I do not know. But that was the dizzy average a very short time later. Anyhow, our "Flowering Knighthood" was cheap enough compared with what Mr. Hearst spent thirteen years later on his Cosmopolitan production, which cost him $1,221,491.20, and was completed in the remarkably short time of one hundred sixty working days. Mr. Hearst's "Knighthood" had a remarkable cast of eighteen principal characters representing the biggest names in the theatrical and motion picture world, and the supporting company counted three thousand extra persons and thirty-three horses. Miss Marion Davies as Princess Mary Tudor was assisted by Lyn Harding, the English actor-manager; Pedro De Cordoba, Arthur Forrest (the original Petronius of "Quo Vadis"), Theresa Maxwell Conover, Ernest Glen