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D. W. Griffith Directs His First Movie 49
"Not bad, but it don't hang together. Good acting; you're good, quite surprised me. No one I can use for a husband though. I must have some one who looks like a 'husband' — who looks as though he owned more than a cigarette. I heard around the studio that they were going to hand me a bunch of lemons for actors."
So, dashing madly here and there for a father for little Dolly, Mr. Griffith saw coming down Broadway a young man of smiling countenance — just the man — his very ideal. Of course, he must be an actor. There was no time for hesitation.
"Pardon me, but would you care to act in a moving picture? I am going to direct a moving picture, and I have a part that suits you exactly."
"Moving pictures, did you say? Picture acting? I am sure I don't know what you are talking about. I don't know anything about picture acting."
"You don't need to know — just meet me at the Grand Central Depot at nine o'clock to-morrow morning."
And so Arthur Johnson became a movie actor.
To my mind no personality has since flickered upon the screen with quite the charm, lovableness, and magnetic humor that were his. He never acquired affectations, which made him a rare person indeed, considering the tremendous popularity that became his and the world of affectation in which he lived.
For the gypsy man Mr. Griffith selected Charles Inslee, an excellent actor whom he had known on the Coast. Mr. Inslee was a temperamental sort, but Mr. Griffith knew how to handle him. So with Mrs. Gebhardt for the gypsy wife, Mr. Griffith completed his cast without using a single one of the "lemons" that were to have been wished upon him ;