When the movies were young (1925)

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52 When the Movies were Young up from passers-by — frequenters of Union Square — lured by a ten-cent entertainment. These were the people to be pleased — they who had paid out their little nickels and dimes. So when they sat through Dolly's seven hundred feet, interested, and not a snore was to be heard, we concluded we'd had a successful opening night. The contract was drawn for one year. It called for forty-five dollars per week with a royalty of a mill a foot on all film sold. Mr. Marvin thought it rather foolish to accept so small a salary and assured my husband the percentage would amount to nothing whatever right off. But David was willing — rather more than willing — to gamble on himself. And he gambled rather well this time. For, the first year his royalty check went from practically nothing to four and five hundred dollars a month — before the end of the year. Wonderful it was — too good to be true. Although, had he known then that for evermore, through weeks and months and years, it was to be movies, movies, nothing but movies, David Griffith would probably then and there have chucked the job, or, keeping it, would have wept bitter, bitter tears.