When the movies were young (1925)

CHAPTER XIV MARY PICKF0RD HAPPENS ALONG J"T was a bright May morning in 1909. When I came A off the scene, I noticed a little girl sitting quietly in a corner near the door. She looked about fourteen. I afterwards learned she was nearing seventeen. She wore a plain navy-blue serge suit, a blue-andwhite striped lawn shirtwaist, a rolled brim Tuscan straw sailor hat with a dark blue ribbon bow. About her face, so fresh, so pretty, and so gentle, bobbed a dozen or more short golden curls — such perfect little curls as I had never seen. A timid applicant usually hugged the background. Bold ones would press forward to the camera and stand there, obtruding themselves, in the hope that the director would see them, like their look, and engage them for a day's work. But Mary Pickford tucked herself away in a niche, while she quietly gave us "the once over." The boss's eagle eye had been roving her way at intervals, the while he directed, for here was something "different" — a maid so fair and an actress to boot ! Pausing a moment in his work, he came over to me and said, "Don't you think she would be good for Pippa?" "Ideal," I answered. Before we closed shop that day, he had Mary make up — gave her a violin, and told her to walk across the stage while playing it so that Billy Bitzer could make a test. Before she left the studio that day, every actor there 99