When the movies were young (1925)

Acquiring Actors and Style 113 looked with varying feelings of resentment and delight at their entrance. We old ones figured that for all our faithfulness and hard work, we might have been raised right off to ten dollars, too. But at least there was hope in that ten per — the proposition looked better now with salaries going up, and actors coming to stay, and willing to forego the dazzling footlights and the sweet applause of the audience. Having reached ten-dollars-a-day, it didn't take so long to climb to twenty — undreamed extravagance — but good advertising along the Rialto and at the Lambs Club. "Twenty dollars a day? It listens well — the movies must have financial standing, anyway," the legitimate concluded. Occasionally, Frank Craven, since famous as the author of many successful Broadway plays, came down and watched pictures being made. While he personally didn't care about the movies, through him Jack Standing came down and jobbed at twenty per. Through friendship for Mr .and Mrs. Frank Powell, with whom he had acted in Ellen Terry's company, David Powell entered the fold for twenty per. Even though money tempted, the high-class actor came more readily through friendship for some one already "in" than as a cold business proposition. Our movie money was talking just the same. But hard as it was to get men, it was much harder to get women. They would not leave that "drammer" (how they loved it!) to work in a dingy studio with no footlights, no admiring audience to applaud them, and no pretty make-ups. Only occasionally did I accompany my husband on a tour of the dramatic agencies, for our manner to each other was still a most unmarried one. I'd wait in the taxi while