When the movies were young (1925)

170 When the Movies were Young cast in old Spain rang silently on the screen. The Biograph Company brought out a special folder with cuts and descriptive matter. The picture was Mr. Griffith's most artistic creation to date. Nor did we neglect the oil fields, for oil had its romance. So at Olinda, that tremendous field, we "took" plungers innumerable and expensive oil spilling out of huge barrels into little lakes, all black and smooth and shiny. The picture, called "Unexpected Help," had Arthur Johnson and little Gladys Egan as star actors. One other oil picture we did, "A Rich Revenge," a comedy of the California oil fields, with Mary Pickford and Billy Quirk. We had located a picturesque oil field. A crabbed-looking man in dirty blue jeans seemed the only person about. We asked him would there be any objection to our working, and he gruffly answered in the negative. So we "set up," and got our scenes ; and, work finished, looked about for our man, wishing to thank him. Feeling sorry for him, we went one better and tendered him a twenty-dollar gold piece. When he saw that money, he began to curse us so hard that we were glad when we hit the highway. At the garage in the village we made inquiries and were enlightened. The man of the dirty blue jeans was none other than the millionaire owner of the oil well, an oil well that was gushing one fair fortune per day. And though he refused our money as though it were poison, three times a week that man walked to Santa Ana, ten miles distant, where he could buy a ten-cent pie for five cents. Still more atmosphere we recorded in a picture called "As It Is In Life" — the famous old pigeon farm located near the dry bed of the San Gabriel River. Shortly after