Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/173



Before any one else can say it first, let me admit that I was no earth-shaking success in the movies. If the truth must be known, I died on the silver screen; I sank majestically beneath the oily waves of the cinema sea and never was heard of again. Not so much as a life belt or a spar was picked up. The fact that a gallant company of stage celebrities perished with me made my demise less poignant personally, but not the less indisputable.

And so it may be suggested that the lavender grapes of Hollywood are sour to my palate only because I found them beyond my reach. Be that as it may, as George Monroe used to say.

I was part of the Triangle Film Corporation, the first great flourish of that prattling infant industry. That was a scant twelve years ago, yet it will entitle my posterity to membership in good standing, if not in the Mayflower Society, at least in the Colonial Dames of Hollywood,