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ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN around Los Angeles, but Hollywood's film history was less than three years old.

Two great stars had blazed in the new firmament by 1915, Chaplin and Mary Pickford. Chaplin, who was only two years out of Fred Karno's vaudeville and obscurity, and who had not yet gotten the Cockney out of his speech, already was a world figure. He had finished with Keystone and was in the midst of his Essanay contract when I went to the Coast, and before I left he had signed that staggering six hundred and seventy thousand dollar one-year contract with Mutual for twelve pictures. Broadway jeered at the sum as stage money, but the mint never coined better, nor did a party of the second part ever make a shrewder contract. Those twelve pictures, among them "Easy Street", by and large the best Chaplin ever made, are still going strong and have returned millions.

All the green eyes were not among the legitimate profession. Miss Pickford, whose one hundred and five thousand dollar contract with Famous Players had been the record until then, showed signs of disquiet, and had to be pacified with a share in the profits of her pictures.

Sam Goldwyn, né Goldfish, was making gloves