Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/190

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN William De Mille, an actor. Friend was a lawyer with some theatrical interests. Before the luncheon checks were paid, Goldfish, Lasky and Friend each had put up five thousand dollars. De Mille took the fifteen thousand dollars westward, found a stable in Vine Street in a Los Angeles suburb called Hollywood, and ground out the first of the Lasky pictures, "The Squaw Man." The afternoon of the luncheon, Lasky and Friend had looked up Dustin Farnum at the Lambs Club and signed him up for the lead in the picture. Farnum had starred in the stage production some seasons earlier. Lasky and Friend offered him a fifth interest in the new company as his pay, but Farnum demanded and received cash in hand, a decision he has had ample leisure to repent.

My first picture was "Don Quixote." As I studied Cervantes' story, which I had not read until then, I fell captive to that mad, lean knight, as have all who ever read him, and forgot all my actor's disdain for the films. No boy or girl newly raised to stardom ever began his first picture with greater zest than I. I thought I saw before me an opportunity to recreate an immortal character of fiction in a fashion impossible to my own stage. But my new enthusiasm