By Morris Gest (1916)
Editor's Note: Movie high salary records are now eclipsed by Geraldine Farrar's figure. Exact sums are not revealed, but Lasky's accepted offer of $2 a minute for every minute of daylight while she is in southern California will make a total of more than $75,000 for her summer engagement. Incidentally, it required a unique theatrical personality like Mr. Gest to win over the queen of the Metropolitan Opera House. Miss Farrar's private-car party will leave New York for Los Angeles June 8.
It is the hardest thing in the world to approach one's friends on a matter of business. Bringing Geraldine Farrar to pictorial reason and the movies was made much more difficult for me because my mother-in-law, Mrs. David Belasco, my wife, and Miss Farrar and her father and mother, form a little intimate circle which meets often at one of Mrs. Gest's dinners, or at Miss Farrar's beautiful West Seventy-fourth street house, or downtown.
One Sunday night last winter, at dinner at Miss Farrar's, were herself, her father and mother, Mrs. Belasco, Mrs. Smythe, Mrs. Gest, and I. Over the coffee Miss Farrar had a moment of melancholy philosophy.
"How cruel it is," she exclaimed, "that riches, or at least comfort, come to most people when they are too old or too weary to enjoy life or the beauty of countries and peoples they have never seen!"
She led us to her library, where she has a number of presentation portraits of eminent European personages. Among them is a painting of the Emperor of Germany in the full flower of early maturity. It was a favorite portrait, presented to her by the Emperor himself.
"How different he is now," she said. "Really- to perpetuate one's youth one should have a photograph taken every day until age begins."
This gave me the first opportunity to little hint of active photography's possibilities in her mind.
"The only way to really live forever," I answered, "is on a picture screen. The chap who invented the movie camera found the eternal youth spring that Ponce de Leon missed."
Miss Farrar laughed the suggestion away, but it occurred to me, in coincidence, that Mr. Belasco's Girl of the Golden West was having its first picture showing that very evening at the Strand.
Miss Farrar was very glad to attend, but in the limousine en route confessed to me that she had seen but one "picture show" in her life- Quo Vadis, only a year ago at the Cinema Theater, in Paris.
"I've been just too busy, resting or working, to go," she explained. "No prejudice, I assure you. I rather like them." I've noticed that the novice beginner always refers to screen plays as "them."
But her amazement knew no bounds once she had entered the Strand.
"Why," she cried, "it is almost as big as the Metropolitan Opera House! I had no idea so many people went to see moving pictures and such people! I really see opera-goers here!" Of course.
"Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing-" I hesitated.
"What?" asked Miss Farrar, impatient at my interruption of her study of the screen.
"I won't tell you now. I'm afraid you'd laugh." She persisted, with great curiosity.
"Look around," I continued, when an intermission came. "Here are nearly four thousand people in this enormous theater. Here is a play which was given by high-salaried artists in a high-priced theater to a very limited audience. Here we have four times Mr. Belasco's original audience, seeing a superb production of his play for a quarter of a dollar- and perhaps thirty other audiences, in thirty widely separated cities, are seeing the same thing."
"Well?" from the prima-donna.
"Just this: wouldn't it be a wonderful thing for the thousands of people who may never see or hear you- through limitations of purse or geography- to see your image on the screen, in a great dramatic part?"
"Do you mean that, Morris?"
"I was never more serious in my life."
"I don't believe that the people would really have any interest in seeing me in pictures," she answered, with some solemnity. "They come to the Metropolitan to hear me sing, but if I should lose my voice over night, do you think they would still come to see me? No! And they would make unkind remarks, too; I am afraid I should be an awful failure if I relied on acting alone."
I did not pursue the subject further, but when we had returned to Miss Farrar's house for supper, I told everyone at the table that I was trying to induce Miss Farrar to pose for moving pictures.
"Splendid!" cried her mother. "Think of it, Jerry! When you are away from me I could turn the crank of a machine right here in our home, and really see you, though you would be hundreds of miles away from me."
The next time we met was at Miss Farrar's birthday party. Notwithstanding a happy gathering, she did not seem to be happy. The European war, ruining opera on the continent, had deprived her of her customary summer of international activity.
"Let's all go to the great fair at San Francisco!" suggested Mrs. Belasco.
"Why not make it a business and pleasure trip combined," I interposed. "The greatest studios in the world are located at Los Angeles."
Miss Farrar drew me to one side, confidentially.
"I have been thinking very seriously of your suggestion of the other night," she said. "I have seen some pictures, and I believe a new and very great art is being born. Let's make a real business appointment and talk this over."
In all my experiences during my ten years' connection with Hammerstein's Victoria Theater, where I had to handle everything from a Caucasus bear to a Russian giant or a fake Sultan with a large family, I had never been so nervous as when I called on Geraldine Farrar the following Thursday night. I had often been a guest; now I was just a Gest on business.
We chatted of various affairs; of my play "Experience" at the Casino- of everything except the subject in hand.
At length I endeavored to show her what a wonderful thing it would be if her performance of "Carmen" could be perpetuated in motion photography. "There are nine million records of your voice to-day," I declared, "and everyone who owns Farrar records has a 'Carmen' record. Every one of those people, as well as many others, would be more than glad of the opportunity to see you as an actress even as they now hear you as a singer. Your voice is heard in every American town and city of consequence, and yet you've been in comparatively few of these places. Do you think that your actual moving personality would have less appeal?"
"Do you really think, Morris, that I would be good in moving pictures?" She is entirely unassuming, and unpresuming, which is more. "In music drama I always give the best that is in me, hut this is a new thing. I might be an absolute failure posing before the camera. How can I possibly get up any thrills or enthusiasm before a lot of blinding lights and a rumpled man monotonously turning a crank?"
I began to walk up and down the floor in excited fashion. I argued as a lawyer before a jury. I told her that she was a national character as well as an international artist, and that it was her duty as an American to preserve her art for future American edification. When she protested- weakening- that she would probably be hailed as a bad actress, I indignantly recalled her tremendous impersonation of Tosca, her incomparable Madame Butterfly, her wonderful Manon.
I slept little that night. The next morning I called up Jesse Lasky, and made an appointment for luncheon at the hotel Astor. I told Mr. Lasky that I had a very big proposition of which I wished to talk later- meanwhile, I invited him to the Metropolitan that night, to see Miss Farrar in "Madame Butterfly."
He attended, and enthused.
Later, at supper in the Knickerbocker, I said suddenly: "What would you say if I told you that I could get Miss Farrar for your photoplays?"
"I should say you were a liar," returned Mr. Lasky, promptly and cheerfully.
"Well, what would you do if I did get her?"
"You put the question wrong. What wouldn't we do?" returned Mr. Lasky.
"Give me some proposition that I can take to her," I answered.
"You can say to Miss Farrar," continued Mr. Lasky, "that we will sign her not by the year as some stars are signed; not by the month, or by the week, or by the day, but by the minutes and if necessary by the second. You call tell her that for every minute of daylight she is in Southern California, whether she is at the studio or not, I will pay her two dollars- and a royalty, and a share of all profits."
Unlike a great many opera stars, Miss Farrar is not mercenary. In all our conversations only the artistic side of her pictures had been discussed. We almost had our first serious quarrel over her attempt to force me to take the profit-and-royalty clause for myself. I at length made her see that my interest was a friendly one, and that I had not invaded her home as a friend to make personal profit.
"I'll go provided you and Mrs. Gest go with me on my private car," she said at length. "Agreed!" I answered, "if you will pledge yourself to play me three numbers of Rimsky Korsakoff's "Scherazade" ballet on the piano every day."
And she agreed.
Original article by Morris Gest, 1915.
Morris Gest, "Winning Farrar," Photoplay Magazine, July 1915, pages 115-117.
© 1997, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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