I do not know the name of Lillian’s first California picture, nor the sequence of those that followed. Nobody today seems to remember these things, and they are not very important. There was a good deal of sameness about the Westerns, and most of them were that. “A Misunderstood Boy” was among the titles, “Just Gold,” and “The Lady and the Mouse”; but as Griffith was turning out pictures at the rate of one, or two and even three, a week—short films, in those days—these titles suggest no more than brief stages of preparation for the day a year or two later when he would begin to write the Greater Picture story across the screens of the world.
But they did something for Lillian and Dorothy: They taught them the technique and mechanics of film photography, in and out of doors, and their alert minds absorbed it as by instinct. It was only a little while until Griffith discussed his pictures with them, asked their suggestions. And something more: The public recognized their faces from the pictures of the previous summer, and began to inquire who they were.
One day Lillian was interviewed. Surely this was “coming on.” The reporter had heard of Belasco’s verdict; it had run ahead of her, and was known and repeated in California almost as soon as she arrived. The reporter wrote about Belasco, and then on his own account called her “Lillian, the adorable.”
It was pleasant, of course, to be written of like that, but she wished he had said more about her pictures. She led the next reporter around to them, explaining that her work was the important thing. He asked her what one must do to be a screen actress, and quoted her as saying:
“To play for the pictures is mostly a matter of the face, and the inside. You have to learn to think, inside.”
Being a young reporter, he was willing to believe that it was a matter of the face—_her_ face: “A tea rose” he called it, “reflected in a moonlit mirror.” Also he spoke of ivory, and pale jade, and of other things not closely related to acting.
There was no Hollywood in that halcyon day, no picture Hollywood. That “particularly irrational” corner of the universe had as yet neither name nor fame. The Biograph studio was in Los Angeles, on Pico Street, a building thought to be rather large, being one hundred or one-hundred-and-fifty feet long—a narrow shack, used chiefly as a carpentry shop, and for dressing-rooms—one each, for men and women.