H.B.  Aitken, president of the Triangle Film Corporation, said to me:  “The screen is intimate.  The camera brings the actor right into your lap.  In the speaking drama, make-up and footlights change and hide, but not the least flicker of expression is lost in the picture.  It’s a test of real-ness, and it takes a real man or a real woman to stand it.  Art isn’t the thing at all, nor do looks count for half as much as people suppose.  It’s what’s back of the art and the looks that makes the hit, and if they haven’t got something, the artist and the beauty don’t last long.  We picked Douglas Fairbanks as a likely film star, not on account of his stunts, as the majority think, but because of the splendid humanness that fairly oozed out of him.”

[Illustration:  A Close-Up (Lumiere)]

When he isn’t before the camera, or fooling with an airship or a motor, or playing with children, or “gettin’ acquainted” with a tramp or a trapper, or practising stunts with a rope or a horse, young Mr. Fairbanks fills in his spare time writing scenarios.  As everyone knows, the motion-picture drama has been a tawdry thing for the most part—­either a rehash of old stage plays, novels, and short stories, or else mediocre “originalities” that epitomized banality.  Young Mr. Fairbanks dissented from the established custom from the very start.

“It’s all wrong,” he declared.  “We’ve got to stand on our own feet.  Develop your own dramatists!”

Practically every play in which he has appeared sprang from his personal suggestion, and in many of them he has collaborated with the scenario writer.  The three things that he demands are Action, Wholesomeness, and Sentiment that rings true.

Never make the mistake of thinking that Douglas Fairbanks starts and finishes with mere good humor and physical exuberance.  There is more to him than his grin, for his mind is as strong and vigorous as his body.  He reads and thinks, and behind his smile is a quick and eager sympathy that takes account of the sadnesses of life as well as its promises.

“The Habit of Happiness” was very much his own idea, and in it he took occasion to show a midnight bread-line, the misery of the slums, and various forms of social injustice.  It isn’t that he thinks himself called to uplift and reform, but, as he expresses it, “Every little bit helps.”

In the last talk that I had with him, he was enthusiastic over the future of the movies as a world force.  He speaks in ideas rather than words, for when he feels that he has indicated the thought he never troubles to finish the particular sentence.

“Pictures are like music,” he declared.  “They speak a universal language.  Great industry—­just in its infancy—­before long films will pass from one country to another—­internationalism.  Why not?  Love, hate, grief, ambition, laughter—­they belong to one race as much as another—­all peoples understand them.  It’s hard to hate people after you know them.  Pictures will let us know each other.  They’ll break down the hard national lines that now make for war and suspicion.”