of National Pictures Company left the family stranded in California after only one picture. Deciding it was smarter to aim high, they went to Triangle Film Corporation, where D. W. Griffith was supervising productions. On the strength of The Battle Cry, Talmadge got a contract with Griffith's Fine Arts Company. For eight months, she starred in seven features for Triangle, including the comedy The Social Secretary (1916), written by Anita Loos and directed by John Emerson, which gave her an opportunity to disguise her beauty as a girl trying to avoid the unwelcome attentions of her male employers. Norma Talmadge Film Corporation When the contract ran out, the Talmadges returned to New York. At a party, Talmadge met Broadway and film producer Joseph M. Schenck, a wealthy exhibitor who wanted to produce his own films. Immediately taken by Talmadge both personally and professionally, Schenck proposed marriage and a production studio. Two months later, on October 20, 1916, they were married. Talmadge called her much older husband "Daddy". He supervised, controlled, and nurtured her career in alliance with her mother. In 1917, the couple formed the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation, which became a lucrative enterprise. Schenck vowed he would make his wife the greatest star of all, one to be remembered always. The best stories, most opulent costumes, grandest sets, talented casts, and distinguished directors, along with spectacular publicity, would be hers. Before long, women around the world wanted to be the romantic Norma Talmadge and flocked to her extravagant movies filmed on the East Coast. Schenck soon had a stable of stars operating in his studio in New York, with the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation making dramas on the ground floor, the Constance Talmadge Film Corporation making sophisticated comedies on the second floor, and the comic unit with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle on the top floor, with Natalie Talmadge acting as secretary and taking occasional small roles in her sisters' films. Arbuckle brought in his nephew Al St. John and vaudeville star Buster Keaton. When Schenck decided it was financially advantageous to rent Arbuckle to Paramount Pictures for feature films, Keaton took over the comedy unit and was soon brought into the Talmadge family fold, at least for a time through an unhappy arranged marriage to Natalie Talmadge. Talmadge's first film for her studio, the now lost Panthea (1917), was directed by Allan Dwan with assistants Erich von Stroheim and Arthur