John Lothrop Motley - "The Life of John of Barneveld, 1617"

Various - "U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses"

Emile Zola - "The Three Cities Trilogy: Paris, Vol. 4"

Zane Grey - "The Last Trail"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Merton of the Movies

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Merton of the Movies




Not many rehearsals were required for this scene, difficult though
it was. Merton Gill had seized his opportunity. His study of agony
expressions in the film course was here rewarded. The scene closed
with the departure of the little sister. Resolutely, showing the
light of some fierce determination, she put on hat and wraps, spoke
words of promise to the stricken mother and son, and darted out into
the night. The snow whirled in as she opened the door.

"Good work," said Baird to Merton. "If you don't hear from that
little bit you can call me a Swede."

Some later scenes were shot in the same little home, which seemed to
bring the drama to a close. While the returned prodigal lay on the
couch, nursed by the forgiving mother, the sister returned in
company with the New York society girl who seemed aghast at the
wreck of him she had once wooed. Slowly she approached the couch of
the sufferer, tenderly she reached down to enfold him. In some
manner, which Merton could not divine, the lovers had been reunited.

The New York girl was followed by her father--it would seem they had
both come from the hotel--and the father, after giving an order for
more of Mother's grape juice, examined the son's patents. Two of
them he exclaimed with delight over, and at once paid the boy a huge
roll of bills for a tenth interest in them.

Now came the grasping man who held the mortgage and who had counted
upon driving the family into the streets this stormy Christmas eve.
He was overwhelmed with confusion when his money was paid from an
ample hoard, and slunk, shame-faced, out into the night. It could be
seen that Christmas day would dawn bright and happy for the little
group.

To Merton's eye there was but one discord in this finale. He had
known that the cross-eyed man was playing the part of hotel clerk at
the neighbouring resort, but he had watched few scenes in which the
poor fellow acted; and he surely had not known that this man was the
little sister's future husband. It was with real dismay that he
averted his gaze from the embrace that occurred between these two,
as the clerk entered the now happy home.

One other detail had puzzled him. This was the bundle to which he
had clung as he blindly plunged through the storm. He had still
fiercely clutched it after entering the little room, clasping it to
his breast even as he sank at his mother's feet in physical
exhaustion and mental anguish, to implore her forgiveness. Later the
bundle was placed beside him as he lay, pale and wan, on the couch.

He supposed this bundle to contain one of his patents; a question to
Baird when the scene was over proved him to be correct. "Sure," said
Baird, "that's one of your patents." Yet he still wished the little
sister had not been made to marry the cross-eyed hotel clerk.

And another detail lingered in his memory to bother him. The actress
playing his mother was wont to smoke cigarettes when not engaged in
acting. He had long known it. But he now seemed to recall, in that
touching last scene of reconciliation, that she had smoked one while
the camera actually turned. He hoped this was not so. It would mean
a mistake. And Baird would be justly annoyed by the old mother's
carelessness.




CHAPTER XVI

OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE


They were six long weeks doing the new piece. The weeks seemed long
to Merton Gill because there were so many hours, even days, of
enforced idleness. To pass an entire day, his face stiff with the
make-up, without once confronting a camera in action, seemed to him
a waste of his own time and a waste of Baird's money. Yet this
appeared to be one of the unavoidable penalties incurred by those
who engaged in the art of photodrama. Time was needed to create that
world of painted shadows, so swift, so nicely consecutive when
revealed, but so incoherent, so brokenly inconsequent, so
meaningless in the recording.

How little an audience could suspect the vexatious delays ensuing
between, say, a knock at a door and the admission of a visitor to a
neat little home where a fond old mother was trying to pay off a
mortgage with the help of her little ones. How could an audience
divine that a wait of two hours had been caused because a polished
city villain had forgotten his spats? Or that other long waits had
been caused by other forgotten trifles, while an expensive company
of artists lounged about in bored apathy, or smoked, gossiped,
bantered?

Yet no one ever seemed to express concern about these waits. Rarely
were their causes known, except by some frenzied assistant director,
and he, after a little, would cease to be frenzied and fall to
loafing calmly with the others. Merton Gill's education in his
chosen art was progressing. He came to loaf with the unconcern, the
vacuous boredom, the practised nonchalance, of more seasoned
artists.

Sometimes when exteriors were being taken the sky would overcloud
and the sun be denied them for a whole day. The Montague girl would
then ask Merton how he liked Sunny Cafeteria. He knew this was a
jesting term that would stand for sunny California, and never failed
to laugh.

The girl kept rather closely by him during these periods of waiting.
She seemed to show little interest in other members of the company,
and her association with them, Merton noted, was marked by a certain
restraint. With them she seemed no longer to be the girl of free
ways and speech. She might occasionally join a group of the men who
indulged in athletic sports on the grass before the little
farmhouse--for the actors of Mr. Baird's company would all betray
acrobatic tendencies in their idle moments--and he watched one day
while the simple little country sister turned a series of hand-
springs and cart-wheels that evoked sincere applause from the four
New York villains who had been thus solacing their ennui.

But oftener she would sit with Merton on the back seat of one of the
waiting automobiles. She not only kept herself rather aloof from
other members of the company, but she curiously seemed to bring it
about that Merton himself would have little contact with them.
Especially did she seem to hover between him and the company's
feminine members. Among those impersonating guests at the hotel were
several young women of rare beauty with whom he would have been not
unwilling to fraternize in that easy comradeship which seemed to
mark studio life. These were far more alluring than the New York
society girl who wooed him and who had secured the part solely
through Baird's sympathy for her family misfortunes.

They were richly arrayed and charmingly mannered in the scenes he
watched; moreover, they not too subtly betrayed a pleasant
consciousness of Merton's existence. But the Montague girl
noticeably monopolized him when a better acquaintance with the
beauties might have come about. She rather brazenly seemed to be
guarding him. She was always there.

This very apparent solicitude of hers left him feeling pleasantly
important, despite the social contacts it doubtless deprived him of.
He wondered if the Montague girl could be jealous, and cautiously
one day, as they lolled in the motor car, he sounded her.

"Those girls in the hotel scenes--I suppose they're all nice girls
of good family?" he casually observed.

"Huh?" demanded Miss Montague, engaged with a pencil at the moment
in editing her left eyebrow. "Oh, that bunch? Sure, they all come
from good old Southern families--Virginia and Indiana and those
places." She tightened her lips before the little mirror she held
and renewed their scarlet. Then she spoke more seriously. "Sure,
Kid, those girls are all right enough. They work like dogs and do
the best they can when they ain't got jobs. I'm strong for 'em. But
then, I'm a wise old trouper. I understand things. You don't. You're
the real country wild rose of this piece. It's a good thing you got
me to ride herd on you. You're far too innocent to be turned loose
on a comedy lot.

"Listen, boy--" She turned a sober face to him--"the straight lots
are fairly decent, but get this: a comedy lot is the toughest place
this side of the bad one. Any comedy lot."

"But this isn't a comedy lot. Mr. Baird isn't doing comedies any
more, and these people all seem to be nice people. Of course some of
the ladies smoke cigarettes--"

The girl had averted her face briefly, but now turned to him again.
"Of course that's so; Jeff is trying for the better things; but he's
still using lots of his old people. They're all right for me, but
not for you. You wouldn't last long if mother here didn't look out
for you. I'm playing your dear little sister, but I'm playing your
mother, too. If it hadn't been for me this bunch would have taught
you a lot of things you'd better learn some other way. Just for one
thing, long before this you'd probably been hopping up your
reindeers and driving all over in a Chinese sleigh."

He tried to make something of this, but found the words meaningless.
They merely suggested to him a snowy winter scene of Santa Claus and
his innocent equipage. But he would intimate that he understood.

"Oh, I guess not," he said knowingly. The girl appeared not to have
heard this bit of pretense.

"On a comedy lot," she said, again becoming the oracle, "you can do
murder if you wipe up the blood. Remember that."

He did not again refer to the beautiful young women who came from
fine old Southern homes. The Montague girl was too emphatic about
them.

At other times during the long waits, perhaps while they ate lunch
brought from the cafeteria, she would tell him of herself. His old
troubling visions of his wonder-woman, of Beulah Baxter the daring,
had well-nigh faded, but now and then they would recur as if from
long habit, and he would question the girl about her life as a
double.

"Yeah, I could see that Baxter business was a blow to you, Kid.
You'd kind of worshiped her, hadn't you?"

"Well, I--yes, in a sort of way--"

"Of course you did; it was very nice of you--" She reached over to
pat his hand. "Mother understands just how you felt, watching the
films back there in Gooseberry "--He had quit trying to correct her
as to Gashwiler and Simsbury. She had hit upon Gooseberry as a
working composite of both names, and he had wearily come to accept
it--"and I know just how you felt"--Again she patted his hand--"that
night when you found me doing her stuff."

"It did kind of upset me."

"Sure it would! But you ought to have known that all these people
use doubles when they can--men and women both. It not only saves 'em
work, but even where they could do the stuff if they had to--and
that ain't so often--it saves 'em broken bones, and holding up a big
production two or three months. Fine business that would be. So when
you see a woman, or a man either, doing something that someone else
could do, you can bet someone else is doing it. What would you
expect? Would you expect a high-priced star to go out and break his
leg?

"And at that, most of the doubles are men, even for the women stars,
like Kitty Carson always carries one who used to be a circus
acrobat. She couldn't hardly do one of the things you see her doing,
but when old Dan gets on her blonde transformation and a few of her
clothes, he's her to the life in a long shot, or even in mediums, if
he keeps his map covered.

"Yeah, most of the doublers have to be men. I'll hand that to
myself. I'm about the only girl that's been doing it, and that's out
with me hereafter, I guess, the way I seem to be making good with
Jeff. Maybe after this I won't have to do stunts, except of course
some riding stuff, prob'ly, or a row of flips or something light.
Anything heavy comes up--me for a double of my own." She glanced
sidewise at her listener. "Then you won't like me any more, hey,
Kid, after you find out I'm using a double?"

He had listened attentively, absorbed in her talk, and seemed
startled by this unforeseen finish. He turned anxious eyes on her.
It occurred to him for the first time that he did not wish the
Montague girl to do dangerous things any more. "Say," he said
quickly, amazed at his own discovery, "I wish you'd quit doing all
those--stunts, do you call 'em?"

"Why?" she demanded. There were those puzzling lights back in her
eyes as he met them. He was confused.

"Well, you might get hurt."

"Oh!"

"You might get killed sometime. And it wouldn't make the least
difference to me, your using a double. I'd like you just the same."

"I see; it wouldn't be the way it was with Baxter when you found it
out."

"No; you--you're different. I don't want you to get killed," he
added, rather blankly. He was still amazed at this discovery.

"All right, Kid. I won't," she replied soothingly.

"I'll like you just as much," he again assured her, "no matter how
many doubles you have."

"Well, you'll be having doubles yourself, sooner or later--and I'll
like you, too." She reached over to his hand, but this time she held
it. He returned her strong clasp. He had not liked to think of her
being mangled perhaps by a fall into a quarry when the cable gave
way--and the camera men would probably keep on turning!

"I always been funny about men," she presently spoke again, still
gripping his hand. "Lord knows I've seen enough of all kinds, bad
and good, but I always been kind of afraid even of the good ones.
Any one might not think it, but I guess I'm just natural-born shy.
Man-shy, anyway."

He glowed with a confession of his own. "You know, I'm that way,
too. Girl-shy. I felt awful awkward when I had to kiss you in the
other piece. I never did, really--" He floundered a moment, but was
presently blurting out the meagre details of that early amour with
Edwina May Pulver. He stopped this recital in a sudden panic fear
that the girl would make fun of him. He was immensely relieved when
she merely renewed the strength of the handclasp.

"I know. That's the way with me. Of course I can put over the acting
stuff, even vamping, but I'm afraid of men off-stage. Say, would you
believe it, I ain't ever had but one beau. That was Bert Stacy. Poor
old Bert! He was lots older than me; about thirty, I guess. He was
white all through. You always kind of remind me of him. Sort of a
feckless dub he was, too; kind of honest and awkward--you know. He
was the one got me doing stunts. He wasn't afraid of anything.
Didn't know it was even in the dictionary. That old scout would go
out night or day and break everything but his contract. I was twelve
when I first knew him and he had me doing twisters in no time. I
caught on to the other stuff pretty good. I wasn't afraid, either,
I'll say that for myself. First I was afraid to show him I was
afraid, but pretty soon I wasn't afraid at all.

"We pulled off a lot of stuff for different people. And of course I
got to be a big girl and three years ago when I was eighteen Bert
wanted us to be married and I thought I might as well. He was the
only one I hadn't been afraid of. So we got engaged. I was still
kind of afraid to marry any one, but being engaged was all right. I
know we'd got along together, too, but then he got his with a
motorcycle.

"Kind of funny. He'd do anything on that machine. He'd jump clean
over an auto and he'd leap a thirty-foot ditch and he was all set to
pull a new one for Jeff Baird when it happened. Jeff was going to
have him ride his motorcycle through a plate-glass window. The set
was built and everything ready and then the merry old sun don't
shine for three days. Every morning Bert would go over to the lot
and wait around in the fog. And this third day, when it got too late
in the afternoon to shoot even if the sun did show, he says to me,
'c'mon, hop up and let's take a ride down to the beach.' So I hop to
the back seat and off we start and on a ninety-foot paved boulevard
what does Bert do but get caught in a jam? It was an ice wagon that
finally bumped us over. I was shook up and scraped here and there.
But Bert was finished. That's the funny part. He'd got it on this
boulevard, but back on the lot he'd have rode through that plate-
glass window probably without a scratch. And just because the sun
didn't shine that day, I wasn't engaged any more. Bert was kind of
like some old sea-captain that comes back to shore after risking his
life on the ocean in all kinds of storms, and falls into a duck-pond
and gets drowned."

She sat a long time staring out over the landscape, still holding
his hand. Inside the fence before the farmhouse three of the New
York villains were again engaged in athletic sports, but she seemed
oblivious of these. At last she turned to him again with an
illumining smile.

"But I was dead in love once before that, and that's how I know just
how you feel about Baxter. He was the preacher where we used to go
to church. He was a good one. Pa copied a lot of his stuff that he
uses to this day if he happens to get a preacher part. He was the
loveliest thing. Not so young, but dark, with wonderful eyes and
black hair, and his voice would go all through you. I had an awful
case on him. I was twelve, and all week I used to think how I'd see
him the next Sunday. Say, when I'd get there and he'd be working--
doing pulpit stuff--he'd have me in kind of a trance.

"Sometimes after the pulpit scene he'd come down right into the
audience and shake hands with people. I'd almost keel over if he'd
notice me. I'd be afraid if he would and afraid if he wouldn't. If
he said 'And how is the little lady this morning?' I wouldn't have a
speck of voice to answer him. I'd just tremble all over. I used to
dream I'd get a job workin' for him as extra, blacking his shoes or
fetching his breakfast and things.

"It was the real thing, all right. I used to try to pray the way he
did--asking the Lord to let me do a character bit or something with
him. He had me going all right. You must 'a' been that way about
Baxter. Sure you were. When you found she was married and used a
double and everything, it was like I'd found this preacher shooting
hop or using a double in his pulpit stuff."

She was still again, looking back upon this tremendous episode.

"Yes, that's about the way I felt," he told her. Already his affair
with Mrs. Rosenblatt seemed a thing of his childhood. He was
wondering, rather, if the preacher could have been the perfect
creature the girl was now picturing him. It would not have
displeased him to learn that this refulgent being had actually used
a double in his big scenes, or had been guilty of mere human
behaviour at odd moments. Probably, after all, he had been just a
preacher. "Uncle Sylvester used to want me to be a preacher," he
said, with apparent irrelevance, "even if he was his own worst
enemy." He added presently, as the girl remained silent, "I always
say my prayers at night." He felt vaguely that this might raise him
to the place of the other who had been adored. He was wishing to be
thought well of by this girl.

She was aroused from her musing by his confession. "You do? Now
ain't that just like you? I'd have bet you did that. Well, keep on,
son. It's good stuff."

Her serious mood seemed to pass. She was presently exchanging tart
repartee with the New York villains who had perched in a row on the
fence to be funny about that long--continued holding of hands in the
motor car. She was quite unembarrassed, however, as she dropped the
hand with a final pat and vaulted to the ground over the side of the
car.

"Get busy, there!" she ordered. "Where's your understander--where's
your top-mounter?" She became a circus ringmaster. "Three up and a
roll for yours," she commanded. The three villains aligned
themselves on the lawn. One climbed to the shoulders of the other
and a third found footing on the second. They balanced there,
presently to lean forward from the summit. The girl played upon an
imaginary snare drum with a guttural, throaty imitation of its roll,
culminating in the "boom!" of a bass-drum as the tower toppled to
earth. Its units, completing their turn with somersaults, again
stood in line, bowing and smirking their acknowledgments for
imagined applause.

The girl, a moment later, was turning hand-springs. Merton had never
known that actors were so versatile. It was an astounding
profession, he thought, remembering his own registration card that
he had filled out at the Holden office. His age, height, weight,
hair, eyes, and his chest and waist measures; these had been
specified, and then he had been obliged to write the short "No"
after ride, drive, swim, dance--to write "No" after "Ride?" even in
the artistically photographed presence of Buck Benson on horseback!

Yet in spite of these disabilities he was now a successful actor at
an enormous salary. Baird was already saying that he would soon have
a contract for him to sign at a still larger figure. Seemingly it
was a profession in which you could rise even if you were not able
to turn hand-springs or were more or less terrified by horses and
deep water and dance music.

And the Montague girl, who, he now fervently hoped, would not be
killed while doubling for Mrs. Rosenblatt, was a puzzling creature.
He thought his hand must still be warm from her enfolding of it,
even when work was resumed and he saw her, with sunbonnet pushed
back, stand at the gate of the little farmhouse and behave in an
utterly brazen manner toward one of the New York clubmen who was
luring her up to the great city. She, who had just confided to him
that she was afraid of men, was now practically daring an undoubted
scoundrel to lure her up to the great city and make a lady of her.
And she had been afraid of all but a clergyman and a stunt actor! He
wondered interestingly if she were afraid of Merton Gill. She seemed
not to be.

On another day of long waits they ate their lunch from the cafeteria
box on the steps of the little home and discussed stage names. "I
guess we better can that 'Clifford Armytage' stuff," she told him as
she seriously munched a sandwich. "We don't need it. That's out.
Merton Gill is a lot better name." She had used "we" quite as if it
were a community name.

"Well, if you think so--" he began regretfully, for Clifford
Armytage still seemed superior to the indistinction of Merton Gill.

"Sure, it's a lot better," she went on. "That 'Clifford Armytage'--
say, it reminds me of just another such feckless dub as you that
acted with us one time when we all trouped in a rep show, playing
East Lynne and such things. He was just as wise as you are, and when
he joined out at Kansas City they gave him a whole book of the piece
instead of just his sides. He was a quick study, at that, only he
learned everybody's part as well as his own, and that slowed him.
They put him on in Waco, and the manager was laid up, so they told
him that after the third act he was to go out and announce the bill
for the next night, and he learned that speech, too.

"He got on fine till the big scene in the third act. Then he went
bloody because that was as far as he'd learned, so he just left the
scene cold and walked down to the foots and bowed and said, 'Ladies
and gentlemen, we thank you for your attendance here this evening
and to-morrow night we shall have the honour of presenting Lady
Audley's Secret.'

"With that he gave a cold look to the actors back of him that were
gasping like fish, and walked off. And he was like you in another
way because his real name was Eddie Duffy, and the lovely stage name
he'd picked out was Clyde Maltravers."

"Well, Clifford Armytage is out, then," Merton announced, feeling
that he had now buried a part of his dead self in a grave where
Beulah Baxter, the wonder-woman, already lay interred. Still, he was
conscious of a certain relief. The stage name had been bothersome.

"It ain't as if you had a name like mine," the girl went on. "I
simply had to have help."

He wondered what her own name was. He had never heard her called
anything but the absurd and undignified "Flips." She caught the
question he had looked.

"Well, my honest-to-God name is Sarah Nevada Montague; Sarah for Ma
and Nevada for Reno where Ma had to stop off for me--she was out of
the company two weeks--and if you ever tell a soul I'll have the law
on you. That was a fine way to abuse a helpless baby, wasn't it?"

"But Sarah is all right. I like Sarah."

"Do you, Kid?" She patted his hand. "All right, then, but it's only
for your personal use."

"Of course the Nevada--" he hesitated. "It does sound kind of like a
geography lesson or something. But I think I'll call you Sarah, I
mean when we're alone." "Well, that's more than Ma ever does, and
you bet it'll never get into my press notices. But go ahead if you
want to."

"I will, Sarah. It sounds more like a true woman than 'Flips.'"

"Bless the child's heart," she murmured, and reached across the
lunch box to pat his hand again.

"You're a great little patter, Sarah," he observed with one of his
infrequent attempts at humour.

On still another day, while they idled between scenes, she talked to
him about salaries and contracts, again with her important air of
mothering him.