Books: Merton of the Movies

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The daughter Merton did not like. She was not unattractive in
appearance, though her features were far off the screen-heroine
model, her nose being too short, her mouth too large, her cheekbones
too prominent, and her chin too square. Indeed, she resembled too
closely her father, who, as a man, could carry such things more
becomingly. She was a slangy chit, much too free and easy in her
ways, Merton considered, and revealing a self-confidence that
amounted almost to impudence. Further, her cheeks were brown, her
brief nose freckled, and she did not take the pains with her face
that most of the beautiful young women who waited there had so
obviously taken. She was a harum-scarum baggage with no proper
respect for any one, he decided, especially after the day she had so
rudely accosted one of the passing directors. He was a more than
usually absorbed director, and with drawn brows would have gone
unseeing through the waiting room when the girl hailed him.

"Oh, Mr. Henshaw, one moment please!"

He glanced up in some annoyance, pausing with his hand to the door
that led on to his proper realm.

"Oh, it's you, Miss Montague! Well, what is it? I'm very, very
busy."

"Well, it's something I wanted to ask you." She quickly crossed the
room to stand by him, tenderly flecking a bit of dust from his coat
sleeve as she began, "Say, listen, Mr. Henshaw: Do you think beauty
is a curse to a poor girl?"

Mr. Henshaw scowled down into the eyes so confidingly lifted to his.

"That's something you won't ever have to worry about," he snapped,
and was gone, his brows again drawn in perplexity over his work.

"You're not angry with poor little me, are you, Mr. Henshaw?"

The girl called this after him and listened, but no reply came from
back of the partition.

Mrs. Montague, from the bench, rebuked her daughter.

"Say, what do you think that kidding stuff will get you? Don't you
want to work for him any more?"

The girl turned pleading eyes upon her mother.

"I think he might have answered a simple question," said she.

This was all distasteful to Merton Gill. The girl might, indeed,
have deserved an answer to her simple question, but why need she ask
it of so busy a man? He felt that Mr. Henshaw's rebuke was well
merited, for her own beauty was surely not excessive.

Her father, from the bench, likewise admonished her.

"You are sadly prone to a spirit of banter," he declared, "though I
admit that the so-called art of the motion picture is not to be
regarded too seriously. It was not like that in my day. Then an
actor had to be an artist; there was no position for the little he-
doll whippersnapper who draws the big money to-day and is ignorant
of even the rudiments of the actor's profession."

He allowed his glance to rest perceptibly upon Merton Gill, who felt
uncomfortable.

"We were with Looey James five years," confided Mrs. Montague to her
neighbours. "A hall show, of course--hadn't heard of movies then--
doing Virginius and Julius Csesar and such classics, and then
starting out with The Two Orphans for a short season. We were a
knock-out, I'll say that. I'll never forget the night we opened the
new opera house at Akron. They had to put the orchestra under the
stage."

"And the so-called art of the moving picture robs us of our little
meed of applause," broke in her husband. "I shall never forget a
remark of the late Lawrence Barrett to me after a performance of
Richelieu in which he had fairly outdone himself. 'Montague, my
lad,' said he 'we may work for the money, but we play for the
applause.' But now our finest bits must go in silence, or perhaps be
interrupted by a so-called director who arrogates to himself the
right to instill into us the rudiments of a profession in which we
had grounded ourselves ere yet he was out of leading strings. Too
often, naturally, the results are discouraging."

The unabashed girl was meantime having sprightly talk with the
casting director, whom she had hailed through the window as
Countess. Merton, somewhat startled, wondered if the little woman
could indeed be of the nobility.

"Hello, Countess! Say, listen, can you give the camera a little peek
at me to-day, or at pa or ma? 'No, nothing to-day, dear.'" She had
imitated the little woman's voice in her accustomed reply. "Well, I
didn't think there would be. I just thought I'd ask. You ain't mad,
are you? I could have gone on in a harem tank scene over at the
Bigart place, but they wanted me to dress the same as a fish, and a
young girl's got to draw the line somewhere. Besides, I don't like
that Hugo over there so much. He hates to part with anything like
money, and he'll gyp you if he can. Say, I'll bet he couldn't play
an honest game of solitaire. How'd you like my hair this way? Like
it, eh? That's good. And me having the only freckles left in all
Hollywood. Ain't I the little prairie flower, growing wilder every
hour?

"Say, on the level, pa needs work. These days when he's idle he
mostly sticks home and tries out new ways to make prime old Kentucky
sour mash in eight hours. If he don't quit he is going to find
himself seeing some moving pictures that no one else can. And he's
all worried up about his hair going off on top, and trying new hair
restorers. You know his latest? Well, he goes over to the Selig
place one day and watches horse meat fed to the lions and says to
himself that horses have plenty of hair, and it must be the fat
under the skin that makes it grow, so he begs for a hunk of horse
from just under the mane and he's rubbing that on. You can't tell
what he'll bring home next. The old boy still believes you can raise
hair from the dead. Do you want some new stills of me? I got a new
one yesterday that shows my other expression. Well, so long,
Countess."

The creature turned to her parents.

"Let's be on our way, old dears. This place is dead, but the
Countess says they'll soon be shooting some tenement-house stuff up
at the Consolidated. Maybe there'll be something in it for someone.
We might as well have a look-in."

Merton felt relieved when the Montague family went out, the girl in
the lead. He approved of the fine old father, but the daughter
lacked dignity in speech and manner. You couldn't tell what she
might say next.

The Montagues were often there, sometimes in full, sometimes
represented by but one of their number. Once Mrs. Montague was told
to be on Stage Six the next morning at 8:30 to attend a swell
reception.

"Wear the gray georgette, dearie," said the casting director, "and
your big pearls and the lorgnon."

"Not forgetting the gold cigarette case and the chinchilla neck
piece," said Mrs. Montague. "The spare parts will all be there,
Countess, and thanks for the word."

The elder Montague on the occasion of his calls often found time to
regale those present with anecdotes of Lawrence Barrett.

"A fine artist in his day, sir; none finer ever appeared in a hall
show."

And always about his once superb frock coat clung the scent of
forbidden beverages. On one such day he appeared with an untidy
sprouting of beard, accompanied by the talkative daughter.

"Pa's landed a part," she explained through the little window. "It's
one of those we-uns mountaineer plays with revenooers and feuds; one
of those plays where the city chap don't treat our Nell right--you
know. And they won't stand for the crepe hair, so pop has got to
raise a brush and he's mad. But it ought to give him a month or so,
and after that he may be able to peddle the brush again; you can
never tell in this business, can you, Countess?"

"It's most annoying," the old gentleman explained to the bench
occupants. "In the true art of the speaking stage an artificial
beard was considered above reproach. Nowadays one must descend to
mere physical means if one is to be thought worthy."

CHAPTER V

A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS

During these weeks of waiting outside the gate the little woman
beyond the window had continued to be friendly but not encouraging
to the aspirant for screen honours late of Simsbury, Illinois. For
three weeks had he waited faithfully, always within call, struggling
and sacrificing to give the public something better and finer, and
not once had he so much as crossed the line that led to his goal.

Then on a Monday morning he found the waiting-room empty and his
friend beyond the window suffering the pangs of headache. "It gets
me something fierce right through here," she confided to him,
placing her finger-tips to her temples.

"Ever use Eezo Pain Wafers?" he demanded in quick sympathy. She
looked at him hopefully.

"Never heard of 'em."

"Let me get you some."

"You dear thing, fly to it!"

He was gone while she reached for her purse, hurrying along the
eucalyptus-lined street of choice home sites to the nearest drug
store. He was fearing someone else might bring the little woman
another remedy; even that her headache might go before he returned
with his. But he found her still suffering.

"Here they are." He was breathless. "You take a couple now and a
couple more in half an hour if the ache hasn't stopped." "Bless your
heart! Come around inside." He was through the door and in the dimly
lit little office behind that secretive partition. "And here's
something else," he continued. "It's a menthol pencil and you take
this cap off--see?--and rub your forehead with it. It'll be a help."
She swallowed two of the magic wafers with the aid of water from the
cooler, and applied the menthol.

"You're a dear," she said, patting his sleeve. "I feel better
already. Sometimes these things come on me and stay all day." She
was still applying the menthol to throbbing temples. "Say, don't you
get tired hanging around outside there? How'd you like to go in and
look around the lot? Would you like that?"

Would he! "Thanks!" He managed it without choking, "If I wouldn't be
in the way."

"You won't. Go on--amuse yourself." The telephone rang. Still
applying the menthol she held the receiver to her ear. "No, nothing
to-day, dear. Say, Marie, did you ever take Eezo Pain Wafers for a
headache? Keep 'em in mind--they're great. Yes, I'll let you know if
anything breaks. Goo'-by, dear."

Merton Gill hurried through a narrow corridor past offices where
typewriters clicked and burst from gloom into the dazzling light of
the Holden lot. He paused on the steps to reassure himself that the
great adventure was genuine. There was the full stretch of
greensward of which only an edge had shown as he looked through the
gate. There were the vast yellow-brick, glass-topped structures of
which he had seen but the ends. And there was the street up which he
had looked for so many weeks, flanked by rows of offices and
dressing rooms, and lively with the passing of many people. He drew
a long breath and became calculating. He must see everything and see
it methodically. He even went now along the asphalt walk to the
corner of the office building from which he had issued for the
privilege of looking back at the gate through which he had so often
yearningly stared from across the street.

Now he was securely inside looking out. The watchman sat at the
gate, bent low over his paper. There was, it seemed, more than one
way to get by him. People might have headaches almost any time. He
wondered if his friend the casting director were subject to them. He
must carry a box of the Eezo wafers.

He strolled down the street between the rows of offices and the
immense covered stages. Actors in costume entered two of these and
through their open doors he could see into their shadowy interiors.
He would venture there later. Just now he wished to see the outside
of things. He contrived a pace not too swift but business-like
enough to convey the impression that he was rightfully walking this
forbidden street. He seemed to be going some place where it was of
the utmost importance that he should be, and yet to have started so
early that there was no need for haste.

He sounded the far end of that long street visible from outside the
gate, discovering its excitements to wane gently into mere
blacksmith and carpenter shops. He retraced his steps, this time
ignoring the long row of offices for the opposite line of stages.
From one dark interior came the slow, dulled strains of an orchestra
and from another shots rang out. He met or passed strangely attired
people, bandits, priests, choir boys, gentlemen in evening dress
with blue-black eyebrows and careful hair. And he observed many
beautiful young women, variously attired, hurrying to or from the
stages. One lovely thing was in bridal dress of dazzling white, a
veil of lace floating from her blonde head, her long train held up
by a coloured maid. She chatted amiably, as she crossed the street,
with an evil-looking Mexican in a silver-corded hat--a veritable
Snake de Vasquez.

But the stages could wait. He must see more streets. Again reaching
the office that had been his secret gateway to these delights, he
turned to the right, still with the air of having business at a
certain spot to which there was really no need for him to hurry.
There were fewer people this way, and presently, as if by magic
carpet, he had left all that sunlight and glitter and cheerful noise
and stood alone in the shadowy, narrow street of a frontier town.
There was no bustle here, only an intense stillness. The street was
deserted, the shop doors closed. There was a ghostlike, chilling
effect that left him uneasy. He called upon himself to remember that
he was not actually in a remote and desolate frontier town from
which the inhabitants had fled; that back of him but a few steps was
abounding life, that outside was the prosaic world passing and
repassing a gate hard to enter. He whistled the fragment of a tune
and went farther along this street of uncanny silence and vacancy,
noting, as he went, the signs on the shop windows. There was the
Busy Bee Restaurant, Jim's Place, the Hotel Renown, the Last Dollar
Dance Hall, Hank's Pool Room. Upon one window was painted the terse
announcement, "Joe--Buy or Sell." The Happy Days Bar adjoined the
General Store.

He moved rapidly through this street. It was no place to linger. At
the lower end it gave insanely upon a row of three-story brownstone
houses which any picture patron would recognize as being wholly of
New York. There were the imposing steps, the double-doored
entrances, the broad windows, the massive lines of the whole. And
beyond this he came to a many-coloured little street out of Bagdad,
overhung with gay balconies, vivacious with spindled towers and
minarets, and small reticent windows, out of which veiled ladies
would glance. And all was still with the stillness of utter
desertion.

Then he explored farther and felt curiously disappointed at finding
that these structures were to real houses what a dicky is to a
sincere, genuine shirt. They were pretentiously false.

One had but to step behind them to discover them as poor shells.

Their backs were jutting beams carried but little beyond the fronts
and their stout-appearing walls were revealed to be fragile
contrivances of button-lath and thin plaster. The ghost quality
departed from them with this discovery.

He left these cities of silence and came upon an open space and
people. They were grouped before a railway station, a small red
structure beside a line of railway track. At one end in black
letters, on a narrow white board, was the name Boomerville.

The people were plainly Western: a dozen cowboys, a sprinkling of
bluff ranchers and their families. An absorbed young man in cap and
khaki and puttees came from a distant group surrounding a camera and
readjusted the line of these people. He placed them to his liking. A
wagon drawn by two horses was driven up and a rancher helped a woman
and girl to alight. The girl was at once sought out by the cowboys.
They shook hands warmly under megaphoned directions from a man back
by the camera. The rancher and his wife mingled with the group. The
girl was drawn aside by one of the cowboys. He had a nobler presence
than the others; he was handsome and his accoutrements seemed more
expensive. They looked into each other's eyes a long time,
apparently pledging an eternal fidelity. One gathered that there
would have been an embrace but for the cowboy's watchful companions.
They must say good-by with a mere handshake, though this was a slow,
trembling, long-drawn clasp while they steadily regarded each other,
and a second camera was brought to record it at a distance of six
feet. Merton Gill thrilled with the knowledge that he was beholding
his first close-up. His long study of the photo-drama enabled him to
divine that the rancher's daughter was going to Vassar College to be
educated, but that, although returning a year later a poised woman
of the world, she would still long for the handsome cowboy who would
marry her and run the Bar-X ranch. The scene was done. The camera
would next be turned upon a real train at some real station, while
the girl, with a final look at her lover, entered a real car, which
the camera would show moving off to Vassar College. Thus conveying
to millions of delighted spectators the impression that a real train
had steamed out of the station, which was merely an imitation of
one, on the Holden lot. The watcher passed on. He could hear the
cheerful drone of a sawmill where logs were being cut. He followed
the sound and came to its source. The saw was at the end of an
oblong pool in which logs floated. Workmen were poling these toward
the saw. On a raised platform at one side was a camera and a man who
gave directions through a megaphone; a neighbouring platform held a
second camera. A beautiful young girl in a print dress and her thick
hair in a braid came bringing Ms dinner in a tin pail to the
handsomest of the actors. He laid down his pike-pole and took both
the girl's hands in his as he received the pail. One of the other
workmen, a hulking brute with an evil face, scowled darkly at this
encounter and a moment later had insulted the beautiful young girl.
But the first actor felled him with a blow. He came up from this,
crouchingly, and the fight was on. Merton was excited by this fight,
even though he was in no doubt as to which actor would win it. They
fought hard, and for a time it appeared that the handsome actor must
lose, for the bully who had insulted the girl was a man of great
strength, but the science of the other told. It was the first fight
Merton had ever witnessed. He thought these men must really be
hating each other, so bitter were their expressions. The battle grew
fiercer. It was splendid. Then, at the shrill note of a whistle, the
panting combatants fell apart.

"Rotten!" said an annoyed voice through the megaphone. "Can't you
boys give me a little action? Jazz it, jazz it! Think it's a love
scene? Go to it, now--plenty of jazz--understand what I mean?" He
turned to the camera man beside him. "Ed, you turn ten--we got to
get some speed some way. Jack"--to the other camera man--"you stay
on twelve. All ready! Get some life into it, now, and Lafe"--this to
the handsome actor--"don't keep trying to hold your front to the
machine. We'll get you all right. Ready, now. Camera!"

Again the fight was on. It went to a bitter finish in which the
vanquished bully was sent with a powerful blow backward into the
water, while the beautiful young girl ran to the victor and nestled
in the protection of his strong arms.

Merton Gill passed on. This was the real thing. He would have a lot
to tell Tessie Kearns in his next letter. Beyond the sawmill he came
to an immense wooden structure like a cradle on huge rockers
supported by scaffolding. From the ground he could make nothing of
it, but a ladder led to the top. An hour on the Holden lot had made
him bold. He mounted the ladder and stood on the deck of what he saw
was a sea-going yacht. Three important-looking men were surveying
the deckhouse forward. They glanced at the newcomer but with a
cheering absence of curiosity or even of interest. He sauntered past
them with a polite but not-too-keen interest. The yacht would be an
expensive one. The deck fittings were elaborate. A glance into the
captain's cabin revealed it to be fully furnished, with a chart and
a sextant on the mahogany desk.

"Where's the bedding for this stateroom?" asked one of the men.

"I got a prop-rustler after it," one of the others informed him.

They strolled aft and paused by an iron standard ingeniously swung
from the deck.

"That's Burke's idea," said one of the men. "I hadn't thought about
a steady support for the camera; of course if we stood it on deck it
would rock when the ship rocked and we'd get no motion. So Burke
figures this out. The camera is on here and swings by that weight so
it's always straight and the rocking registers. Pretty neat, what?"

"That was nothing to think of" said one of the other men, in
apparent disparagement. "I thought of it myself the minute I saw
it." The other two grinned at this, though Merton Gill, standing by,
saw nothing to laugh at. He thought the speaker was pretty cheeky;
for of course any one could think of this device after seeing it. He
paused for a final survey of his surroundings from this elevation.
He could see the real falseness of the sawmill he had just left, he
could also look into the exposed rear of the railway station, and
could observe beyond it the exposed skeleton of that New York
street. He was surrounded by mockeries.

He clambered down the ladder and sauntered back to the street of
offices. He was by this time confident that no one was going to ask
him what right he had in there. Now, too, he became conscious of
hunger and at the same moment caught the sign "Cafeteria" over a
neat building hitherto unnoticed. People were entering this, many of
them in costume. He went idly toward the door, glanced up, looked at
his watch, and became, to any one curious about him, a man who had
that moment decided he might as well have a little food. He opened
the screen door of the cafeteria, half expecting it to prove one of
those structures equipped only with a front. But the cafeteria was
practicable. The floor was crowded with little square polished
tables at which many people were eating. A railing along the side of
the room made a passage to the back where food was served from a
counter to the proffered tray. He fell into line. No one had asked
him how he dared try to eat with real actors and actresses and
apparently no one was going to. Toward the end of the passage was a
table holding trays and napkins the latter wrapped about an
equipment of cutlery. He took his tray and received at the counter
the foods he designated. He went through this ordeal with difficulty
because it was not easy to keep from staring about at other patrons.
Constantly he was detecting some remembered face. But at last, with
his laden tray he reached a vacant table near the centre of the room
and took his seat. He absently arranged the food before him. He
could stare at leisure now. All about him were the strongly marked
faces of the film people, heavy with makeup, interspersed with
hungry civilians, who might be producers, directors, camera men, or
mere artisans, for the democracy of the cafeteria seemed ideal.

At the table ahead of his he recognized the man who had been annoyed
one day by the silly question of the Montague girl. They had said he
was a very important director. He still looked important and
intensely serious. He was a short, very plump man, with pale cheeks
under dark brows, and troubled looking gray hair. He was very
seriously explaining something to the man who sat with him and whom
he addressed as Governor, a merry-looking person with a stubby gray
mustache and little hair, who seemed not too attentive to the
director.

"You see, Governor, it's this way: the party is lost on the desert--
understand what I mean--and Kempton Ward and the girl stumble into
this deserted tomb just at nightfall. Now here's where the big kick
comes--"

Merton Gill ceased to listen for there now halted at his table,
bearing a laden tray, none other than the Montague girl, she of the
slangy talk and the regrettably free manner. She put down her tray
and seated herself before it. She had not asked permission of the
table's other occupant, indeed she had not even glanced at him, for
cafeteria etiquette is not rigorous. He saw that she was heavily
made up and in the costume of a gypsy, he thought, a short vivid
skirt, a gay waist, heavy gold hoops in her ears, and dark hair
massed about her small head. He remembered that this would not be
her own hair. She fell at once to her food. The men at the next
table glanced at her, the director without cordiality; but the other
man smiled upon her cheerfully.

"Hello, Flips! How's the girl?"

"Everything's jake with me, Governor. How's things over at your
shop?"

"So, so. I see you're working."

"Only for two days. I'm just atmosphere in this piece. I got some
real stuff coming along pretty soon for Baxter. Got to climb down
ten stories of a hotel elevator cable, and ride a brake-beam and be
pushed off a cliff and thrown to the lions, and a few other little
things."

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