The indigene of Southern California has long since ceased to regard with
much interest the publicly practised tribal customs of those clans which
herd upon the motion-picture reservation. He no longer thinks he's
seeing life when he comes upon troops of fairy policemen rapturously
chasing their trails by broad daylight, or woebegone gentlemen with too
much trousers popping out of manholes in public thoroughfares, or
painfully unconscious sweethearts in broad-minded evening dress at high
noon fondling each other in front of, say, the Hollywood Hotel. He no
more knows a thrill when motor-loads of revellers in giddy costume and
with sanguine noses blow by his unromantic bungalow at breakneck speed,
preceded or followed by other cars filled with bored proletaires in
workaday clothes, among them one embracing affectionately the slim young
limbs of a camera tripod. And if he should chance to observe his
next-door neighbour lamming the everlasting daylights out of his wife on
the front lawn, he would make sure there was no camera within range
before telephoning for the police.
A month of Hollywood had so accustomed Lucinda to such sights that she
became a part of them, at least in as far as involved coursing through
the streets in full make-up, without any sense of making herself unduly
conspicuous.
She even forgot to think it strange that she, Lucinda Druce, should not
resent being made love to unprofessionally, that is to say without an
eye to the camera, by a man with rouge on cheeks and lips and eyelashes
beaded with mascaro.
If the feeling that she had cast her lines in strange places was quick
to wear off, in those three days of work with the Summerlad company, the
fun of it wasn't. Lucinda threw herself into the detail of every hour
with tremendous zest, and liked it all as she seldom had liked anything
before.
To rise hours before the time at which use had habited her to waking,
rout the drowsiness from her flesh with a cold plunge, dress hastily in
her becoming white costume, snatch a bite of breakfast and dash out into
the cool glow of morning sunlight to rendezvous at the studio; to pick
up Lynn and Fanny for company on a cross-country race to a wild canyon
of the Sierra Madre; to change to horseback when the going grew perilous
for motor travel, and ride five miles farther up a trail that now ran
level with the rushing waters of a mountain stream, now climbed dizzily
above it on rocky ledges barely wide enough to afford foothold for one
horse at a time, ending in a lovely wilderness spot which Jacques had
selected because, he said, it hadn't been "shot to death"; to idle, chat
and giggle with Lynn, Fanny and Alice Drake during the long delays
devoted by Jacques to making up his mind what he wanted the company to
do in preference to the action indicated in the continuity which he was
politely presumed to be producing; to lunch al fresco, grouped round a
blanket on which a decidedly rude and hearty picnic meal was spread; to
frolic through a few minutes of make-believe while the camera clicked
and Jacques bawled directions through a megaphone; then to drive back in
the evening lull, with lights breaking out in lilac dusk like fireflies
in a tinted mist; to get home so weary that she could hardly keep awake
long enough to wolf down the dinner for which she was ravening, then to
fling herself into the warm, all-obliterating haven of bed; and all the
while to be falling more and more madly in love but still practising
delectable, self-tantalizing self-denial: this wasn't work in any sense,
but play, sheer play of a most gorgeous sort and of which surely one
could never tire.
If this were all there was to motion-picture acting, then Lucinda could
not wonder that, as she was one day informed by a crusty veteran of the
colony: "Bums may turn revivalists, and lawyers honest, but there ain't
no known cure for a lens lizard."
In the name of all things reasonable! why sigh to be cured of a vocation
at once so profitable and so enthralling?
There was another side to the business, of course, there had to be. One
knew it couldn't be all beer and skittles, one heard dark hints of the
uglier side, one even caught glimpses of it and its workings now and
then, as in the instance of Nelly Marquis; but awareness of it had no
perceptible effect upon the spirits of those with whom Lucinda found
herself associated for the time being. Some of the younger members of
the acting division seemed to take life a thought seriously--"life"
meaning, as a rule, themselves--but the more experienced, and the men of
the technical groups, the directors, cameramen, and their assistants,
the property men and jacks-of-all-trades, went about their work with
jests ever on their lips. Lucinda heard few orders given or acknowledged
other than in the semi-jocular vein known as "kidding." Even Jacques,
whose office clothed him with a certain dignity, by which he was
intermittently depressed, seemed in his most earnest moments to find it
difficult to express himself in terms of becoming gravity. The common
attitude summed up to this: that making pictures was all a huge lark and
(strictly between those engaged in it) a darned good joke on the people
who paid the bills.
As for the part she was supposed to play in this picture of Summerlad's,
Lucinda never managed to secure an intelligible exposition of its nature
or its relation to the plot. Both Summerlad and Jacques seemed strangely
vague in their own minds concerning it, and Alice Drake frankly
confessed she hadn't read the 'script and hadn't the faintest notion
what the picture was about. She did what Jacques told her to do, and did
it very well, and so long as there were no complaints and her weekly
cheque turned up on time, she didn't care (she said) a thin red hoot
about the story. Neither was this an uncommon attitude, she averred; not
infrequently directors imposed it upon the actors and actresses working
under them. There was George Loane Tucker, who had directed _The Miracle
Man_; Miss Drake had worked for him and could testify concerning his
methods. He never told any of the cast what the story was, only what he
wanted them to wear and do and how and when to do it; that was all. He
had even invented a secret system of numbering the "takes," so that he
alone could properly assemble the thousand or so separate scenes and
close-ups which go to make up the average motion-picture when
photography on it is finished, scenes which are never by any chance
photographed in consecutive order. Nor was Tucker the only one....
Later on, in the projection-rooms of the Zinn Studios, Lucinda saw the
"rushes" of the scenes in which she had played; "rushes" being the first
positive prints made from the uncut negative: "takes" running anywhere
from twice to a hundred times the length of the scene to be finally
incorporated into the finished picture and disclosed to the public. She
was well content with the way she had done what little had been given
her to do, but was left in the dark as to what it was all about. And in
the final cutting and editing, that sequence of scenes dropped out of
the film altogether. So that nobody ever knew, except possibly Summerlad
and Jacques....
To the best of her observation her role was that of an involuntary vamp.
Not vampire: vamp. No other term will serve so well. Originally a
derisive diminutive, the usage of the studios has endowed this
monosyllable with a significance all its own, not readily definable. A
vamp no longer means of necessity a vampire, a scarlet-mouthed
seductress of strong men's souls. A vamp may be a far more socially
possible person that that, in fact any attractive woman who comports
herself toward another woman's man consistently with the common
amenities of civilized intercourse.
As an involuntary vamp, then, Miss Lee was to meet Mr. Summerlad under
romantic circumstances and innocently wean him from strict fidelity to
the charms of his betrothed (or it may have been his wife) Miss Drake.
Of this situation Miss Drake was in due course to become cognizant. What
was to happen after that between Miss Drake and Mr. Summerlad was no
concern of the involuntary vamp's. Furthermore, she never learned.
The said romantic circumstances proved sufficiently thrilling to bring
about an early wedding in most films. Miss Lee was run away with by her
horse while taking an early morning canter in mountains conveniently
adjacent to her family's suburban villa. Mr. Summerlad, similarly
engaged in health-giving equestrianism, happened along at the right time
to observe her peril, pursue, and snatch her bodily from her saddle to
his arms at the very instant when her mount was plunging headlong over a
precipice. After which he escorted her to her home, and on the way the
two indulged in such normal love-making as was only to be expected when
the facts of the case were taken into consideration.
Jacques used up all of one day and two-thirds of the next staging and
shooting the runaway and the rescue scenes, in none of which either
Lucinda or Summerlad figured in person. Lucinda, it is true, was
photographed from several angles, riding along the mountainside trail at
a point where it was broad enough for her horse, with safety to its
rider, to shy and start to run away. The animal was an unusually
intelligent, perfectly trained and docile trick-horse that, given the
right signals, would perform a number of feats such as shying, running
away, stopping short, falling dead under its rider. And Lucinda was a
good horsewoman, though not good enough for such rough and really
dangerous riding as would be required after the start of the runaway. A
double was therefore provided for her, a tough and wiry young person of
about her height and weight who made her living by risking her life in
just such ways, and who, with Lucinda's white coat, hat and boots added
to her own white riding-breeches, passed well enough for Lucinda in
"distance shots."
A double was likewise provided for Summerlad, though he was a superb
rider and vigorously asserted his right to take what chances he pleased
with his own neck. But Jacques explained it wasn't Summerlad's neck he
cared about, it was finishing a picture in which eighty thousand dollars
had already been sunk and for whose completion Summerlad's services
would be required for four more weeks. Thereafter he could break his
neck as often and in as many places as he liked, for all of Jacques.
So Summerlad held his peace and his place at Lucinda's side, well out of
harm's way, while Jacques went ahead and directed the rescue.
Runaway, pursuit and rescue were all staged on a ledge-like trail three
hundred feet above the boulder-strewn bed of the brawling stream, and
were photographed simultaneously by three cameras, from the river-bed
shooting upwards, from the opposite side of the canyon on a level with
the trail, and from the trail itself but at a distance great enough to
prevent the fact that doubles were used from becoming evident when the
pictures were projected.
It was all honestly hazardous and ticklish work, rendered doubly and
trebly so by the fact that each part of the action had to be replayed
over and over again to satisfy Jacques, an old hand at "stunt stuff" and
a painstaking one.
Lucinda's heart, as she looked on, was in her mouth more often than not.
It made no difference that it was all played at a far slower tempo than
would appear when it was screened; the projection-machine flashes the
pictures across the screen at a faster rate than that at which they are
taken; consequently it is only necessary to crank the camera at slower
than normal speed to attain an effect of terrific speed in projection.
Fast or slow, it was risky enough in all conscience; and Lucinda was
more than glad when the last repetition had been shot and Jacques gave
orders to shift to a location near the mouth of the canyon.
For those scenes of sentiment which Lucinda and Summerlad were to play
in person, Jacques wanted the contrast of richer and more abundant
vegetation, and the location he selected brought the party at length to
a point below that at which the automobiles had been forced to stop.
Here Lucinda and Summerlad were photographed time and again, in distance
shots, medium shots, and close-ups, riding side by side, registering the
dawn of a more intimate interest each in the other, dismounting to rest
in a sweet sylvan glade by the side of the stream, and finally in each
other's arms, with Miss Drake riding up to surprise them as they kissed.
Whether by intention or because such scenes are a commonplace of
picture-making, Lucinda could not say, but she had not been in any way
prepared for the fact that she was to be kissed by Summerlad; whereas
she had been flirting with him decorously but dangerously for the best
part of three days. Now suddenly, toward the close of the third, she was
instructed to permit his embrace, submit to his kiss, and kiss him in
response.
She made no demur, for that would have seemed silly, but did her best to
ape the matter-of-course manner of all hands, and went through it with
all the stoicism, when the camera wasn't trained on her, that was
compatible with the emotions she must show when it was.
But her heart was thumping furiously when she felt Summerlad's arms for
the first time enfold her; and when, murmuring terms of endearment
appropriate to both the parts the man was playing, he put his lips to
hers, she knew, both despite and because of the tumult of her senses,
that she was lost. Control of the situation between them passed in that
instant from her hands to his.
Released at length, she looked round, dazed and breathless, to find
that, during the business of the kiss, a party of uninvited onlookers
had been added to their professional audience.
A motor-car had slipped up on the group and stopped, and one of its two
passengers had alighted and drawn near to watch.
This was Bellamy.