Merton Gill, enacting the part of a popular screen idol, as in the play
of yesterday, sat at breakfast in his apartments on Stage Number Five.
Outwardly he was cool, wary, unperturbed, as he peeled the shell from a
hard-boiled egg and sprinkled salt upon it. For the breakfast consisted
of hard-boiled eggs and potato salad brought on in a wooden dish.
He had been slightly disturbed by the items of this meal; it was not so
elegant a breakfast as Hubert Throckmorton’s, but he had been told by
Baird that they must be a little different.
He had been slightly disturbed, too, at discovering the faithful valet
who brought on the simple repast was the cross--eyed man. Still, the
fellow had behaved respectfully, as a valet should. He had been quietly
obsequious of manner, revealing only a profound admiration for his
master and a constant solicitude for his comfort. Probably he, like
Baird, was trying to do something distinctive and worth while.
Having finished the last egg--glad they had given him no more than
three--the popular screen idol at the prompting of Baird, back by the
cameras, arose, withdrew a metal cigarette case, purchased that very
morning with this scene in view, and selected a cigarette. He stood
negligently, as Parmalee had stood, tapped the end of the cigarette on
the side of the case, as Parmalee had done, lighted a match on the sole
of his boot, and idly smoked in the Parmalee manner.
Three times the day before he had studied Parmalee in this bit of
business. Now he idly crossed to the centre-table upon which reposed a
large photograph album. He turned the pages of this, pausing to admire
the pictures there revealed. Baird had not only given him general
instructions for this scene, but now prompted him in low, encouraging
tones.
“Turn over slowly; you like ‘em all. Now lift the album up and hold it
for a better light on that one. It’s one of the best, it pleases you
a lot. Look even more pleased--smile! That’s good. Put down the album;
turn again, slowly; turn twice more, that’s it; pick it up again. This
one is fine--”
Baird took him through the album in this manner, had him close it when
all the leaves were turned, and stand a moment with one hand resting on
it. The album had been empty. It had been deemed best not to inform
the actor that later close-ups of the pages would show him to have been
refreshed by studying photographs of himself--copies, in fact, of the
stills of Clifford Armytage at that moment resting on Baird’s desk.
As he stood now, a hand affectionately upon the album, a trace of the
fatuously admiring smile still lingering on his expressive face, a knock
sounded upon the door. “Come in,” he called.
The valet entered with the morning mail. This consisted entirely of
letters. There were hundreds of them, and the valet had heaped them in a
large clothes-basket which he now held respectfully in front of him.
The actor motioned him, with an authentic Parmalee gesture, to place
them by the table. The valet obeyed, though spilling many letters
from the top of the overflowing basket. These, while his master seated
himself, he briskly swept up with a broom.
The chagrined amusement of Harold Parmalee, the half-savage,
half-humorous tolerance for this perhaps excusable weakness of woman,
was here accurately manifested. The actor yawned slightly, lighted
another cigarette with flawless Parmalee technique, withdrew a
handkerchief from his sleeve-cuff, lightly touched his forehead with it,
and began to open the letters. He glanced at each one in a quick, bored
manner, and cast it aside.
When a dozen or so had been thus treated he was aroused by another
knock at the door. It opened to reveal the valet with another basket
overflowing with letters. Upon this the actor arose, spread his arms
wide in a gesture of humorous helplessness. He held this briefly, then
drooped in humorous despair.
He lighted another cigarette, eyed the letters with that whimsical lift
of the brows so characteristic of Parmalee, and lazily blew smoke toward
them. Then, regarding the smoke, he idly waved a hand through it. “Poor,
silly little girls!” But there was a charming tolerance in his manner.
One felt his generous recognition that they were not wholly without
provocation.
This appeared to close the simple episode. The scenes, to be sure, had
not been shot without delays and rehearsals, and a good two hours of
the morning had elapsed before the actor was released from the glare of
light and the need to remember that he was Harold Parmalee. His peeling
of an egg, for example, had not at first been dainty enough to please
the director, and the scene with the album had required many rehearsals
to secure the needed variety of expressions, but Baird had been helpful
in his promptings, and always kind.
“Now, this one you’ve turned over--it’s someone you love better than
anybody. It might be your dear old mother that you haven’t seen for
years. It makes you kind of solemn as you show how fond you were of her.
You’re affected deeply by her face. That’s it, fine! Now the next one,
you like it just as much, but it pleases you more. It’s someone else
you’re fond of, but you’re not so solemn.
“Now turn over another, but very slow--slow--but don’t let go of it.
Stop a minute and turn back as if you had to have another peek at the
last one, see what I mean? Take plenty of time. This is a great treat
for you. It makes you feel kind of religious. Now you’re getting
it--that’s the boy! All right--”
The scene where he showed humorous dismay at the quantity of his mail
had needed but one rehearsal. He had here been Harold Parmalee without
effort. Also he had not been asked to do again the Parmalee trick of
lighting a cigarette nor of withdrawing the handkerchief from its cuff
to twice touch his forehead in moments of amused perplexity. Baird had
merely uttered a low “Fine!” at beholding these bits.
He drew a long breath of relief when released from the set. Seemingly
he had met the test. Baird had said that morning, “Now we’ll just run
a little kind of test to find out a few things about you,” and had
followed with a general description of the scenes. It was to be of no
great importance--a minor detail of the picture. Perhaps this had been
why the wealthy actor breakfasted in rather a plainly furnished room on
hard-boiled eggs and potato salad. Perhaps this had been why the costume
given him had been not too well fitting, not too nice in detail. Perhaps
this was why they had allowed the cross-eyed man to appear as his valet.
He was quite sure this man would not do as a valet in a high-class
picture. Anyway, however unimportant the scene, he felt that he had
acquitted himself with credit.
The Montague girl, who had made him up that morning, with close
attention to his eyebrows, watched him from back of the cameras, and she
seized both his hands when he left the set. “You’re going to land,” she
warmly assured him. “I can tell a trouper when I see one.”
She was in costume. She was apparently doing the part of a society girl,
though slightly overdressed, he thought.
“We’re working on another set for this same picture,” she explained,
“but I simply had to catch you acting. You’ll probably be over with us
to-morrow. But you’re through for the day, so beat it and have a good
time.”
“Couldn’t I come over and watch you?”
“No, Baird doesn’t like to have his actors watching things they ain’t
in; he told me specially that you weren’t to be around except when
you’re working. You see, he’s using you in kind of a special part in
this multiple-reeler, and he’s afraid you might get confused if you
watched the other parts. I guess he’ll start you to-morrow. You’re to be
in a good, wholesome heart play. You’ll have a great chance in it.”
“Well, I’ll go see if I can find another Parmalee picture for this
afternoon. Say, you don’t think I was too much like him in that scene,
do you? You know it’s one thing if I look like him--I can’t help
that--but I shouldn’t try to imitate him too closely, should I? I got to
think about my own individuality, haven’t I?”
“Sure, sure you have! But you were fine--your imitation wasn’t a bit too
close. You can think about your own individuality this afternoon when
you’re watching him.”
Late that day in the projection room Baird and the Montague girl
watched the “rush” of that morning’s episode.
“The squirrel’s done it,” whispered the girl after the opening scene. It
seemed to her that Merton Gill on the screen might overhear her comment.
Even Baird was low-toned. “Looks so,” he agreed.
“If that ain’t Parmalee then I’ll eat all the hard-boiled eggs on the
lot.”
Baird rubbed his hands. “It’s Parmalee plus,” he corrected.
“Oh, Mother, Mother!” murmured the girl while the screen revealed the
actor studying his photographs.
“He handled all right in that spot,” observed Baird.
“He’ll handle right--don’t worry. Ain’t I told you he’s a natural born
trouper?”
The mail was abandoned in humorous despair. The cigarette lighted in
a flawless Parmalee manner, the smoke idly brushed aside. “Poor, silly
little girls,” the actor was seen to say. The girl gripped Baird’s arm
until he winced. “There, old Pippin! There’s your million, picked right
up on the lot!”
“Maybe,” assented the cooler Baird, as they left the projection room.
“And say,” asked the girl, “did you notice all morning how he didn’t
even bat an eye when you spoke to him, if the camera was still turning?
Not like a beginner that’ll nearly always look up and get out of the
picture.”
“What I bet,” observed Baird, “I bet he’d ‘a’ done that album stuff even
better than he did if I’d actually put his own pictures in, the way I’m
going to for the close-ups. I was afraid he’d see it was kidding if
I did, or if I told him what pictures they were going to be. But I’m
darned now if I don’t think he’d have stood for it. I don’t believe
you’ll ever be able to peeve that boy by telling him he’s good.”
The girl glanced up defensively as they walked.
“Now don’t get the idea he’s conceited, because he ain’t. Not one bit.”
“How do you know he ain’t?”
She considered this, then explained brightly, “Because I wouldn’t like
him if he was. No, no--now you listen here” as Baird had grinned. “This
lad believes in himself, that’s all. That’s different from conceit.
You can believe a whole lot in yourself, and still be as modest as a
new--hatched chicken. That’s what he reminds me of, too.”
The following morning Baird halted him outside the set on which he
would work that day. Again he had been made up by the Montague girl,
with especial attention to the eyebrows so that they might show the
Parmalee lift.
“I just want to give you the general dope of the piece before you go
on,” said Baird, in the shelter of high canvas backing. “You’re the only
son of a widowed mother and both you and she are toiling to pay off
the mortgage on the little home. You’re the cashier of this business
establishment, and in love with the proprietor’s daughter, only she’s a
society girl and kind of looks down on you at first. Then, there’s her
brother, the proprietor’s only son. He’s the clerk in this place. He
doesn’t want to work, but his father has made him learn the business,
see? He’s kind of a no-good; dissipated; wears flashy clothes and plays
the races and shoots craps and drinks. You try to reform him because
he’s idolized by his sister that you’re in love with.
“But you can’t do a thing with him. He keeps on and gets in with a rough
crowd, and finally he steals a lot of money out of the safe, and just
when they are about to discover that he’s the thief you see it would
break his sister’s heart so you take the crime on your own shoulders.
After that, just before you’re going to be arrested, you make a
getaway--because, after all, you’re not guilty--and you go out West to
start all over again--”
“Out there in the big open spaces?” suggested Merton, who had listened
attentively.
“Exactly,” assented Baird, with one of those nervous spasms that would
now and again twitch his lips and chin. “Out there in the big open
spaces where men are men--that’s the idea. And you build up a little
gray home in the West for yourself and your poor old mother who never
lost faith in you. There’ll be a lot of good Western stuff in this--Buck
Benson stuff, you know, that you can do so well--and the girl will get
out there some way and tell you that her brother finally confessed his
crime, and everything’ll be Jake, see what I mean?”
“Yes, sir; it sounds fine, Mr. Baird. And I certainly will give the best
that is in me to this part.” He had an impulse to tell the manager, too,
how gratified he was that one who had been content with the low humour
of the Buckeye comedies should at last have been won over to the better
form of photodrama. But Baird was leading him on to the set; there was
no time for this congratulatory episode.
Indeed the impulse was swept from his mind in the novelty of the set now
exposed, and in the thought that his personality was to dominate it. The
scene of the little drama’s unfolding was a delicatessen shop. Counters
and shelves were arrayed with cooked foods, salads, cheeses, the latter
under glass or wire protectors. At the back was a cashier’s desk, an
open safe beside it. He took his place there at Baird’s direction and
began to write in a ledger.
“Now your old mother’s coming to mop up the place,” called Baird. “Come
on, Mother! You look up and see her, and rush over to her. She puts down
her bucket and mop, and takes you in her arms. She’s weeping; you try to
comfort her; you want her to give up mopping, and tell her you can make
enough to support two, but she won’t listen because there’s the mortgage
on the little flat to be paid off. So you go back to the desk, stopping
to give her a sad look as she gets down on the floor. Now, try it.”
A very old, bent, feeble woman with a pail of water and cloths tottered
on. Her dress was ragged, her white hair hung about her sad old face in
disorderly strands. She set down her bucket and raised her torn apron to
her eyes.
“Look up and see her,” called Baird. “A glad light comes into her eyes.
Rush forward--say ‘Mother’ distinctly, so it’ll show. Now the clench.
You’re crying on his shoulder, Mother, and he’s looking down at you
first, then off, about at me. He’s near crying himself. Now he’s telling
you to give up mopping places, and you’re telling him every little
helps.
“All right, break. Get to mopping, Mother, but keep on crying. He stops
for a long look at you. He seems to be saying that some day he will take
you out of such work. Now he’s back at his desk. All right. But we’ll
do it once more. And a little more pathos, Merton, when you take the old
lady in your arms. You can broaden it. You don’t actually break down,
but you nearly do.”
The scene was rehearsed again, to Baird’s satisfaction, and the cameras
ground. Merton Gill gave the best that was in him. His glad look at
first beholding the old lady, the yearning of his eyes when his arms
opened to enfold her, the tenderness of his embrace as he murmured
soothing words, the lingering touch of his hand as he left her, the
manly determination of the last look in which he showed a fresh resolve
to release her from this toil, all were eloquent of the deepest filial
devotion and earnestness of purpose.
Back at his desk he was genuinely pitying the old lady. Very lately, it
was evident, she had been compelled to play in a cabaret scene, for she
smelled strongly of cigarettes, and he could not suppose that she, her
eyes brimming with anguished mother love, could have relished these.
He was glad when it presently developed that his own was not to be a
smoking part.
“Now the dissipated brother’s coming on,” explained Baird. “He’ll breeze
in, hang up his hat, offer you a cigarette, which you refuse, and show
you some money that he won on the third race yesterday. You follow him a
little way from the desk, telling him he shouldn’t smoke cigarettes, and
that money he gets by gambling will never do him any good. He laughs at
you, but you don’t mind. On your way back to the desk you stop by your
mother, and she gets up and embraces you again.
“Take your time about it--she’s your mother, remember.”
The brother entered. He was indeed dissipated appearing, loudly dressed,
and already smoking a cigarette as he swaggered the length of the shop
to offer Merton one. Merton refused in a kindly but firm manner. The
flashy brother now pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and pointed
to his winning horse in a racing extra. The line in large type was there
for the close-up--“Pianola Romps Home in Third Race.”
Followed the scene in which Merton sought to show this youth that
cigarettes and gambling would harm him. The youth remained obdurate. He
seized a duster and, with ribald action, began to dust off the rows
of cooked food on the counters. Again the son stopped to embrace his
mother, who again wept as she enfolded him. The scene was shot.
Step by step, under the patient coaching of Baird, the simple drama
unfolded. It was hot beneath the lights, delays were frequent and the
rehearsals tedious, yet Merton Gill continued to give the best that was
in him. As the day wore on, the dissipated son went from bad to worse.
He would leave the shop to place money on a horse race, and he would
seek to induce the customers he waited on to play at dice with him. A
few of them consented, and one, a coloured man who had come to purchase
pigs’-feet, won at this game all the bills which the youth had shown to
Merton on entering.
There were moments during this scene when Merton wondered if Baird were
not relapsing into Buckeye comedy depths, but he saw the inevitable
trend of the drama and the justification for this bit of gambling. For
the son, now penniless, became desperate. He appealed to Merton for a
loan, urging it on the ground that he had a sure thing thirty--to-one
shot at Latonia. At least these were the words of Baird, as he directed
Merton to deny the request and to again try to save the youth from his
inevitable downfall. Whereupon the youth had sneered at Merton and left
the place in deep anger.
There followed the scene with the boy’s sister, only daughter of the
rich delicatessen merchant, who Merton was pleased to discover would
be played by the Montague girl. She entered in a splendid evening gown,
almost too splendid, Merton thought, for street wear in daylight, though
it was partially concealed by a rich opera cloak. The brother being out,
Merton came forward to wait upon her.
“It’s like this,” Baird explained. “She’s just a simple New York society
girl, kind of shallow and heartless, because she has never been aroused
nor anything, see? You’re the first one that’s really touched her heart,
but she hesitates because her father expects her to marry a count and
she’s come to get the food for a swell banquet they’re giving for him.
She says where’s her brother, and if anything happened to him it would
break her heart. Then she orders what she wants and you do it up for
her, looking at her all the time as if you thought she was the one girl
in the world.
“She kind of falls for you a little bit, still she is afraid of what
her father would say. Then you get bolder, see? You come from behind
the counter and begin to make love, talking as you come out--so-and-so,
so-and-so, so-and-so--Miss Hoffmeyer, I have loved you since the day I
first set eyes on you--so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, I have nothing
to offer but the love of an honest man--she’s falling for it, see?
So you get up close and grab her--cave-man stuff. Do a good hard
clench--she’s yours at last; she just naturally sags right down on to
you. You’ve got her.
“Do a regular Parmalee. Take your time. You’re going to kiss her and
kiss her right. But just as you get down to it the father busts in and
says what’s the meaning of this, so you fly apart and the father says
you’re discharged, because his daughter is the affianced wife of this
Count Aspirin, see? Then he goes back to the safe and finds all the
money has been taken, because the son has sneaked in and grabbed out the
bundle and hid it in the ice-box on his way out, taking only a few bills
to get down on a horse. So he says call the police--but that’s enough
for now. Go ahead and do that love scene for me.”
Slowly the scene was brought to Baird’s liking. Slowly, because Merton
Gill at first proved to be diffident at the crisis. For three rehearsals
the muscular arm of Miss Montague had most of the clenching to do. He
believed he was being rough and masterful, but Baird wished a
greater show of violence. They had also to time this scene with the
surreptitious entrance of the brother, his theft of the money which he
stuffed into a paper sack and placed in the ice-box, and his exit.
The leading man having at last proved that he could be Harold Parmalee
even in this crisis, the scene was extended to the entrance of the
indignant father. He was one of those self-made men of wealth, Merton
thought, a short, stout gentleman with fiery whiskers, not at all
fashionably dressed. He broke upon the embrace with a threatening stick.
The pair separated, the young lover facing him, proud, erect, defiant,
the girl drooping and confused.
The father discharged Merton Gill with great brutality, then went to the
safe at the back of the room, returning to shout the news that he had
been robbed by the man who would have robbed him of his daughter. It
looked black for Merton. Puzzled at first, he now saw that the idolized
brother of the girl must have taken the money. He seemed about to
declare this when his nobler nature compelled him to a silence that must
be taken for guilt.
The erring brother returned, accompanied by several customers. “Bring a
detective to arrest this man,” ordered the father. One of the customers
stepped out to return with a detective. Again Merton was slightly
disquieted at perceiving that the detective was the cross-eyed man.
This person bustled about the place, tapping the cooked meats and the
cheeses, and at last placed his hand upon the shoulder of the supposed
thief. Merton, at Baird’s direction, drew back and threatened him with
a blow. The detective cringed and said: “I will go out and call a
policeman.”
The others now turned their backs upon the guilty man. Even the girl
drew away after one long, agonized look at the lover to whose embrace
she had so lately submitted. He raised his arms to her in mute appeal as
she moved away, then dropped them at his side.
“Give her all you got in a look,” directed Baird. “You’re saying: ‘I go
to a felon’s cell, but I do it all for you.’ Dream your eyes at her.”
Merton Gill obeyed.
The action progressed. In this wait for the policeman the old mother
crept forward. She explained to Merton that the money was in the ice-box
where the real thief had placed it, and since he had taken the crime of
another upon his shoulders he should also take the evidence, lest the
unfortunate young man be later convicted by that; she also urged him
to fly by the rear door while there was yet time. He did these things,
pausing for a last embrace of the weeping old lady, even as the hand of
the arriving policeman was upon the door.
“All for to-day, except some close-ups,” announced Baird when this scene
had been shot. There was a breaking up of the group, a relaxation of
that dramatic tension which the heart-values of the piece had imposed.
Only once, while Merton was doing some of his best acting, had there
been a kind of wheezy tittering from certain members of the cast and the
group about the cameras.
Baird had quickly suppressed this. “If there’s any kidding in this piece
it’s all in my part,” he announced in cold, clear tones, and there had
been no further signs of levity. Merton was pleased by this manner of
Baird’s. It showed that he was finely in earnest in the effort for the
worth-while things. And Baird now congratulated him, seconded by the
Montague girl. He had, they told him, been all that could be expected.
“I wasn’t sure of myself,” he told them, “in one scene, and I wanted
to ask you about it, Mr. Baird. It’s where I take that money from the
ice-box and go out with it. I couldn’t make myself feel right. Wouldn’t
it look to other people as if I was actually stealing it myself? Why
couldn’t I put it back in the safe?”
Baird listened respectfully, considering. “I think not,” he announced
at length. “You’d hardly have time for that, and you have a better plan.
It’ll be brought out in the subtitles, of course. You are going to leave
it at the residence of Mr. Hoffmeyer, where it will be safe. You see, if
you put it back where it was, his son might steal it again. We thought
that out very carefully.”
“I see,” said Merton. “I wish I had been told that. I feel that I could
have done that bit a lot better. I felt kind of guilty.”
“You did it perfectly,” Baird assured him.
“Kid, you’re a wonder,” declared the Montague girl. “I’m that tickled
with you I could give you a good hug,” and with that curious approach
to hysteria she had shown while looking at his stills, she for a moment
frantically clasped him to her. He was somewhat embarrassed by this
excess, but pardoned it in the reflection that he had indeed given the
best that was in him. “Bring all your Western stuff to the dressing room
tomorrow,” said Baird.
Western stuff--the real thing at last! He was slightly amazed later
to observe the old mother outside the set. She was not only smoking a
cigarette with every sign of relish, but she was singing as she did a
little dance step. Still she had been under a strain all day, weeping,
too, almost continuously. He remembered this, and did not judge her
harshly as she smoked, danced, and lightly sang,
Her mother’s name was Cleo,
Her father’s name was Pat;
They called her Cleopatra,
And let it go at that.