At the first showing of the Buckeye company’s new five-reel comedy--Five
Reels-500 Laughs--entitled Brewing Trouble, two important members of
its cast occupied balcony seats and one of them throughout the piece
brazenly applauded the screen art of her husband. “I don’t care who sees
me,” she would reply ever and again to his whispered protests.
The new piece proved to be a rather broadly stressed burlesque of the
type of picture drama that has done so much to endear the personality of
Edgar Wayne to his public. It was accorded a hearty reception. There was
nothing to which it might be compared save the company’s previous
Hearts on Fire, and it seemed to be felt that the present offering had
surpassed even that masterpiece of satire.
The Gills, above referred to, watched the unwinding celluloid with
vastly different emotions. Mrs. Gill was hearty in her enjoyment, as
has been indicated. Her husband, superficially, was not displeased. But
beneath that surface of calm approval--beneath even the look of bored
indifference he now and then managed--there still ran a complication
of emotions, not the least of which was honest bewilderment. People
laughed, so it must be funny. And it was good to be known as an artist
of worth, even if the effects of your art were unintended.
It was no shock to him to learn now that the mechanical appliance in his
screen-mother’s kitchen was a still, and that the grape juice the honest
country boy purveyed to the rich New Yorker had been improved in rank
defiance of a constitutional amendment. And even during the filming of
the piece he had suspected that the little sister, so engagingly played
by the present Mrs. Gill, was being too bold. With slight surprise,
therefore, as the drama unfolded, he saw that she had in the most brazen
manner invited the attentions of the city villains.
She had, in truth, been only too eager to be lured to the great city
with all its pitfalls, and had bidden the old home farewell in her
simple country way while each of the villains in turn had awaited her
in his motor-car. What Merton had not been privileged to watch were the
later developments of this villainy. For just beyond the little hamlet
at a lonely spot in the road each of the motor-cars had been stopped by
a cross-eyed gentleman looking much like the clerk in the hotel, save
that he was profusely bewhiskered and bore side-arms in a menacing
fashion.
Declaring that no scoundrel could take his little daughter from him, he
deprived the villains of their valuables, so that for a time at least
they should not bring other unsuspecting girls to grief. As a further
precaution he compelled them to abandon their motor-cars, in which he
drove off with the rescued daughter. He was later seen to sell the cars
at a wayside garage, and, after dividing their spoils with his daughter,
to hail a suburban trolley upon which they both returned to the home
nest, where the little girl would again languish at the gate, a prey to
any designing city man who might pass.
She seemed so defenceless in her wild-rose beauty, her longing for
pretty clothes and city ways, and yet so capably pro by this opportune
father who appeared to foresee the moment of her flights.
He learned without a tremor that among the triumphs of his inventive
genius had been a machine for making ten--dollar bills, at which the New
York capitalist had exclaimed that the state right for Iowa alone would
bring one hundred thousand dollars. Even more remunerative, it would
seem, had been his other patent--the folding boomerang. The manager of
the largest boomerang factory in Australia stood ready to purchase this
device for ten million dollars. And there was a final view of the little
home after prosperity had come to its inmates so long threatened with
ruin. A sign over the door read “Ye Olde Fashioned Gifte Shoppe,” and
under it, flaunted to the wayside, was the severely simple trade-device
of a high boot.
These things he now knew were to be expected among the deft infamies
of a Buckeye comedy. But the present piece held in store for him a
complication that, despite his already rich experience of Buckeye
methods, caused him distressing periods of heat and cold while he
watched its incredible unfolding. Early in the piece, indeed, he had
begun to suspect in the luring of his little sister a grotesque parallel
to the bold advances made him by the New York society girl. He at once
feared some such interpretation when he saw himself coy and embarrassed
before her down-right attack, and he was certain this was intended when
he beheld himself embraced by this reckless young woman who behaved in
the manner of male screen idols during the last dozen feet of the last
reel. But how could he have suspected the lengths to which a perverted
spirit of satire would lead the Buckeye director?
For now he staggered through the blinding snow, a bundle clasped to his
breast. He fell, half fainting, at the door of the old home. He groped
for the knob and staggered in to kneel at his mother’s feet. And she
sternly repulsed him, a finger pointing to the still open door.
Unbelievably the screen made her say, “He wears no ring. Back to the
snow with ‘em both! Throw ‘em Way Down East!”
And Baird had said the bundle would contain one of his patents!
Mrs. Gill watched this scene with tense absorption. When the mother’s
iron heart had relented she turned to her husband. “You dear thing, that
was a beautiful piece of work. You’re set now. That cinches your future.
Only, dearest, never, never, never let it show on your face that you
think it’s funny. That’s all you’ll ever have to be afraid of in your
work.”
“I won’t,” he said stoutly.
He shivered--or did he shudder?--and quickly reached to take her hand.
It was a simple, direct gesture, yet somehow it richly had the quality
of pleading.
“Mother understands,” she whispered. “Only remember, you mustn’t seem to
think it’s funny.”
“I won’t,” he said again. But in his torn heart he stubbornly cried, “I
don’t, I don’t!”
* * * * * * *
Some six months later that representative magazine, Silver Screenings,
emblazoned upon its front cover a promise that in the succeeding number
would appear a profusely illustrated interview by Augusta Blivens with
that rising young screen actor, Merton Gill.
The promise was kept. The interview wandered amid photographic
reproductions of the luxurious Hollywood bungalow, set among palms and
climbing roses, the actor and his wife in their high-powered roadster
(Mrs. Gill at the wheel); the actor in his costume of chaps and
sombrero, rolling a cigarette; the actor in evening dress, the actor
in his famous scene of the Christmas eve return in Brewing Trouble; the
actor regaining his feet in his equally famous scene of the malignant
spurs; the actor and his young wife, on the lawn before the bungalow,
and the young wife aproned, in her kitchen, earnestly busy with spoon
and mixing bowl.
“It is perhaps not generally known,” wrote Miss Blivens, “that the
honour of having discovered this latest luminary in the stellar
firmament should be credited to Director Howard Henshaw of the Victor
forces. Indeed, I had not known this myself until the day I casually
mentioned the Gills in his presence. I lingered on a set of Island Love,
at present being filmed by this master of the unspoken drama, having but
a moment since left that dainty little reigning queen of the celluloid
dynasty, Muriel Mercer. Seated with her in the tiny bijou boudoir of her
bungalow dressing room on the great Holden lot, its walls lined with the
works of her favourite authors--for one never finds this soulful little
girl far from the books that have developed her mentally as the art of
the screen has developed her emotionally--she had referred me to
the director when I sought further details of her forthcoming great
production, an idyl of island romance and adventure. And presently, when
I had secured from him the information I needed concerning this
unique little drama of the great South Seas, I chanced to mention my
approaching encounter with the young star of the Buckeye forces, an
encounter to which I looked forward with some dismay.
“Mr. Henshaw, pausing in his task of effecting certain changes in the
interior of the island hut, reassured me. ‘You need have no fear about
your meeting with Gill,’ he said. ‘You will find him quite simple
and unaffected, an artist, and yet sanely human.’ It was now that he
revealed his own part in the launching of this young star. ‘I fancy it
is not generally known,’ he continued, ‘that to me should go the honour
of having “discovered” Gill. It is a fact, however. He appeared as
an extra one morning in the cabaret scene we used in Miss Mercer’s
tremendous hit, The Blight of Broadway. Instantly, as you may suppose, I
was struck by the extraordinary distinction of his face and bearing. In
that crowd composed of average extra people he stood out to my eye as
one made for big things. After only a moment’s chat with him I gave him
a seat at the edge of the dancing floor and used him most effectively
in portraying the basic idea of this profoundly stirring drama in which
Miss Mercer was to achieve one of her brightest triumphs.
“‘Watch that play to-day; you will discover young Gill in many of the
close-ups where, under my direction, he brought out the psychological,
the symbolic--if I may use the term--values of the great idea underlying
our story. Even in these bits he revealed the fine artistry which he has
since demonstrated more broadly under another director.
“‘To my lasting regret the piece was then too far along to give him a
more important part, though I intended to offer him something good in
our next play for Muriel Mercer--you may recall her gorgeous success in
Her Father’s Wife--but I was never able to find the chap again. I made
inquiries, of course, and felt a really personal sense of loss when I
could get no trace of him. I knew then, as well as I know now, that
he was destined for eminence in our world of painted shadows. You may
imagine my chagrin later when I learned that another director was to
reap the rewards of a discovery all my own.’
“And so,” continued Miss Blivens, “it was with the Henshaw words still
in my ears that I first came into the presence of Merton Gill, feeling
that he would-as he at once finely did--put me at my ease. Simple,
unaffected, modest, he is one whom success has not spoiled. Both on the
set where I presently found him--playing the part of a titled roue in
the new Buckeye comedy--to be called, one hears, ‘Nearly Sweethearts or
Something’-and later in the luxurious but homelike nest which the
young star has provided for his bride of a few months-she was ‘Flips’
Montague, one recalls, daughter of a long line of theatrical folk dating
back to days of the merely spoken drama-he proved to be finely unspoiled
and surprisingly unlike the killingly droll mime of the Buckeye
constellation. Indeed one cannot but be struck at once by the deep vein
of seriousness underlying the comedian’s surface drollery. His sense of
humour must be tremendous; and yet only in the briefest flashes of his
whimsical manner can one divine it.
“‘Let us talk only of my work,’ he begged me. ‘Only that can interest my
public.’ And so, very seriously, we talked of his work.
“‘Have you ever thought of playing serious parts?’ I asked, being now
wholly put at my ease by his friendly, unaffected ways.
“He debated a moment, his face rigidly set, inscrutable to my glance.
Then he relaxed into one of those whimsically appealing smiles that
somehow are acutely eloquent of pathos. ‘Serious parts--with this
low-comedy face of mine!’ he responded. And my query had been answered.
Yet he went on, ‘No, I shall never play Hamlet. I can give a good
imitation of a bad actor but, doubtless, I should give a very bad
imitation of a good one.
“Et vailet, Messieurs.” I remarked to myself. The man with a few simple
strokes of the brush had limned me his portrait. And I was struck again
with that pathetic appeal in face and voice as he spoke so confidingly.
After all, is not pure pathos the hall-mark of great comedy? We laugh,
but more poignantly because our hearts are tugged at. And here was a
master of the note pathetic.
“Who that has roared over the Gill struggle with the dreadful spurs was
not even at the climax of his merriment sympathetically aware of his
earnest persistence, the pained sincerity of his repeated strivings,
the genuine anguish distorting his face as he senses the everlasting
futility of his efforts? Who that rocked with laughter at the fox-trot
lesson in Object, Alimony, could be impervious to the facial agony above
those incompetent, disobedient, heedless feet?
“Here was honest endeavour, an almost prayerful determination, again
and again thwarted by feet that recked not of rhythm or even of bare
mechanical accuracy. Those feet, so apparently aimless, so little under
control, were perhaps the most mirthful feet the scored failure in the
dance. But the face, conscious of their clumsiness, was a mask of fine
tragedy.
“Such is the combination, it seems to me, that has produced the artistry
now so generally applauded, an artistry that perhaps achieved its full
flowering in that powerful bit toward the close of Brewing Trouble--the
return of the erring son with his agony of appeal so markedly portrayed
that for the moment one almost forgot the wildly absurd burlesque of
which it formed the joyous yet truly emotional apex. I spoke of this.
“‘True burlesque is, after all, the highest criticism, don’t you
think?’ he asked me. ‘Doesn’t it make demands which only a sophisticated
audience can meet-isn’t it rather high-brow criticism?’ And I saw that
he had thought deeply about his art.
“‘It is because of this,’ he went on, ‘that we must resort to so much of
the merely slap-stick stuff in our comedies. For after all, our picture
audience, twenty million people a day--surely one can make no great
demands upon their intelligence.’ He considered a moment, seemingly
lost in memories of his work. ‘I dare say,’ he concluded, ‘there are
not twenty million people of taste and real intelligence in the whole
world.’
“Yet it must not be thought that this young man would play the cynic.
He is superbly the optimist, though now again he struck a note of almost
cynic whimsicality. ‘Of course our art is in its infancy--’ He waited
for my nod of agreement, then dryly added, ‘We must, I think, consider
it the Peter Pan of the arts. And I dare say you recall the outstanding
biological freakishness of Peter.’ But a smile--that slow, almost
puzzled smile of his--accompanied the words.
“‘You might,’ he told me at parting, ‘call me the tragic comedian.’ And
again I saw that this actor is set apart from the run of his brethren
by an almost uncanny gift for introspection. He has ruthlessly analysed
himself. He knows, as he put it, ‘what God meant him to be.’ Was here a
hint of poor Cyrano?
“I left after some brief reference to his devoted young wife, who, in
studio or home, is never far from his side. “‘It is true that I have
struggled and sacrificed to give the public something better and finer,’
he told me then; ‘but I owe my real success all to her.’ He took the
young wife’s hand in both his own, and very simply, unaffectedly, raised
it to his cheek where he held it a moment, with that dreamy, remembering
light in his eyes, as of one striving to recall bits of his past.
“‘I think that’s all,’ he said at last. But on the instant of my going
he checked me once more. ‘No, it isn’t either.’ He brightened. ‘I
want you to tell your readers that this little woman is more than my
wife--she is my best pal; and, I may also add, my severest critic.’”
End of Project Gutenberg’s Merton of the Movies, by Harry Leon Wilson