"You had a hard day, Roody? You look tired."
"I don't like the battle of Waterloo in the 'Saint Elba' picture."
"Roody, that scene it took such a fortune to build into the shape of the
letter A?"
"It looks like what is it. Fake! The way it reads in that _French
Revolution_ by that fellow Carlyle they gave me to read and the way it
looks in the picture is the difference of black from white. For fifty
thousand dollars more or less on a four-hundred-thousand-dollar picture
I don't have a fake Waterloo."
"I should say not, Roody, when you're famous for your water scenes in
all your big pictures! In 'The Lure of Silk' it's the scenes on the
water they went craziest over."
"I've already got the passage engaged for next week to shoot the
company over to France. That windmill scene on Long Island looks as much
like the windmill north of Fleuris, where Napoleon could see the Blucher
troops from, as I look like a windmill scene. 'Sol,' I says, 'it looks
just like what it is--a piece of pasteboard out of the storehouse set up
on a rock. Eat those feet of film, Sol,' I says to him, 'plant 'em,
drown 'em--anything you like with 'em. That kind of fake stuff won't
make 'Saint Elba' the greatest picture ever released, and every picture
turned out from these studios has got to be just that.' I wish you could
have heard, Rosie, in the projection-room, quiet like a pin after I came
out with it."
"Fifty thousand dollars, Roody?"
"Yes. 'Fifty thousand dollars,' begins Sol with me, too. 'Fifty
thousand--one hundred thousand--two!' I said. 'It would make no
difference. If we can't fake the kind of battle-plain that wouldn't make
Napoleon turn over in his grave, we cross the ocean for the real thing.'
'Fifty thousand dollars,' Sol keeps saying--you know how he cries with
his voice. 'Fifty thousand dollars your grandmother!' I hollered. 'For a
few dollars more or less I should make a Rudolph Pelz picture something
I'm ashamed of.' Am I right, Rosie? Am I right?"
"I should say so, Roody, for a few dollars you should not belittle
yourself."
"Not if your old man knows it, by golly! and I think he does."
"Hurry now, Roody; you know how Bleema likes it you should be dressed."
"Believe me, if Feist had his choice he wouldn't be dressed, neither.
Full dress for grandma and all of us to look at each other in! When
there's company, it's bad enough, but for Feist and a few servants,
hanged if I see it!"
"Does it hurt, Roody, to give the child a little pleasure? Anyway, she's
right--people like us should get dressed up for sup--dinner. I wouldn't
be surprised if she didn't bring Lester Spencer back for dinner from
automobiling."
"He leaves to-night at ten with the company for Pennsylvania and the
Horseshoe Bend picture. Anyways, I don't see where it comes in that for
a fellow who draws his salary off of me I have to dress. I got to say it
for him, though, give the devil his due, he does a good piece of work
where Sol succeeds in getting him off center-stage in his scene with
Wellington."
"Lester is a good actor. Madame Coutilly, to-day, when I had my
manicure, just raved over him and Norma Beautiful in 'The Lure
of Silk.'"
"He'll be a screen proposition some day if we can chain down some of his
conceit. Only, where such friendships with him and Bleema comes in, I
don't see. I don't like it."
"Say, the child likes to run around with celebrities. Why shouldn't it
give her pleasure over the other girls from Miss Samuels's school to be
seen out once in a while with Lester Spencer, their favorite, or Norma
Beautiful? 'America's Darlings,' I see this week's _Screen Magazine_
calls 'em. It's natural the child should enjoy it."'
"Let her enjoy; only, where it comes in I should have to sit across
from him at supper three times this week, I don't see. Out of the
studio, me and Spencer don't talk the same language. To-night, him and
Feist would mix like oil and water."
"Does Feist know yet, Roody, you closed the deal on the Grismer estate?"
"Sure! I says to him to-day: 'Feist, with us for next-door neighbors of
your country estate, together we own nearly half of Long Island.' Am
I right?"
"Like I says last night in mamma's room to Etta and Sol, 'I was used to
thirty-four rooms and nineteen baths from home yet!' Poor mamma--how she
laughed! Just like before her stroke."
"Nothing, Rosie, not one hundred rooms and fifty baths--nothing I can
ever do for you is one-tenth that you deserve."
"And nothing, Roody, that I can do for you is one-hundredth what you
deserve."
"I sometimes wonder, Rosie, if, with all we got, there isn't maybe some
little happiness I've overlooked for you."