I don't think I have ever read a short story about a film, so I have
made one up myself.
* * * * *
Viviana Smith was born in Battersea. At twelve years old she ran about
the streets with holes in her stockings and played a complicated game
with chalk squares and a stone. She had the accent of London streets,
which is the only accent that can pierce through the noise of London
traffic. But she had hair the colour of marsh-marigolds, a Vorticist
mouth and patent enlargeable eyes. In the street she made eyes at
errand-boys, and at school she made eyes so large that there was no
room to dot them.
At the age of seventeen she went in for the Purple Pomegranate film
competition, and was selected from five hundred thousand candidates
to be a motion-picture star. She starred some. At the beginning she
played in romantic comedy films with woodland scenery and rustic
bridges and pools where she tickled for trout. She tickled so well
that one could almost hear the trout laugh. Later she played in
"crook" melodrama, where somebody was always peeping through the door
when the secret patent was being taken out of the office safe, and
where men always kept arriving in motor-cars and going up flights of
steps with their faces turned to the audience and going down flights
of steps with their faces turned to the audience and getting into
motor-cars again. They never missed a step. There is something about
this feat which holds a cinema audience spellbound.
Later she rode on untamed mustangs and fell over cliffs gagged and
bound, and sometimes she was even promoted to slide or twirl into a
bakehouse and tumble with a talented cast of actors and actresses into
a large trough of dough. When they had wiped the dough off they all
came back into the bakehouse one after another and tumbled into the
dough-trough again. Repetition is the soul of wit.
One day Viviana met Ignatius Vavasour, the poet. For two years he had
worshipped her afar on the screen. He had seen her in so many reels
that she made him giddy. He had seen her in _Youth's Yodelling
May-tide Hour_, length five reels, and in _Hate's Hideous Hand of
Crime_, length six reels, and in _Gertie Flips the Flap-jack over_,
length seven reels and a half. He had never heard her speak, but he
had seen her beautiful lips ripple into a thousand artless expressions
of grief and joy. He did not know whether he loved her most when she
was tripping through a silvan glade, with meadow-sweet in her hand,
or when she was gliding gracefully over Niagara Falls in a tar-barrel;
when she was cracking the door of a strong room with a jemmy or when
she was getting the dough out of her hair with a rake. But as soon as
he had seen her out of the pictures he knew that he loved her best as
she was. He knew that he could not live without her. He told her so.
"But, Mr. Vavasour," she protested.
"Call me Iggie," he cried.
"But you have only known me such a short time," she said. "You have
seen me, you say, a hundred times on the films, and I daresay you
admired me immensely, but tell me this, Iggie, Is it my real character
that you love?"
"No, no! A thousand times no!" he exclaimed.
"Then I cannot marry you," she answered coldly, turning away.
Crushed with disappointment Ignatius staggered from the room. He had
no thought for poetry now, but wandered feverishly about the streets,
searching for some mad excitement to stifle his despair. He played
billiards and _vingt-et-un_. He took to drugs and to drink. He even
had thoughts of standing for Parliament. But he soon found that the
sorrow, gnawing at his heart was one that politics could never
assuage nor alcohol drown, not at least at the present price of green
Chartreuse.
One day as he slouched miserably along the pavement he saw the
advertisement of a lecture outside the door of an institute. "The
Ideal in Philosophy and Art," said the placard; and, scarcely knowing
what he did, Ignatius went in. But the lecturer had barely begun to
expound his theme, which he did in the following forcible words:
"The categorical subjectivity of all intuitive apperceptions of the
ideal"--when a wild light flashed in the poet's eyes and he started
from his seat and rushed madly from the room. The lecturer wondered
mildly what had happened, but blinked and went on. What had happened
was that Ignatius Vavasour was pounding like a prize American trotter
to the nearest telephone box.
"Viviana," he cried an hour later, when he had got through, "you
remember what you said the day we met? Is it your real character that
I love? And I said 'No.'"
"Yes, Iggie," she said with a catch in her voice.
"Did you mean Rabbits, Eggs, Eggs, Lloyd, or Babbits, Eggs, Albatross,
Lloyd?"
"Albatross," she moaned.
"Well, it is. I mean, I do," he cried.
"Viviana, will you marry me?"
"Sure, Iggie," she answered softly. "Good-bye."
* * * * *
And now that I have written this story I am going to get it filmed.