Alma dear. Now go on, right through the scene."
Miss Daley, lying in complete collapse, with her head to the camera, writhed up on an elbow, planted her hands upon the floor and by main strength pushed her heaving shoulders away from it, keeping a tortured face turned to the camera throughout. Then she got her second wind, caught hold of the edge of the table, pulled herself up, looked around wildly, realized that she was a deserted woman, saw her hat by Tappé hanging on the back of a morris-chair by Ludwig Baumann, seized it, rushed to the door by which Egbert had escaped, and threw herself out in pursuit.
Mr. Laughlin clapped gleeful hands.
"Fine, Alma, wonderful! You're simply marvelous today, dear. Now Tommy, run through it just once with Alma, and then we'll shoot."
Mr. Lane bustled about and found chairs for Lucinda and her friends, upon which they composed themselves to watch Tommy interpret Mr. King Laughlin's tuition in the art of acting for the screen.
To the best of Lucinda's judgment, however, the greater part of Mr. Laughlin's efforts had meant to Tommy precisely nothing at all. Beyond the rudimentary mechanics of the physical action sketched in by the director, Tommy made no perceptible attempt to follow pattern, and disregarding entirely its conventional but effective business, embellished the scene instead with business which was, such as it was, all his own, or more accurately that of a dead era of the speaking stage.
Like a wraith of histrionism recalled from the theatre of East Lynne and The Silver King, Tommy carved out his effects with flowing, florid gestures, and revived the melodramatic stride and heroic attitudinizing; and though he wilfully made faces at the camera throughout, he demonstrated the deep veneration in which he really held it by never once showing it his back, until, having duly spurned the clinging caresses of Miss Daley, he was obliged to march to the door, and even then he made occasion to pause with a hand on the knob and, throwing out his chest and fretfully tossing rebellious black locks from tragic brows, granted the camera the boon of one last, long look at him ere making his exit.
And when Mr. Laughlin tranquilly approved this performance and announced that they would forthwith "shoot it," Lucinda began to wonder if there were possibly something wrong with her own powers of observation.
"But," she protested to Mr. Lane, who had coolly elected himself her special squire and placed his chair close to hers – "that man they call Tommy – he didn't play the scene as Mr. Laughlin did."
"Oh, Tommy Shannon!" said Mr. Lane equably – "Tommy's all right, he knows what he's doing – best leading man in the movin' picture business, bar none. King Laughlin knows he can trust Tommy to put it over his own way. All you got to do is to let Tommy Shannon alone and he'll ring the gong every shot."
"But if that's the case, why did Mr. Laughlin take so much trouble to show him – ?"
"Well, you see, it's this way," Mr. Lane explained: "King's all right, and Tommy's all right, too, both stars in their line; but if Tommy don't see a scene the way King shows him, and King starts to bawl him out, why, Tommy'll just walk off the lot. And then where are you? You can't finish your picture without your leading man, can you? And there's maybe a hundred-and-fifty or two-hundred thousand dollars invested in this production already. One of the first things a director's got to learn in this game is how to handle actors. That's where King Laughlin's so wonderful, he never had an actor quit on him yet."
"I see," said Lucinda thoughtfully. "The way to handle an actor is to let him have his own way."
"You got the idea," Mr. Lane approved without a smile.
"But suppose," she persisted – "suppose the leading man insists on doing something that doesn't suit the part he's supposed to play, I mean something so utterly out of character that it spoils the story?"
"Sure, that happens sometimes, too."
"What do you do then?"
"That's easy. What's your continuity writer for?"
"I don't know, Mr. Lane. You see, I don't even know what a continuity writer is."
"Why, he's the bird dopes out the continuity the director works from – you know, the scenes in a picture, the way they come out on the screen: Scene One, Scene Two, and all like that."
"You mean the playwright?"
"Well, yes; only in pictures he's called a continuity writer."
"But that doesn't tell me what you do when an actor insists on doing something that spoils the story."
"That's just what I'm trying to tell you, Mrs. Druce. You get your continuity writer, of course, and have him make the change."
"You mean you change the story to please the actor?"
"Sure: it's the only thing to do when you got maybe a hundred-and-fifty or two-hundred thousand dollars hung up in a picture."
"But doesn't that frequently spoil the story?"
"Oh, what's a story?" Mr. Lane argued reasonably. "People don't go to see a story when they take in an Alma Daley picture. They go because they know they get their money's worth when they see a Ben Culp production that's taken from some big Broadway success and costs a hundred-and-fifty or maybe two-hundred thousand dollars. But princip'ly, of course, they go to see Alma Daley, because she's the most pop'lar actress on the screen, and makes more money than Mary Pickford, and wears the swellest clothes that cost sometimes as much as twenty thousand dollars for each picture; and besides she's the grandest little woman that ever looked into a lens, and there's never been no scandal about her private life, and an Alma Daley picture's sure to be clean. Why, Mr. Culp wouldn't let Miss Daley act in any picture where she had to be wronged or anything like that. When he buys a play for her and the heroine's got a past in it or anything, he just has the story changed so's there's never any stain upon her honour or anything anybody could get hold of. That's one thing Mr. Culp's very partic'lar about; he says no wife of his shall ever go before the public in a shady part."
"Has he many?"
Mr. Lane looked hurt, but was mollified by the mischief in Lucinda's smile.
"Well, you know what I mean. But we better stop talking, if it's all the same to you, Mrs. Druce, or Miss Daley'll get upset. They're going to shoot now."
The warning was coincident with the sudden deluging of the set with waves of artificial light of a weird violet tint, falling from great metal troughs overhead and beating in horizontally from the metal stands or screens, which were now seen to be banks of incandescent tubes burning with a blinding glare.
Nor was this all: shafts and floods of light of normal hue were likewise trained upon the scene from a dozen different points, until the blended rays lent almost lifelike colouring to the faces of the actors, whose make-up had theretofore seemed ghastly and unnatural to uninitiate eyes.
Stationed just beyond the edge of the area of most intense illumination, the audience sat in a sort of violet penumbra whose effect was hideously unflattering. In it every face assumed a deathly glow, resembling the phosphorescence of corruption, the red of cheeks and lips became purple, and every hint of facial defect stood out, a purple smudge. So that Lucinda, reviewing the libelled countenances of her companions, breathed silent thanks to whatever gods there were for their gift of a complexion transparent and immaculate.
"Camera!"
The command came from King Laughlin. Lucinda could just hear a muffled clicking, and seeking its source discovered a youngish man, with a keen face and intelligent eyes, standing behind
