HANDMAID TO FAME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 February 1939, Page 10

HANDMAID TO FAME

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT COPYRIGHT.

BY

BERTA RUCK.

v CHAPTER V. A message awaited Terry at Lavery’s room. It was: Would Miss Grey kindly wait until the second post comes in and then bring all the letters on to the film studio? Terry, once more me drab secretarial mouse in That Hat and that work-a-day suit, waited. The second post came in. Terry took the letters, took a taxi, and went forth to the film studio. Her first experience of that vast Amusement Factory.

The be-medalled commissionaire at the entrance told her that Mr Lavery was on the floor; impossible to see him.

“I was to wait here and see him,” Terry said. “Very well, madam,” said the commissionaire;. “Will you go into the waiting-room?’’ “Right,” said .Terry. Being a human girl she was all stimulated and inquisitive about this new world, than of film-making. So, when she found that instead of opening the door into the waitingroom, she had taken the wrong turning and found herself in one of the studios, she did not immediately dash out again. “Goodness knows when I shall have the chance again,” she thought,’ “see all you can while you can. Terry.” She settled her disguising glasses on her straight, inquisitive little nose and looked about.

Looking round she saw that the studio was positively solid with other girls. Girls with a kind of mass-pro-duced prettiness, a mass make-up, a mass effectiveness of dress.

The girl to her right might have been a sister of the girl to her left. The one in front of Terry looked like a cousin of the one behind her.

It was the one behind her who, with a “little dash of Dublin” in her voice, said to Terry, “Who sent you, dear?” “Mr Lavery,” said Terry. “Oh. It’s you that have the luck,” said the Irish girl. She had a blue hat, charming legs. “If you’re a friend of his, it’s a cinch that you’ll be taken on, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I’m not a friend of his,” said Terry quickly, laughing a little, blushing a little as she thought of last night’s uncomfortable party. “I’m his secretary. I’m nothing to do with the film, if you meant that.” “Oh, I see!” Meaning, she wondered how I could ever have got on the screen,” thought Terry. She asked. “What are all you girls doing in the film?” A little ripple of laughter went round the mass-produced prettiness within earshot. The Irish blonde in the blue hat explained to Terry that the theatrical agencies had reported that extra ladies were requires for ‘Venus Rises,’ how many they didn’t know, but they’d all come on. It was Terry’s turn to say, “I see,” The door opened again. “The Casting Director!” Terry made herself as inconspicuous as possible, and was witness to the scene, (which, it occurred to her, she might presently write). The casting director was a small, lark man with an impersonal voice. Difficult to know whether he was addressing the two hundred odd girls, himself, the universe, or some unseen colleague of the industry as he anounced.

“I need thirty girls.” A black wearied eye swivelled over them as he counted, selected, pointed . . “I’ll have you —and you—and you: that's twentyeight, twenty-nine, ” A gasp broke from the blonde in the small blue hat, dragged down over one large blue eye. Terry looked at her. Was she to be passed over again. Would the Director see nothing in her, except that her hair need a perm, and her grey suede shoes wanted re-heeling, and that her appearance was too betrayingly hard-up? Or wouldn’t he even see her? “He’ll see me,” thought Terry swiftly. “Among these lookers I just stand out as a girl without an attempt at looks." Recklessly ,and on impulse, Terry stepped forward, slipped her hand into the arm of the blue-hatted blonde, and as the casting director counted “twentynine ’"Terry took up loudly, “Did you mean me, or my friend here?” The casting director gazed at Terry as though she were something deplorable which he had found in the green salad. He appeared hypotnised by her eye glasses, her unmade-up impishness, and that frightful suit, no less than by the impertinence of her manner. “You? No, no, Not you. Your friend. You in the blue hat ”

Another gasp, of relief this time, from the little Irish blonde.

“Oh, darling.” she muttered gratefully to Terry, “I’ll never forget this! Sure as my name's Eily Regan! If ever I can do anything for you ” “I’ll let you know,” promised Terry, feeling more cheered up than she had felt since last night's fiasco. A stream of mass-produced prettiness eddied towards the door and out —the Hundred Odd Rejected, poor darlings. She continued to watch. Her little friend Eily was now among the Thirty Chosen, and waited for the Casting Director to pick a stand-in. Now a stand-in, as all film fans know, is an extra who has the same height and measurements as the star. The Stand-in is the test for the activities of those experts who are called Cameraman, Sound. Props, Carps and Sparks—- “ Thank goodness,” thought Terry, who knew all this, “that I am only hand-maid to fame, not stand-in for a star ”

How often' too, must the measuring tape be extended from the eye of the lens to the nose of actor with shouts of “Hows that Bill? Too short? Or too far?’’—before they can begin the actual rehearsal. No temperamental star at two hundreds pounds a week will put up with these preliminaries. That's the Stand-in’s job. Out of the thirty, three were sifted out. One was Eily Regan. “Oh, let me get this!” Terry heard the whispered prayer of the Irish

“extra” as she and Mr Lavery’s secretary were told they were to come up, in the lift, to the next floor and the set of ‘Venus Rises.’

The first thing that Terry knew of ‘Venus Rises' (words that were afterwards to feel as if they were stamped on her!) was the din of hammering and sawing. The next was the glaring of lights. Then she found herself in a vast, crowded, over-heated oven, chalk marked into partitions, thronged with men in shirt-sleeves; pallid, rumpiehaired, sweating, shouting at each other.

While Terry waited for the appearance of the male Star, the female Star waited for the final verdict about her stand-in. Superciliously she glanced at the blue-hatted Irish girl; she had not yet seen Terry.

"Measuring-tape,” called someone “Props!”

The tape was produced, and run over the anxious extra,lady. “Waist? — Bust?—Hips—Turn round, dear. Across the back?”

“Faces don’t matter. Miss Armitage. Question of dimensions. That’ll do, dear,” the possible stand-in was told. “You wait downstairs.”

More waiting? More cruel suspense. Terry hoped the little Irish girl would get it; crowd work, she had said, might mean a few days only. The stand-in’s job would last for weeks. She disappeared to wait downstairs. Terry waited upstairs watching the preliminaries. Presently Miss Flower Armitage, stepping back, saw her. The Star’s mouth, which was made-up brownycrimson and the shape of the ace of hearts, opened to a drawled and not-too pleased “Hullo! —Miss Grey, again, isn’t it? What are you doing here? —Come for Mr Lavery? Oh yes—l believe you’ll have to wait a bit ” She nodded, smiled as she said it. But Terry had noted the flash in those eyes that looked out of their pools of heavy film make-up. “That girl, for no reason, just hates me,” thought Terry. “She is as badtempered as she is beautiful. ‘Venus Rises,’ indeed. Heaven help poor Mr Lavery or anybody else if ever this Venus rises in wrath!” “What Vai will do without Miss Grey when he marries, I don’t know,” was Flower Armitage’s significant summing up. “I’m afraid his wife is never going to wait on him hand-and-foot as Miss Grey does now.” "Meaning,” thought Terry Grey, “that I needn’t expect to hold this job down vpry long.” Hei’ job as handmaid to face had now altered in character. This happened thus.

On the day that Terry hurried from her employer’s rooms to his studio’with letters, a fresh complication had been added to the already hectic complications on the set of “Venus Rises.” Betty White, the continuity-girl, was taken ill. It is now a well-known fact of natural history that the continuity girl on a picture represents that picture’s incarnate memory, following every detail from the script, remembering whether there were four white flowers in that vase yesterday, noticing whether the star’s overcoat had been left buttoned or unbuttoned.

“Lord!” exclaimed the assistant-di-rector. “Who's going to take Betty’s place?” “Here’s my secretary,” Vai Lavery had said, adding in a hurried mutter, “Very efficient girl . . .First-rate work. “You don't mind, Miss Grey? You can rise to the occasion until Betty turns up?”

Terry Grey rose to the occasion, and since Betty did not reappear, and since Vai Lavery said it was all right by him, Terry found herself playing handmaid to fame in the actual scene of fame's making—and liking it. She enjoyed the hectic, varied life of the film unit.

She liked the excitement, the uncertainty of it. She liked the comradeship among the technicians. She liked the new collection of friends she made among the artists, among the sceneshifters. There was still plenty that she could see to for her Star; she still was a mixture of secretary, errand-girl, universal aunt, and shop-hound. The whole of Vai's family and his circle of friends turned for information about Vai to Vai’s Miss Grey. All of them liked her —except Vai’s fiancee. “Flower? Ought to have been christened Flame!" thought Terry. “She’s a devourer.”

She terrorised the make-up man. The wardrobe-mistress trembled before Flower. So did her maid.

So, especially, did her little stand-in Eily Regan. Eily had gained the coveted job of being moved here and there and getting drawn round her shoes chalk malks into which the Star would presently slip her elegant feet. Once Eily came blinded off the set because of those lights which are destructive even to costly furs. Still dazzled. she walked right into Miss Armitage, and Vai. "Look where you're going, can’t you!" snapped Flower.

Lavery steadied the little stand-in with a personal, sympathetic, un-screen and heartening smile. Terry, standing there holding the script'and following every line, thought "Decent he is to everybody. Keeps his temper with everyone, and everything." "The lighting." complained Flower, is lousy.” "It is lousy,” agreed the director. "O.K. Flower darling. Don't worry. I'll put the other girl through it again. We begin where Venus holds out her hands

Obediently Eily held out both hands. Again the male star caught them in his.

Flower’s glance upon the two was as

sharp as a stiletto. The director cried “O.K. camera? — How’s that? Buzz off out, Eily, then. Flower, darling, please ”

“Shoot!” Terry was feeling anxious—about Valentine Lavery. It wasn't only that the young man was overworked, under-slept, that he had lost weight and colour —these things being part of picture making.

Nor was it that his family were being specially annoying. “All families,” thought Terry, thinking of her own, “can be and are, a trial.” But it took more than these things to upset Vai. He was continually being upset, and Terry thought, “It’s Flower.”

She knew that, even though the services of the continuity girl had not been required at the big publicity dinner given for Flower by Mr Elmer K. Osgood. The talk was mostly of shop. Flower took it into her head, however, to bring up the question —“In an engagement it is better for the man or for the girl to be most in love? —What do you think, Mr Osgood?” “Miss Armitage, unless a man in love is more in love than the girl herself I don’t see as he can be in love at all, and if he is in love, the poor devil is for it!”

"Vai. what do you think?” "Flower, my dear, after that gruelling day in the studio I don’t think I’m capable of thought.” "Oh, but you must think when I ask you. Vai?” Vai muttered something “sotlo voce." He was sorry, even as he said it. Flower took up sharply. “What did you say, Vai?"

“Nothing that mattered.” "Vai, tell me the truth?” He was goaded into this wild extravagance. “If you must have the truth I’ll tell it to you for a change.” For after “that gruelling day” and a snatched lunch, in the studio-canteen, the first half-glass of bubbly had gone to the male-star’s head. “I’m afraid I was rather rudely saying that nobody could be more in love with you than you are yourself!" (To be Continued.)