PEGGY IN HOLLYWOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 February 1939, Page 10

PEGGY IN HOLLYWOOD

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

COPYRIGHT.

BY

MRS PATRICK MACGILL.

CHAPTER I. “David, I’m going to Hollywood!' Here’s the cable —look!” The eager, excited whirlwind of a girl waved an important looking Western Union envelope above her head as she spoke. “Let me look, Peggy.” David Whitley read the cable slowly, replaced it in the envelope and bit savagely on his underlip. “I don’t like it, somehow. Sheer madness, I call it.” The words came haltingly, half-strangled, through David’s teeth. In his fine, brown eyes were both agony and anger, but mostly anger.

He was young, barely 25. Peggy was even younger, nearly at the end of her 19th year, and for a year and a half had been the prize student at the famous Royal Dramatic Academy. Slim and small-boned, scarcely more than fiye feet two, Peggy Rooney’s Irish ancestry showed in the wide, blacklashed eyes of curiously deep gentian blue, set well apart in a small, oval face of creamy purity, smoothly arched brows as black) as ink, a small, fulllipped mouth that turned up humorously at the corners, and glossy black hair that was the envy of all her friends, for not a cent had ever to be spent upon curling and waving it at hairdresser’s shops; it obligingly performed those functions of its own accord.

The young man got up suddenly and so swiftly that Peggy had no time to resist, folded her in arms that pressed so tightly that they hurt; to him she was all the great actresses of theatrical history rolled into one. The slim, provocative, ignorant, lovely, headstrong, but maddeningly sweet young figure had fired his blood and held his heart ever since the night, when at a charity performance of “Peg o’ My Heart,” she had acted Peg. and he had been in the audience. The cable was the outcome of an advertisement for British actresses in a Hollywood stock film company which Peggy had answered some time previously, and to which, at their request, she had sent untouched negative photographs of herself in various practice parts, and an electrical recording of her speaking and singing voice.

Both, it seemed, had been found perfectly satisfactory and Peggy was requested to report at the studios of the Lioness Film Company in Hollywood three weeks from the date of receivthe cable. Salary would depend upon her handling of the studio tests, but there was a minimum of 15 dollars a week for all stock actresses, and accommodation was provided in the company’s own hotel. Her train would be met if she sent an advance wire from New York.

On the surface, there was nothing to alarm anybody. No money was asked for; it might easily be that the executives of the company, on the lookout for new screen material, had been sufficiently impressed with Peggy’s picture and voice to give her a trial. Nevertheless, David cursed the poverty which kept him tied to London while Peggy, who had just inherited her aunt’s small fortune of exactly a thousand pounds, could afford to rush off to Hollywood and leave him like this! The whole vast earth seemed too small to contain so much love as David Whitley felt as, holding her fast, he told Peggy, “I don’t want life to hurt you! You are so young, so exquisite, so beautiful . . .”

Their lips met and clung together, David’s with agony and elation, with despair and a dark passion which vaguely disturbed and frightened her. “Let me look after you, sweetheart . Marry me'now, at once . . We’ll manage somehow . . .”

The eager, pleading voice beat like waves of far-away music upon Peggy’s ears; a delicate, stinging sensation ran along her veins with a thrill poignantly sweet, and in her innermost heart, Peggy knew that she would never in all her life love anybody else as she loved David Whitley, but she was so young—not yet 20—and as yet the cup of life had scarcely been held to her avid lips. She felt the urge of the calling she loved quite as much as the man who feverishly pursued another of its branches—for though David was employed in an office during the day, he was a dramatist by talent and unceasing application during weekends and holidays, and more than one West End manager had seen fit to encourage him to continue, asking to see his current effort when it should be completed. But it was not the dull round of domesticity as a struggling dramatist’s wife that could slake the thirst of Peggy’s ambition; while the rose-white youth of the world swelled past to beat her wings futilely against the bars of the cage represented by the four-room flat in Brixton,, which would be all that they could afford until David “made good.” There followed an unquiet silence in which things happened. Peggy’s white arms against the black crepe de chine frock that she wore looked like two slender columns of marble as she wound them about David’s neck. “Not yet . . oh, not just yet. . . .” she said, her voice half muffled against his shoulder. She loved David, but one might as well have told a child trying to learn how to walk not to use its legs as to have tried to dissuade Peggy Rooney from trying her luck in the magic world within a world—the fantastic tinsel kingdom of Hollywood. CHAPTER If. Los Angeles at last! Our Lady of the Angels! “What a fitting name,” Peggy thought, as she came upon the sauve, luscious greenness of Pasadena, with its magnificent white marble-fronted houses gleaming in the brilliant sunshine, softened to the eye by the brown foothills

of the Sierra Mountains that seemed to fold their russet foliage around themselves like the sober hued garment of a monk. Flaming poinsettias, red lilies, pink azaleas and purple petunias rioted casually along the footpaths, around the boles of enormous palms that swayand curtsied in the lightest breeze. Peggy caught her breath, entranced. Her very blood thrilled to the whispered promise of adventure, and her heart was beating so fast that it seemed to jump up into her throat. “In pictures, honey?” inquired' a bloated, fat, sleepy-looking man who had been so blind to the glories of California that he had slept nearly all the day, as well as —presumably—all the night before. “No, but I hope to be. I’m joining the stock company of the Lioness Film Corporation,” answered Peggy, rather self-consciously. A faint gleam of interest showed in the sleepy eyes that did not look into Peggy’s, but at the luggage rack. “Burst. Last week. How much did you put into the company? Mind my asking?” Heaving his huge bulk so that he could thrust a hand into an inside pocket, Peggy’s train companion brought forth a richly chased and monogrammed card case and extracted an engraved card. It bore the name, “O. Lewisohn.” “Why, Mr Lewisohn, I didn’t put any money at all into the company. I was told to send an electrical recording of my voice—l had already sent some pictures —and then, well . . here is the cable I got from them.” Peggy fished the much read and rather frayed cable from her bag and handed it to Oscar Lewisohn to read. “Apple sauce!” was his terse comment. “It’s an old racket, the stock company one. They would deduce from the fact that you were able to pay your fare, and had had all this expensive training, that there .was money somewhere. You were probably to be milked of a thousand dollars as a start, only luckily for you, the Chamber of Commerce ran them out last week.” Peggy’s joy in the wine-like air and glorious landscape diminished somewhat. She looked very much like a lost child appealing to policeman as she said, “I . . well, it’s a bit difficult to know exactly what to do.” “Do? A ferocious gleam suddenly galvanised the small, pig-like eyes into an astonishing brilliance. “If you’ve anything under your hat besides your hair, turn right round and go home.” “What? And not try to get into pictures? Not see Hollywood after coming 6000 miles?” Peggy both looked and sounded wounded in her deepest feelings. “Not even if you came 60,000 miles, honey. You take my advice and beat it right back home.” Oscar Lewisohn reached for his bags as he spoke, and a minute later the train slowed into Los Angeles. “Take my advice, honey, and spend a week if you must, in seeing the sights. You’ll find the Y.W.C.A. the best bet for a lodging for a young girl. [ Good luck.” The building was like every Y.W.C.A. the world over. The self-operating lift took Peggy to the third floor and her room turned out to be in front of the street, commanding a magnificent view of sky, mountains on the one hand, and the ant-like activities of Los Angeles on the other. On a hoarding below her was a brightly-coloured poster of a famous screen star in the arms of another, equally famous. The poisonous thrill of the Tinsel Kingdom, even at that early date, began to grip Peggy. Unconsciously, gazing down upon the unconcerned throng, she clasped her hands hands together in her fervour and felt that there was a certain kinship between them; they were her public; she loved them and wanted them to love her . . The telephone on the little table beside the bed suddenly shrilled. Thinking that it might be the girl at the desk announcing the arrival of the luggage, Peggy answered it unconcernedly. Then, with every nerve leaping into such startled surprise that her ears refused to believe what they heard, the voice of David —David, to whom she was about to send a cable announcing her safe arrival! —said casually, “Hello, darling! I'm downstairs in the lounge. Will you come down?” Too excited even to powder her nose, Peggy dashed out of the room, leaving the telephone receiver dangling by its cord, and, forgetting the lift, ran down the white stone steps two at a time and nearly flung herself into David Whitley’s arms. “Oh, David . . how did you get here? It's . . it's unbelievable!” Peggy was stuttering in her amazement and the laughing girl in the glass cage labelled "Reception” bent her blonde head over her books, and gave an extra hard chew on her piece of gum. “Looks like it’s her heavy sugar,” she confided to her chum from the shelter of the back of her hand. “But how did you get here, David?” Peggy asked the question for the fourth time in succession, without giving an instant's pause. David Whitley laughed and the heartening masculine sound enlivened the blent lounge. “In a boat . . same as you. But I came by the fastest liner and got to New York under the week, and we did the rest of the journey by airplane,” he explained. “We—who’s we?” Peggy was too full of curiosity to bother about a little thing like grammar. David smiled. Peggy thought there was something queer in the way his lips came down over his teeth, concealing, instead of revealing them. Alto-

gether, he looked very mysterious. “Come out to lunch, Peggy, and I’ll tell you. I’ve got a little car outside, for only a millionaire can afford to be without one in Hollywood. We’ll go to Enrico’s for lunch. All the stars go there, and all the waitresses come to work in their own cars, and belong to the most swagger clubs,” David told Peggy, before she had time even to get her breath. Scarcely knowing whether she possessed feet or wings, Peggy sped once more up the three flights of stairs to her room and this time managed to simmer down sufficiently to wash and powder her face and change into one of the scarlet and black outfits that David always said made her look like a gipsy. The touch of David’s firm hand beneath her elbow as he guided her through the lounge and out into the street where the little yellow roadster stood shining anil winking in the bright sunshine, gave her another thrill. Down famous Olvera Street, where Mexican families lived and hourly fought each other, dressed in all the bright reds and greens and purples of their beloved Mexicowhere on blue nights flooded with moonlight, they gathered with guitars and sang the most passionately melting love songs, while overhead in the lacy branches of the pepper trees, the mocking bird picked up and echoed their notes and the California nightingale contributed a heart-breaking love song all his own. Peggy took in everything at a gulp and consequently, saw nothing. Up the noble, tree-lined Wilshire Boulevard they sped, through Vine Street, where David pointed out the famous Enrico’s where they were going to lunch, and finally, he swung into the most beautiful, the most tragic and the most stimulating thoroughfare in all America —Hollywood Boulevard. “Oh, David, isn’t it unutterably lovely! It ... it makes one’s throat ache,” breathed, rather than said, the beautyintoxicated girl. David took one hand off the wheel for a second to place it over the small white fist doubled up on Peggy's lap. “Just give you a little bit of material and you make your own loveliness out of it,” he said, with a note in his voice that held a hint of passion.