PEGGY IN HOLLYWOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 March 1939, Page 10

PEGGY IN HOLLYWOOD

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

MRS PATRICK MACGILL.

CHAPTER XVlll—(Continued)

The great dark eyes looked as if a little candle had been lighted behind them; they were so softly, tenderly, luminous. She seized David’s hand and tried to kiss it. He gently withdrew it. It seemed unnatural, vaguely repulsive; no woman should kiss the hand of a man. No word was said, but the result of the action on the uncontrolled, lovesick girl was to put her angrily on the defensive; to make her argumentative where before she had been pleading. “I suppose you imagine that your happiness lies in the love of that little doily-faced fool, Peggy Rooney?” she accused, hotly. David bit his lip. He disliked to have Peggy brought into such a discussion. His eyes looked empty and very youthful as they sought the deeper, more experienced gaze of Opal Orth, who had got up from her seat by the bed to stand over by the window. “No, love is not happiness —at least, not often,” said David slowly and thoughtfully, quietly ignoring the reference to Peggy. Hoping to close the discussion, he picked up one of the magazines, suggestively. Opal swung round, furious that she could strike no answering spark to her own hopeless passion. Pier voice rose high, filling the little room with a strident, basically vulgar sound that instantly grated on David’s ear. It was distinctly reminiscent-of a slum. “Let me tell you, David Whitley, that for a man who wants to get on, if he hasn’t any capital, loving a woman who cannot help him is just plain ruination. Luxury, travel, money in the bank, a good position —these are the things that form the right foundation for happi-; ness. Do you see what I mean, David . . . do you?” insistently, pitiful in her eagerness. “I don’t agree with you, Opal,” was David’s unsatisfactory reply, after an uncomfortable pause. Opal bit savagely on her underlip, and a quick glance revealed that the beautiful eyes were filled with tears. “We could do so much together,” went on the eager voice, wistfully.

David’s mind revolted at the mere idea, and suddenly it occurred to him to wonder if the girl were quite sane! She was aware of his engagement to marry Peggy. As if reading his mind, Opal went on with the tortured emphasis of the pas-sion-ridden, “Women have always fought each other for the men they love —and as long as a man is unmarried, any woman has the right to try to get him for herself!” There was too much that was big ano fine and tolerant in David Whitley to despise love of any sort, but he felt resentful of his own impotence and compulsion under promise to remain silent.

“Don’t you think you are a bit overwrought this afternoon, Opal? Not been resting enough, perhaps;” suggested David, feeling that his words were a little lame, but hardly knowing what to say or do. “Listen, David.” The girl with whom the cabin was to be shared turned out to be a typical, gum-chewing Hollywood blonde, possessed of ,an insatiable curiosity. Her name was Violet de Frece, but nobody ever called her anything but “Vi.” As it was past midnight when Peggy arrived in Idyllwild, Vi was already in bed and aslee'p, 10 o’clock being the latest that lights were allowed in cabins, all members of the company being obliged to be in bed if not actually asleep at that hour. Oscar Lew= isohn ruled his little world with the severity of a sergeant-major while a picture was being made, but directly it was finished, if he could possibly afford it, every member of the cast from prop boy to leading lady, received a bonus of 25 per cent of their salaries, and those that had children were always touched by the fact that every child was remembered, according to age and preference, Lewisohn going to endless trouble to discover the current desire of each childish heart. There was no director in Hollywood more deeply and sincerely beloved than the kindly old Jew, and his popularity was proved by his financial arrangement with the entire company, not one of whom was receiving a cent.

“Say, you are the big noise, in this picture, aren’t you?” asked Vi at six o’clock the following morning when, on opening her eyes, she saw the twin bed to her own occupied.

Peggy sat up. She turned her large dark blue eyes towards the girl whe had spoken, and Violet de Frece, exclaiming, “My God! What a pair oi lamps!” jumped up and came and sat on the end of Peggy’s bed. She woulc be about 25, Peggy judged, and though not exactly pretty, her face had the sort of bone structure that photographs well. Peggy vaguely remembered hei on the screen.

“I’m taking the lead,” Peggy admitted, with such charming modesty that Vi instantly forgave her for it. “It is my first part,” went on Peggy seeing no reason for “putting up a front” of previous experience, and relying on what she could “pick up” of other people's technique to see her through.

“Well, you must be the cat's whiskers, or you wouldn’t get by Lewisohn if you was the First Lady herself crying her eyes out to act in pictures—no sir. I suppose, like all the rest of us, you are taking a chance?" “Taking a chance?” Peggy looked the vagueness she felt. Vi clicker her tongue impatiently. "Lewisohn’s not paying you anything, is he?” she asked sharply.

Peggy shook her head. “He hasn’t said anything about money yet,” she admitted.

Vi seemed mollified. "There isn’t anybody knowing the old man that wouldn’t break their necks to set him on his feet again. We’ve all worked for him dozens of times before, and if he sells this picture, we know we’ll be all right for others. But what’s the mystery about it, do you know?”' “Mystery?” Again Peggy seemed puzzled. “Yes. We had to swear that we would not communicate with any of our friends unless through the old man during the time that the picture was being made. As a rule, the more publicity the better, especially when a new leading woman is being put over.” It was easy to see that Vi’s curiosity

was most painful to her. “Oh, I expect he has his own reasons." Peggy contented herself with remarking and before more statements and questions could be hurled at her head, she changed the subject by suggesting that she get up' and make a cup of tea. “Turn and turn about. You get up one morning and I get up the next,” said Vi, jumping up and opening the door, just as she was in her pyjamas, to return in a minute with an armful of small wood, which she packed into the little closed stove let into the wall of the cabin.

She proved invaluable in letting Peggy into the secrets of film make-up that were the result of years of experience on her own part, and when the two girls walked across to the makeshift studio to report for work, all the company welcomed Peggy as if she had been known to them all their lives.

“Peggy, you look absolutely lovely! Never had a more charming little lady to play up to,” said Douglas Gillmore, the famous young New York actor who, being a free lance, was able to do as he liked about helping his old friend. His “beau gueste” had consisted of leaving his part to an understudy in the middle of a successful run, chartering an aeroplane in reply •to the telegram, and arriving in Hollywood, ready for work two days later. Never had producer displayed more courage in an enterprise than had Oscar Lewisohn in the .filming of “Success.” Nothing except labour, goodwill, and a few gallons of gasoline had gone into Oscar Lewisohn Productions up to the present. The rough fire shed which stood against the mountain was filled with veritable floods of liquid light—beautiful, clear, sparkling light which would rendef good even poor photography—and Jon was the best camera man in Hollywood. An enormous pane of clear glass formed the north wall of the room, and the cameras and sound truck occupied all of the floor space with the exception of a roped-off portion whereon scenes were to be acted. The innkeeper—there was only one inn—had given permission for Lewisohn to erect his studio on a vacant lot, and to make use of as many empty cabins as he wished for the cast directly he had heard part of the story behind the filming of David’s play. John Everton’s Christianity was as wide as the world in its all-embracing charity; he missed the evil that others saw, and undoubtedly saw the beauty that others missed, in his quiet, healthy, industrious life amidst the pines and firs and cedars, and all the wild things of the woods that forgot their fear when he approached them. The entire Idyllwild community numbered ' less than a hundred and most of them left their jobs for a few minutes to come and watch the “picture actors” at work.

Mrs Everton was in blue checked gingham, face aglow with pleasure, in her hands a great jar of cookies still hot from the oven. She offered them to Peggy as soon as she saw her stepping out of the cabin with Vi.

“My, what a lovely young thing you are! But you’ll all be hungry by 10 o’clock. Breakfast soon wears off in Idyllwild air,” she laughed. Peggy’s spirits rose. There was something so clean and wholesome, such an utter lack of all that so jarred and depressed her in Hollywood, no petty intrigues, no cut-throating for jobs, no and everybody “putting up a front” as it was called.

miserable subterfuges with anybody Again David got a fleeting, vague, but undeniable impression of a slum. The reason became apparent when, in the manner of one taking a mental plunge, Opal lifted a tiny corner of the curtain covering her life. "David,” the pleading voice would not be denied. However unwillingly, the man was bound to listen. "I suppose you think I’m one of the world’s* lucky ones—rich, beautiful, and all that, don’t you?” “You would certainly seem to be both, Opal,” admitted David. “Well, then, I am not! I’m as poor as a rat —cleaned out —if this picture is not successful! I’ve staked everything on crashing Hollywood!” A strange expression showed on David’s face; fear and pity, but mostly pity. “Look here, Opal!” He spoke from his own heart for the first time. “Why don’t you call the whole thing off? Cut your losses and clear out of Hollywood?” There was an undercurrent of meaning in David’s words that he tried very earnestly to convey to Opal Orth’s jnderstanding, but evidently he did not ;ucceed. Hers was apparently a onetrack mind, capable of only a single rim and thought at one time. “I can’t do that.” she shuddered a little, as if shrinking from some inward contemplation. “I’ve gone too leeply into this picture to be able to back out. Sixty-seven thousand dollars already, and not finished yet! They have exceeded the schedule by 10,000 and they say that I don’t handle the part of Esta right.” “The thieving swine!” David muttered under his breath. “Esta is rather complex, although on the surface, she appears simple,” he continued, feeling an safe ground when his play was the subject under discussion. “That is what I feel about her, too. David. They say it isn’t the fault of the play—that it’s a fine story —and Sam swears there’s nothing wrong with anything except my acting. It is too cold. But if you loved me, even a little, David, it would soon show in my work —you’d see! I’ve struggled up from nothing—never had a chance to see anything except a father and mother continually drunk and fighting each other.” It was a weird story of the underworld that Opal told; the underworld of half-civilised law breakers that defy all efforts of society to reclaim and turn into decent men and women. (To be Continued).