PEGGY IN HOLLYWOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 March 1939, Page 12

PEGGY IN HOLLYWOOD

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

MRS PATRICK, MACGILL.

CHAPTER XVlll—(Continued) The reading of “Success” was a triumph. Oscar Lewisohn had shown fine showmanship in getting Peggy to interpret to the others the play that had been especially written for her. The thing of her lover’s creation lived in the minds and hearts of the 20 men and women gathered together in the rough fire shack, and the first scene was shot at half-past 10, amidst the wildest enthusiasm, lines being learned with "incredible swiftness after the manner of seasoned actors, business being studied and rehearsed in odd corners, over Mrs Everton’s cookies, or with enthusiasm reaching fever pitch seated on the mountainside, drinking in health with every breath they drew of the scented, champagne-like air. It was the effect of this heady, effervescent quality in the air that Lewisohn had to combat in his company. For the comedy scenes it was excellent in the results achieved, not a foot of film being wasted, not a single retake being necessary, but in the scenes demanding drama and a realistic portrayal of tragedy the effect was such as to drive the harassed, overworked, underslept director to despair. “There is no emotion coming from the inside, the heart of you, Douglas, and nothing at all from you, Peggy—your tears must be in your voice and your heart—in your very life—as well as in your eyes —tears in the eyes can be faked, indeed, are more effective if they are faked, but who can put tears —drama —colour—into the voice but the owner of that voice—tell me that!” “I’m sorry, Mr Lewisohn. I’ll try,” said Peggy humbly and sadly. For now that her great chance had come, it seemed that the misery which would have helped her in her big scene with her screen lover —helped her to have “put over” the essential drama of the play—was no longer there. Perhaps, after all, she was not. destined for a great actress! The thought infuriated, maddened her —why could she not lose herself in the mere imagining of sorrow?

Oscar Lewisohn was to be more than satisfied with Peggy’s acting in the big scene with the New York actor a couple of clays later. “A lucky draw in a sweepstake gave me my chance. I was .16 at the time. I said nothing to anybody, but quit quietly before the news leaked out. I had tutors of all sorts, and I put myself under a professor of speech and acting for five years before I came to Hollywood, and he said that I was fit for. any stage in the Englishspeaking world.” “Lessons never have and never will make actors and actresses,” said Davir. “The great ones, Bernhardt, Rejane. Mrs Fiske, Ellen Terry—never saw a school of acting in their lives.” Opal looked suitably impressed, but she was too blinded by her own ego to be convinced. “I have never had so suitable a part as Esta —that was why I was ready to go to any lengths to make ‘Success’ my first picture. With a few retakes I am certain it will succeed. Oh, David, if it does, won’t you love me then—just a little?” Somehow, visualising the slum gamin struggling upwards on the proceeds of a sweepstake—granting the truth of the story—David felt a little more warmth towards his undeniably beautiful ex-employer, far less irritation at her bold approach. Opal had been with him hall an hour, the time limit set to her visits by private arrangement with Nurse Mary. Punctually to the minute, she appeared very brisk and efficient, thermometer in hand. “Time for your temperature, Mr Whitley,” she informed David, to his secret relief. “So sorry, she murmured conventionally to Opal, as'she waited pointedly for her to leave. “Where shall I put these roses, Mr Whitley?-The poor things are half dead for want of water,” she said, gathering up Opal’s offering into her hands with that single swift movement that seems peculiar to all nurses. “Oh, burn them!” growled David, suddenly nerve-rasped from the reaction to his visitor. “H’m! Her vamping won’t get her very far!” Nurse Mary confided to her friend later in the evening. “She’ll get him, though. That kind always does. It’s only fools like us, who work our fingers io the bone ioi them, that gets the raspberry when it comes to marriage,” was the gloomy reply of Nurse Mary’s friend.

CHAPTER XIX. There could scarcely in all the world have been a lovelier or more suitable spot for the secret filming of “Success than Idyllwild, hidden in the heart of the San Jacinto Mountains. Six thousand feet above the sea, the air sweetly pungent with spruce and cedar, pine and fir, with crimson azaleas and manzanita stretching through miles of virgin forest, by mountain streams hidden in ferns and columbine, over wild and rugged ridges, through deep canyons overlooking fertile plains and, beyond all this the scorching desert—this was the scene that met and entranced the eyes at Idyllwild. Peggy awoke at dawn, to the singing of birds and the scampering of squirrels. It had been late when she had arrived the previous night. They had been climbing into mountains steadily all the way from San Felipe. After what seemed an interminable drive up a trail cut through fine forests. Peggy had been introduced to a little log cabin which, she was told, was to be shared with another actress while the picture was being made, and that she was to report at the studio, across the way at eight o’clock sharp) the following morning, made up. Tired as she was after all the excitement that the day had held, Peggy was thrilled to the depths of her vivid, impressionable young soul at the turn events had taken. She was still in California; still in the same county with David; Oscar Lewisohn had informed her that letters came up the mountain from Hollywood every day so that solace was not to be denied her. On the following morning she was to read "Success” to the assembled company, at the particular request of Oscar Lewisohn. She, Peggy Rooney, was to read David’s play to a company of experienced Hollywood actors and actresses! It would have been bliss just to be alive if—if—Peggy resolutely shut the thought of Opal Orth and her concern with David’s play from her mind, as Lewisohn had earnestly asked her to do.

“I’ve got to get the picture made and out and previewed in three weeks, which means 12 days for shooting, two for possible retakes, and it will take me and, Jon all the rest of the time, working night and day, to fit in the rest of our programme,” Lewisohn told Peggy, abruptly.

CHAPTER XX. The Idyllwild Brethren had guests for their mid-weekly gathering: The. inn was always closed for that one evening ,the floor freshly swept and sanded, the organ opened and moved to a place of honour in the middle of the room, while the members sat round in a reverent, attentive, and —to the “Success” company and to Oscar Lewisohn himself—charming circle, while they sang hymns, together and separately, and listened to the matchless story of the Prodigal Son read in John Everton’s low, unhurried, kindly fashion. with no pauses for his own interpretation or comment. Aunt Louella and Miss Fanny May, the latter in white starched lawn of the fashion of 1890' were there: gran’pa and gran’ma Willoughby, who had crossed the plain in a covered wagon 70 years ago; John Everton's youngest boy, a nice, frankfaced youngster of 19, who would not for the world have hurt any of the Brethren by absenting himself from a meeting when he came up from the university at Berkeley where he was a student. With him was a lovely, modern, typical American girl of 17, who immediately caught the spirit of the gathering and sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” until the organ failed them. “Let me try, Aunt Louella. I used to be a wow at humouring the organ when I was a boy,” offered Douglas Gillmore, with a smile and gallant dash that fluttered feminine hearts from Fifth Avenue to the Bowery.

But the organ refused to budge, and giving up, the New York star sang “Songs my Mother Taught Me” with such pathos that his only applause consisted of sniffles.

Then Peggy, pressed for a turn, recited a nonsense poem that set them all laughing. But it was Oscar Lewisohn begged for “Jest a little talk on sump’n’ or other,” who electrified the gathering by faking a well-worn leather-covered Bible from his inner pocket and striding to the middle’ of the floor, lifted his fine, seamed, lifescaryed face to the mountains, which, seen through the open window, looked as if they were bathed in blood. “Have you ever considered the Psalms of David as dramas—as a cry from the human heart?” he asked, abruptly.

Peggy thought that she had never looked ’ in eyes that expressed greater power. “I call this one The Vow,” he said, selecting for reading, but never once looking at the Psalm containing the deathless, “If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning,” and even though they were of an alien, a younger faith, every man and woman in the little room with the sanded floor sensed the agelessness, the mightiness of the faith that to those of Lewisohn’s race, will not, cannot die. “I wish you could all come down to Hemet, where we are putting op a programme next Sunday night for the new organ. We sure do need one, don t you think so, Mr. Lewisohn?” ..Without, wailing to hear what the film director though, Aunt Louella went to the shelf above the fire and brought down an old black japanned box. Opening it, she displayed a collection of one dollar bills, fifty cent, even ten and five' cent pieces, saying, “We’ve been a-saving up two years —” “And how much have you got?” asked Lewisohn, wistfully fingering his last five-dollar bill.

“Twenty-four dollars,” was Aunt Louella’s prompt reply. Suddenly, Oscar Lewisohn jumped to his feet, apparently seized with the force of a sudden idea.

‘•What would you do with a thousand dollars, Aunt Louella?” he asked, his dark eyes brilliant, his eager face bent forward, looking into the old woman s as if her reply was the one thing in the world that mattered. “Do, Mr Lewisohn? Why, we'd build us a church, a real house of worship—not that the Presence disdains the inn,” she hastened to assure the film director. “Then you can earn it yourselves. Aunt Louella was bidden, with a surface facetiousness that did not strike Lewisohn until he noticed the hurt expression of the simple, kindly old face. “I mean it, Aunt Louella. I’ll tell you how later on—when “Success” is finished," he reassured her. Peggy, waiting for her director to discuss a point of tomorrow’s work which happened to be a retake, smiled so happily that Oscar Lewisohn treated her to a scowl. “If you could only lose yoursell enough to forget that your lite has ever held a single moment’s joy. . . if we could only get that 'big scene with Gillmore as I want it —"Success'’ would be finished. 1 could start the cutting. Don’t you want the picture to be finished on time —don’t you care that you are ruining it?” Oscar Lewisohn's voice rose in a fury of declamatory anger; with the usual fluidity of the Jew, he appeared a totally different individual from the man who, only a moment ago, had been discussing the new organ with Aunt Louella. Peggy drew in her breath with something'that sounded very like a stifled sob. “I’fre done my best, Mr Lewisohn. really 1 have. I guess that what you think is there just isn’t in me. that is all," she acknowledged so humbly that inwardly the old Jew was touched; but he had too much at stake to give any sign. “It’s this dashed altitude, that's what it is,” he grumbled fiercely. “It’s the • first and last time I’ll ever make a picture at an altitude of 6000 feet.” “I’ve given it all I’ve got,” said Peggy, with what she imagined to be utter sincerity. “And I say you’ve not,” stormed Lewisohn. “Are you teaching me my business after 24 years? Do you know who made ‘Rose of the Desert,’ ‘Sidewalk Idols,’ ‘Behind Life’s Glitter’?” The old Jew answered himself. “I did — I, Oscar Lewisohn —made three separate fortunes from those pictures! And then you tell me what you can and what you cannot do! How is an artist to know what he or she can do?” The director sat down and put his head between his hands with the ineffable grief that to the theatrical temperament is very real, very tragic, while it I lasts, and utterly incapable of being j understood by the outsider. I "I’ll try hard tomorrow, Mr Lewi-

sohn, really I will,” Peggy promised, humbly. She went back to the little cabin that she shared with Vi, and confided the reason for her low, depressed spirits; added to the fact that the day had brought no letter from David; the first time that he had missed. “This is your first picture, isn’t it, honey?” said Vi, sympathetically. Peggy nodded miserably. (To be Continued).