PEGGY IN HOLLYWOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 March 1939, Page 10

PEGGY IN HOLLYWOOD

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY Ml

MRS PATRICK MACGILL.

CHAPTER XX. (Continued). “When you’ve done two or three more you’ll know something of the things directors will sometimes do to bring out what they believe is 'in a girl if she can’t bring it out by herself. When I was making ‘Broken Dolls,’ the picture you remember seeing me in, the director poured a spoonful of hot water down my back to make me give a real enough scream. How’s that for a joke?” Peggy hardly know how she was expected to take the story. She was saved the trouble of replying by Vi saying that she would bring her a Los Angeles newspaper after which she had promised to go for a walk up the mountain with one of the boys.

“All right, dear. Thanks for getting me the paper. I didn’t want to go out myself. I think I'll run over that scene again with Douglas if he’ll let me when you are gone for your walk.’ Peggy sat alone in the tiny log cabin and a great stillness, tantamount in nature to the dead quiet that precedes a _storm, took possession of her spirit. Curiously enough, more than of David she thought of her dead aunt, who had loved her, sacrificed for her, brought her up. Was her spirit reaching out to her, trying to warn her of something about to happen? Afterwards Peggy always declared this to be the case. The mood subsided but did not pass with the coming back from the store of Vi. “Here’s your paper, honey,” she said lightly, tossing the newspaper on the table.’ She' went out, whistling, and that was the last that Peggy was ever to see of her housemate, except in a picture. . . . , ~ Deliberately closing her mind to the scene in “Success” which was causing so much heartache, in order to make a fresh approach, Peggy sought distraction in the newspaper. She enjoyed the studio gpssip page and, like a child leaving, the best tit-bit until the end, skimmed the other pages first. Thei e were, as usual, a variety of pictures to take the eye and Peggy lingered over these, especially those the originals of whom she knew. Suddenly a cry left her lips—a cry like that of the wounded deer she had seen a hunter shoot only that morning—low, wailing, in essence somehow more spiritual than physical. At one moment a feeling of death pervaded her whole being, at another, the hurt, only the intolerable, inescapable hurt that tore and rent her in every nerve. Her eyes were staring at a picture of David and Opal Orth as bride and bridgroom! David was dressed in conventional morning coat and striped trousers, and in his hand he carried a silk hat; on his arm, smiling up sweetly into his face, was Opal, in white satin and orange blossoms, with a shower bouquet of what looked like lilies of the valley and orchids. The caption was “Filmland’s Latest Bride.” , , Peggy did not stop to read any moie. The walls of the narrow little room seemed 'to close together, crushing her to pulp between them. It seemed stifling, though the stove was not yet alight. David—David had done this thing to her. . . yesterday’s letter had contained a little verse about l° ve - ■ • love only being like the flower called morning glory, doomed at noon to die. “But out love will not be like morning glory, will it, sweetheart?” the letter asked. - • , . , , Peggy rushed over to Lewisohn s cabin to find him talking to Jon and Douglas Gillmore. The script of “Sue-1 cess” was lying open on the table at their big scene. The three men gave a startled upward glance as Peggy, with the scarce formality of a single tap on the door, lifted the latch and stood there in the circle of light that the lamp made. “What’s the matter, girlie? asked the film director. A shrill sound, horrible to hear from the lips of a girl—Douglas Gillmore never forgot that travesty of human laughter to the end of his life caused Oscar Lewisohn to glance at Jon with a look that conveyed only one meaning. “To the studio,” ordered Oscar Lewisohn abruptly. Jon moved instantly to obey, like a well-trained dog. Douglas Gillmore hesitated, his only thought for Peggy, and in his voice was live and tenderness, consternation and dismay. “Can’t you see she’s terribly upset, Oscar-” he asked as, leading Peggy to the one armchair that the room contained, he was about to place her gently therein but Lewisohn stopped him angrily. “Get up, Peggy. Pull yourself together and come and do the big scene with Douglas. You’ve got in your face what I’ve been waiting and praying and hoping for all the time the company’s been up here. Come on, I say . . come on . . . what are you waiting for?’.’ The film director tried to push Peggy in front of him, but she resisted, clinging to the chair. “I can’t—l can’t! Don’t you see? He and Opal are married . . . married yesterday. Yes, it’s true all right . . . look . . . look far yourself.” The cold, nerveless fingers held out the printed sheet to Oscar Lewisohn. “What if it is? Aren’t there plenty of matches smashed up one way or another every hour of every day? Forget it. Come and do that scene with Douglas." The man seemed beside himself, like a giant struggling and straining at the chains that bound him down. “Experience — living—bitter lessons, the heart broken but not the spirit — that is what makes an actress. Not merely having been through things, but rising above them. If love fails, work will not. Never. Come Peggy.' “All right, Mr Lewisohn. I'll come. I'll do my best. But it is the last time I appear before a motion picture camera,’' Peggv declared. Douglas Gillmore and Peggy went through their big scene together, magnificently, superbly, so that they and Lewisohn and even Jon, as he ground his camera, got carried away by their own emotion and sobbed aloud. All were frankly .crying, the three men and Peggy, Peggy leaning against the wall of the rough makeshift studio, while, beside himself with joy, with the tears still pouring down his face. Lewisohn exclaimed, “That will lay ’em in the aisles from New York to Zanzibar! The best picture I’ve ever made. Douglas, take Peggy and give her a cocktail—a dry Martini—to buck her up. Then bring her back to me.

I’ve got something to tell her —something she'll be mighty pleased to hear.” Douglas Gillmore’s reply to Lewisohn was in the form of a question. ••'You are sure this is the last retake? The play's 'quite finished?”“I start cutting tomorrow,” Lewisohn who, from crying, was now beaming delightedly, assured them. “Then' I’ll be getting back to New York. Good-bye, Oscar, glad to have been of use. Previewing it at the Chinese Theatre on the Boulevard?”

“Yep.” Lewisohn’s reply was brief and delighted. “Come along. Peggy. I've something to say to you, too.” Peggy, feeling too hurt and humiliated to refuse anybody’s bidding, followed with the docility of a child. Douglas took her up the mountain trail a little way, where the myriad sounds 'and scents of the enchanting night all mingled to soothe and tell of the nothingness of all things —of the futility of all care and worry and strife, when nature, the mother of all mothers, is ever ready to assume the burden of her children’s care. A late squirrel harvesting nuts, ran up a tree trunk; a ■ chipmunk stirred the fallen leaves; the bobolinks in the branches above their heads seemed to laugh at their foolishness, and the valley below them was white with moonflowers shining softly in the dark blue dust.

Peggy was scarcely conscious of the fact that she had a companion. The whole of creation seemed to stand still and concentrate on the bruising and mangling of her spirit. Unheeding, unmindful of the fact that Douglas Gillmore was following her, only a pace or two behind, white and set of face, Peggy said aloud, “I must bear it! must be strong.”

There was desperation in the gleam of her eyes, in the set of her chin. "I must get away from her—from Hollywood —I must go home!” Douglas caught up with the small, slight figure. Peggy’s vital face, so penetratingly pure that somehow it seemed to enter into him, shone white, like one of the moonflowers at their feet.

“Come back to New York with me, Peggy, tonight, now!” urged the young actor, his handsome, mobile face expressing what had been in his heart for Peggy almost from the first. In that he had very few women friends, and none at all who counted, Douglas Gillmore was an exception to the general run of successful actors. As a matter of fact, acting was, only a means to an end with him —his popularity was largely due to luck and being the son of a great newspaper magnate—his real interest in the theatre was in becoming a dramatist; he felt that in acting he was laying the foundation for his future career. When Lewisohn had sent him the script of “Success” with a pleading letter, he had not hesitated ten minutes after the reading of it. And, meeting Peggy as a result, he had blessed his decision until he had learned from Lewisohn that she was engaged to the author. And now she was free! Bruised, hurt, humiliated almost beyond bearing—he did not let his mind dwell upon the kind of man that the author of “Success” must be to behave in such but men do strange things at times under certain influences, he knew that—but to drag a girl’s pride through the mud was the surest way for any man to uproot love. ■ Hq would show her what real love meant.

.Suddenly Peggy felt herself clasped from behind; kisses, so -fierce that they almost hurt, were pressed upon her cheeks, her eyes and the side of her soft young throat. “I frightened you!” Douglas said huskily, a note in his voice that had never been there before for any human being, “God knows I didn’t mean to! You get into my blood, and I feel it tingling in my veins and rushing in my head until I cannot think of anything nor see anybody except you!” Douglas added, almost in a whisper, “And if I should die, Peggy, it would not end there. I should long for you and worship you wherever I was.” Peggy did not speak for a moment. Her eyes sought the stars above her head, and once again, as in the cabin immediately preceding the news of David’s marriage, a strange calm pervaded her being, giving wings to her spirit and wisdom to her understanding. It would be senseless to deny that Douglas Gillmore had poured oil on her wounded vanity by his proposal— Peggy was too true a woman not to run the gauntlet of suffering to the limit where her love was treated lightly—but already she was wondering what terrible pressure had been brought to bear upon David,' what Opal Orth could have done or threatened for him to marry her so suddenly. The moment of calm merged into the storm just as it had done an hour previously in the cabin.

“Come away with me to-night, Peggy. There’s nobody to worry about, so far as explanations go. The company has gone on a moonlight drive to the Painted Desert to celebrate the finishing of the picture. Lewisohn and Jon have shut themselves up in the studio for the night to work till tomorrow morning on the cutting. They have got two enormous plates of ham sandwiches and a pot of black coffee, and you could be the President of the United States banging on their door and not a bit of notice would be taken of you.”

Somehow Douglas seemed to restore Peggy's power of thought, to lift the curtain of her black hopelessness. It was, of course, out of the question to respond to Douglas Gillmore’s advances; except as an actor, she was scarcely conscious of him. But he Was showing her a way out of the scene of her miserable failure, he was a kindly fellow human being, and chose to think that he wished to marry her. “Don't look like that, Peggy, dear,” he pleaded, sitting down on a huge rock and drawing Peggy down beside him.

“Well, I don’t feel exactly myself, Douglas. Excuse me. We’ll go back, shall we?”

Peggy got up. Douglas pulled her back and hold her once more in his arms, his face bending down to hers with an expression in the eyes that startled Peggy and in that moment she yielded the greatest liking that her life was ever to know to this man who so truly loved her. fTo be Continued).