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Job Hunting in Hollywood
School Days! School Days! BY LOUISE GALLAGHER
‘JUST a moment, young ladies, you will not begrudge me the moment when you learn that, while you are going to be sent back to school there will be absolutely no examinations in your course.
“To gain high credits this session all that will be necessary will be to show a properly made up face every morning.
“Bettie that shade of blue you have over your eyes is going to photograph like the devil-good looking, extreme clothes, exaggerated hosiery, what there is of it -Lois, dear child, refrain in future from getting close to the camera when you have a run in your silken ankle as you did yesterday: it showed up on the film and the old man gave me the blame. We will use the 1925 Advanced Modes of Flirtration-two or three of the . . new films have already gotten ahead of us and it can’t be helped but do get it over in style. Remember, Connie, no pre-war Bayne-Bushman line like you pulled when you roamed in that Roman garden last week. The cutter nearly met an early death from yawning before he could get it clipped out. You will please express yourselves, young ladies, at the dances, football games on the campus as the present generation of intellectual students should-we all know you are a shy goddess by nature, Alice, but remember no clinging vine stuff goes in this Louise, I am banking on you to get a few of the untutored professors firmly grounded long enough to get them instructed in a few long shots-8:30 Tuesday morning and on time or not at all-and kindly write this in big letters on your make-up boxes, as it is the most important of all instructions given out this morning. No lunch must cost over 60 cents-if it does, the woman pays and pays.”
We have been at the University of California now for four days and for me it has been very enjoyable to slip back to the student role once again. No matter how interesting studio sets may be, bringing with them as they do, adventures from all lands, one does tire dreadfully of the eternal chatter of self.
The pseudo-actor is an egotist of the first ranks and offers every possible excuse for playing minor parts, excepting the ofttimes true one of lack of ability. It is a trifle wearing to hear the everlasting, “I screen like a million dollars and, of course, I am sure to go up but the leads ate so jealous of my type.” It is lots of fun, too, getting on to the new slang introduced during the past year, to hear all about the games scheduled and the frat dances, to get a rush from the new coach and find he is a Georgia Tech man to be presented with a hot dog twice a day, one each from the two good looking blond Swedes from Minnesota, who have opened a stand on the campus and expect to pay their way through college in this doggy way.
WhoJly Correct.
Our stage environment for the comedy we are making is wholly correct and real students get lots of fun on getting in on scenes and watching up work during their study period. We only have permission to use certain parts of the ground and other scenes are being shot out on the boulevard. The freshman football fights are on and this is our principal reason for being back at school where we can get a football audience that will look the part. You just can’t imagine how hard it would be to get together through an agency a crowd of extras that would look the part. In the words of Octavius Roy Cohan they would be anything else but.
Yesterday we were called back on our street set at 1 :30. The assistant director checked us up impatiently for taking such a long time to get to our positions. The cameras were wheeled into position, the assistant raised his megaphone and looked back to the director for instructions. His seat was empty. We waited 15 or 20 minutes restlessly; the sun was hot and the shade of the nearby pepper trees coolly inviting. Still the director failed to show up and his worried assistant set out to learn what had become of him. Ten minutes later he returned with the information that the boss was so interested in watching a practice game, that we were all to be excused until it was over.
It is convenient to have a director, who was one a football star himself and can appreciate the real article more than the canned variety he is to turn out. Already I have acquired a rakish “Frosh Hat,” 10 bids to the first dance, three class pins and an offer from the university champion swimmer-a daring, dangerous looking sheik -to teach me the trudgeon stroke. I don’t think I will have any lessons though for I would hate to destroy the old tradition that no Sennett Bathing Girl has ever been permitted to swim.
Linin’ ‘Em Upl
Monday I was out at Universal to get a line-up on future work on that lot and witnessed what came near being a tragedy scene of the real kind. They were filming a scene of a story of life in the circus. All the colorful performers of the sawdust ring were doing their specialties. Acrobats, clowns, bareback riders, trained animals, and wild ones in their cages added their bit to the scene. “Minnie,” the famous trick elephant, was proving the star player.
We had just turned our car to leave, when one of the prop men informed us that we had better wait a few minutes and see the storm they were preparing that was to blow away the top of the big tent. A battery of wind and rain effect machines had been painted outside of the tent. At a given signal from the director the property men and electricians turned on their various contrivances and the “storm” broke in all of its fury.
“Minnie” may have experienced storms in her Asiatic jungles with an aloof calm but this man-made one nearly scared the poor thing to death. She broke loose from her trainer and made a blind rush for safety, scattering the performers heIter, shelter, crushing her way through the numerous scenery back props and completely demolishing the side of the tent. Directly in the way of the half crazed animal, Louise Lorraine, the leading woman of the play, was too dazed by it all to even try to get out of the way of the infuriated Minnie. The author of the story jumped from the sdie platform into the center of the set and grabbed Miss Lorraine just as Minnie swept by, crushing everything before her. Two of the acrobats also had narrow escapes but got off with broken arms. Now wouldn’t you have expected the brave hero stuff would be pulled by some big Western he-man and not a 1I5-pound writer with dreaming eyes?
Stars in Embryo.
The embryo movie star is always interested in the financial advancement of one of their number, even though their congratulations may be tinged with a little jealousy. Last month one of our cast, a handsome Norwegian, who came over to show us up in pictures, married the daughter of a Chicago meat packer-one of the very big ones of whose millions there can be no doubt. Everyone was glad for him for the poor but enterprising chap is not much on talent only where musculine good looks are required when he can knock you for a fade-out. He has been a frequent screen escort of mine and likes me very enough to always eat my share of any dinner party and I have helped him out many times by asking for more and getting extra cigarets from the prop boy when he has smoked only one out of the package left on our table and secreted the rest for nonprofessional use. He told me once he never spent money for cigarets but kept himself provided by salvaging from different sets where he worked.
When I heard the young Viking-he is really too ornamental to be worthwhile-had married so well I was pleased for the poor thing does need so much food. Last week I met him on a set for the first time since he came into his fortune. We were at the opera together and I noticed he was wearing a new cape and pearl shirt studs. It was night work and at 12 box lunches were provided. A big studio truck parks near, loaded with boxes and the coffee containers. The coffee urns and the cups (you get a china one if you are one of the principals) are unloaded on stands by the side and you line up to receive your lunch and cup, while you fill yourself from the urns. This night he asked me to try to get two lunches as he was feeling pretty empty. I did and he came back also with two. Later on he got back in line and got two more. You can sometimes get by with this if they fail to remember that they have already given you your allotted share. We each ate our one box and I asked him why he had gotten the others and if he expected to drink the two extra bottles of milk I had gotten in lieu of coffee. “Not now, I have had plenty, but I am going to park them in my car to take home so we won’t have to buy any eats tomorrow!” I no longer think he should have married for money. He is evidently a clever and capable young man and I wish I could tell you the name of the girl he married.
