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Job Hunting in Hollywood
A Last Word In Advertising BY LOUISE GALLAGHER
THE last week in August 1924, will always remain a blur of conflicting emotions. For two days of that eventful week, I literally walked on air. I thought destiny had elected me to flick the best flapper vamp across the silver sheet that the motion picture art has yet given to a long suffering and patient world. I was all ready to give cards and spades to the present well known vamps and show them up on every close-up as antiques. I put in a lot of good hard work exercising my shoulder blades and practicing- new eye work for the interesting job of wrecking the peace and quietude of firesides. Perfecting good vamp technique is not as easy as it looks. Each new contender in the field must know some individual trick hither to unknown to the trade if she expects to undulate very far on the film footage that leads to the vamp throne. All of the vamps that have marked film history in the past have been tall women. Until just recently any director would have scoffed at the idea of a little woman being dangerous. Clara Phillips did a lot for the small women of California showing just what stuff they are made of. She set directors to thinking-they are several who have really been known to do this, at time-if the tall vamp had not had too much of monopoly. It took a long time to get the movement started but in several productions to be released shortly, the vamp power to be reckoned with is shown as a delicious little dear.
On Fate’s Wheel.
You never can tell in this land of make-believe what the fates have in store for you. One turn of the movie wheel of fortune may shoot you up like a sky rocket and the next whirl you spinning down again. You hear so much of how it is impossible to get on in pictures unless you are on friendly terms with directors and a regular attendant at parties given by them, that you would believe from such repetition that this was true were it not for the fact that you know many of the girls who are well known in Hollywood’s night life never get beyond the extra stage.
Just as soon as a girl begins to advance in pictures, is picked out from the others for special little parts, stories begin to circulate as to the reason for this. It is ever so seldom that ability is spoken of as a possible cause. Professional jealousy keeps actors from acknowledging that they do not possess all talent necessary to reach the top if they could only be given the opportunity.
It is only for something especially important that you are ever called off a set to answer the telephone. As a courtesy to each other, studios will sometimes try to get a message to an actor if his time on their special set is almost over and another studio wants to get in touch with him. When the call boy carne for me to answer the telephone I knew the operator had been told the message was important. It was or at least it seemed so just at first. I was to go to the offices of a booking agency that evening, to be interviewed for a part in picture put out by a new company.
I found awaiting me one of James Cruze’s assistant directors whom I had worked with on the Lasky lot. He explained that he had been engaged to make a picture for an independent company to be filmed in Colorado. They were leaving the casting of the principles largely to him and he would be glad to recommend me for second lead, which was a vamp role. The salary would be $200.00 per week with all expenses during the making of the picture on location and my contract would call for six months additional work at the same salary to appear in some hundred and fifty theaters on the night of the opening of the picture to make a personal appearance. All expenses of this tour. would be taken care of.
Almost Too Good.
The only members of the cast making this personal appearance tour would be the three girls playing the leading parts. It sounded too good almost to be true and on the way horne I decided the first thing I would do next morning would be buy five pairs of new slippers. A dissipation I have not as yet been able to afford. Two days later I went to sign the contract, meet the other members of the cast, and hear the script read. Mr. Murray, the director, was present as were also four or five well dressed, prosperous looking businessmen who seemed somehow not to belong to the type that would in interested in pictures. Mr. Murray asked one of the gentlemen to please explain to us exactly what our contracts would call for.
Now what do you think the old dears were risking their thousands on? Not our acting ability or how well the picture went over. No, it was simply a very clever advertising scheme to sell many thousands of acres of oil land in Colorado. We were to go there and make this picture on the locale of a story which had been written especially to show what possibilities awaited those who were farsighted enough to have a little oil stock in the family.
When the picture was finished, the company of about forty would return to Hollywood, but the three girls playing leads would tour the Middle West, making personal appearance in the theaters in which the picture was run. Accompanying the girls would be a crew of salesmen, who would arrange for a banquet after the show, at which we would be expected to be present, the the natives might take more kindly to purchasing land where we had once made a picture.
Mr. Real Estate Man was very generous as to salaries and assured us that fund covering our entire salary for the time we would be under contract would be deposited in the bank here. Take a night to think it over.” It didn’t take even five minutes for me to know I didn’t want to even though I could have ten pairs of new shoes all at once.
It sounds kind of rakish to say I sent all next morning with a handsome young sheik in “pink trousers” that were highly suggestive of the boudoir but to be truthful it was on a tennis scene where all the men’s white flannels were dyed so as to photograph better. You can’t imagine how funny pink trousers look with gray or blue coats until you see them on a set. You can’t associate romance with the combination.
Out at Sennett’s today all of us who played in “Yukon Jake” with Ben Turpin were in for a thrill. The picture was made last February and I was one of the six girls who put on ducky bathing suits in the ice and snow on the possible chance of some adventuresome traveler knocking at our little snow huts. Ben Turpin made a splendid Yukon Jake, hard boiled as a picnic egg. And now Sennett is being sued by the man who wrote “The Ballard of Yukon Jake” way back in 1920, and who is asking that the federal court restrain the Mack Sennett Company from using the title of Yukon Jake on the picture, claiming that it is a great misrepresentation of the character he created. He also wants to share in all profits derived from the picture and for damages which he says will amount to $25,000. Personally, the company thinks we added fresh laurels to “Yukon Jake” and that Ben made him a most captivating hopeless rascal whom, anyone might be willing to take a trip to Alaska to see. We are all sitting thoughtful and trusting somehow to get in on the trial. “One thing,” Ben said. “I am determined on and that is not to make the girls influence the jury. I’ll rig all six you you up in fur leggins and wool caps so that any sensible person would know yoou could have had nothing to do with starting Jake on his downward path for: “Oh, the North Countre-e-es is a hard countre-ee And It mothers a bloody brood.”
