Merton of the Movies. Harry Leon Wilson

Others were elderly or old, and a few would be accompanied by children, often so young that they must be held on laps. They, too, waited with round eyes and in perfect decorum for a chance to act. Sometimes the little window would be pushed open and a woman beckoned from the bench. Some of them greeted the casting director as an old friend and were still gay when told that there was nothing today. Others seemed to dread being told this, and would wait on without daring an inquiry. Sometimes there would be a little flurry of actual business. Four society women would be needed for a bridge table at 8:30 the next morning on Stage Number Five. The casting director seemed to know the wardrobe of each of the waiters, and would select the four quickly. The gowns must be smart — it was at the country house of a rich New Yorker — and jewels and furs were not to be forgotten. There might be two days’ work. The four fortunate ladies would depart with cheerful smiles. The remaining waiters settled on the bench, hoping against hope for another call.

      Among the waiting-room hopefuls Merton had come to know by sight the Montague family. This consisted of a handsome elderly gentleman of most impressive manner, his wife, a portly woman of middle age, also possessing an impressive manner, and a daughter. Mr. Montague always removed his hat in the waiting room, uncovering an abundant cluster of iron-gray curls above a noble brow. About him there seemed ever to linger a faint spicy aroma of strong drink, and he would talk freely to those sharing the bench with him. His voice was full and rich in tone, and his speech, deliberate and precise, more than hinted that he had once been an ornament of the speaking stage. His wife, also, was friendly of manner, and spoke in a deep contralto somewhat roughened by wear but still notable.

      The daughter Merton did not like. She was not unattractive in appearance, though her features were far off the screen-heroine model, her nose being too short, her mouth too large, her cheekbones too prominent, and her chin too square. Indeed, she resembled too closely her father, who, as a man, could carry such things more becomingly. She was a slangy chit, much too free and easy in her ways, Merton considered, and revealing a self-confidence that amounted almost to impudence. Further, her cheeks were brown, her brief nose freckled, and she did not take the pains with her face that most of the beautiful young women who waited there had so obviously taken. She was a harum-scarum baggage with no proper respect for any one, he decided, especially after the day she had so rudely accosted one of the passing directors. He was a more than usually absorbed director, and with drawn brows would have gone unseeing through the waiting room when the girl hailed him.

      “Oh, Mr. Henshaw, one moment please!”

      He glanced up in some annoyance, pausing with his hand to the door that led on to his proper realm.

      “Oh, it’s you, Miss Montague! Well, what is it? I’m very, very busy.”

      “Well, it’s something I wanted to ask you.” She quickly crossed the room to stand by him, tenderly flecking a bit of dust from his coat sleeve as she began, “Say, listen, Mr. Henshaw: Do you think beauty is a curse to a poor girl?”

      Mr. Henshaw scowled down into the eyes so confidingly lifted to his.

      “That’s something you won’t ever have to worry about,” he snapped, and was gone, his brows again drawn in perplexity over his work.

      “You’re not angry with poor little me, are you, Mr. Henshaw?”

      The girl called this after him and listened, but no reply came from back of the partition.

      Mrs. Montague, from the bench, rebuked her daughter.

      “Say, what do you think that kidding stuff will get you? Don’t you want to work for him any more?”

      The girl turned pleading eyes upon her mother.

      “I think he might have answered a simple question,” said she.

      This was all distasteful to Merton Gill. The girl might, indeed, have deserved an answer to her simple question, but why need she ask it of so busy a man? He felt that Mr. Henshaw’s rebuke was well merited, for her own beauty was surely not excessive.

      Her father, from the bench, likewise admonished her.

      “You are sadly prone to a spirit of banter,” he declared, “though I admit that the so-called art of the motion picture is not to be regarded too seriously. It was not like that in my day. Then an actor had to be an artist; there was no position for the little he-doll whippersnapper who draws the big money today and is ignorant of even the rudiments of the actor’s profession.”

      He allowed his glance to rest perceptibly upon Merton Gill, who felt uncomfortable.

      “We were with Looey James five years,” confided Mrs. Montague to her neighbors. “A hall show, of course — hadn’t heard of movies then — doing Virginius and Julius Caesar and such classics, and then starting out with The Two Orphans for a short season. We were a knock-out, I’ll say that. I’ll never forget the night we opened the new opera house at Akron. They had to put the orchestra under the stage.”

      “And the so-called art of the moving picture robs us of our little meed of applause,” broke in her husband. “I shall never forget a remark of the late Lawrence Barrett to me after a performance of Richelieu in which he had fairly outdone himself. ‘Montague, my lad,’ said he ‘we may work for the money, but we play for the applause.’ But now our finest bits must go in silence, or perhaps be interrupted by a so-called director who arrogates to himself the right to instill into us the rudiments of a profession in which we had grounded ourselves ere yet he was out of leading strings. Too often, naturally, the results are discouraging.”

      The unabashed girl was meantime having sprightly talk with the casting director, whom she had hailed through the window as Countess. Merton, somewhat startled, wondered if the little woman could indeed be of the nobility.

      “Hello, Countess! Say, listen, can you give the camera a little peek at me today, or at pa or ma? ‘No, nothing today, dear.’” She had imitated the little woman’s voice in her accustomed reply. “Well, I didn’t think there would be. I just thought I’d ask. You ain’t mad, are you? I could have gone on in a harem tank scene over at the Bigart place, but they wanted me to dress the same as a fish, and a young girl’s got to draw the line somewhere. Besides, I don’t like that Hugo over there so much. He hates to part with anything like money, and he’ll gyp you if he can. Say, I’ll bet he couldn’t play an honest game of solitaire. How’d you like my hair this way? Like it, eh? That’s good. And me having the only freckles left in all Hollywood. Ain’t I the little prairie flower, growing wilder every hour?