Casper Daily Tribune Newspaper, February 4, 1923, Page 26

ebreadfrult tree. PAGE SIX. “SOULS FOR SALE”- Casper Sunday Morning Cribune CHAPTER XXV—(Continued.) F the sunlight was of a gold re- fined and somehow enriched, the shadow was also of a deeper cool. Just inside its edge the sun was walled out. They had set above their houses the roofs of wintry climates, end one might still see in older Los Angeles obsolete homes whose slant- ing shingles were excellently ar- ranged to let the snow slide off. Since there was no snow to slide, they served as furnaces for the hot sun. Next came the low roof with the wide flat eaves casting a heavy shade about the windows. But this made the houses chilly, and the new brought the tiles just to the of the walls; and these walls not often glaring white as be- brown, dove gray, salmon, olive. re the shacows lay along the the walks they were of un. not dapplings of round but the ual d sign, mid-west, ed leave As long scissvred slashes of palm fronds, the threa reeds of papyrus, the pepper's delicate flounces Even in this Eden, however, there was distress anxiety The hard times that were freezing t oute world were threatening the aging prosperity of Los Angeles. Studios were closing overnight. Supposed nwillionaires were depart- ing abruptly in search of funds to meet their payrolis. Stars who had been collecting $10 000 a week or less wero left stranded in the midst of unfinished pictures and unfinishec mortgages and jewelry bills. The les: eer fry were being cast ashore In heaps, Ike minnows after a tidal wave's recession. ‘The girls at Leva’s were wondering how long their jobs would last. A mere cut in salary would be a wel- come mercy, @ respite from a death sentence. ‘This was devastating news to Mem. for she had landed on this tropical fsle in the expectation of at least a Her blanched face told her story to Leva, who held out more hope than she inwardly enter- tained, “Never say die, Mrs. Woodville,” she safc. “There's always a chance. ‘The companies are turning off their oldest, most experienced people in| droves, but every now and then they| take in a newcomer. I'll speak to the} laboratory chief. Anyway, your borrd and lodging won't cost you anything as long as we've got either here, eh,/ girls?” The girls agreed. Thetr adventur-| ous spirit included a reckless hosp!-! tality and they put off care tl tomor- ‘ow in the hope that it would never come. She gasped at this. She had never learned even a lamb-trot. Her fath- er’s church diG not permit dancing,| and while it overlooked the sin in cer- tain of its parishioners, there would have been scandal indeed {f the par- son's daughter had ever lifted her! foot in aught save solemnity. 3ut Mem was not a‘lowed to ex- blain. She was dragge from her chair and forced to copy the steps set before her. It would have been impossibly priggish and insulting for her to plead religous scruples she put her best foot foremost. The dance mood was innate and she had a natural grace of rhythm that had languished unheeded. The eteps were simple, and their combination} at the whim of the dancer who led. | anc: Mem was soon whirling about the| room, with more or less awkwardness| which only malo laughter, with a swimming intoxication eft her pantin and diz: strangely, foo ly happy. She had learned a new alphabet of expression. She mis-spellec: the words and jumbled the syntax, but she was getting along planet | When: three or four men drove up na iny somchow on a new in a car ded the house with nvitations to Gi nce at the Hollywood hotel. Mem declined, of course H refusal was ignored as of no import- ance. ‘It's Thursday night." sald Lev “and it's our retigivus duty to show up at tho Helivwood. Everzty tere. You might meet sore. who'd give you a job.” Mem beggec to be excused. She could not dance and she was very tired. “That's when you're at your best,” cried Leva, who was an entirely other woman from the shrouded Arabian that Mem had met Im Springs. While Mem protes' Leva mo- tioned one of the men, tor to make her dance. In spite of her strugeles she was snatched from her chair into the arms of this faun whose manly beau- ty was his stock intrade. It was the first time any man except her father and her brothers had embraced Mem a young ac- since Elwood rnaby had thri‘led her with his love. She mid not count the brief duel with Tom Holby in Palm Canon, since ‘he had made no effort to overwhelm her resistan But this laughing satyr. Mr. Creighton, held her tight and *com- pelled her to dance. Giddy with the whirl and sulten with the outrage Mem’s anger blazed into open disgust. Cre'ghton said ho was horribly sorrv and only meant it in fun, and by h's abject contrition After the dinner the victrola was set whirring again and Mem was in- vited to forget her troubles in a fox- trot. \ >, Bo-efo-fo-ef se 5M toca sMe te o% % ho-efo-eo-sSo-afo-c8o-o%o-cte- ote 0% Coat Sars re Ae, Moe? o> tnctae’ RO os M me ss Lo toto o 5 ro-4fo-4s oe gars > % % 3 ° R ‘ 0-49 oe cS 50-4 RD " oes oe S roa oe 3 ro-05 RO 5 Soe%e-% so-4Se-45e-40o-40o-45 ‘ 50-4 % 04504, aes cS <5 % a> e - <Page aye-age 4, 5 *o' Seat made Mem ashamed of herself. She dd not know what to do or This was her first experience of the confusion that comes from being too respectnble on a holiday To escape from the scene of her kil!joy boorish- ness (as it looked to her now) she went out into the moonlit patio. The moon seemed to make life simpler. It has a way of blotting the matertul details with dumb shadowy and spreading a love ight over dreamy surfaces. From a house somewhere near and drowned in foliage came a music of guitar and ukulele and young voices. An automobile went by, trailing laughter in a glittering scarf. Over her head a palm tree waved an aro- matic fan, as over a daughter of Pharaoh. Along the northern sky the mountains were aligned, built of | Some soft-tinted cloudiness as if they were a wall decreed between Xanadu of all delights an the harsh, respect- able realms of the east, a barrier be- tween the woeful lands of shagbark nd mock orange and this garden of almond trees and roses. In a radiance so amorous that {t seemed almost to coo, Mem felt that the great needs of her soul were love, tenderness, rapture. This yearning was divine in this light. In the bright lexicon of the moon there were no such word as “Don't!” Everything wooed everything. In Mem's down- es her bosom was silvered the glamour and gathered into same thought that mused upon wall and flower anG tree, upon the deeps of the sky, and upon the near- vine leaf aquake with the ecstasy of boing alive at night. The air was imbued with a luscious fragrance that delighted her nostrils and drew her eyes to an orange treo, almost a perfect globe In symmetry, and cur‘ously forming a little unl- verse whose support was lost in the gloom beneath. In the round night of its own sky hung moons exhaling perfume and temptation. Like another Eve she yletded to the cosmic urge and put her hand forth to the treo of knowledge, plucked the frult that was not hers, and made it hers. She di¢ not peel the cloth of géld and divide the pulp, but,.as she had seen these Califorwians do, bur'ed her teeth in the ruddy flesh, tore out a hole and drained the syrup. She was too well schooled in b'blica! lore not to think of Eve. There was, however, no Adam for her to involve in her fall; so she took the whole fruit for herself. But then, insteal of feeling shame as the scales fell from her eyes, shame itself fell from her and she laughed. Eve had be- come Li'ith for the moment. She felt in her heart that there was something wrong here in this new life. But then there had been so much wrong in the life she had le¢ before. This was a city of per'l, but she had not escaped peril at home. She breathed deep of the new free- dom. She cast off her past, resolved cast with the to bend her head and her back no longer under remorse, but to stand erect, to run, and dance, and to be beautiful and rich and famous. Like Eve, she felt that the first] necessity of her new era was clothes. If she had. had any she would have calleG a taxicab and dashed away to the Hollywood hotel. She felt that she cou'd dance with anybody or with nobody. She could be Salome and dance herself into dance everybody's head off, including her own. But it has been so arrange’ that whenever a woman {s set on fire with a high resolution to-do some “AM day sho sat In a dark room| and ran a little projecting machine. glorious. thing, an elbow demon al- ways brings her back to the dust by whispering, “You have nothing fit to wearg’ Otherwise the conquest of the world would not have been left to plundering, hesitant males. Mom went into the house, The moon was all very well for beautifu: moots but it was impracticable; it did not provide the wardrobe for the deeds it inspired. She went into the house like a pris oner granted a little exercise in a walled yard, then driven back to her cell. She was awake in her perptex!- ties when Leva and her friends came home. The young men railed the ice box, then went the'r way. Leva was so drowsy that she could hardly get her hair down, but she sat cn the edge of Mem's Lew and dis- cussed the future. Leva advised new duds by all means Distribution Simplifies Bookkeeping PRINTING Basement Midwest Bldg.—Phone 980-J STATIONERY 426 East Second St.—Phone 2224 2, VECCEV IT ~ By he hon ate eon On co elp eeeadowew, Soe PRION OLE I ING SOUL TOTO LESTE CORI ED NOUS Hee Are the ruled forms you are using perfectly adapted to your business? . Are you using stock forms that necessitate the adjustment of your accounts to same, rather than perfect forms that meet all of your accounting requisites? DON’T WASTE TIME AND MONEY using a misfit Cash Book, Journal, Combination Cash. Book and Journal, Led- gers, Recapitulation Forms, Cost Accounting Forms, Inventory and Stock Rec- ord Forms, or any other ruled form when you can get, right here in Casper within 24 hours, any ruling you may need. stall half a kingdom,! Ret s5 SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1923. | and offered to have them charged to | her own account until Mem cou‘d find | a@ job and begin to pay. It was har- | rowing to Mem to think that she | must take on a burden of large debt before she could hope for small | wages. But tho necd was impera- tive. | (The next morning Mem acquired on tick the brief trousseau of a little business bride. Then she went to the studio with Leva and was assignec | without delay to the laboratory pro- jection room at $25 a week. A bun: dred pretty actresses got no jobs at | a for they were secking glory and wealth. : 5 of tue stud o astounded Mem. It was a vast factory, This company's assets were $13,000,000; its last year's cross income $8 600,000. In a score of years a toy unknown be- fore had become the fifth largest in- dustry in the world, a mammoth tar- get for every sort of crite. And now Mem hail entered the ma- chine shop, if not the art. CHAPTER XXVI. Al day she sat {n a dark room and ran ‘a little projecting machine that poured forth moving pictures before her on a L@tle private screen. She must watch out for typographical errors, a “to” for a “too,” a slip of grammar, or a mistake in an actor's or a character's name. Her common school education was goo enough for this, though it by no means 20 marvelous as Leva had told her em- pl it was, Later Mem was permitted to study the fi'ms for belmishes scratches, dust specks, bad printing, bad tinting, bad assembly, bad any one of a score of things. There were f've other young wo- men besides Leva engaged at the same task, each with jber 1:ttle pro- jection machine and her litt’e screen ani her littlé picture racing ahead of her past the continual night of the laboratory. At one end of the pro- Jection room was a larger screen for the laboratory chief (a learned scien- tist) and his assistants and occasional directors who came with problems of photography requiring immeciate so- lution, The conversation was in a foreign language to Mem but the jargon grew gradually familiar and sbo kept an eager ear alert for information. She decided to master the trade in every detail. It was fascinating at first —a strange and fairy business. Like a chorus of girs at spinning wheels these ma{ds sat and unrolled from the magic distaff romance un- ending and of infinite variety. Mem was supposed to keep her mind on her own screen, but it was impossible not io glance at the other pictures. Now there was a glittering flood of waters roaring almost au- dibly through a canyon, and in them a spun anc. tormented canoe that fi- nally flung into the waves a fugitive woman and cast her on the rocks. Some one told her that so great an actress as Mary Alden bad spent thirty minutes in those icy waters while they photographed the scene. This went again and again in d't- ferent ‘takes by different cameras, as if Miss Alden had been kiled and brought to life again repeatedly to respon’ to encores of death. Over against this tremendous rush of nature there appeared sudcenly a yet more thrilling cataract of human passions, a battle in a Chinese den, where frenzied criminals, Chinese and haif-castes and policemen struck and stabbed and sbot and broke over one another's heads furniture of exquisite carving or hurtled from ornate bal- conles and splintered embro'dered screens and jeweled idols; Lon Chaney leered and b'ed and let demo- niac thoughts flicker across his mask. Parallel with this flowed a torrent of luxury, a reception in a home of wealth, designed by Cedric Gibbons, lover of arches and interlaced per- spectives; beautiful women in gleam- Ing dresses danced or listened to love stor'es or let tears drip like diamonds upon their fans of white peacock feathers. A vast mounta'n range shouldered the clouds aside and a posse of vig!- lantes chased a pack of Cesperadoes on desperate horses or desperadoes chased Tom Mix as a fugitive hero who sent his broncho leaping, slid- ing, galloping down cliffs and up ra- vines, a swallow darting away from falcons, In a close-up of huge detail Will Rogers’ wh!msical face twisted with cowboy impudence and embarrass: ment and pathetic wit. In another, the cinematograph'c features of Helene Chadwick exploit- ed her subtlest moods in a language that could not be misunderstood; or Claude Gl!ngwater's Jovian brow So-ste ce stoctoce-sectecte-ste toate steste-oste-ste sfoete-ste-so-etesteseeste-to-ste-ste-aie-ste-ste ste ahosto-se-ae-stocte-sto-steste-ete-steste-stesto-se d-s%r-so-ste stot sie sroane see ee-ore- strugg:ed with big emotions or Rich- ard Dix's stalwart humor flourished. He was whisked away, and a low comedian took his place with high an- ties of ancient glory, the horseplay that the new critics have always de- nounced and the classics have always adored; the knock-about assaults on dignity, the physical satires on pom- posity that delighted Aeschhylus no less than Aristophanes, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, all the big men who were not afraid of fun and un- derstood that there is less wisdom in a strut than in a caper. Then the sensitive beauty of Golleen Moore roiled by tremulous to every least emotion as an aspen leaf. Before all these windows Mem looked into countless phases of life and emotion and character. It oc: curred to her that she was getting a divine purview of the world. Life to her looked much what life must look like to God. He must see billions of souls unrolling their continuities be- fore him in all varieties of grimace, frenzy, co:lapse, appeal for pity or laughter. Humanity must dance be- fore him as before her until each life was cut off or vanished in its final fade-out. She wondered more and more why the moving pictures should have been greeted with hostility and con- tempt or fear. She did not understand that they who teach the world a new language, or open a new world, or bring golden gifts of any sort to the people are always crucified at first by the Pharisees. Later, thelr con- verts become Pharisees for new Mes- siahs. She was fgnorant of the primeval eternal habit of the critic mind to lash out at all that is alive and eager. Why ‘ash the dead? They cannot feel the sting of the whip. She knew only that the moving pie- tures were abhorrent to multitudes and {t seemed to her pitiful that this should be so, All these actors and actresses and photographers were merely trying to flluminate life. to pass dull hours away, to quicken the) sp'rits of the lonely and the weary. ‘The artistic beauties of the pictures! made her inarticulately happy. She! knew nothing of painting or sculp- ture or architecture. She loved sun- sets and moon dawns and tight on leaves anc. the textures of fabrics embracing shadows in their folds, he loved the war of gloom and glow.| She found the pictures overwhelming- ly beautiful to her eyes, kalefdoscopes of leading masses and lines,~ sym- phonic tempests of shape and color. For a time Mem was in a heaven of tumultuous ecstacies. But gradu- ally the delight turned to torture, the ‘orture of envy. \ She was young and she had been told that she was beautiful. She had realized with shame and anger and disgust at first that she seizec the’ IT COSTS NOTHING ed. your forms today -- analyze them need what we have not got -- give us a chance to show our good work. oe, to investigate the fine quality of ruling and printing we do -- indeed it will be a pleasure to show you some of our work. We invite you to visit our plant at your first opportunity and see the new Hickok Ruling Machine recently in- If you are unable to pay usa visit, call us by phone and one of our men will be right over to see you. CHECK OVER POSSESS SOS - If they are not what you need and if you -A Great Novel of Hollywood Life BY RUPERT HUGHES eye and charmed. Now, as in a’most every other way, she was so revol tionized that what had hitherto s ed to her odious was beginning tc seem admirable. What had been her evil was her good and her good her evil. 1f God made her pretty !t was be cause he delighted in beauty and wanted it known. He did not grow flowers in cellars. He was not afraid to squander the sunshine, If the art of mimicry was a God given gift, it must be meant for use. She had acted once before a camera, there in the desert. She had felt the possession of an allen agony. She had shot tears from her eyelids. She had brought tears to the eyes of strangers. She had tasted the sweet poison of vicarious suffering. It was accounted divine on a cross; why dia- bolic on a screen? She was an ac: tress by divine intention. She sat in a dark room and watch- ed other people's pictures flow by. It seemed wrong, wicked, cruel. Yet she was eCucating herself un- consciously in the complex technics of acting, learning dramatic anal and synthesis. Foo's who knew nothing about act ing spoke of it as if it had no intel- lectual element. They thought that the common-nough ability to write impudent scurrilities about the brain- lessness of actors was a proof of brains. Mem came to see how difficult a science, how bewildering an art the mimetic career requires. She would learn the angulshes of self control and self-compulsion that must be un- dergone when the actor's soul squeezes itself into the mold of an- other character. She could already see how many ways there were of thinking, holding hands, of looking love or hate, of kissing, crying, laughing, rising up and sitting down. She was mad to act. CHAPTEl¢ XXVII. Among the processions of types that marched past Mem’s eyes as she sat at her magic window in the pro- jection room—among the innumerabie American types, good an@ bad, rich, poor, foreign, native, rural, urban, the aliens of every clime and age 4 costume the animals and the bi 5 the plunging horses of the cowboys, the lions, the wolves, the rattlesnakes went many children in rags and tags ahd volvet gowns. She saw Booth Tarkington's “Ed- gar” family and the other tiny ar- tists of the colony; exquisite Lucille Ricksen; the essence of boyhood, Johnny Jones; the plump Buddy Messenger; the adorable Robert de Vilbiss. She saw at the movie houses the little master of comedy, Wesley Barry, with his skin a constellation of freckles; and the all-conquering Jackie Coogan. (Continued Next Sunday.