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What I need at the moment is not a chapter but a billboard on which to paste with great splashy gestures a three-sheet announcement: “Coming!—The Literary Lochinvar—Coming!” Both words and pictures—yes, and muted notes from the steam calliope—are requisite to herald adequately the author of Under the Big Top. If I tell the story of Courtney Ryley Cooper, fiction, even his own fiction, will seem colorless beside it. Therefore read no further. The lights are off and a beam flung from the projection room high overhead shows us——
Scene. Large white canvas mushrooms growing closely together and obviously attracting swarms of the human ant. Animals in gaudy cages, the living skeleton, lemonade, spangles and paper hoops. Close-up. Fifteen-year-old boy, at once timid and bold, interviewing the master of destinies. Caption: “Boy, water the elephants!”
Scene. Amphitheatre within the largest of the tents. Several thousand faces that are all one face and that have even less significance than one face and that emit a crackling, collective sound. Clowns, masked by perpetually surprised looks painted on noses, mouths and eyebrows, in ballooning white costumes, rolling and tumbling about the arena. Thwack! Close-up. Fifteen-year-old ecstatic over the time of his life, working hard. Caption: “Spare the slap-stick and spoil the child.”
Scene. Office of the Denver Post, twelve years later. Enter Buffalo Bill, white hair pigtailed and everything. He strides up to the city editor. Caption: “Whar’s that reporter fellow——”
Flash. “Film not broken, but we have just been informed that all motion picture rights in the career of Courtney Ryley Cooper are reserved to Mr. Cooper. Please keep your seats.”