I
Aint it funny the things that comes into a person's head when they are rubbing cold cream onto their nose? All sorts of stuff, some of it good sense and some of it the bunk. But most of it pretty near O.K. If some one was to take down the ideas I get at such a sacred hour, I'd be out of the dancing game and into the highbrow class just as quick as the printer got through his job.
It sure is a time when a woman's true thoughts come to the surface along with the dust and last night's make-up, and many a big resolve has been made owing to that cleanly habit. Wasn't there some wise bird made up a quotation about cleanliness being next to God knows what? Well, believe you me, its the truth, for once a woman starts in with the cold cream all alone,—and she sure does it at no other time—there is no telling what will come of it beside a clean pink face.
With me personally myself, thats where most of my ideas about life come from—right out of the cold cream tube! And while indulging in this well known womanly occupation the other evening I commenced thinking about rest and how important it is for us Americans—and of the way we go after it—like it was something we had to catch and catch quick or it would get away from us. Do you get me? If not, leave me tell you what a friend of mine, which has just been mustard out of the service says to me, when I was checking up his experiences abroad while he was checking up what the waiter had put down.
"My idea of rest?" he says. "Why taking Belleau Woods after three restless weeks in the trenches," he says.
Which sort of puts the nut in the shell, as the saying is. And also at the same time reminds me of the rest I just recently took.
Not that I generally need one any more than any other thoroughly successful star, for heavens knows the best known parlor dancing act in the world and Broadway, which mine undoubtedly is, dont need to rest because the managers theirselves always come after me and resting I leave to the booking-agency hounds. But this time it was bonea fido, and come about in a sort of odd way.
To commence at the start it begun with me falling for the movies, which Gawd knows I only done it for the money, their being no art in it, and they having hounded me into them for a special fillum. And of course many well known girls like Mary Garden and Nazimova go into pictures and even myself, but its simply because of being hounded, as I say. But once in you earn your money, believe you me, and I have stood around waiting for the sun like Moses, or whoever it was, until my feet nearly froze to the pallasades before jumping off, only of course it was a dummy they threw after I had made the original motions of the leap to death. And the worst part is once you are signed up on one of these "payment to be made wheather the party of the first part (thats me) is working or not" you got to do like they say, and a whole lot of the "not working" means plain standing around waiting for the director or the camera-man or the rain to quit, and what us public favorites suffers when on the job is enough to make the photographor's Favorite of Grainger, Wyo., abandon the career she might of had in favour of domestic service or something like that where she'd get a little time to herself.
Well anyways my judgment having slipped to the extent of having signed my sense of humor away for six months at twenty-two hundred a week, I was in the very middle of a fillum called the Bridge to Berlin when one day, just as a big brute of a German officer by the name of O'Flarety had me by the throat in a French chateau, the studio manager comes in and says the armistice is signed and the war is over, and we was to quit as who would release a war fillum now and we was to start on something entirely different, only he didn't know what the hell it was to be and here was eight thousand feet wasted—and believe you me I was sore myself for we had shot that strangling sceene six times by then and my marcelle wave was completely ruined by it, and I would of liked to of had something to show for it.
But anyways, orders was to quit and so me and Ma and the two fool dogs and Musette left the wilds of Jersey and after a stormy voyage across the Hudson come safely home to our modest little apartment on the drive, there to not work at 22 hundred a week until Goldringer got the studio manager to get the scenario editor to get me a new story, which at the price was not of long duration for while Gawd knows they dont care how long a person stands around waiting to be shot, they just naturally hate to pay you for doing the same thing at home in comfort.
Well anyways the bunk that scenario editor picked out was something fierce. I wouldn't of been screened dead in it. But it just happened I had a idea for a scenario myself, which come about through somebody having give me a book for Christmas and one night, the boy having forgot to bring the papers, I read it. And was it a cute book? It was! I had a real good cry over it, and while it wasn't exactly a book for a dancer, I could see that there was good stuff in it. So finally me and Ma stopped into Goldringer's office after he had twice telephoned for me and handed him a little surprise along with the volume.
"I got a idea for a picture, Al," I says, "and here's the book of it."
"Well Miss La Tour, what's the name of it and idea?" says he, chewing on his cigar strong and not even looking at the book but throwing it to the stenographer, which is a general rule always in the picture game and one reason we don't see such a crowd of swell fillums.
"The name is Oliver Twist," I says. "It's a juvinile lead the way it stands, but I want it fixed up a little, with me as Olivette Twist—the editor can fix it so's that will be all right. It's really a swell part. I could wear boy's clothes some of the time."
"Huh! Olivette Twist," says Goldringer, taking back the book and looking at the cover of it. "Always thought it was a breakfast food! But if you say its O.K. we'd better get it. Where is this feller Dickens? We'll wire him for the rights. Friend of yours?"
You see, if anybody brings scenarios personally, a star in particular, it's generally a friends.
"No," I says. "It was sent me by Jim along with a letter which shows the bird is well known," I says. "And is in Westminister Abby, London, England, which Jim says proves his class.
"Must be a swell apartment," says Goldringer. "All right we'll send a cable to him and see if the picture rights is gone or not. If the boy is so well known he may stick out for a big price. This is Thursday. We may hear from him by Monday or Tuesday, and we'll get a scenario ready anyways so's we can begin to shoot not later than a week from to-day. Until then," he says, "run along and amuse yourself and dont do anything I wouldnt."
Well, me and Ma was shown out then and down on Broadway Ma see some salt-water taffy in a drug-store and wanted to go in and by it which I had to prevent because outside of Ma being in no need of nourishment, she weighing considerable over the heavy-weight requirements already and Gawd knows if she was to have went back into the circus it would no longer be on the trapeese and a certain party in the side-show would have a strong competitor for her job and it wouldn't be the human skeleton either. But leaving off the consideration how would it look for us to go up the Ave. in my new wine-colored limousine which I earned myself and no one can say different with truth—and eating stuff like that out of a folded paper box? Ma certainly has my health well in hand and heart and its seldom we quarrel over any little thing, but she certainly has no class instinct, or instinct for class—do you get me? And when I try to make her see that them little refinements is what makes me the big success I am, she sometimes kicks and if its hunger, its got to be met immediately if not one way, why then another. So in lieu, as the poet says, of the taffy I had to take her to the Ritz and watch her put away 6 vanillia eclairs at two bits each and a quart of cocoa, not that I begrudge the money, only believe you me the way all hotels charge nowadays is rapidly making Bolshivik out of even we capatalists. Do you get me? You do! But of course in my line you got to keep before the public in the right way.
Well anyways Ma complained over the loss of that taffy the whole way through the six eclairs, which it was certainly a little hard on me to have to sit there and watch her while for professional reasons eating only one of these tomato surprises which never surprise but the once, on my figures account, and certainly its a fact that the two of us was doing the next best thing to what we wanted instead of the thing itself which is one of the prices of success. So, as is also often the case at such times, I was a little mean to Ma on account of having been mean already—do you get me?
"Mamma," I says. "You certainly are getting heavier. It's a crime for you to wear these narrow skirts!"
Ma give me a searching look the same as used to lead up to caster oil when I was a kid, and then took the half of a eclair at one bit before replying.
"Now Mary Gilligan you needn't take out your artistic temperament or any other ailment on me!" she says as firmly as the eclair would permit. "Just because Jim is in France yet, and your moleskin dolman was a failure and you aint been occupied daily for a week or more, and slipped up on doing your setting up exercises this morning which I wouldnt of mentioned only you started it," she says. "Its no excuse for picking on me," she says. "What if I am a little plump? My Gawd aint I earned the right to be? What with three kids and your Pa to bring up and the center trapeese in the circus right through it all except when absolutely necessary? You dont know what a woman can go through!"
"Dont I, just!" I snapped for my Gawd aint it the truth every woman has the very worst troubles that any woman ever had? And she sure gets sore when another woman sets up to go them one better!
"No you don't!" retorts Ma with that maddening air of being older than me which she uses to squelch me every time she cant get me any other way. "No you dont!" she says. "You never brought up three kids without a nurse girl while on the trapeese—you never brought up a thing but two fool dogs and you even leave them to the carelessness of a personal maid," she says. "Poor dears, Gawd knows what will become of their little canine minds and morals!"
"Now Ma!" I begged, because she aughter know that is a sore point with me and not intention, and she had me on the raw.
"Well then!" she says. "You got a swell job and no troubles only mabe a sluggish liver and you aint the only woman in America which Gen. Pershing cant yet spare the husband of," she says. "And mabe I do need to reduce a little," which was her way of apologizing. And just as this lull occurred who should come into sight but Maison Rosabelle, her which runs the shop where myself and all the most chic professionals gets their clothes. She was all dressed up like a plush horse with real sables, part of which must of come off them simple refined little gowns I had made for the Bridge to Berlin that was ruined by the armistice. Her hair had just been rehennered and her face was as fresh as a tea-rose straight from the fragrent facial massage. She smiled and sailed down on the two of us which we welcomed with the usual relief of a family quarreling when neither sees the way to win out and have got to go on living together. In other words she automatically buried the hatchet for us, as the school books say.
"So pleased to of run into you, dearies!" she says. "For I'm goin' to Atlantic City to-morrow for a little rest."
No sooner was them words out from between her lip-rouge than I see a vision of salt-water taffy arising in Ma's eyes. Believe you me Ma is certainly hard to pry loose from anything she has once set her mind on! And Maison had to continue in that cordial manner.
"Why dont you run down for a few days?" she says. "It'll do you good. You're looking kinda pulled down Mrs. Gilligan!" she says—and of course Ma fell for that.
"I do feel a little low!" she says, finishing off her cocoa. "And Mary—Marie here is waiting until they get a answer to a cable which was sent to England by the studio. I understand we may have quite a wait, so I really believe we might go along."