We went to a film rehearsal at the Flying A. In front of us sat the heroine, the hero, the villain, and all members of the company. The director read the words that would be printed between sections of the finished reel and the pictures were shown in negative only. Every now and then the actors made a few remarks such as, “That’s a fine action, Steve”; “Gee, Steve, that’s great!” “I like Flora down by the brook”; “Nice scene, Flora!” Finally the heroine died.
“Nobody can die with so much sob stuff as Flora,” said our friend in a whisper.
Flora heard and answered: “Some time I’d like a part that I don’t have to die in. That’s the seventeenth time I’ve died this season.”
Of the many moving picture plants we saw, the Flying A was the smallest but most interesting. The difference between the Universal City and Flying A studio is that between Barnum’s Circus at the Madison Square Garden and the Little Theater—or better, the Grand Guignol in Paris. The Universal City is a gigantic organization that can produce anything from tiger-hunting in the jungle, to plays like “Quo Vadis.”
But why—Oh, why don’t the moving picture people have someone show them how the houses of the socially prominent really look? Where do they devise the manners, customs, and nightmare interiors that could not be found outside of the society atmosphere of Dingy Dunk or Splashville except in the “movies”?
Leaving Santa Barbara about two o’clock we arrived at Paso Robles long before dark. The next morning, however, we left early in order to spend part of the day with some friends who have a cattle and alfalfa ranch about midway to Monterey. I should think the cattle would all topple over dead and the alfalfa shrivel to cinders. Cool California? The thermometer was easily 120, and that cloudless sky a blinding blaze of torture. Our friends were quite tranquil about it. “It is pretty hot here just now. You see we are pocketed in between the hill ranges, but it is beautifully mild all winter.”
To us the mild winter did not seem to compensate, since we could not understand anyone’s surviving so long as until then.
On the Seventeen-Mile Drive at Monterey
That afternoon’s drive was the hottest I hope ever to have to live through. To put your hand on unshaded metal was to burn it, as though on a hot flat-iron. The main road, El Camino Real, was good all the way to Salinas, but the branch road from there to Monterey was bumpy and bad until within a mile or so of our destination.