Merton of the Movies

by Harry Leon Wilson

With an empty auditorium to choose from, he compromised on a balcony seat. Down below would doubtless be other members of the company, probably Baird himself, and he did not wish to be recognized. He must be alone with his triumph. And the loftier gallery would be too far away.

The house filled slowly. People sauntered to their seats as if the occasion were ordinary; even when the seats were occupied and the orchestra had played, there ensued the annoying delays of an educational film and a travelogue. Upon this young actor’s memory would be forever seared the information that the conger eel lays fifteen million eggs at one time and that the inhabitants of Upper Burmah have quaint native pastimes. These things would stay with him, but they were unimportant. Even the prodigal fecundity of the conger eel left him cold.

He gripped the arms of his seat when the cast of Hearts on Fire was flung to the screen. He caught his own name instantly, and was puzzled. “Clifford Armytage—By Himself.” Someone had bungled that, but no matter. Then at once he was seeing that first scene of his. As a popular screen idol he breakfasted in his apartment, served by a valet who was a hero worshipper.

He was momentarily disquieted by the frank adoration of the cross-eyed man in this part. While acting the scene, he remembered now that he had not always been able to observe his valet. There were moments when he seemed over-emphatic. The valet was laughed at. The watcher’s sympathy went out to Baird, who must be seeing his serious effort taken too lightly.

There came the scene where he looked at the photograph album. But now his turning of the pages was interspersed with close-ups of the portraits he regarded so admiringly. And these astonishingly proved to be enlarged stills of Clifford Armytage, the art studies of Lowell Hardy. It was puzzling. On the screen he capably beamed the fondest admiration, almost reverent in its intensity—and there would appear the still of Merton bidding an emotional farewell to his horse. The very novelty of it held him for a moment—Gashwiler’s Dexter actually on the screen! He was aroused by the hearty laughter of an immense audience.

“It’s Parmalee,” announced a hoarse neighbour on his right. “He’s imitatin’ Harold! Say, the kid’s clever!”

The laughter continued during the album scene. He thought of Baird, somewhere in that audience, suffering because his play was made fun of. He wished he could remind him that scenes were to follow which would surely not be taken lightly. For himself, he was feeling that at least his strong likeness to Parmalee had been instantly admitted. They were laughing, as the Montague girl had laughed that first morning, because the resemblance was so striking. But now on the screen, after the actor’s long fond look at himself, came the words, “The Only Man He Ever Loved.”

Laughter again. The watcher felt himself grow hot. Had Baird been betrayed by one of his staff?

The scene with the letters followed. Clothes baskets of letters. His own work, as he opened a few from the top, was all that he could have wished. He was finely Harold Parmalee, and again the hoarse neighbour whispered, “Ain’t he got Parmalee dead, though?”

“Poor, silly little girls!” the screen exclaimed, and the audience became noisy. Undoubtedly it was a tribute to his perfection in the Parmalee manner. But he was glad that now there would come acting at which no one could laugh. There was the delicatessen shop, the earnest young cashier and his poor old mother who mopped. He saw himself embrace her and murmur words of encouragement, but incredibly there were giggles from the audience, doubtless from base souls who were impervious to pathos. The giggles coalesced to a general laugh when the poor old mother, again mopping on the floor, was seen to say, “I hate these mopping mothers. You get took with house-maid’s knee in the first reel.”