"Yes, ma'm—where they make the movin'-pictures."
Lucinda stared unbelievingly at the building, finding it hardly possible to reconcile such mellow beauty of scheme and proportion, so harmonious with the spacious lawns and massed foliage of its setting, with memories of those grubby, grimy, back-street premises tenanted by the Culp studios in New York.
A screen-door beneath the portico opened, Mr. Summerlad emerged, a shape of slender elegance in Shantung silk, and ran impetuously down to the car. With more deliberation Lontaine appeared and waited.
"Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Lontaine: I hope you'll forgive me for telling Tom to stop in here instead of taking you back to the hotel. Lontaine's here, and we've planned a little surprise, dinner at my place out in Beverly Hills, just the four of us. You won't say no and spoil everything? That's splendid! But it's early, and perhaps you'd like a look around a regular movie factory first...."
Conducting them through the building by way of a panelled entrance hall, Summerlad explained that the stages were temporarily idle, due to the fact that photography on two productions in process had recently been finished and their casts disbanded, only the directors and their staffs remaining to cut and title the films; while the production in which Summerlad was to play the lead was as yet not ready for the cameras.
The working premises lay behind the administration building. But here again Lucinda noted few points of close resemblance to the Culp studios. A field several acres in extent, about half in turf, was surrounded by a sizeable village of glass-roofed stages and structures housing the technical and mechanical departments—a laboratory, a costumier's, property, carpenter and scene-painting shops, directors' offices, dressing, projection and cutting-rooms, a garage, sheds to shelter motor-cars and trucks by the score, stables, a small menagerie, a huge tank for "water stuff," a monolithic fire-proof vault of cement for the storage of film.
Due in great measure to temporary suspension of active camera-work, the place seemed very peaceful and pervaded by an atmosphere of orderliness and efficiency. There were no actors wasting time about the grounds, no sets occupied the huge enclosed stages, the men at work in the several departments seemed all to be busy.
"Well, Mrs. Lee: what do you think of a California studio? Not much like what you've seen back East, eh?"
Lucinda shook her head, and smiled. "I am enchanted with this country," she said; "if what I've seen of it this afternoon is any criterion, I'm afraid it's going to be hard to go away from...."
"You haven't begun to see it yet." Summerlad declared. "Wait till we've had a few motor trips."