But no committee can ever do that sort of thing. It takes a single-handed personality, and I guess mabe the biggest bluff Germany has had to confess to is her ex-leader. He seems the A-1 example of how true it is that well-known tailors' ad, "Clothes make the man." Also it inspires me to invent a quotation to hang beside the famous one of Shakespeare's, I think it is "Do it now!" which you see so often, mine being "Do it yourself!" Well, you will if you are the able one on a committee. Everybody which has served on one knows that every committee is composed of the one which does all the work and three to six others which uses most of their vitality and imagination in thinking up excuses and offering them.
Well, anyways, the foregoing is why I simply eliminated the other members of my Theatrical Ladies' Committee of Welcome to Our Returning Heroes. And eliminating them was so simple, too. I just didn't call any committee. And why would I, what with the knowledge I had gained through former experiences? Believe you me, a lady which learns by experience is a great little time-saver, although admittedly rare, but in my line you don't fall out of a air-plane more than once, and any successful picture actress and dancer like myself will tell you the same. So as to committees, none for me, thanks just the same, as the man said to the soda clerk the morning of July first, 1919 A. D., which is Latin for Anti-Drinking. Not that I will ever again try to get into the strong-character class with the aforementioned celebrities, for a reputation for doing anything well is as good as a signed contract to do it. And my advice to young girls is, don't let it be known you can do anything well or you'll have to deliver constantly. Look as ignorant as possible whenever anything is suggested except the thing you are burning to get after, or your time will be taken up with a lot of useless side-lines that get you nowheres. There is a person for every job if you just let the job alone until the right person finds it. Did you ever notice the way simps which can't do a thing always get it done for them? You have! Well—from this on, here's where I look like a poor fish whenever anybody outside of a motion-picture magnate or a theatrical manager makes a noise like work to be done.
All the amateur stuff can be taken care of by the sweet womanly women who ain't got anybody to support except their dressmakers, and not by a mere professional earning near a hundred thousand a year like I. My final lesson on working with volunteer boards and committees is a un-wept memory, and believe you me, that Chateau Terry battle had nothing on some of the War Relief Committee board rooms I seen in executive session and keep the home fires burning is right, we done it, especially the White Kittens Belgian Relief, which it's a fact we nearly split over whether we'd print our postcard appeals on pink or yellow cards!
Well, anyways, I suppose these relief committees was a big help to them that was on them if not to any one else, and after all a lot of money somehow got left to do good with after expenses was paid. But the biggest relief I know of come from relieving ourselfs of them relief committees, and the last of all was the Welcome Home one.
I wouldn't of gone on it in the first place only I was so low in my mind. And who wouldn't be a little low even with my cheery disposition after such a morning as I went through, first commencing with the loss of Maude.
Not that I had ever liked her nor 'Frisco, her husband, either, but losing her was worse than living with her any day, and when Ma come in and broke the news I wasn't in any mood for it, struggling as I was over the joint contract which Goldringer had just sent on from Los Angeles as a nice surprise and welcome for Jim which we were expecting to hear he would be leaving France any day now. It called for seventy-five thousand per each of us for six joint pictures, our expenses to the coast, and I was holding out for a car while there and a special publicity man of our own to be paid by them, but chosen by us, meaning Rosco, which has so faithfully let the public know every time I sneezed these last five years and has a way of disguising a two column ad so's the editor thinks it's a news item.
Well, anyways, I was reading through all that foreign language portion of this contract and had waded past about a page of "to wit, viz.: party of the first part" stuff, which sounds like it didn't mean anything, but is where they sometimes slip one over on you, when in come Ma with a big home-made cruller partly in her hand and partly in her face. She was dreadfull agitated but had to get rid of the first part of the second party before she could speak, and I put in a few seconds of watchful waiting, wondering how could she do it, for Ma had put on at least thirty lbs. the last few months and believe you me, she was no slif before then, weighing some amount she would never tell just what and anybody knows what that means with a woman. But up to just recent she had gone through spells where she was making at least the faint motions of dieting, or when not that, sighing and saying she hadn't really ought to over every second helping but taking it. Do you get me? You do!
Since she had heard Jim was coming back, however, she had taken to eating everything in sight regardless. It give me real pleasure to think of any mother-in-law feeling that way about her daughter's husband and dancing partner coming back, for with many mothers it is nothing of the kind. So I made no remarks upon the cruller, and finally Ma give a gulp and gasped out the bad news.