“Not in pictures!” Jeanne protested. “No, no! And then you know I have promised. I said, ‘Yes, I will be Lorena LeMar.’ And Lorena LeMar I must be.”
It was with grave misgiving that she approached the movie lot on the first day of actual work. “There is so much I do not know,” she told herself. “If it is necessary to explain much to me, what must that sharp-eyed Mr. Soloman think?”
These fears vanished as she saw the rows on rows of faces packed in the stadium ready to witness the actual making of a movie feature, for it was this and nothing less that the keen Mr. Soloman had advertised in big electric words outside the gate.
“I must succeed! I must! I must!” She set her will to the task.
To her vast surprise she found that first day passing as serenely as a journey down a country lane. The scenes were simple ones, the lines short and easy. She came to it all with a simple naturalness that pleased both Soloman and her audience.
But, as the days passed, it seemed to her that the whole affair was like a gigantic machine that gathers speed as its many wheels revolve.
Not three days had passed ere every person in the cast realized that here was a real task, the making of a genuine feature in record time on an improvised stage. “Seldom has it been done,” they were told. “All the more reason for succeeding,” came their answer.
Powerful lights were hung over the mountain and long after the spectators were gone the cast of the play toiled on.
Important scenes were filmed not once or twice, but six, eight, ten times. Each little detail must be right.
Those burning lights burned into Jeanne’s very soul. What matter this? She must smile. She must weep. She must shout for pure joy when the script said, smile, weep, shout.