“The worst of it is,” mourned Sue, “more crowd scenes are scheduled for shooting tomorrow and we’re all scheduled out.”
“All except lucky Jane, who’s in for the rest of the week,” said Grace.
“I’ll try and skip around in the crowd scenes and take the places of all of you,” Jane consoled them.
“Mrs. Murphy’s going to be the Cheyenne star in the picture,” chuckled Sue. “The director saw her at the field and he drafted her for a comedy role. It was taken this morning and was as funny as could be. They dressed Mrs. Murphy up in an old-fashioned outfit with a bonnet and a parrot in a cage. She was taking her first trip by plane and all she had to do was to look flustered and talk about her fear.”
“Yes, and Mrs. Murphy’s never been up,” added Grace. “When she started toward the plane she forgot all about being in a movie and began to get scared. By the time she reached the steps, she wasn’t acting and Miss Barrett and Mr. Macklin had to almost force her into the ship. Mrs. Murphy’s brogue was so thick you could cut it and the whole film crew laughed until they were just about worn out. Mrs. Murphy got a hundred dollars for the scene and she’s tickled to death.”
All the girls were scheduled out on early ships the next morning and Jane went to the field with them. Even at that hour, Director James was on hand making plans for the day’s schedule.
After the early planes had cleared the field, Jane saw him talking to Charlie Fischer, who had been given a leave of absence to do the stunt flying. A few minutes later Charlie came over and joined her.
“This is my big day,” he said. “If I do all of the tricks they want me to, I’ll go crazy.”
“What do you have to do?”
“They’re practically re-enacting the scene of the bandit plane attacking us, and I’ve got to fly the bandit ship. They had a chap from Denver slated to come up and do that while I flew the army plane which arrived just in time. Now I’ll have to fly the bandit plane through a lot of maneuvers and then come down, get another ship which will be painted like an army plane, and do some more stunts all around one of the tri-motors.”