“Sure. The supervisors always want the last word.”
After dinner they drove to the studio, Mrs. Thorne accompanying them.
Helen’s father took them directly to the projection room. Billy Fenstow was waiting and half a dozen others were in the room. Most of them spoke to Henry Thorne and he introduced several to Janet and Helen, but Janet couldn’t remember their names.
Then the lights went out and they settled back into comfortable leather-upholstered chairs.
Scenes from a number of pictures in production flashed before their eyes. Suddenly Janet and Helen saw themselves on the screen, moving and talking, and Janet dropped her eyes for a minute. To her it looked pretty terrible, but her voice was well modulated and pleasing.
After that the lights came on and Henry Thorne went over to speak to Billy Fenstow. When he returned a few minutes later Janet couldn’t even guess what the decision had been.
“The action was punk,” Helen’s father said frankly, “but the supervisors liked your voices. You’ve got good faces and figures. In other words you report Monday morning and both of you go into ‘Broad Valley,’ Billy’s next picture.”
Chapter XXII
WESTERN ACTION
In the days intervening Janet and Helen found plenty to do. Billy Fenstow sent over scripts of his new western and they had a chance to familiarize themselves with the general theme of the play. The story, briefly, was the efforts of a band of ruthless men to gain control of “Broad Valley,” a great cattle ranch which had been left to young Fred Danvers by his father. There was plenty of action, some gunplay, and a love theme in which Fred fell in love with the leader of the band of men who sought his property. The theme was as old as western pictures, but Billy Fenstow had a knack of dressing them up and making them look new.
Janet and Helen reported at stage nine at eight o’clock Monday morning, Henry Thorne driving them over himself. He left as soon as they reached the lot.