Photoplay/Volume 36/Issue 5/A Hollywood Promise

IT was the most extraordinary document that had ever come up for a studio manager's okay. And Eddie Mallen had seen some pretty wild ones too. He had been comptroller for two Von Stroheim pictures; countersigned checks through the two year vicissitudes of "Ben Hur"; and that very afternoon had okayed a ten thousand dollar bead bill for a certain-to-be-censored King Solomon dissolve; tacked the railroad accommodations of a New York jaunt by an executive's family onto the cost sheet of a dog picture; and paid the rental of an alley cat equivalent to the cost of a hundred cats, because someone had forgotten to send the animal back after one day's use!

But this―this mauve enveloped, violet scented bill from Jerry Wilton's office! "Debtor, Eileen O'Hara"—whoever the hell she was! Eddie scratched his broken, prize fighter nose, as he always scratched it before engaging in battle with a big director, and swung off for Jerry Wilton's office.

But he did not find Jerry there, or any place in the studio, for that matter. In fact, it was almost three days before Eddie was able to piece the story together from the gossip that so ably supplements the news sheets of Hollywood.

A WOODEN horse was responsible for the fall of Troy. The downfall of Eileen took place because of a rubber one. A strange, striped creature whose coloring and physiognomy bore no resemblance to reality. A sea-horse that gamboled and bobbled upon the waves with a serene impudence.

Apparently alone and unattached, it challenged to adventure. Eileen, weary of her aimless troubled stroll down the Santa Monica beach, flung down her yellow flannel bathing cape, and crashed into the curling surf, her slender arms cutting the breakers in a long graceful crawl.

Cresting a wave, she captured the saucy creature and tried to mount it. It turned. It spun. It dumped her backwards into the sea. When she came up through swirling greenness, she heard a voice, a throaty masculine voice.

"I can't ride the darned thing either. But maybe if I hold his ears for you―"

She became aware of a smiling bronzed face and curly red hair close beside her. Even in the water, she could feel the magnetism of the stranger's personality. He held the bouncing steed. She tried again and flopped back into his arms.

"Now give me a chance," he said.

She gave him not only one, but two and three, until finally he mastered the art, and sitting far forward, legs spread as widely as possible, he paddled triumphantly to shore with Eileen hanging on behind and balancing in moments of peril.

As they dropped exhausted on the beach, he cast an admiring ​glance at Eileen's trig figure in its smart peacock-blue bathing suit―the suit she had won at the High School aquatic meet.

"I didn't know there was anyone who could swim as well as that at Margalo's party," he said.

"But I'm not at Margalo's party," laughed Eileen. "I don't even know who Margalo is."

"Tie that!" he said. "Do you mean to say you don't know who Margalo Thompson is?""

"Oh, the picture star!" breathed Eileen reverently, for to her, as to most people in the United States, the shadowy luminaries of the screen were a world apart. "Do you actually know Margalo Thompson?"

"Sure. Didn't I tell you I was at her party? That's her beach shack over there."

"Shack! Why that's a palace!" exclaimed Eileen, gazing at the huge white affair, Moorish with burnt red tiles and multicolored awnings.

"Say, if you think that's swell, you ought to see Marion Davies' or Bebe Daniels'."

"You know them too?" breathed Eileen.

"I ought to. I've directed their best pictures. I―" here he paused and spoke with the air of making an important announcement, "I―am Jerry Wilton."

"Not Jerome Wilton, the great director?"

"Tell that to the critics," he laughed.

"YOU certainly are. I go to every one of your pictures and think they're wonderful. I saw 'Love's Wings' six times. How do you do it?"

"It's knowing life, I guess," said Jerry soberly. "I may not be much on books or theories, but I've had a bit more than my share of bumps and knocks. It's sort of taught me to feel things. Yes, I may not put in some of the stunts the foreign directors do, but as Louella Parsons says, I know Life."

Eileen looked at the handsome stalwart young figure beside her. Yes, there were traces of pain in those sparkling eyes and strange furrows etched on the ruddy skin of his cheeks and brow.

​"I'm so thrilled!" she exclaimed. "You see I never met anybody before, who had anything to do with pictures."

"You don't live around here then?"

"No, I'm from Illinois―just out here for a motor trip with some friends."

"Oh, I see―a society girl."

"You might call it that," answered Eileen.

"Are you with anybody this afternoon?"

"No. The Kingston-Smiths―those are the friends who brought me on the motor trip―were tired today, so they got me a card to the Beach Club. They're so sweet and polite and I am too―we really needed an afternoon off from each other."

"SAY" cried Jerry suddenly, "would you mind awfully going back to Margalo's with me for a bit? You don't know what a relief it is to be with someone who doesn't know a thing about pictures. I've got a lot on my mind this afternoon―that's why I left the party to go out swimming by myself. If I had to talk shop with anyone, I'd bust right up in smoke."

"But Margalo―would she want me, a perfect stranger?"

"My dear girl, half the guests at her party are perfect strangers to her. She's got a yen for society people anyway. Come on. You can help me carry the horse back."

So in tandem formation, bearing the horse like a corpse rescued from the sea, they marched across the sands and up a little staircase that surmounted the great white wall of Margalo's beach shack.

Inside was Paradise! A dainty jewel of a green marble swimming pool was spanned by an ornate sculptured bridge. There were gaily colored beach umbrellas and wicker chairs of marvelous size, shaped to fit every possible angle of a fatigued body. Strewn around the pool were two or three more rubber horses, huge bright colored balls and a tiny inflated boat with a carved paddle.

And the guests! Eileen decided she had never seen so many beautiful girls and handsome men. She recognized many of them―idols, whose romantic struggles to fame and riches she had followed in fan magazines.

A golden blonde in bright blue beach pajamas disengaged herself from the crowd.

"Jerry Wilton! We'd begun to think you'd been drowned. Jack Gilbert was all for getting up a party to keep anyone from rescuing you. How about it, Jack?"

A lithe back, stretched on the sand, wriggled slightly.

"Nothing to it. Drowning's too good for any director."

Jerry picked up a huge rubber ball and bounced it accurately off the curly black head, then turned to his hostess―

"Margalo, want you to meet a great friend of mine. Miss―"

"O'Hara," prompted Eileen.

"Miss O'Hara. She's a society girl," he added in explanation.

Margalo held out a warm and friendly hand. "So glad to see you. The party's sort of dying on its feet," she added apologetically. "But I'll leave it to Jerry to give you a good time."

AND Jerry did. Why, it made Eileen happy just to be with him. He was such a big, happy overgrown boy. And yet how dominating! How he teased, flattered, strutted! Eileen could see that he was a leader, even in this gathering of leaders. Then suddenly, in the midst of a hilarious game of progressive ping pong, he took her hand.

"Come here," he said. "I want to talk to you," as he led her to a little balcony, hung miraculously out over the sea, its framework a wonderful piece of intricate carving that Jerry said Margalo had imported from some Venetian palace. Before them was flung the Pacific, blue and translucent, embraced in the curving arm of Santa Monica Bay.

A tray with two frosted glasses and a bowl of freshly cut limes was brought by a silent servant, who silently departed. They drank. ​Then Jerry came very close to her. She thought he was going to make love and with a little shiver of fear she suddenly realized that if he did, she would let him.

But instead, he just took her hand and began to talk. If Eileen had only known it, this was the real reason he had brought her to the party. He was in that frame of mind, known to all creative workers, where it was desperately necessary for him to talk about himself.

And talking about yourself is just the one thing you mustn't do in a gathering of picture people, that is, if you wish to keep the reputation and popularity that Jerry Wilton had. So when on the beach she had listened so sweetly with her wide, admiring blue eyes, she had seemed what a not too educated producer once called "Moma from Heaven."

FOR a solid hour Jerry talked. By the time he was through, Eileen had heard all about his achievements, past and present, his plans for the future, his first talkie that he was starting production on tomorrow―the talkie that was to make him a leader of the new art as he had been of the old.

There was no guile behind her admiring interest. It was all so new, so fascinating to her. She couldn't help comparing Jerry Wilton with the men she had known, nice men, always doing the expected things, following the furrows that someone else had plowed out for them. Gary Owens, for instance, the banker's son, whom everybody, including Eileen, expected would some day marry her.

No, Eileen had never met such a man and Jerry had never encountered such a listener. Finally, the hard knots smoothed out of his mind, his soul at ease, he heaved a great sigh and stopped talking. Lazily, he reached for Eileen's hand and patted it. "Eileen O'Donald, you're wonderful," he murmured.

"My name's O'Hara," she corrected gently.

"I don't care what your name is. You're wonderful, Eileen, and I've fallen for you―hard. You're the first man or woman I've been able to stand around me for more than five minutes. I've been so nervous and jumpy. You're like those purple mountains I often motor out to when I get the heebe-jeebes―lying in quiet stateliness under the sun."

He paused and held up his hand for silence as he searched for similes. He liked to invent them. Some critic had said he had a genius for them. "You're like a stained glass window in a cathedral―cool and beautiful and soothing. You rest me like that line of Kipling's, 'Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas.'"

She made a grimace. "I make you sleepy? That's a doubtful compliment."

"DON'T be fresh." His arm curved around her. "I mean it, Eileen darling. Good Lordy, you don't know what a director has to put up with from girls out here! They're always making a play for you. Oh, they're beautiful and smart all right, but you get to know all the tricks in time. Beneath all their vamping, flirting, kidding, there's always the same refrain, I-want-a-job―I-want-a-job!"

"But suppose I wanted a job?" A daring, incredible idea had suddenly come to Eileen. Jerry glanced up. A faint, almost imperceptible shadow crossed his face. A second later it was gone and he was smiling with his old exuberance.

"You'd get it, of course! But what's the use of talking? You society girls are always raving about going into pictures, but you never mean it."

"Well, I mean it," said Eileen. She was surprised at her own earnestness. "I really mean it. Do you think I'd screen?"

"Like a million dollars! That sleek curl of your black hair―it's like carved ebony―your profile's pure aristocrat―and your voice, so cool and deep! Why you were just made for the talkies!"

"Will you give me a chance?"

"Say, will I! That part of Lisbeth―you know, in the story I was telling you. It might have been written for you!" Jerry's voice was ​so hearty and reassuring. It made you feel good just to listen to him―gave you confidence and courage. Eileen leaned toward him.

"Oh, it's all too wonderful!" she cried.

"You're the wonderful one. Great luck my meeting you." He caught her hand, pressed it and pulled her to her feet. "Tough luck that I have to tear myself away. Tennis date with Silvermarsh, my producer. In the picture game, it's always business before pleasure, you know."

"I'VE got to be going myself," said Eileen quickly. "The Kingston-Smiths will be wondering what has become of me. You really meant what you said about the job? It's a promise?"

"Sure!" he boomed. "It's a promise. Come around to see me at the studio."

"Tomorrow?"

"Any time. Just say you're a friend of Jerry Wilton's." Then as he looked down at her uplifted face and eyes moist with speechless gratitude, his voice became more tender, "Gee, you're a sweet kid, Eileen O'Neil―"

"My name's not―" she began, but was suddenly checked, because he pulled her towards him and kissed her on the lips―a kiss, such as she had never received in all her life―so impersonal it was and yet so vibrant with the warm surging vitality of the man.

Eileen bade adieu to her hostess, climbed back onto the sands and strode happily towards the Beach Club. What a contrast to her bored, aimless stroll along the self-same sands before she had encountered that horse! Now her heart was leaping high, like the charging waves themselves.

Now that she saw escape before her, she realized what a bound, depressing life hers had been. Trying with her lady mother to stretch that most inelastic of all inelasticities,―a government pension. Living on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. Having people nice to her when she could never be sure whether it was due to her own charm or the memory of her revered soldier father.

Well, that was all over. She would never have to go to another party where she felt she was invited only because the hostess was anxious to do something "nice for Col. O'Hara's daughter." She would be free and rich like those girls at Margalo's party. She would be able to do things for her mother. And―she blushed as she realized how much it meant to her―she would be living in the same town with Jerry Wilton.

After dinner, she had it out with the Kingston-Smiths. They were perfectly polite about it. Of course, if Eileen did not wish to continue the trip with them―? Oh, it wasn't that, Eileen assured them, but this marvelous opportunity to break into pictures. Mrs. Kingston-Smith's thin lips compressed themselves into a line still thinner.

Marvelous opportunity, indeed! What would Eileen's mother say? And Gary Owens? Would he approve?

"I DON'T give a darn whether he does or not," was on the tip of Eileen's tongue, but she only breathed gently that Gary Owens really had no claim on her and as for her mother, why she was thinking mostly of her mother―the things she could do for her. Surely the Kingston-Smiths could understand? But the Kingston-Smiths could not or would not and after a frosty interval, it was finally arranged that they should continue their tour the next day while Eileen remained in some comfortable and respectable apartment which Mrs. Kingston-Smith would look up for her in the morning.

The next day, when the big limousine finally rolled away, Eileen experienced a little sinking of the heart. The month's rent in advance for the apartment in which Mrs. Kingston-Smith had installed her, had absorbed most of her "P. F."

The "P. F.," or Pride Fund, had been Eileen's most precious possession. Through long years, by the most brilliant economies, by ​the careful hoarding of bridge winnings, she had managed to save it, dime by dime, and quarter by quarter. With the "P. F." in her pocket, Eileen had always been able to argue with at least some degree of conviction, about paying her share of expenses; and when a house party or a tour like that with the Kingston-Smiths became almost more than her politeness could bear, she had always been able to comfort herself with the thought that should worst come to worst, the pride fund would pay her way home.

WELL, the old "P. F." was practically shot now. Eileen could count two five dollar drafts in her American Bankers' Association check book and some seventeen dollars in cash in her little alligator skin traveling bag. But the movies―the golden movies! She wondered if Jerry would think three hundred a week too much for playing the part of Lisbeth.

She was a little tired with moving and she decided it would be rushing matters to look him up too early in the day. Late afternoon would probably be best.

In the 'phone book she found the number of a beauty shop she had heard Corinne Griffith casually mention, so she called a taxi and spent the next hours in a half somnambulant state, soothed by fragrant creams, and dexterous manipulations with lotions, steam and ice.

When the last curl was sleeked into place, the last rosy finger nail polished, she called another taxi and hurried to the studio.

The mention of Jerry Wilton's name and the assertion that she had an appointment got her past the gate-keeper, doorman and two secretaries. Her heart was leaping high when she finally came upon a frosted glass door with "Jerome Wilton, Director" stenciled in large gold letters.

But Jerry wasn't there. Instead, a cool blonde creature with the manners of a grand duchess, yet somehow exuding efficiency, announced herself as Jerry's secretary.

"I had you sent up because I wanted to tell you Mr. Wilton's not in town."

"NOT in town?" gasped Eileen.

"No. They had a little fire on the sound stage last night. Upset the whole schedule, so he's taking the principals of his cast up to the High Sierras to get some snow stuff for the Siberian sequences. No, I haven't the least idea when they'll be back."

Then seeing the stricken deer expression on Eileen's face, she relented a little. "You might call him up in a week, dearie."

Eileen could hear the crisp clicking of the typewriter keys as she hurried down the corridor. Outside the studio she decided she had best walk back to her apartment. That night she had her first experience of a Hollywood cafeteria, nearing before her a tray meagrely arrayed with a dinner that cost her thirty-nine cents.

Five days later, when walking to the drug store where she usually purchased her cup of coffee breakfast, she noticed headlines in the paper at the news stand.

From the paper, which cost her a nickel, she gathered that Jerry and his cast were safe, but suffering horrible hardships. That it might take a week before rescuers could bravely battle to their release.

But whatever hardships the marooned company suffered, were mild compared to those of Eileen. Though she lived on one meal a day and that at a cafeteria, the precious "P.F." was soon reduced to a minus. The minus representing debt due one Solemn Marcus and secured by the leather traveling coat Mrs. Kingston-Smith had given her at the start of their tour.

Nevertheless, she was really as cheerful as the cheerful letters she wrote home, and when she read that the Jerome Wilton company had finally returned, she made another trip to Mr. ​Marcus and parted with the brooch Gary Owens had given her the past Christmas. With the proceeds, she purchased a good meal and the requisite beauty treatments to efface the marks of her fasting. But this time she took a bus to the studio instead of a taxi.

Here she was informed that Jerry was shooting on the sound stages.

From the secretary's manner, Eileen gathered that he might as well be in Darkest Africa as far as any possibility of communicating with him was concerned.

No, the secretary wouldn't give his address or 'phone number. It was forbidden by the rules of the studio. But Eileen might try coming back tomorrow.

TOMORROW, after a light breakfast and a finger wave, Eileen returned.

"No," the secretary told her. "Mr. Wilton isn't on the sound stage, but he can't possibly see anyone. Can't for days―" The secretary's voice sunk to a horrified whisper. "He's ten days behind schedule."

Eileen did not quite understand what being behind schedule meant, but she gathered it was something rather worse than being suspected of having murdered your own mother.

She waited three days. Then sought out a cheaper beauty shop. By guiding the inexpert operator, she achieved a finger wave that would at least be attractive under her smart French toque. Jerry would be pleased with her appearance, if he would only see her. And she knew he wanted to see her. Any furtive thought that he might not have meant all he promised she quickly banished from her mind. It was just up to her to put a stop to this nonsense.

So when the secretary told her "Mr. Wilton is in conference," she sat down and wrote him a note. It took a week to get an answer. in which time she found a place where she could sell her clothes and she propped her head up on pillows at night to keep her precious finger wave in place. Then the secretary told Eileen that Jerry had left word she was to see the casting director.

This illustrious personage referred her to the second assistant, who referred her to the first. He sent her to the scenario-writer, who confided a long list of his own troubles and made an appointment for her with the supervisor, who said she had better see Jerry Wilton after all, seeing she had discussed the part with him. Thus, after two days, she found herself right back where she started from, in Jerry Wilton's outer office and the secretary informed her that he was home asleep, after "shooting" until dawn.

THAT night Eileen took stock of herself and the situation. She must see Jerry Wilton. It was so depressingly necessary to her pride! Her scanty meals and the necessary beauty treatments for her daily trips to the studio had left her with exactly $2.65. Everything pawnable had been pawned, and every dress, except the dark green one that she thought most becoming, had been sold. And to whom could she wire for money? The Kingston-Smiths? Gary Owens? The very thought made her pride curl up and die. Her mother, her darling mother, who was always at least fifty dollars behind by pension day? No, that was unthinkable also.

She would go to the studio. She would just wait and wait and wait until somehow she saw Jerry Wilton. Then they would laugh over her troubles. He would take her in his arms and kiss her once more. She wondered if hunger was making her light headed.

The next morning there was the problem of how best to employ her remaining funds. Fifteen cents she spent for breakfast,―her first meal in twenty-four hours―the remaining two-fifty at her cheap beauty shop. Then she walked to the studio.

She was very serene when the secretary announced that Mr. Wilton was busy and couldn't see her.

"Very well then," she said, "I'll wait 'till he can."

The secretary shrugged her best grand duchess shrug. "It's up to you, dearie, if you care to wait. I can't promise anything. He's in an important conference."

Eileen waited. One hour, two, three. The grand duchess secretary went to lunch and was replaced by a dark, nervous one.

A delicious avocado salad and iced tea tray went tinkling in to Jerry Wilton's private office. The first secretary came back, confiding the raptures of Baked Alaska at the Montmarte. Eileen got herself a paper cup of water from the lukewarm container in a corner.

The secretary sat in the shade, directly in front of an electric fan, which wafted the draperies of her apple green print coolly about her. The afternoon sun found its way to Eileen's chair and bathed her with its parching dryness. It seemed that she waited years—years composed entirely of hot, sizzling summers. The floor began to sway up and down like the razzle-dazzle at the amusement park. She felt strange and far away, when the secretary at last disappeared into Jerry's office to emerge a moment later with the message, "Mr. Wilton says he can't see anyone today. He's been called away to look at a location."

"But he's got to―it's desperate―" there was panic in Eileen's eyes.

"Well he's coming out now―you can ask him yourself," the secretary said sourly.

Eileen rose unsteadily to her feet. The door opened and there came toward her a mountain of goldish tweed―a rumpled red haired crest and beneath it that friendly contagious smile. Eileen took it for a look of glad greeting. She started forward.

"MR. WILTON," she began and then stopped, as with a shock she realized he was not smiling at her at all. He was laughing at a joke told to him by one of the men who followed him out. He looked straight through Eileen.

"Don't you remember me―Eileen O'Hara?" she begged.

His eyes were as vacant as ever. Eileen might as well have been a piece of furniture in his way. He spoke rather sharply to his secretary.

"Can't see anyone today―going out to look for a location. Back here in an hour. Important conference with Silvermarsh." Then the great outer door banged behind him.

Eileen stared at it unbelievingly. Then she cried, "He must know who I am. He promised―I stayed on here, spent all my money. I wouldn't have stayed if he hadn't promised."

"Promised what?" demanded the metallic voice of the secretary.

"Promised me a part. The part of Lisbeth."

"Lisbeth! Why Ruth Hale got that part three weeks ago. She always plays those types in his pictures."

"Wha―t?" gasped Eileen. For a moment she stood there swaying. The pent up resentment of her weeks of waiting, the high white heat of anger paralyzed her body, mind and soul. The "slow swinging sea" Jerry had spoken of rose in a whirlpool of wrath, the peaceful mountain broke forth in volcanic fires, the stained glass window cracked and shattered on the cathedral floor.

WHEN Eileen came to, she was lying on the leather couch in the office. Someone was dabbing wetness on her forehead. And the voice of the grand duchess had become warm and human. "There, there, dearie. I was afraid this was going to happen. It's fierce the way these directors give girls the run-around."

"The run-around?"

"Yes, kid 'em along and then refuse to see them when it comes to a show-down."

"Do you mean to say Mr. Wilton was giving me the run-around all the time I was waiting for him?"

"I'm afraid he was, dearie."

​"And he deliberately lied when he offered me that job?"

"No, it was just a Hollywood promise. You asked him for a job, didn't you? Well, if he'd refused, said you wouldn't do, it would have meant explanation, argument. Good Lord, they get enough of that around the studio!"

"But I wouldn't have argued," quavered Eileen.

"WELL, ninety-nine girls out of a hundred would. That's why the big directors and executives will promise almost anything―outside a studio. It costs too much in time and energy to say 'no'."

"But don't they ever think how much it might cost the others―the people who believe them?"

"A lot they care. They're so big and important they know they can get away with it, all right, all right."

"Run-around." "Get away with it!" The phrases hummed through Eileen's brain as she left the studio.

And she had been so darned nice to Jerry Wilton.

Listened to him all that time, and not only listened, but believed.

Thought him too sure and strong and powerful ever to stoop to petty deceits, the meannesses of life.

Now she realized that he had deliberately used her to ease a restless moment of his mind. Used and discarded her as one might pick up a rag to flick a bit of dust from a pair of shoes. The fighting spirit of her soldier father took possession of her. He hadn't let ​that party of raiding Germans get away with it.

It had cost him his life. Well, Jerry Wilton couldn't do any worse to her.

When Jerry returned to his office, it was dusk. He sought his sanctum sanctorum, a twenty thousand dollar affair of Art-Moderne furniture and antique tapestry.

The lighting was "moderne" too―long shafts and blobs of brilliancy cutting into contrasting blackness.

Under the gargoyle lamp that illuminated his desk, lay a square of mauve colored paper. Idly, he picked it up, glanced through it, as a restless mind will.

Then of a sudden, as its purport struck him, the heavy muscles of his throat swelled. He crushed the paper in his fist and flung it down on the desk.

"WHAT the hell!" he shouted through the dictaphone to his secretary. "Haven't I got enough on my mind without someone playing rotten jokes? Haven't I told you to keep everything from me till the picture's finished? Can't I get any co-operation in this lousy studio?"

Eileen hiding behind the curtain of the fireescape window through which she had insinuated herself into the office, watched him, frightened.

This was not at all the reaction she had expected. Why she had thought he would greet the little missive with a smile in appreciation of her humor and daring!

She was about to step forward rebelliously, when a low door near Jerry's desk burst open and a small stocky man entered. Instantly, the director's frenzy subsided.

"Why, hello, Little One!" he purred in a gruff, good-natured voice. "I was just telling my secretary what a lousy studio you run here."

The Little One smiled as though the insult were a compliment. Then his face clouded again.

"Maybe we won't have no studio at all unless you cut the castle sequence from out of your picture."

"Now, Mister Silvermarsh―don't kid me!" There was subtle menace and determination beneath Jerry's throaty good nature.

"No, I ain't kidding at all, Jerry. I mean it. I was just talking with Eddie Mallen. He says he can't figure you to do it for less than a hundred thousand dollars."

"Well, what of it? I didn't promise to do it for any less, did I? The castle is where the heavy takes the girl to tempt her. It's the punch of the story. Without it where are you?"

"I know where I am. Already eleven days behind schedule and a hundred thousand over-cost on a picture I don't know will gross me a nickel."

JERRY drew himself up imperiously. "Just what do you mean by that, Mr. Silvermarsh? Are you forgetting it's the first Jerome Wilton all-talking special?"

Silvermarsh shrugged as he lit a cigar. "That don't tell me a thing, Jerry. 'Eve's Alibi' didn't draw so well at the Capitol last week."

"And why should it? It was a silent picture and besides these fellows don't know how to exploit my stuff. It's all over their heads. That's why I left 'em and signed with you."

"That's good trade talk, Jerry, but how do I know you can make talkies?" snarled Silvermarsh.

"If you didn't think so, I wonder why you signed me up at four thousand a week?"

"Yes, and my backers, they wonder that too, when I can get the stage director of any big New York hit for seven fifty. I got you because you talked well and brought me what I thought was a good story. But every day when I read that story over again, it seems worser and worser. Supposin' the picture ain't any good? Supposin' the public is fed up with Russian stories? Supposin' I lose, Jerry―five hundred thousand dollars―?" His voice sunk to a frightened whine and he spilled the ashes of his cigar onto the shining expanse of black desk.

From behind her curtain, Eileen saw Jerry's hands clutch the edge of his desk. There was an electrically charged moment;―it was almost as though Eileen could feel the thought waves sent out from his brain, the call on every fibre of his body for assistance in this crisis. She watched, fascinated, as his face took on an expression of controlled, yet dominating rage.

With a sudden sweep of his arm, he sent the ebony cigar box crashing to the floor. One swift stride and he stood over the cowering Silvermarsh.

"LISTEN, Sam! Listen, Mister Silvermarsh! All you producers make me sick. Losing whatever brains you've got over this talie racket. Dragging in a lot of old stage directors, vaudeville gag-men, who don't know the first thing about pictures. Who haven't got imagination enough to realize that what's made pictures popular is their beauty―their visual appeal.

"That's the secret of my success. I give the public more than their money's worth in beauty and emotion. Do you suppose a little thing like a microphone's going to stump me? Do you suppose I haven't got ears as well as eyes?"

Silvermarsh put up a hand to stop him, but Jerry waved it away and continued, "Yes, and you, Sam―why did I turn down three other offers and sign with you? Because I thought you had imagination and brains and courage―weren't like the rest of the other baa-baa sheep. Now on the first picture you start baa-baaing. By God, I won't go on! You can't make me. I'll get my contracts and you can help me tear 'em up! We'll have a nice little tearing-up party and use the bits to stage a paper chase―the chase I'm going to take out of this dumb baa-baa studio. I'll ring for the contracts right now―"

His arm thrust out toward the bell. But he couldn't ring it, because Silvermarsh had hold of his arm and was hugging it.

"Jerry boy, I didn't mean it. I've got complete faith in you, Jerry. The trouble with the other baa-baa producers is they don't know that what's made pictures popular is their beauty―their visual appeal.

"I should let you tear up your contract! Not on your life. Go ahead with your picture. I'll tell Eddie to okay anything you want on that castle. Oh boy, what a punch! We'll show 'em, Jerry!"

But in spite of Silvermarsh's repentance, it took him five minutes to persuade Jerry not to tear up the contracts.

Finally, the director deigned to fling a golden tweed arm across Silvermarsh's dark blue and usher him towaad the door. As Silvermarsh retreated down the hallway, Eileen could hear Jerry making golden promises:

"Shoot every night."

"Catch up with the schedule in two weeks."

"Beat the estimate by at least twenty thousand."

WHO could doubt that self-confident, world-confident voice, those hearty reassuring tones?

With a start, Eileen realized Jerry was using the same intonations she had heard that afternoon so long ago, when he had promised her a job.

Angrily, she started forward from her curtain.

But Jerry, returning, did not see her. There was a strange frozen expression on his face. The face of a child, who has seen the bugaboo man in his dreams.

He staggered to the desk and plopped down in the great easy chair.

He buried his face in his arms. The broad shoulders heaved. Eileen stood and stared in amazement.

​The great Jerry Wilton was sobbing like a baby!

Eileen started to tiptoe from the room. Jerry raised a tousled head.

"Why you!―who the devil are you?"

"I'm the girl you met on the beach. The girl you look to Margalo's party and talked to on the balcony."

"But what are you doing here?"

"You wouldn't see me, so I sueaked in by the fire-escape. I hid when Silvermarsh came———"

"So you heard that fracas, did you? Well do you blame me for blubbering? God, what a grind this picture's been! Everything from fire to snowstorms to hold me up. And Silvermarsh! Why Silvermarsh was mild today. He's been hectoring me ever since we started. Butting in, offering fool suggestions, whining about whether I can do talkies or not. It's driving me crazy! Look!" he stretched out a bronzed hand. "Look at the way my arm shakes. I'm beginning to doubt myself. Maybe I'm not any good. Maybe I can't do talkies. Oh, I'm scared―scared to death!"

HE flopped down on the desk again. Eileen forgot her own troubles, her own wrongs. All she knew was that she yearned to comfort this young Atlas, who seemed to be carrying the world on his shoulders―a world that might cost five hundred thousand dollars and never earn any profits.

She reached forward a hand to stroke the curly hair. She gently turned the bowed bead until Jerry's bloodshot eyes stared right into her cool blue ones.

"Why you big silly! To be afraid after all you've done! Don't you know nothing can stop you? Why you have power! Power to stir people. Just as you stirred Silvermarsh. And me―a few moments ago I was waiting behind that curtain angry enough to kill you―. And now, I―I want you to succeed more than I ever wanted anything in my life. You've got a message, Jerry Wilton, a message for everyone―not just sophisticated New York audiences, but people all over the country, all over the world. You know Life, and that's what counts in silence or in sound."

Yes, Jerry Wilton knew Life and knowing it, he realized that standing before him was one girl who would always believe in him, match his strength with her strength, soothe and calm, comfort and understand. Being a man quick on decisions, he pushed aside the great curved desk with one mighty heave and took her in his arms. The

mauve colored missive fluttered unnoticed from the desk.

FOUR weeks later, the grand duchess found it where it had lodged in a half opened drawer. Always efficient, she sent it down to Eddie Mallen.

Pretty soon Eddie came storming in and planked the scented sheet upon her desk.

"Read that aloud," he roared. "I want to see if it says what I think it does or if I've gone nutty.

In tones as precise as her coiffure, the grand duchess read:

When she had finished, she yawned slightly.

"Now it's no use getting hot and bothered, Eddie. Don't you know since Jerry's picture is finished and looks so good in the cutting room, anything he says goes. You'll pay off on this and like it. Or have a hell of a row with Jerry.

"You see, he and Miss O'Hara are spending the week-end at Agua Caliente getting married."