Photoplay (Apr - Sep 1918)

REVENGE is SWEET Poor Tim, a simple, trusting soul, is rudely disillusioned By Edward S. O'Reilly Illustrated by D. C. Hutchison I KNEW somethin' awful was goin' to happen if them girls around the lot didn't stop pesterin' old Tim Todhunter. Since Tim came to Celestial City to play them bad men parts, the girls have been havin' the time of their lives flirtin' with him. The trouble with Tim is that he don't realize that his face is his fortune. It's the only face of its kind in the known world, thank heaven. The old bandit thinks he's a real actor and takes everything you say dead serious. Lately he's been as full of conceit as a cow is full of ticks, and this led to the trouble. He's been playin' the villain in one of them westerns. Naturally, the director, who makes them ocular outrages, has him all lit up in leather chaps, a calfskin vest, and a couple of pistols. Tim takes a fancy to himself in that rig., he'd never seen anything like it down on the border where he was raised, and takes to posin' and struttin' around all over the lot. Especially he likes to parade in the patio around the gate where the extra people gang up waitin' to be picked. Hope Alley, some of the fellows call it. Every day there's a bunch of women come there and sit around and hope that a director will pick them to be a star. Tim would come teeterin' down the line on his high heels, peekin' at the extras out of the corner of his eye, holdin' himself as proud as a publicity man. The trouble with Tim is that he can't never tell whether these girls are smilin' at him or laughhr at him, so he takes it all as admiration. One day he comes to me with one of them Airedale grins, and says: "Slim, you know, and I know, and everybody knows, that I never aim to arouse false hopes in any female's breast." "Sure," says I. "What do you do it for?" "I don't mean to," he answers. "But they just don't seem able to resist me." "Who is it now?" I asked him, well knowin' that some woman had been prankin' with him. "Why, it's one of them extras," he admits. "That tall, well built one with the Mary Pickford curls." I knew the one he meant. She'd been playin' the extra bench for about a month without any visible encouragement. I never did see a woman with so much hope. I don't want to describe her because it ain't right to insult any lady. She was about six feet high and built in proportion, that is a perfect seventy-six. "How do you know the lady has designs on you?" I asks him. "Why she writ a note and told me so," he says, throwin' out his chest. "She says that her soul pines to dwell in the realms of true art. Believin' that kindred spirits like me and her would be mutually attractive, she remains "Try that expression of 'Utteimost Despair "he was sayin'. my admirer. That's about the way it goes. Now I want you to get acquainted with the lady and introduce me." "No," retorts I. speaking quietly but firmly. "I've taken your part in a lot of troubles, and paid your fines, and been your confidant, but I'll be hanged if I'll be your chaperon." "Very well, I'll find another way to meet the lady," snorts Tim, walkin' off very haughty. He did. The next afternoon I saw them walkin' around together. She had a scissors holt on his left arm and was gigglin' and rollin' her eyes. Tim. proud as a cowboy with a new hat, was showin' her around the lot. It kept on that way for two or three days. Every day Tim would parade her around tellin' all he knew every fifteen minutes. She'd hang on his arms and his words. Some days she would be an ingenue, and sometimes a vampire and then again she'd be a haughty society queen. Leastwise she acted like she thought she was them genders of the feminine sex, but she wasn't. She might have made a hit in a munitions factory if there was any heavy liftin' to do. "You'd be surprised at that little lady," Tim confides to me one day when he catches me in a corner. "You see, she's always had aspirations, but she ain't never had a chance to air them on account of some kind of repression in her home surroundings. She said it had a sordid atmosphere so I guess she must of lived in one of them flats. "All the time what she wanted was to express herself. She says so. So finallyr she decides she'll express herself or bust. A mere business man just naturally gets her goat. I never knowed they were such varmints until she told me. So she came to Celestial City. She wants to mingle with us actors and people who untie their emotions. I find her a very promisin' pupil." "You don't mean to insinuate that you're teachin' that woman how to act?" I asked him. "Well yes, in a manner of speakin'," he cold bloodedly admits. "There's no use in my bein' a damn hog about 4.S