Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1916)

ARE you one of the many thousands who have nourished a secret desire to become a screen star ? Are you one of the many millions who never have seen the LandBehind-the-Screen ? If Yes, then it is to you indeed a mystery land, full of shadows through which weaves a life so shot with colors, so vivid, so palpitant, so everchanging, so wonderfully commingling the personal existence of its actors with the imaginary adventures of its characters, that only one who has dwelt in it, breathed it, absorbed it for the purpose of telling, the story of it to you, is equipped to write it actually and accurately into fiction. This the author of " The Glory Road," whose opening chapters appeared in the July issue of Photoplay Magazine, has done. He is the first to achieve the real description of the real life of the moving picture studios of Southern California, the world's capital of the silent drama. It is a story of vibrant fascination, a story you cannot afford to miss following closely if the picture screen life attracts you, calls to you. Francis William Sullivan writes " The Glory Road " as a sequel to " Star of the North," which came from him under the now discarded pen name"Frank Williams" and was published in Photoplay Magazine. The same principals pass through the pages of both stories, and are joined in " The Glory Road " by others of equal interest. The Graphic Company's film work in the Hudson's Bay country, near the post of which June Magregor's father is the factor, and which furnished the plot for " Star of the North," is finished, and Tom Briscoe, the Graphic's director-general, keeps his promise and brings June as a trial member of the company out into the great world which she never has glimpsed. She is a girl to be loved, a pure snowflower of the North, the promised wife of Paul Temple, Graphic star. Paul is thirty; a lean, athletic, keen-faced, sensitive man who has lived in the world and knows life. His devotion to June is absolute. They have yielded consent to Briscoe's insistence that they put off their marriage day until he has tested June out and proved her a success or a failure as a screen actress. He predicts her success. Briscoe is the type of man who radiates electricity and issues orders like the blows of a pile-driver. Briscoe takes the company to California for the staging of a play of the days when that state was a Spanish colony. The " location " is a little island off the coast. The story opens with Briscoe directing a scene of the play, an attack upon the island settlement by pirates from the Spanish Main. The leader of the defense is Romualdo Stark — a perfect type of the romantic hero. His blood is mixed Spanish and New England, his grandfather having crossed the continent to California in the days of hidalgo and married a cultured senorita. Just before Briscoe's "Ready! Camera! Go!" in the PRECEDING CHAPTERS OF The Glory Road " shooting " of the pirate scene, there steps into the storyTerrence MacDonnell, " press agent and liar extraordinary to the Graphic." It is his habit to wear a cap on the far back of his head and smoke incessantly a calabash pipe. In the battle between the pirates and the rten of the island settlement, June plays the part of maid to a senira. It is her business, as the women and children flee to the hills behind the protection of their fighting men, to fall as though shot, and let drop from her hand a love note appertaining to her mistress. She "does the fall" perfectly — but twists her ankle, and cannot rise. The scene taken, Briscoe and Paul hurry to her. Unable to walk, she is carried to a great house of gloomy and pretentious grandeur, secluded in a canyon of the island, near by. There they are reluctantly admitted by Mrs. Spence, the housekeeper; a matronly, strange, gray woman who seems obsessed by a great fear of letting any stranger upon the premises. June is made comfortable m the big living-room, an apartment furnished with priceless treasures from far lands. Paul is forced to leave June to take the boat for the mainland; he has an appointment to keep that evening with the president of the Graphic. June is to follow on the next day's boat. This brief separation is made harder for the lovers because in three days Paul is to depart for the Mexican border to direct the making of a picture play. In the midst of a terrific rain storm, which comes up suddenly, Holt, the owner of the great house in the canyon, arrives home. He surprises June reclining on a couch before an open fire. A man of thirty-six, there is about him an air of world-weariness. As a truck driver he had dreamed of wealth and luxury and the culture that moneyed leisure can grasp. By the force of a dominant will he had wrenched all theso things from the world — and he stood before June now, the man he had made himself; blunt, cultured, cynical, a perfect host; a self-made man who had polished himself while he made himself. The storm continues the next day. and there is no boat. Holt, playing host with a touch of delicate charm, falls in love with June. " Yes, you're right, I'm not married," he says. "I have yet to meet a woman friendly enough. " How interesting." June replies lightly. "Especially to the women if they could only know in advance whether you were going to love or hate them." " Well, as to that," Holt retorts quietly, " I can tell you in advance that I'm going to love you. Your knowing now will save any misunderstanding later. Standing before the open fire, his hands in his pockets, he looks at June Jong, intently. Finally he says: "You're in love with someone else. I might have known it. June tells him Yes, she is engaged to be married. Holt replies that he will make her love //;/;/. And he leaves her with the words: "I just thought I'd tell you this — when I want a thing I svr *"'. Good night. 5S