Hollywood Saga (1939)

HOLLYWOOD SAGA before her eyes! This mental process evidently affected my physical progress; as my thoughts moved faster and faster my legs moved more and more slowly; by the time I reached the springboard’s end I was experiencing all the sensations of death by drowning. I paused to complete the thought. Then I became conscious of the audience waiting. Nothing was happening, and it was up to me to do something about it. I saw father’s face; he looked rather disappointed, if not just a bit disgusted. Mother’s expression conveyed a mixture of gentle understanding and regret. At this point I jumped, for the simple reason that I was afraid not to. This early scene recurred to me vividly as I saw Cecil fare forth into the West. There he was, jumping blindly again into space, smiling, self-confident, with the same love of adventure, the same firm belief that whatever the obstacles, he would overcome them. In this spirit he took his twenty thousand dollars, his star and a young man who, having been Farnum’s dresser in the theater, now found himself suddenly promoted to the post of studio manager, as soon as there should be a studio, and went blithely out toward the sunset. My little brother was Director-General of a picture company after having devoted some six weeks to an academic study of his new profession and having seen, in all, possibly two dozen pictures. After much careful consideration, the boys had decided that Flagstaff, Arizona, was just the place to build their studio. It certainly looked good on the map; government weather statistics proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was ideal. Also, some stool pigeon had hinted that it occasionally got foggy in California. There would be no fog in Arizona, however. Just look at the altitude, nearly seven thousand feet; no fog up there, you bet — why, it was way above the clouds and every day would be clear sunlight 50