Moving Picture Weekly (1915-1920)

20 THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY HANDLIN' THE BEAUTS D I ELL, they're back ! I'm glad. Though I, personally, loved erery darn one of them, and would spend six consecutive months barefooted at the North Pole just to receive a smile from any one of the "hull bunch," yet I've got rather a hickory idea that I was not scheduled to drape myself in a crowd where three or more "beauts" are gathered =^=i=== together. I never seemed to be able to handle myself correctly at the right time. When I looked nobody was lookiu' my way, except my wife, and when I attempted to step back once in a while I always landed right plum on a dainty No. 2, width B. However, not since the fat tenor in the village choir was caught kissing the parson's wife in the old school-house has there been such a fuss as the Universal Beauty Special stirred up on its trans-continental cruise. From the girl who persistently referred to a certain range of mountains as Sarah's Nevadas, to the diminutive Aliss, from Pittsburgh, who declared that Pike's Peak was nothing more, nor less, than an ice cream cone turned inside out, there was always something to keep our minds ofE the constant purring of the car wheels. The three male chaperones, Joe Brandt, who stirred up the idea ; Nathaniel O. Rothstein — who much prefers to be called Nat — and the first section of the Van Ix)an family, felt just about as comfortable among that five dozen beauties as a school-boy does when he muffs the ball while his favorite teacher is looking on. At times they seemed to look on us with pity ; at other times in sympathy and oftenor with contempt. We counted noses until we could accurately describe the location of the freckles on every beaut's nose. We photographed them so much that they got the habit of stopping in front of every photographer's shop. We "shot "them until they were filmistically killed. Then we proceeded to take a few snap-shots of them. Excitement was always at fever heat. There was always something stirring. Some of them were stricken with pains in the Rockies, while others came very near being tickled to death by the feather in the Feather River Canyon. The janitor forgot to close the door after we entered this canyon, and, as a result, some of the girls caught bad colds. To add to the excitement, one of the girls toppled out of a top berth just as the train was about to enter the Royal Corge, and it took all the strength of Dr. Carver, whose name suggests her profession, and a couple of huskies — New England girls — to persuade a rib to go back to its location. Now the Gorge undoubtedly has been compared with everything from the Erie Canal to the lower end of Broadway, looking south, but when Edith Maas, BY H. H. VAN LOAN ETAIIjED account of one of the Cicerone.s on the Universal Beauty Special from Chicago to Universal City and covering a very exciting three weeks. A section of the Beauty Stage. who represented all the beauties of Detroit, exclaimed that the "dam thing looked like an avenue of Huyler's" I keeled right over. Alameda Holcombe, who shouldered all the dignity of Atlanta, retorted that it looked like a range of fudge. But Joe Brandt put an end to all arguments when he declared that it wasn't such a great sight after all for the Universal Beauty Special had had a Royal Gorge in the diner ever since the train left Chicago. Immediately thereafter the chattering ceased and the little group disbursed, many of them going as far back as the observation platform. That was a very exciting night. One or two of the girls had proved, by test, that it is beyond human endurance to compel French peas to remain in a dignified condition on a silverplated knife even in a Rio Grande diner, while another made an attempt to put the Missouri River In the bed of the Arkansas, much to the horror of Nat Rothstein, ■who, according to historians, is a topological expert. Before things had assumed a normal state, and while the Pullman conductor was making an effort to sneak over a couple of snores on one of the tables in the diner, another thoughtless creature deliberately placed the littlest finger on her right hand in the path of a down-falling window. That's all. The girl had just previously declared she would love to go into the movies, but that she was as free from dramatic ability as a frog is of feathers. But after that window had settled comfortably on her little digit she portraye<i more emotion than Eve did after she was picked out of Eden. But, for me it was the pleasantest moment of the entire trip. I skidded to the scene and with Herculean strength raised the window. That was me ! But the big scene followed when that dame, semi-negligee, oceaned brine all over my shoulder, and when I saw she had spent nearly aU of her tears, brute that I was, I was half tempted to drop the confounded window again in order that I might rehearse the scene. Now I have had some jobs during my kaleidoscopic career and have filled various roles, from manicuring dishes in a tramp steamer to serving gasoline cocktails in the back-room of Dirty Dick's, that select dive in Whitechapel, where the patrons never associate with water for fear of becoming rusty, but I wish to state that I cherish with fondest memories the paramount position I filled on the Universal Beauty Special. I was the guy who called the beauts every morning ! ? ! ? At the close of the third day I decided that though the judges of each state had decided just who was who in their respective states the fellow who really got their number was the chap who came to caU them in the morning. That was me ! Artists declare that the real time to judge beauty is when the hair is brushed