Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1916)

IF a moving picture star should say to you, "Come out to the studio and spend the day with me and watch us work" — would you go? If a friend introduced you to a director, and the director said, as he shook hands good-bye, "We're putting on some big scenes tomorrow, why don't you run out to the studio and look us over?" — would you? If you happened to have a bowing acquaintance with the president of a film producing company and he should hail you from his car at the curb and say, "Want to take a spin with me out to the studio? We'll sort of look about a bit and see who's on the job today" — would you say you had another engagement? When Francis William Sullivan wrote "The Glory Road" he unlocked the gate of Filmland, where photoplays are made, and invited the public in. This hadn't been done before. "Come," he said. "I will show you how the women and men you see on the screen and see so much about in print, live. What they do and what they are supposed to do when they come to work. How they act. How they behave when they are acting. Their great moments. Their little meannesses. How they love. And hate. And plan for bigger things and things they think are bigger. Their fag at the day's end. Their romps, parties, extravagances, economies. Fords and can't-affords. How the lure of luxury holds out its arms to them. What happens sometimes when they yield to its caress. The tragedy of rivalry, and the fine spur that rivalry wears. The friendships. The enmities. The day's work. Come with me behind the screen. I'll show you." "The Glory Road" is a face-to-face, behind-thejcreen narrative of photoplay art in its capital, Southern California. While the characters are purely fictitious, the types might have been culled from life. Mr. Sullivan spent months in the Coast studios getting his atmosphere. The result is the first novel of photoplaying which combines thrill with accuracy, action with detail, plot with style. A brief outline of the story as thus far told, is this: June Magregor, the heroine, a lovely girl out of the Canadian wilderness, is being tried for star material by Tom Briscoe, director-in-chief of the Graphic Company. She is engaged to marry Paul Temple, a Graphic actordirector. While the company is "out on location'' on an island off California June falls and twists her ankle. She is taken to the magnificent house of Stephen Holt, a selfmade millionaire who has acquired polish with his wealth. Notwithstanding she is affianced, he tells her he will make her love him. Business takes Temple to the Mexican border. June discovers Holt is the principal owner of the Graphic Company. He courts her, carefully. She cannot hide the fascination his personality has for her, but she again reminds him that she is promised to Temple. She tries to take refuge with herself in this thought. Only a beginner in learning the lessons of life as it is lived among men and women of the world, June was no Stephen Holt Preceding Chapters of The Glory Road less but rather more the woman for having spent all the years of her childhood and youth close to Nature's secrets — in the great, silent heart of the North wilderness, her one companion her father. She had none of the weapons that experience in manfending teaches a woman to fashion for herself; but she had womankind's universal combination weapon-andshield-instinct, and the shield-half of it was polished and the blade-edge of it was uncommonly keen. She had no need of her instinct to warn her that Stephen Holt had made her his quarry: he himself had bluntly told her that. "You can marry whom you like, but you are going to love me," he had said. The girl was too unworldly wise to sense the whole ominousness of this domineering threat, but instinct did warn her that with her, the woman, rightly rested the say of how far this man should go. Yet withal, realizing this, June put her feet in the footprints that other women's feet have worn deep and deep since Eld, because it is pleasant to be wooed without respect to having been by another won. She did wrong; subconsciously, and sometimes very consciously, she knew in her heart she did wrong; but she balmed her conscience with the steady-flame thought that it was Paul she loved and it was Paul's \\-ife she was to be. How long will the flame bum steady? Marcia Trent, Graphic star, is under Holt's patronage. Fearful of losing her place in the sun through his attraction to June, she skillfully plots the destruction of June's good name and her consequent dismissal. In the dusk of a foggy evening Holt is calling on June at her bungalow in the foothills of Hollywood, and they have been speaking seriously of life and work. "The desire to lift the man out of his mire of hopeless cynicism became an imperative need with June, and in her anxiety and eagerness she forgot herself and her own discouragement. They talked on Holt picks up presently a Hawaiian ukulele and sings softly in the gathering dark, "Aloha Oe. ' "June felt the wounds of life touched by a gentle healing, felt all bitterness loosened and melted within her by a supreme manifestation of beauty She was lifted above the earth, and vibrated in harmony with some music outside and beyond herself. Her eyes grew dim \\ith tears. "The music throbbed softly and died away, and Holt looked at her. She was quite still, her face cast in lines of profound sweet emotion. He laid the ukulele down gently and came toward her. She was conscious of his approach, and at the command of some inner urgency, stood up." He lets his passion sweep him off his feet, and takes her almost brutally in his arms. "As he sought her mouth she tried to turn her head, but could not. His lips crushed upon hers, and something within her seemed to break From the fierce command of his kiss there was no release; and slowly, instinctively, her arms went round his neck." 106