Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1931)

By m argaret E. Sangster ILLUSTRATED BY R. F. JAMES "I want," she told the young man, "a career. I want to go into the movies. I photograph beautifully — really I do, Pres! My voice — according to all I've read about voices — is the right sort of voice for the mike. I don't want to settle down before I've had a chance. At least — " her tone was suddenly gentle, "not yet." It was Preston Crowell's cue to be grateful then, and tactful. Had he shown a proper feeling for that hesitant "not yet," the three-room apartment might have been leased at once. But after the manner of young men, he turned suddenly sullen. "It isn't as easy as you seem to think," he said almost harshly — the quaver had quite gone from his tone, "this breaking into the movies. Lots of prettier girls than you, Molly — with better voices, too — are wearing out their shoes, and the sidewalks of J lolly wood, looking for work. Maybe you'll be sorry — you'll regret— that you — " But Molly interrupted. She was just in the mood, then, for argument. "If you think," she said hotly, "that I'll ever regret not marrying you — " It was Preston who interrupted, this time. "I wasn't going to say that," he told her, "at all! I wasn't going to bring myself, or marriage, into it! But if you want to be mean — well, I bet you'll think that this old town, and everything in it, looks pretty good a few months from now. When you come back to it." "But I won't come back," Molly told him fiercely. "How do you get that way? Not until I've made good. See! Not until I've made good!" Preston Crowell brushed his hand back, nervously, across his sleek hair. And then all at once his reserves had crumbled. "Oh, honey," he begged. "Oh, Molly dear. If you change your mind — and you probably will, you know — just wire me. And I'll come all the way out — " But again he was unfortunate in the matter of phrasing his thoughts. He shouldn't have said, "you probably will." For — "I won't change my mind!" Molly told him. "And I won't wire — not ever!" But just two months later, as she stood outside the director's office, rubbing the scuffed toe of one patent leather slipper against the back of her darned stocking, Molly was thinking of New York. And of the tiled kitchenette, and the little roadster, and Preston, and — everything. And it wasn't easy not to cry! And, oh God — how hungry she was! SHE had gone out so blithely from New York, with her smart summery dresses packed in two new suitcases, and her ticket paid for, and three hundred dollars left over. She had registered at one of the best hotels, never counting the cost of best hotels! For, she told herself, three hundred dollars would certainly be ample until she got a job in pictures. Of course, Molly didn't expect a starring part at first, not quite that. Although she'd fed her soul on a million Cinderellalike experiences in half a million magazine articles! But she did expect something that would supply bread and butter and jam and new silk stockings — supply them almost immediately. It was with a sense of acute surprise that she reviewed her resources at the end of her first week in Hollywood, and realized that more than a third of her money was gone and, as yet, she hadn't even seen the inside of a movie lot. Even at the end of the second week she was already scanning her features almost forlornly, in the mirror. Why, she didn't even look as pretty in Hollywood as she had in New York — Hollywood was crowded with prettier girls than she! The clerks in the shops were beautiful, the waitresses in the tea rooms were radiant. "But after all," Molly told herself, "I've got a good voice, if I do say it." And so she took a sharp tug at her mental boot straps and moved from the good hotel which had by this time absorbed two-thirds of her capital, to a cheap boarding house. But cheap though it was, the' boarding house had eaten acidly into her remaining hundred dollars. So that at the end of a month Molly, a trifle wild-eyed, was looking for stenographic work, the sort that she had stopped doing in New York — stopped doing several years ago, before she assumed the dignity and title of a secretary. It surprised her acutely that she couldn't even get a chance to show her skill on a typewriter. Surprised her, that is, until the boarding house keeper gave her the proper slant on Hollywood's economic situation. "You'll not get a job out here, dearie," the boarding house keeper said, not ungently. "The place is over-run with stenographers who came out to act — and who need jobs! Take my advice, girlie" — the woman was a kindly soul — "and go home and marry some nice young fellow and settle down." At that moment Molly found herself almost wishing that she could go home and marry some nice fellow. But her denial of Preston had been far too definite to admit of failure — at least yet. "Oh." she told the boarding house keeper, and though her tone was not exactly airy, it at least had a touch of confidence, "oh, something will turn up yet, I'm sure." 55