We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
In the ranks of Hollywood’s extras may be found the real drama of the movies. Here is the story of a Central American refugee who faced a mimic firing squad and seared his bit into celluloid. Fame was his — but he never knew
Illustrated by
R . Van Buren
Pasquale was quite unconscious of the grinding of a camera. Was quite deaf to the calling voice of the man who directed the scene. He took his place, against the wall, in a way that was utterly mechanical. Remember the peasant who was the second from the left? The gaunt, dark little man? The director shouted an order. And it was then that Pasquale made his great dramatic appeal. It was then that he had his great moment
the doors of a casting office. His English was too meager — his need was too great. His explanation would, at best, have read like fiction — like a story out of 0. Henry’s “ Cabbages and Kings.”
Only this — he had come. Winding a tortuous way along a trail that might end, anywhere, in disaster. By pack mule and motor car — on tramp steamer and in freight train — he had made the journey. A man looking wearily ahead to a land that was not a land of promise. A man afraid to look back into a past that held only the agony of broken hopes!
And one wondered — reading motion picture news, searching mob scene after mob scene — why the man never appeared again to duplicate the amazing thing that he had done with what might have been a shallow, commonplace moment.
For he would have duplicated his success — but surely! For he had, if acting counts, the aforementioned flair of genius ! He would have duplicated his success, if —
HOW he came toHolly wood, Pasquale himself could not have answered. For he didn’t quite know — wasn’t quite able to trace — the path that led from a Central American revolution to
HE had been snatched — inarticulate, bewildered, almost ill — from a little prison. Infested with rats and rumors, with fever and with fear. The next dawn had been set for his execution — for he was a rebel and only a successful rebel is hailed as a hero! He was making his peace with God — what he thought to be his final peace — in the dark of the midnight when a creaking at his cell door, a whispered summons, gave him his liberty. Almost before he knew it he was out upon the street — a blanket muffled about his face, his feet scarcely daring to hurry.
“ If they catch you — no matter how far you may travel — ” so his deliverer told him — “it will be death. But that — you know. ... We will carry you across the border— and you will be given what money we have, and our prayers will follow you. But that is all. You must — ” the voice was rife with warning — “you must seek your own safety!”
And so it had gone. Silently, surely, Pasquale was smuggled across a barrier. Money — not much! — was pressed into his thin hand. A blessing was breathed into his ear. And he was on his way to — God knows where.
A man who might have been called, had his patriotism flourished, his country’s saviour. A man who, now, would only be known as an exile.
He started out. Upon a journey that might have ended at any door — in any city. The [ continued on page 84 ]