Screenland (May-Oct 1941)

my pocket and tiptoed away. It was the next morning Lank was going to make his new test with Crystal. Johnson introduced them just as if they hadn't met at all and Lank looked puzzled when Crystal acted as if she hadn't ever seen him before. But he didn't have a chance to say anything, for the director started them out on the scene they were going to do. Lank looked more like himself now, wearing his own cowboy clothes, and I guess he felt more at home too since they were taking it out on our ranch, the one on the back lot I mean. But they'd just started the scene when a couple of airplanes flew over the lot and the engines made so much noise the director motioned to them to stop. "If it isn't bad actors, it's noisy planes," he said, but "nobody paid any attention to him. For Crystal and Lank were standing there talking to each other and everybody else was looking up at the planes. Then when they were gone they started the scene all over again and the camera man gave his assistant a bawling out, for it seemed he'd been letting the camera run all the time. They were going to run the test the next day and I got to the projection room early, for I wanted to see if Crystal had improved Lank's acting any. Lank had given up seeing his tests but I felt it was part of a manager's job to keep watch on everything. But as early as I got there' Gilbert and the director and Johnson were there before me. If it had been anybody but Lank I could have laughed at the fool way he looked standing there on the screen making love to Crystal. Maybe it was the things he had to say to her, maybe it was because he was just naturally shy, or maybe it was just because he wasn't no actor at all. But even I could see he was gosh darn awful, though I'd have biffed any one else who said it on the jaw. "It's going to be hard," he was saying up there on the screen, looking at Crystal as if he thought she was going to bite him, "leaving all this, the clean blue of that heaven, the smell of that dust and the sage. I'll miss it all." "And me?" Crystal asked in that sweet voice of hers. "How about me, Slim? Won't you miss me a little?" "You," he said, looking more scared than ever and his voice sounding like he was juggling pebbles in his mouth. "You most of all. You are the blue heaven. You are the dust and the sage and the beauty and the wonder of it all. . . ." _ Then all of a sudden there was a whirring sound and Crystal and Lank looked up and the film wobbled a little. "This is the wrong take," the director said. "This is where the plane comes in. How in blazes did this come through?" But in just a second the picture went on and it wasn't the scene at all, just Lank and Crystal standing there talking, with the camera running and the sound track still on. "Never mind," Johnson said then. "We'll ' look at this too. Might as well see them all." "Just now you acted as if you had never seen me before," Lank said, as the test Went on. "What was the reason for that?" "It seemed the wisest thing to do," Crystal hesitated just a little. "Somebody might wonder about us, I mean." "Don't you want nobody to know?" Lank asked. "Not everybody," Crystal said. "Not yet." Lank sort of gulped then. "Maybe you don't feel about me the way I do about you. I mean enough that you don't care who knows it." "I do — really — inside," Crystal said softly. "But you're so beautiful and important and all that," Lank said as if he couldn't get over his good luck. "You must be used to having men at your feet all the time." "I don't want men at my feet," Crystal whispered. "I want to look up at my man, like this." And she moved closer to him and for a minute I thought she was going to kiss him. I heard Gilbert gasp at that and the director coughed, but Johnson just sat there thinking it was a part of the test. "This is great !" he said. "Better than I expected. Crystal certainly gets what we want out of him." "Maybe I'm wrong," Lank said then. "But it seemed to me you didn't want Mr. Johnson to know that you knew me, that you were afraid — " "I do believe you're jealous of Mr. Johnson," Crystal said then. "But that's so silly, Lank." Then suddenly you couldn't hear what they were saying any more, not with Johnson getting up and letting out a roar like a steer that had just been thrown and rushing out of the room. He'd no sooner gone than I went too. For I couldn't keep quiet any longer. I had to warn Lank. But when I found him he was on his way to Crystal's dressing room. "I got to find out about something," he said. "I heard some of the girls talking and they said Crystal was Mr. Johnson's girl friend and I was just being kept around and paid that money every week to keep her happy. I got to see Crystal and find out if it's true." I could see he was still hoping that it wasn't, but when we got to Crystal's dressing room we heard Johnson inside talking to her. "But you told me to play up to him in the test," Crystal was saying. "What did you expect? Can I help it if I'm such a good actress?" "Can you help it if you're a double-crossing little cheat, you mean," Johnson shouted. "What could you possibly see in that cowboy?" "What could I see in him?" Crystal shrieked. "What did you see in him? It was you who were so hopped up to have him make good. I was only doing you a favor. 'Do it for me!' you said. 'Do it for old Phinny.'" She started to laugh then. "It's funny, isn't it?" "I'm not laughing," Johnson said. "I am!" Crystal sounded as if she was having hysterics, laughing and crying like that at the same time. "You thought we could take that greenhorn cowboy and make a ham actor out of him. Well, let me tell you what / made out of him. Let me tell you, my sweet, precious Phinny !" But he didn't hear that, for Lank backed away from that door as if he'd stepped into a nest of rattlers. I know better than to try to talk to Lank when he looks like that and besides, I wouldn't have tried to argue with him even if I could. Lank had been right about Hollywood in the first place. It wasn't for the kind of man he is, and I should have known it. I'd been right about Crystal too, but it didn't make me happy knowing that. There are some things a man'd rather not be right about._ It didn't take much to see Lank couldn't get her out of his mind after we got back to New Mexico, even if he never as much as mentioned her name. And when he spoke _ about going back to the Rodeo I knew it was because that ranch house of his reminded him of that other ranch on the back lot and he'd be remembering how Crystal used to come out to see him and how happy he'd been. So that day I rode into town and saw the headlines on all the papers saying Crystal had disappeared from Hollywood, I didn't even tell Lank about it, hating to bring up anything that would remind him > even more than he was being reminded already. But I had to keep a harness on my mouth to keep from doing it. Then the i next morning I'll be a coyote's uncle if a car didn't come right up to our porch and Crystal and her maid got out of it. Crystal didn't say a word at first, just ran to Lank and put her arms around him as if she never wanted to let go of him again, but he looked at her and his eyes were colder than a desert night as he pulled her arms away and stood holding her away from him. "Is that any way to act with a girl who's just walked out on her whole career to be with the man she loves?" Crystal asked then. "What happened, Lank?" "You're asking me what happened?" Lank said. "That's kind of funny." And he turned on his heels and left her. I went along with him, for there was some fences that needed mending. But we'd no sooner started than there was Crystal coming over to us and looking as if she'd been crying her eyes out. "Why won't you listen to me, Lank?" she said. "I listened to you once," Lank said. "That time you were telling Mr. Johnson what you saw in me. You said I was a greenhorn cowboy." Brenda Marshall and William Lundigan smile thusly for their roles in Warner Brothers' "Highway West." There's nothing more satisfactory than to see that "They Lived Happily Ever After" look in the eyes of such attractive people. Olympe Bradna's in the cast, too. 70