Screenland (Sept 1922–Feb 1923)

"•JJywod. ScREENLAND c«ufi*»» 21 PRESENTS he RUSH to /Ae RE SCUE The Motion Picture Slump Brings Another Crisis in the Busy Career of Mr. Bloom RUCE WAPPINGER, a tall, ======== I ^ broad-shouldered director who once had been a leading man, skipped nimbly up the steps that led to Stage No. 1 in the studio of the Planet Film Corporation, Inc., and, reaching the top, stopped to hold open ' 1 the canvas door for the round little man who had trudged up the stairs after him. "Mr. Bloom, I'm going to show you something that will knock your eye out," he said, proudly. His pudgy little employer, wiping his face with a silk handkerchief slightly smaller than a sheet, smiled nervously as he answered : "I hope it knocks all my eyes out, but also I hope that it don't cost me too much money." "It's worth all it costs," his new director assured him, and led the way across the dark and lofty stage. The president of the Planet Film Corporation, Inc., doing his best to keep up with him, dissented in silence. "In the pictures or out of the pictures nothing is worth what it costs," he reflected. He would have put his cynicism into words had he not seen that his director was in an elevated mood in which pessimistic sentiments were out of place. Wavering between his desire to talk and his disinclination to hurt his subordinate's feelings, he held his peace. Half-way across the stage the director halted. "Hit 'em," he cried in a voice of command. Instantly there burst into brilliant light a magnificent ballroom set which hitherto had been shrouded in darkness. Mr. Bloom, blinking at the sudden flaring up of banks and spots and baby spots counted with his eye the members of the working crew, then transferred his gaze to the spacious apartment which stood before him. "My eye is knocked out," he said, soberly, and dropping his voice to a confidential whisper, he continued : "But I don't see how you're going to get enough people to fill that set without borrowing the United States Army." His proud director smiled tolerantly. "Oh, I'll fill it all right," he assured him. "This ballroom stuff will be the flash of the picture." "It won't be no flash,"contended Mr. Bloom, sinking his teeth deeper into his thick cigar ; "it'll be an explosion. I didn't expect anything like this. For the ballroom I thought we'd use some stock and then match it up " ANOTHER great short story of studio life by the author of "The Good Conduct Clause," "The Girl With a Pull," "The Yes Man," "Mamma the Manager," etc. Illustrated by Everett Wynn Bloom, honestly, "but if you want this I'll let you have it. Anyway I've seen it and you turn off the lights and save the juice." "All right, boys," the director called to the electricians and the beautiful ballroom relapsed into the darkness whence it had come. Neither Mr. Bloom nor his director spoke again until they were out in the sunshine. There a guarded look at the director's face made Mr. Bloom feel that his appreciation of the ballroom set had not been all that the director had expected. In a laudable effort to dispel the gathering cloud of misunderstanding he remarked: "Nice weather, ain't it ?" His subordinate swept the landscape with dissatisfied eyes. "Fair," he conceded. "Nice weather for shooting interiors," said Mr. Bloom, less amiably. "Nobody but me seems to remember that every day those sets are up they cost me money. The outdoors don't cost me a nickel, but I can't use it if we wait until it rains to use lt "Too cheap," was the director's comment. ^heapness is no knock me, Bloom "There will be no rain," rumbled Mr. Wappinger. "I'm glad you've fixed that," remarked his employer, nettled by the other's complacence. "Just now I need all the good luck I can get." Instantly he regretted this burst of confidence for the look that the director turned upon him had in it less of sympathy than of suspicion. "I didn't think that the slump made any difference to you," he said insinuatingly. "I didn't say that it did, did I ?" parried his employer. There was no answer and Mr. Bloom grew bolder. For slumps I don't care that," he boasted and tried to snap his fingers. The day was hot and they would not snap. "For slumps I don't care nothing at all," he insisted. "I don't believe in slumps. You go ahead and make the picture. I'll pay the bills. Maybe I won't discount 'em, but I'll pay 'em." was a. brave speech and bravely spoken and it wrung from the director a deep-voiced : "Right you are." "He believes it," Mr. Bloom said to himself as his audience moved away. "I wish I could believe it myself." ALONE, amid the golden-oak -XXsplendor of his office, a few minutes later, Mr. Bloom realized that his chances of paying the bills for the picture he had engaged Bruce Wappinger to direct were slim indeed. For the afternoon mail brought him his monthly statement from his distributors in New York and that statement showed that the moving-picture public, whose intelli