Screenland (Sept 1922–Feb 1923)

Hoiiy wool Screen land c»u£*»i* "Tsst !" hissed her husband ; "it's a signal. It shows Bill is ready to run the fillum. Now, with a push button here, I signal back that he can go ahead and run it. You can't see the push button. It's over here in the dark." "The push button ain't all I can't see," remarked, with a shade of asperity, the impatient Mrs. Bloom; "I can't see what's the use of wasting money on push buttons. Why don't you just yell at him?" "It wouldn't do at all," contended her husband; "in the movies you got to have a system in everything. You got to " "You don't got to sit there all afternoon without pushing the button," she remonstrated. "If this is the way you spend your time, I can put a red bulb in the clothes closet at home and you can go in and shut the door and not have to go to the studio at all. I "You can please give me a chance to show you you are all wrong," said Mr. Bloom, loftily. "Wait till I find this here push button." His wife raised her voice in a tone of command. "Mr. Bill, up there," she said, addressing herself to the rear wall, "whatever you are going to do, do it. This is Mrs. Bloom speaking." "Let 'er flicker," repeated Mr. Bloom, ignoring the fact that already Bill had started his projecti on machine. "She's flickering," commented Mrs. Bloom, in bitter tones ; "she's flickering so bad I can't make no sense out of the fillum." "Frame !" shouted Mr. Bloom, and the film began to run more smoothly. "You should have music," observed Mrs. Bloom; "you wouldn't believe how much help music is to pictures, especially to punk ones." "This picture ain't a punk one," sputtered her indignant husband. "You were saying why don't I make pictures like I made five years ago. Well, this is a picture I made five years ago. If you look at it and not talk so much, you'll see it." "You ain't got one of Dave Griffith's pictures,' handy, have you, Abie ?" she asked, stifling a yawn. "No, and I ain't got Sousa's band," he retorted; "all I got here is a picture that if you will do me the favor to pay attention to it, will show you that this feller Kendall is a low life." "My, ain't the styles changed in five years?" Mrs. Bloom wondered audibly. "About the styles I don't care nothing at all," grunted her husband; "I want you to watch close for a situation at the end of this reel. I'll tell you when we come to it." "Tell me before/' she advised. "Give me time to get my eyes open." "Are you sitting there looking at this fillum with your eyes shut ?" demanded Mr. Bloom. "I look once in a while." "Mamma, please look all the time," he begged; "don't you want me to prove to you that this feller Kendall is a thief?" "No, I don't," she answered stoutly ; "I want you to give him more money. Anyway, looking at a picture he ain't even in don't prove he ever stole a penrty " "Look!" cried her husband, excitedly. "Look there where the old blind man gets his eyesight back and punches the villain." "I see it," said Mrs. Bloom calmly. "I knew all the time it was going to happen." , "Gift you Remember it?" asked. her husband. "I ain't much for remembering pictures," she answered warily, "and I don't see what difference it makes if I remember it or not " "It makes lots of difference," he told her. "Now, just shut your eyes and don't look at the rest of the reel. Keep thinking about that blind man getting his eyesight hack and punching the villain." "I don't want to shut my eyes," she remonstrated, stirring uneasily ; "this picture is just getting good." "Keep 'em open then," returned the exasperated man ; "the reel'll be over in a minute anyway." When it had been run, he called up to the man in the booth : "Put on the rushes," he said. "Don't bother on my account," said Mrs. Bloom, rising in the darkness. "I appreciated looking at that picture, but I can't stay here all afternoon looking at pictures. I got to see Dr. Stein about Mrs. Kendall." "Please, Mamma, sit down again," begged her husband. "The rushes are very short and unless you see them you won't know what I'm driving at." "Probably I won't know anyway," she answered. "I got to go. Mr. Bill, turn on the light." "Bill, turn on the rushes," cried Mr* Bloom. "Abie!" gasped his wife, "are you sick?" "I ain't sick," proclaimed the little man, who found it is easier to be brave in the dark than in the light; "I ain't sick, but I am purely and simply bossing my own business. Bill, hurry up with them rushes." Again the projection machine began to buzz ; again a moving picture unrolled itself upon the farther wall. "Remember," said Mrs. Bloom, slowly and distinctly in the darkness, "the lights won't be out forever. Abie, just put your mind on that." "If you'll put your mind and your eyes on the rushes, you will see something," announced the intrepid man. "When these lights go on again, you will see something else," remarked Mrs. Bloom; "you will also hear something " "Watch the screen," he advised in a hoarse whisper. "What you see will make you speechless." "Not the way I feel, it won't," she retorted. "It's more likely to make me dizzy. All I can see is the same actors and actresses doing the same thing over and over again. It's all mixed up. There ain't no sense to it " "Look now!" he exclaimed; "see the blind man getting his eyesight back and punching the villain." "Suppose he is?" she asked, wearily; "ain't it because your friend, Bill, has got4the fillums mixed?" "Mamma," cried Mr. Bloom, "you know better, but you won't admit it. You know that the pictures you looked at just before you looked at this was made five years ago. I'm telling you that the picture that you're looking at now was made yesterday. That one scene of the blind man getting his eyesight back and punching the villain is in both of them the identical, similar, and the same scene. Different people, but the same scene. It's a scene I put in my picture five years ago and now along comes this feller, Kendall, and tries to put it in my picture again. It is theft and highway robbery and — — " "His wife is sick," said Mrs. Bloom/ "Abie, where are you in the dark? Come over here. I want to lean on you." "Don't cry, Mamma; don't cry," he begged. "If you want to fight with me, fight with me, but please don't cry. I can't stand it." "Poor Mrs. Kendall was telling me that her husband comes home and works all night for you," sniffled Mrs. Bloom. "The typewriter would keep her awake, so he writes it all out with a lead pencil. Ain't it sad, Abie, to think of that poor man with that sick wife and that little boy, that nice, little boy, sitting there all night writing with a pencil ?" "With him stealing scenes, it's sad to think of him writing at all," asserted the unfeeling Mr. Bloom. "The writers' union should get after him and I should throw him off the lot." "They'll all starve," she said, and moved closer to him. "Abie, you ain't starved anybody yet." "I don't want to starve anybody now," protested the much-tried man; "maybe, you can tell me what I'd better say to him?" "Ain't you talked to him yet about it?" exclaimed Mrs. Bloom in surprise. (Continued on page 56.)