The self-enchanted : Mae Murray : image of an era (1959)

time you're interested in scenery let us know. We lost half a day's shooting." Evidently Wally hadn't shown up yesterday either. He was ill, someone said. She wondered if he'd been tilting that flask. They worked on the disembarking scene, the girls standing on board ship, their names on signs pinned to their cloaks. No one talked to her all day. When Wally showed up at dinner, he brought along the evening papers. "You got yourself a barrel of publicity, little one." The papers carried dramatic stories about the ex-Follies girl lost on the wild mountainside, illustrated with several large pictures from the Ziegfeld file. "The girl with the bee-stung lips," they called her. A stack of telegrams from Jay was waiting when she returned to Los Angeles. He'd read the papers, he'd been trying to reach her by phone. "Everything's wonderful," she told him, when he called again. "I'm learning a lot." She was learning at night, in the projection room. The young man who ran the film told her there were stills in the next room, would she like to see those too? They weren't much, these stills, not nearly as good as the photographs she'd had taken in New York. Too quick, too sharp, she looked like a girl dressed up for a masquerade. She tore them to pieces and tossed them in the waste basket. The projectionist seemed terribly upset. "My God, you shouldn't have done that!" "Don't worry, they're my pictures." Next morning she was summoned from the set to Mr. DeMille's office. She was very glad to be noticed finally by the working head of the studio. He sat behind a massive desk at the far end of a long suite. "Miss Mae Murray," his secretary said. Mr. DeMille continued to study papers. She took a step forward, waited, and another step. "Mr. DeMille? You sent for me!" No answer. 62