Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood dared not laugh. The prime comedy was the furious solemnity of the discussion, which reached a height of fun unintended by the participants, possibly more comic than the resultant act could be. Even the gaffer had a word in the matter. The only one who took little part in the talk was Lupino himself. But just as we thought that author and camera-man must come to blows he stood up. The complete idea was shaped in his brain. Picking a piece from this and a fragment from that, he fused the whole and added another actor. At once a messenger was sent to the street to bring in a passing taxi, and the central casting-bureau was asked by telephone to supply the extra man at once. The taxi-man drove in and took up his role with the greatest nonchalance, for in Hollywood at any moment a taxi-man may be called on to become a movie actor. We should not be surprised to find their meters calibrated in four grades : (i) mileage; (2) time; (3) night; (4) movie work. The extra actor arrived after a surprisingly short interval, and the scene was staged. In the completed act there was hardly a trick that had not been used on the movies a hundred times before, but the combination was made in a new way and became all the funnier because the devices were old. It was like a novel cocktail, a reproportioning of familiar ingredients, which sounds easy enough. But a peculiar talent is required to effect just this kind of reproportioning. Lupino and his movie family drove up to the door half a dozen times. Half a dozen times he had to get entangled in the superfluity of his luggage, suit-cases, hat-boxes, parcels, fishing-rods, golfbag. Half a dozen times the hired extra would stop him, demanding a light for his cigar. And half a dozen times Lupino, once more a man mingled with luggage, had to fall head first through the front door. During the rehearsal in this last, precipitous plunge the actor dislocated his thumb. [218]