When the movies were young (1925)

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88 When the Movies were Young were going to do. We were generally being lovers, of course, and strolling in pairs beneath a sunshade until we reached the foreground, where we were to make a graceful flop onto the sandy beach and play our parts beneath the flirtatious parasol. Before we were ready to take the scene we had to put ropes up to keep back the uninvited audience which giggled and tee-heed and commented loudly throughout. We felt like monkeys in a zoo — as if we'd gone back to the day when the populace jeered the old strolling players of Stratford town. Mr. Griffith got badly annoyed when we had such experiences. His job worried him, the nasty publicity of doing our work in the street, like ditch diggers. So he had to pick on some one and I was handy. How could / stand for it? Why was / willing to endure it? He had to, of course. So thinking to frighten me and make rne a good girl who'd stay home, he said: "Something has occurred to me; it's probable this business might get kind of public — some day, you know, you may get in the subway and have all the people stare at you while they whisper to each other, 'That's that girl we saw in the movie the other night.' And how would you like that?" One saving grace the Highlands had for us. We could get a swim sometimes. And we discovered Galilee, a fishing village about twenty miles down the coast, the locale of that first version of Enoch Arden — "After Many Years." But when winter came, though we lost the spectators we acquired other discomforts. Our make-up would be frozen, and the dreary, cold, damp rooms in the country hotels made us shivery and miserable. We'd hurriedly climb into our costumes, drag on our coats, and then light our little alcohol stove or candle to get the make-up sufficiently