From Place to PlaceCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
From Place to Place
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Fiction; Short stories
On the following afternoon, the weather being rainy, the Regal opened
its doors for the three-o'clock performance to an audience that was
smaller than common and mostly made up of dependable neighbourhood
patrons. However, there were at least two newcomers present. They sat
side by side, next to central aisle, in the rearmost row of
chairs--Judson Green and Michael J. Cassidy. Their man was almost
directly in front of them, perhaps halfway down toward the stage. Above
a scattering line of heads of women and children they could see, in the
half light of the darkened house, his head and shoulders as he bent his
body forward at an interested angle.
Promptly on the hour, a big bull's-eye of light flashed on, making a
shimmering white target in the middle of the screen. The music started
up, and a moving-picture soloist with a moving-picture soloist's voice,
appeared in the edge of the illuminated space and rendered a
moving-picture ballad, having reference to the joys of life down in Old
Alabam', where the birds are forever singing in the trees and the
cotton-blossoms bloom practically without cessation. This, mercifully,
being soon over, a film entitled "The Sheriff's Sweetheart" was offered,
and for a time, in shifting pictures, horse-thieves in leather "chaps,"
and heroes in open-necked shirts, and dashing cow-girls in divided
skirts, played out a thrilling drama of the West, while behind them
danced and quivered a background labelled Arizona, but suggesting New
Jersey. When the dashing and intrepid sheriff had, after many trials,
won his lady love, the ballad singer again obliged throatily, and then
from his coop in the little gallery the lantern man made an
announcement, in large, flickering letters, of a film depicting William
Shakespeare's play, "Macbeth."
Thereupon scene succeeded scene, unfolding the tragic tale. The
ill-fated Duncan was slain; the Witches of Endor capered fearsomely
about their fearsome cauldron of snaky, froggy horrors; and then--taking
some liberties with the theme as set down by the original author--the
operator presented a picture wherein Macbeth, tortured by sleeplessness
and hag-ridden with remorse, saw, in imagination, the dripping blood
upon his hands and vainly sought to scour it off.
Right here, too, came another innovation which might or might not have
pleased the Bard of Avon. For as Macbeth wrestled with his fears, the
phantom of the murdered Duncan, a cloaked, shadowy shape, crossed slowly
by him from right to left, traversing the breadth of the screen, while
the orchestra rendered shivery music in appropriate accompaniment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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