Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Fiction; Motion picture industry -- Fiction
He dressed the next morning with a new elation. He must be more careful
about keeping tab on his money, but also it was wonderful to find more
than you expected. He left the storeroom that reeked of kerosene and
passed into the emporium to replace his treasure in its hiding place.
The big room was dusky behind the drawn front curtains, but all the
smells were there--the smell of ground coffee and spices at the grocery
counter, farther on, the smothering smell of prints and woolens and new
leather.
The dummies, waiting down by the door to be put outside, regarded each
other in blank solemnity. A few big flies droned lazily about their
still forms. Merton eyed the dusty floor, the gleaming counters, the
curtains that shielded the shelves, with a new disdain. Sooner than he
had thought he would bid them a last farewell. And to-day, at least, he
was free of them--free to be on the lot at two, to shoot Western stuff.
Let to-morrow, with its old round of degrading tasks, take care of
itself.
At 10:30 he was in church. He was not as attentive to the sermon as he
should have been, for it now occurred to him that he had no stills of
himself in the garb of a clergyman. This was worth considering, because
he was not going to be one of those one-part actors. He would have a
wide range of roles. He would be able to play anything. He wondered how
the Rev. Otto Carmichael would take the request for a brief loan of one
of his pulpit suits. Perhaps he was not so old as he looked; perhaps
he might remember that he, too, had once been young and fired with high
ideals. It would be worth trying. And the things could be returned after
a brief studio session with Lowell Hardy. He saw himself cast in such a
part, the handsome young clergyman, exponent of a muscular Christianity.
He comes to the toughest cattle town in all the great Southwest,
determined to make honest men and good women of its sinning derelicts.
He wins the hearts of these rugged but misguided souls. Though at first
they treat him rough, they learn to respect him, and they call him the
fighting parson. Eventually he wins the hand in marriage of the youngest
of the dance-hall denizens, a sweet young girl who despite her evil
surroundings has remained as pure and good as she is beautiful.
Anyway, if he had those clothes for an hour or two while the artist made
a few studies of him he would have something else to show directors in
search of fresh talent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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