"Surest thing you know," Luck agreed, with that little chuckle of his.
"At first I was afraid the crowd wouldn't get it; I didn't know but they
might try to take it seriously. Now, I know for certain that it will get
over. It will be the cleanest, funniest, farce-comedy series that has
ever been filmed." Luck sat up straight and pulled a cigar from his
pocket and looked at it absent-mindedly. "Say, those boys of mine are
certainly real ones! I wouldn't trade that bunch for the highest-salaried
actors you could hand me. Do you know what made that picture such a
scream? It was because there wasn't a bit of made-to-order comedy
business in the whole film. Those boys didn't think about acting funny
just to make folks laugh. They were so doggoned busy having fun with the
story and showing up its weak points that they forgot to be
self-conscious. If I'd had a regular comedy company working on it,
believe me, Mr. Brown, it might have turned out almost as rotten a farce
as it would be as a drama!"
Had Bently Brown owned under his pink skin any of the primitive instincts
which he was so fond of portraying in his characters, he would have
killed Luck without any further argument or delay.
Instead of that he spluttered and stormed like a scolding woman. He
lifted first one puttee and then the other, and he shook his fist, and
he nodded his head violently, and finally was constrained to lift the
leather-banded Stetson from his blond hair and wipe the perspiration
from his brow with a lavender initialed handkerchief. He said a great
deal in a very few minutes, but it was too involved, too incoherent to
be repeated here. Luck gathered, however, that he meant to sue the Acme
Company for about nine million dollars damages to his feelings and his
reputation, if _The Soul of Littlefoot Law_ was released in its present
form. He battered at Luck's grinning composure with his full supply of
invectives. When he perceived that Luck's eyes twinkled more and more
while they watched him, and that Luck's smile was threatening to
explode into laughter, Bently Brown shook his fist at the two of them,
shrilled something about seeing his lawyer at once, and went out and
slammed the door.
"Lor-dee! He'd make a hit in comedy, that fellow," Luck observed
placidly, and lighted the cigar he had been holding. "What's he mean--'
sue the company'?"
"He means sue the company," Martinson retorted grimly. "That clause in
the contract where we agree to produce his stories in a manner befitting
the quality and fame of these several stories in fiction; he's got
grounds for action there, and he's going to make the most of it. He's
sore, anyway. Some one's been telling him he practically made us a
present of his stuff."
"Hell!" said Luck. "Why didn't you say so?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account