But no sooner was he nicely settled in his hotel, “static” and “being run over” quite forgotten, and all set for his opening--when a long distance came. Mr. Miles on the wire: “Awfully sorry, Gaston, but there was more static and we will have to take you out and run you over again.” And before Gaston had time to recover from the shock, the movie director and his camera man were right there in Washington! “Good night,” said Gaston, despairingly, to himself. But to Mr. Miles he said, “Now I’ll tell you what you have to do, you must have another actor handy to go on for me to-night, for I cannot take any more chances.” Well, they took the scene another time, ruining neither Mr. Bell nor his grand new suit, and as this time the scene was static-less, the day was saved for Gaston. But “never again” vowed he. And “never again” vowed the director. David Miles kept good his promise and when Gaston’s season in Washington closed, he joined Reliance. There he and George Loane Tucker soon became known as the “Hall Room Boys.” For in an old brownstone they shared a third floor back--also a dress suit. And if both boys happened to be going out into society the same night, whoever arrived home first and got himself washed up and brushed up first, had the option on that one tuxedo. The hall-room days of George Loane Tucker were brief. “Traffic in Souls,” the white-slave picture that he produced for Universal, put him over. An unhappy loss to the motion picture world was Mr. Tucker’s early death; for that truly great picture, “The Miracle Man,” his tribute to the world’s motion picture library _de luxe_, promised a career of great brilliance. Mr. Tucker had come rightfully by his great talent, for his mother, Ethel Tucker, was an actress of note and a clever stage director also. As leading woman in stock repertoire at Lathrop’s Grand Dime Theatre of Boston, she had a tremendous popularity in her time. And long years afterward, she too went into “the pictures” in Hollywood, for a very brief period. Mr. Tucker’s “Miracle Man” brought stardom to its three leading players, Lon Chaney, Betty Compson, and Tommy Meighan. Tommy Meighan’s leap to fame was surprising to both friends and family. For Tommy had been considered, not exactly the black sheep of the family, but rather the ne’er-do-well. During the run of “Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford,” both being members of the cast, Frances Ring, sister to the lustrous Blanche of “Rings on My Fingers” and “In the Good Old Summertime” fame, had married Mr. Meighan, Tommy becoming through this matrimonial alliance the least important member of the Ring family of three clever sisters, Blanche, Frances, and Julie. An obscure little Irishman, Tommy trailed along, with a voice that might not have taken him so very far on the dramatic stage.