Then at last away we would go—a whole young cavalcade of autos, bulging with people and duffle, heads of actors and legs of camera tripods sticking out in every direction—bumping and jouncing along out into the country to our selected “location”—perhaps an old farmhouse, twelve miles out. For a week or so it is always fascinating; then it gets to be just the usual routine of work, like almost everything else, and the real joy of it is in the ability to keep open-minded for the sight and appreciation of new things—in the enthusiasm of work to be done, and in the satisfaction of getting good results. Folks standing at the curb to see us start from the hotel probably wished that they too might be journeying off into the open country, with all the glamor of adventure surrounding the expedition—but they knew nothing of the long, long hours of waiting through the day, while the director rehearsed and rehearsed one or two actors in a particular scene, or the whole company just shifted from one foot to the other, hour after hour, ready to be on the job the moment the sun came from behind the passing clouds—if it ever did. Sometimes, though, there were new and entirely different experiences, as the picture gradually progressed from stage to stage, and scene was added to scene in all the thousands of feet of film sent to the laboratories to be developed and printed. For instance, for a time I went on ahead, acting as “location man” in advance of the company, as we went from locality to locality where our scenes were to be filmed. In one little Montana town the only car I could get to take me around for a day was a “closed” Ford. It was “closed” by having the top and body of a sedan, but all the glass was broken out, including the windshield, and the floor-boards were gone besides, so that you propped your feet on whatever rods came handy, while the road rushed past beneath you, and occasionally tossed a pebble into your lap. The fenders were dilapidated, and the poor little old buggy looked like an utter wreck, but we covered nearly two hundred miles in it before dark, over prairie roads that were hardly more than wheel-ruts through the grass. Twice we ferried across the Yellowstone, and once over the Missouri, before that valiant little wreck of a bus got back to the bleak prairie town, amid all the glory of a marvelous western sunset. Well, I have been running along this line for a reason. When an actor comes on the screen, in the early scenes of a photoplay, we look at him without much interest. But if we see him chop wood, or come through a fight, or learn what a time he had selling papers when he was a youngster, we unconsciously begin to get more interested in him. We like him better. Because we know him better. It is the same in real life. Old friends are the best friends; we know them better.