Minnie Flynn/Chapter 9

WORK at the studio after that period of readjustment which precedes each new production settled into a fairly comfortable routine. So many weeks are allowed for the completion of a picture. The time varies. There can be many unexpected delays; illness of one of the principals in the cast, insufficient room at the studio to build all the necessary sets, or inclement weather.

Deane's company had been keeping abreast of their schedule in spite of the fact that Deane was finding it more difficult than he had anticipated to make an actress out of Minnie Flynn. Her first four or five days' work had astonished the studio. They had gathered in the projection room to see the film run off, Beauregard more eager than any of the others to see whether his judgment was vindicated, for he had been willingly blinded by Minnie's gratitude into believing that it was he and not Deane who had discovered her.

Minnie photographed beautifully. The camera, relentless as it is to age, seems to find in youth charm and intelligence which the human eye can never perceive. The camera, hearing nothing but seeing everything, passes judgment only on contours. A beautiful face may lose all its beauty when accompanied by a harsh, grating voice and uncultured speech; but the camera, being deaf, gives double credit to what it sees. It is neither charmed into believing a plain face is less plain because a sweet cultured voice goes with it, or is it ever ​disillusioned because a winsome face is carried by one of crude speech.

On the screen Minnie Flynn's pathetic, yet laughter-loving mouth, was full of charm of an elfin quality. Her eyes, large and rather vacant to the casual observer, seemed, under their shadow of long lashes, to possess a deep solemn tenderness while her face was in repose—a fire and richness when the high light of a smile illuminated them. Her long slender fingers suggested a remote patrician forebear. Her body, flexible, small, was vibrant with youth.

Beauregard was jubilant. "We've got the greatest bet in the business today!" he said enthusiastically. "What did I tell you, Deane? Go the limit with this girl! Build up your story, give her a fatter part. By gad, she's beautiful!"

Deane smiled and said nothing. He hated unbridled hysterical enthusiasm. He alone knew how much work had to be done if this stupid little girl was to become a star. But he liked work; it was always an interesting experiment to take raw material to mold. The only drawback was that he dreaded the time when Minnie, like all the others, would believe each triumph to be the success of her own petty endeavor. And how she would resent the very process of molding, as if it were impertinent meddling! Frankensteins, all of them, ready to destroy their creators!

Sometimes he hated Minnie. She seemed so shallow, so lacking in womanliness. Then a great pity for her welled up in him. He saw only the child in her, a spiritually undernourished child with no protective inhibitions. He knew that in her ancestry there was no limiting puritanism and he could tell her environment from the flat, brittle quality of her voice.

​All about him in the picture business were men and women of lowly birth, who had been nourished in the sordid atmosphere under the webbed shadows of eerie New York bridges. Many of them, foreign born, had been disgorged from the stinking bowels of ships plying between Russia, Germany, Austria, Italy and America. Their success had been prodigious because of the spectacular growth of the motion picture industry. Deane could see before him dwarfed bodies made grotesque by the paunches that prosperity had brought them; gray, pale, pock-marked flesh, eyes ferret-sharp, peering at the world, appraisingly, yet with a baited look, a mute defiance underlying their arrogant and odious bombast. A few of the screen's women stars were marked by their early environments. They too had been reared in tenements such as Minnie Flynn's. Their home lives were such as hers, their brains dulled by their early surroundings. But their photographically beautiful faces had brought them sudden, unexpected fame and riches. Deane had watched them; he had seen their meteoric rise; he had watched each bitter, heart-breaking step downward; had seen the roots of their very beings wilt and rot, and disintegrate back into the dirt from which they had sprung.

The men did not degenerate so quickly as the women; they were fortified by instinctive determination against failure and obscurity. In the field of finance and organization, at least, there need be no time limit. Their pride and fear of poverty, moreover, curbed the vices of vanity which would otherwise have found them an easy prey.

The women, hungering for praise, self-adornment, satisfied vanities, were more readily unbalanced. Success, depending entirely upon their physical features, was too short-lived. It was so easily marred and scratched by the sordid contacts that sudden riches bring. Youth is cruelly transient. To the motion picture actress, her youth is a season in which she ​plants her seeds of bitterness, because the beauty of that youth brings a return which is denied maturity.

"Poor little youngster," Deane thought as he sat watching Minnie Flynn, already surrounded by studio parasites. Her arm was thrown lightly over Alicia Adams' shoulder. She was smiling at Mrs. Lee's gushing praise of the scene just rehearsed, a scene only fairly well done by Minnie. Beauregard, Bacon, Letcher, Weaver now recognized in Minnie, before she was certain of it herself, an affluent success. Minnie would soon rise to a position where she could choose her own satellites. The leeches were aware of it. They were already showering her with favors, massaging her with flatteries.

Deane permitted himself no conscious sentimentality. But as the days passed he found himself protecting Minnie from the sly, yet vicious advances of Beauregard. He didn't know that Minnie was married. There was about her an almost detached virginity, emphasized by her slender, boyish body, her studied modesty, the stimulus she found in schoolgirl flirtations and her romantic curiosity.

Although Beauregard could have fired him for his impudence, Deane told him to keep his hands off Minnie. A rankling suspicion was born in Beauregard's mind. Minnie had been working six weeks with Deane in close proximity.

Deane was an attractive man of thirty-five. Physically he was powerful, with a deep chest and sinewy arms. He was square-jawed, and there was a serious intentness in his deep-set dark gray eyes. His features were so regularly formed that his face in repose was set almost stonily. But his rather heavy, conventional face was transformed when he smiled; then his entire personality seemed changed. A wide smile showing strong white even teeth softened his face into a network of fine lines. He seemed young and very alive when he smiled. Minnie thought he was quite handsome. But she was ​afraid of him, his keen analyses, his rapid mental deductions which checked up and blocked each false move before she made it, his cryptic speech, his long intent silences. Only when he smiled did she lose this fear.

Minnie would have been amazed had she known that in spite of her ignorance, by that constantly recurrent triumph of the elemental passions over all superficialities, Hal Deane was falling in love with her.

Beauregard was planning far ahead to make Minnie his mistress, and had, in spite of Deane's zealous guardianship, spent many hours with her. He warded off any active resentment on Deane's part by having a Mrs. Lowell present during almost all their meetings. Mrs. Lowell was a personable woman, middle-aged, quiet, reserved, with a precision of speech and a marked Boston accent. She moved slowly, with great dignity. Her costumes were "old-fashioned" to Minnie, but Beauregard explained that Mrs. Lowell's severity of dress was an expression of her ultra-refined breeding.

He employed Mrs. Lowell as a teacher. Her duties were to level his intonations to what she styled a well-modulated voice; to teach him elaborate English phrases so that he might appear cultured; to direct his reading; and to write his letters, which she couched in the most formal phraseology. Her duties extended also to the little girls whom Beauregard culled from the studios. Some she taught manners, others the very rudiments of English. She was to teach Minnie all the social niceties.

Mrs. Lowell disliked Beauregard, but she was secretly amused by the girls. There was a cruel streak in her nature. She enjoyed arming them with the same superficialities as ​Beauregard had; this gave the girls confidence and soon made them independent of him.

Deane was very friendly with Mrs. Lowell, but he saw through her prattle of philanthropy. He knew the harm of an artificial veneer, and he was eager that Minnie should acquire a sensible basis of education and culture. He spoke to her frankly about going to night school. She listened attentively while Deane outlined her need for some elementary training before she could feel comfortable in the presence of anyone outside her own class. If she were to be even a screen actress (and he told her he was certain she would have her chance at success), then she would meet, socially and in business, men and women who would judge her by the first impression she made upon them.

Minnie understood what he was telling her. She was quick to perceive the need. But the course Deane outlined was a hard one. She couldn't go to night school, she was too tired. And there was Billy—always Billy, and her people who crowded around her the moment she returned to hear the events in her day which gave promise of a future.

So Beauregard's offer of an education not only seemed more comfortable, but was certainly much more satisfying. During these long periods of waiting to be called for scenes, Minnie would go into Beauregard's office. Then Mrs. Lowell was summoned. She came into the office, walking, smiling, thinking correctly, carrying books in one hand, a basket in the other. The basket held knives, forks, spoons, glasses, and other perquisites borrowed from the Property Department.

During the lessons, which were punctuated by loud giggles from Minnie, Beauregard sat in his huge mahogany chair, his hands resting upon his round abdomen, his eyes half-closed, the lids obliquely drawn to the outer corner, like a Chinese mandarin. His head was moving in a rotary motion as if his ​neck were set in a greased socket. He made up his mind that Minnie Flynn should appear before the world beautiful, and apparently well educated. Clever little mimic; he listened daily to the changes in her voice. It was like tuning and giving resonance to a musical instrument. The flat "a's" were losing their sheep-like bleats. Under the persistent guidance of Mrs. Lowell, she would soon be freely using the broad "a's." Yes, June Day, the motion picture actress, would be acclaimed for her beauty and intelligence, and thus would his own vanity be ballooned. For Beauregard never dreamed of any possibility of his not possessing Minnie. . . . No one knew better than he the demands and sacrifices of ambition.

So Minnie Flynn was in the process of metamorphosis. Deane was molding her, teaching her how to give expression physically to the artificial emotions required in any particular rôle, teaching her the tricks of facial expression which was the basic register of these emotions. Beauregard was teaching her the artifices of social relationships. Deane's help was the more needed and substantial, though Minnie, misled by soft kindness, was grateful only to Beauregard.

All this had happened during the making of the first picture, which because of early winter storms, was held up for several weeks. The ten weeks were the most stimulating that Minnie had ever known!

Ten weeks at seventy-five dollars a week—that was their only real significance to the Flynn family. They were there, standing in line every Saturday night like park bums, hands out, their mouths working as if they were tasting of the money. Pete was husky-voiced with reiterated flatteries. Alternately hating and loving them, Minnie emptied her pay ​check upon the red damask tablecloth in the Flynns' front parlor.

Billy stood by like a stranger looking through a window. He loved Minnie, but he wanted nothing from her. He could never be like Jimmy, recklessly finding ways she could spend her money, though Minnie seemed to love Jimmy for the very buoyant spirit of his improvidence.

Minnie was his wife, and he had once felt proud of the possession. But now he had become only Minnie's husband. Since he had acknowledged his miserable shame, a dumb submission had come into his eyes.

One Saturday the shop closed for the afternoon. An Odd Fellow had died and Hesselman, of the same order, had declared it a holiday.

Minnie was working. Though Billy had never been to the studio, he knew from countless descriptions where to locate it in New Jersey.

Billy had been planning a surprise for Minnie. It was to have been kept for her birthday, but the chances were he wouldn't have a holiday then. He had turned in the old motor bicycle, and paid several instalments on a second-hand motorcycle with a side car attachment. When they were first married, how Minnie had wished for one! She enjoyed the seat in back of Billy; they had taken many rides to Coney in this fashion, but it lacked the "class" of the basket side car.

How was Billy to know that in ten weeks Minnie's entire perspective of life had been changed?

Before Billy reached the studio, Minnie was passing through a crisis, her first assured triumph. The completed picture had been run off for a critical group of studio and newspaper men. Everyone had voiced his enthusiasm; here was a girl worthy of development and opportunity.

​Blinded by their praise, Minnie groped her way into Beauregard's office.

"Oh, Mr. Beauregard," she cried, "you should have stayed there and heard what all those men had to say to me. Longer words than Mrs. Lowell uses. I was never so happy in all my life. And it's you, you!"

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. He recoiled as if she had struck him, and stood there, looking at her, with an evil malevolence in his eyes. He resented this impersonal salute, which betrayed, unmistakably, Minnie's lack of sex consciousness in his presence. Almost brutally he pushed her away from him.

"Words are cheap," he flung at her. "It's always easy to talk appreciation. But when it comes right down to really proving it, then that's a different matter."

"Why, Mr. Beauregard, what do you mean?"

"That you will have plenty of chances to show how sincere you really are. You're going to make another picture here."

"Oh, am I? Am I?"

Beauregard continued, with an air of generous concession, "Of course you are, little June Day. I flared up a minute ago because I meet with so many disappointments. But you will be different from the others I know. At least I hope so, little girl."

Deane came into the office at this moment. His quick glance took in Beauregard's arm around Minnie's waist. Color rose swiftly to his forehead. His throat clutched convulsively, but he said nothing. A break with Beauregard might separate Minnie from him forever. He doggedly tried to make himself believe at this time his interest in her was purely platonic, that he was thinking only of her success, which was to be his own triumph.

"I have just been telling Miss Day that she is to make an​other picture for us," Beauregard began in his flat, stilted voice. "Just as you came in, I was going to announce to our young aspirant that she was also to receive a lucrative raise in salary."

Deane knitted his brows; he didn't believe in rapid salary increases. It was too unbalancing. But his frown disappeared when he saw the childishly eager expression on Minnie's face, making it as radiant as if she had stepped into bright sunlight.

"One hundred dollars a week, covering a period of ten weeks, and possibly at the end of the second picture a year's contract—at a slight advance, of course."

Minnie had nothing to say. She sank limply into a chair. At last, with an attempt at poise and lightness, she motioned to Beauregard.

"Bring in your li'l' ole contracts and I'll sign on any ole dotted line that you want me to."

Minnie's senses were drugged when she left the studio that afternoon. She hurried out through the gate, waving a farewell to the gate-keeper. She sang noisy greetings to familiar faces. She kissed Alicia and Mrs. Lee good night. She was even tolerant of an interruption from Eleanor Grant, who looked so red and white, so thin and haggard. She leaned upon Minnie wearily.

"I'm stepping my pride into the dirt, Minnie——"

"Ssh! They'll hear you. It's June now."

"Right into the dirt, June, but I've got to ask help from you."

"Help—from me?"

"Sure, Minnie—June. I'm sick, dreadfully sick. This bron​chitis is going to be the death of me. Look at me. I'm a fright. I've done nothing but eat, and I can't put enough flesh on my bones to keep me from looking like a scarecrow."

"Oh, Eleanor, really I'm sorry for you. I'll never forget how good you were to me that first day. I—well, I've forgotten all about how you pressed me for that money. But I can't blame you. I was so irresponsible then."

Though Eleanor was listening attentively, thinking only of what Minnie was going to say, she became aware of the changes in her mode of speech. And she smiled with mocking bitterness. Beauregard! The old routine was in motion.

Minnie was opening her purse, going through it with nervous fingers. "Here, Eleanor, here's ten dollars. You can have it, every cent of it!"

Eleanor looked at her with shocked reproach. "Minnie!" she said, and her voice carried her pain. "I'm not asking you for money. How could you think I meant a thing like that, as if I'd sunk that low, as if I were a beggar! Oh, how could you!"

Minnie was bewildered by all these double and triple standards of virtue which she had found among the girls in the picture business. Back in Ninth Avenue, moral requirements had been the one positive thing. Matters of kindness, culture, artificial delicacy had been considered nice but secondary. Whereas now, morals were considered nice, but secondary. Minnie knew Eleanor's moral status. She could not evaluate between false and real modesty; to have taken money from Beauregard without shame, but to have blushed when she offered it.

"But you said you needed help, Eleanor. I guess I don't quite get—get—understand you. Please tell me what I can do for you."

Eleanor fastened herself upon Minnie by pinioning her ​arms, and looked her so long and steadily in the eyes that Minnie was frightened by the unnatural aggressiveness.

"Minnie!" Eleanor talked quickly because she saw that Minnie was eager to get away from her. "I don't know whether to warn you, or be silent and just pity you. If I do tell you what I'd like to say you'll think I'm preaching. You'll do what I did when other girls tried to steer me right. But always remember this: success is so damned elusive! It lasts only long enough to give you a taste of the comfortable things in life and then you're kicked out again. Why, look at me, Minnie. Look what I had! . . . For God's sake, Minnie, don't be immoral, and treasure your youth, it's all you've got. . . . "After a violent wrenching coughing spell, she continued—"I guess, Minnie, I'll have to take the ten dollars, after all, if you can spare it, but for the love of heaven, don't let any of that gossiping crowd know that I'm down to that."

Eleanor's voice was rasping. Trembling in her tight grasp upon Minnie's arms, it sent a shudder through her body. They were so close that Minnie could feel the fever of Eleanor's breath.

"Minnie, you're so little and pretty. Oh, God damn this rotten motion picture business! It saps us so! Don't give in to a lecherous old devil like Beauregard. Don't do that to succeed. It doesn't get you anywhere. Look at me. I did! What did it do for me? What does it do for any of them? They're like leeches, men like that. Blood-suckers. What they can give you is so short-lived. The people at the studios, the ones with brains, who can really make you, they're prejudiced and work against you if you are one of the boss's girls. You'll see that in every studio. They get it over to the public, too. Only a few of them have been successfully foisted upon the public, and they could have made good, anyway, got much further in the business legitimately if they. ​had worked hard at it, and been willing to climb slowly and decently."

"S-sh! Eleanor," Minnie interrupted her, and in her voice was a hint of trembling eagerness to escape. "You're wearing yourself out. I understand, dear. I'm no spring chicken. Nobody can ever put anything over on me."

Eleanor's hysteria riding on a crescendo left her nerves broken and jangling. She shook as if palsied.

Touched, Minnie threw her arms around Eleanor and drew her close. She kissed her, little fumbled, half-embarrassed kisses. So many people were passing by. "Eleanor," she whispered, "I'll help you again when you need it. Call on me any time you want to. Are you sure there isn't anything else I can do for you?"

Eleanor said if she would she could speak to Deane and see if there wasn't some small part which she could play. "He doesn't know my work, in fact I've never been able to get a chance with his company. But if you don't mind, Minnie, you can tell him what I've done and show him some of my photographs. I'll come over to the studio tomorrow and bring you a portfolio of them."

When Minnie hurried away, Eleanor lifted her face, her eyes wildly straining to catch a last glimpse of Minnie. It was like looking into the past; Minnie was her own youth come back.

Deane's car rolled out of the studio garage. Leaning forward, he caught a glimpse of Minnie. "She walks like a young boy, arms swinging clear of her sides, head up, elastic step. She is pretty," Deane ruminated. Then he called to his chauffeur to stop.

​"Want to ride with me?"

"Sure I do, what could be sweeter?"

Deane didn't mind her flippancy as Beauregard did. It characterized her. He began to believe that Minnie, polished, might be rather uninteresting.

Minnie was thinking when Deane drew up beside her: "Poor Eleanor—but if I ever get a swell flat with three nigger servants in it like Eleanor used to have, I'll have sense enough to keep it and play the game lots more cleverly than she did."

Just as Deane tucked the fur robe around Minnie, for it was an open car and the air was nipped with frost, Billy MacNally's voice penetrated her consciousness with the tearing process of a bullet.

"Minnie," he called. "Ooh-hoo!"

She sat there, too numb to know at once just which was the best course to take to cover her shame and keep Deane from knowing that Billy was her husband.

Billy was grinning with his cap pushed off his broad, flat perspiring forehead; his motorcycle was churning under him.

"Good night, Mr. Deane, don't wait for me—that's a friend of mine over there to see me about something—I guess it must be awfully important or he wouldn't have come way over here—" she telescoped her words as she scrambled over his feet to escape.

"Here, wait a minute!"

Deane sprang out of the car and held the door open for Minnie. He was intensely curious.

Billy stopped the motor, swung off the seat and came forward. He was beaming with breathless happiness. "Gee, Minnie, I pretty near lost you, didn't I? Well, what do you think of it, hon?" he asked, looking back, his thumb pointing to the side car, apparently unconscious of Deane's presence.

Minnie's teeth were chattering. "Good night, Mr. Deane, ​I'll see you tomorrow." She began to back away from him.

Billy looked up and seemed to see Deane for the first time.

"I was just telling my wife how I pretty near missed her," he said in a low embarrassed voice as if he owed Deane an apology.

Minnie drew in her breath so sharply that it whistled through her teeth.

"Oh, Mr. Deane," she cried, not knowing why she could say nothing more than that. "Oh, my Lord, Billy!"

No one knew what lay back of Deane's inscrutable smile. He walked over to Billy and held out his hand. "You're Mr. Flynn, of course. My name is Hal Deane."

Billy laughed vacuously. "Mr. Flynn!" He thought it was a sample of Deane's sense of humor. He wanted to show Deane how quickly he had caught on. "You're right. I guess I'm more Flynn than MacNally at that. My wife's little, but she's the boss of our house."

Minnie could have killed him.

"Well, honey, what do you think about your birthday present?" Billy was so filled with the success of his plans he could think of nothing else. He talked because the others were silent. Deane seemed interested in what Billy was saying because he bent his sharp eyes upon him. He made no move to get back into his car and drive away.

"Oh, is this your birthday?" Deane finally asked, speaking in a mechanical sort of way, with a detached politeness Minnie had never before observed. His harshness had been much more personal.

"No, it ain't," Billy answered, "but we had an afternoon off in the butcher shop where I'm workin' and so I came over to spring it on Minnie as a grand surprise."

Minnie.

Somehow or other though he never thought of it until that ​moment, Deane had always known that her name was Minnie, had always known that she was married to a man who worked in a butcher shop, that she never would or never could be other than just what she had always been. . . . He laughed silently to himself all the way home with no bitterness only disappointment in the laughter. But Deane was honest enough with himself to admit that in another month there would have been bitterness. And for this he was disgusted; the whole situation was so ludicrous for a man who had counted himself so wise.