Brilliance (31 page)

Lisette managed a smile in an effort to be more cheerful. ‘If she has your determination and my stubbornness she should be able to find us wherever we are!’

He grinned. ‘That is true!’

The next day they returned to England and the routine of movie making.

As preparations went ahead for
Out of the Flames
Lisette was surprised when Daniel told her that he had chosen a young actress named Betsy Grey to play the heroine. Previously the girl had only appeared in comedies. She was a pretty little thing, but Lisette did not think her acting ability was nearly strong enough to sustain this particular role. It was also known that the girl was nervous about the conflagration scene when she had to be in a burning building, all of which had been arranged with the resort’s fire service.

Lisette challenged his decision as they sat with coffee one evening after dinner, for during a rehearsal that day Betsy had dissolved into tears several times at having to repeat a scene yet again.

‘I admit Betsy looks the perfect heroine,’ she said, ‘with her big eyes and naturally rosebud mouth, but you should face the fact that she isn’t a good enough actress for this very important role. Your reputation as an exceptional movie maker will stand or fall by this new venture.’

Daniel inclined his head towards her attentively. ‘I agree with all you’ve said. But everything is set up now and where else would I find another actress at such short notice?’ He looked persuasively at her. ‘Of course, you could always step in.’

She was undeceived, seeing that this was what he had been aiming for over some months. She also remembered the conspiratorial look that he had exchanged with Jim, who had made the remark that her face could launch a thousand cameras. The two of them had been plotting for a situation like this all along!

‘Since you need a replacement so urgently,’ she conceded, amusement in her eyes, ‘I’ll take the part. But it’s for once only.’

Yet she knew full well that he would keep finding roles for her from now on.

A
s Lisette had guessed, Betsy Grey was thankful to be replaced, especially as she was given a minor role that was more suited to her talents.

Before rehearsals started Lisette met the young actor, Ronald Davis, who was her own age and would be playing the hero to her heroine. He had only recently joined the studio and was tall, broad-shouldered and handsome with romantically long-lashed dark eyes and a swashbuckling look about him. Lisette thought that women in the audiences would love him on sight. He seemed to think the same, for he exuded self-confidence even though it was his first time in the motion picture business.

‘I’ve been in repertory on stage for two years,’ he had told her, ‘and so I’ve played a variety of parts. I was in a major production at the Theatre Royal in Brighton when Mr Shaw saw me and offered me this new experience. Acting in such a very different medium should be an interesting interlude.’

He gave the impression that he had been playing the lead in the major production, but she had been with Daniel at a performance and seen that he had had quite a minor role. In fact it was she who had pointed out to Daniel that he had the looks of a romantic hero.

‘Perhaps you will never want to return to the stage,’ she suggested. ‘With time, many more people would see you on the screen than in a theatre.’

He preened. ‘Yes, I should like to be seen as much as possible.’

Lisette thought him insufferably conceited, but she had seen during rehearsals that he could act, sometimes quite sensitively, which was what mattered.

On the day that filming started Lisette emerged from the make-up room with her eyelashes very black and her lips as rosebud as was possible with her generous mouth. She was wearing one of her own summer dresses and a straw hat with ribbons, which was from the wardrobe room. Tom, who had long since left her domestic employ to work full-time at the studio, gave her a courtly bow copied from one of the actors.

‘You look very fine, madam.’

Daniel gave a nod. ‘I agree,’ he said with a grin as she came towards him. ‘Every inch the demure maiden. Now we’ll get to work.’

Jim, who always wore his cap back to front in order to keep its peak from getting in the way as he filmed, had set up his camera on its tripod in the lane. He gave her a smiling wink as she passed him. This was his day of triumph. He was getting her before his lens at last.

She went along the lane to take her place at a five-barred gate. There she leaned an arm on it as she gazed into the distance. Today there were sheep in the field, a peaceful scene under a porcelain blue sky flecked with wispy clouds like sugar strands and the soft, undulating line of the grassy downs lay in the far distance. Momentarily letting her thoughts slip, she realized how much she was beginning to feel at home in England.

Daniel’s shout through his megaphone broke into her reverie. ‘Camera! Action!’

After a few moments, as rehearsed, she moved away from the gate and started strolling leisurely in the direction of the camera. As she passed Ronald, apparently without noticing him, he moved into the lane and gazed after her as if already smitten by love at first sight.

‘Cut!’ Daniel snapped. Instantly Jim stopped turning the handle of his camera and they exchanged a grin of satisfaction.

For the next scene they all moved into the neighbouring hamlet where at Daniel’s prompting through his megaphone Lisette came out of a bakery in time to see Betsy getting her purse snatched. Then she watched in apparent admiration as Ronald gave chase, fought Betsy’s attacker and brought him to the ground. With the cooperation of the resort’s police force, a Black Maria was driven on to the scene. Then an actor, dressed as a policeman, jumped from it with truncheon and handcuffs to arrest the villain and bundle him into the vehicle. Lisette, watching the action, thought it was as well there was no sound as she could hear the policemen laughing in the vehicle and guessed they had come along to enjoy the action.

Throughout the week the filming of
Out of the Flames
continued with an unwinding of the plot, which included a scene of Betsy shyly giving Ronald a photograph of herself in the hope that she would fix herself firmly in his memory and he would want to see her again. The casual way in which he slipped the photograph into his pocket would confirm to audiences that his heart was already lost to the girl he had seen in the lane.

Most animated picture directors wanted acting on screen to be slightly larger than life for the meaning of everything to be fully understood by audiences, but Daniel believed otherwise. When taking close ups, he wanted expressions to be subtle and all movement to be totally natural. Even when a dramatic indoor scene was to be enacted he warned both Lisette and Ronald not to exaggerate their gestures in any way.

It was to be filmed as every indoor scene had to be: in the open air. On the wheeled platform a backcloth of a sitting room had been set up with plywood walls, one inset with a door, on either side. The furnishing consisted of a rag rug, two chairs and a table laid for tea. The plot had brought Lisette and Ronald to the point of his declaring his love. The breeze fluttered the tablecloth and played with Lisette’s hair as she poured the tea, but Daniel said the audience would be too enthralled to notice, especially when Ronald took up Lisette’s hand and kissed it, his handsome eyes very eloquent. But then the photograph of Betsy fell from his pocket and Lisette viewed it with an anguished gaze.

The sequence of the quarrel then took place, both Lisette and Ronald enjoying the enactment of the clash between them, she in tears at his deceit and he throwing his arms about in protest at being unjustly accused of unfaithfulness. In a final gesture he tore up the photograph to show that it belonged to the past, but when Lisette refused to be convinced and turned her back on him, he rushed off the set in a fine show of despair. All those standing around clapped enthusiastically.

Two days later Jim set up his camera again. Everybody was on site early at the derelict house that was to be burnt down in the climax of the movie. The resort’s fire brigade arrived on time, brass helmets and the clanging fire bell well polished and flashing back the sunshine. Word had spread beyond the studio that the brigade was to be involved in the filming and local people from both the neighbouring hamlet and the resort gathered to watch the spectacle, not realizing that their presence would add to the realism of the scene. There was some delay when the chief of the brigade, resplendent in the silver helmet that denoted his rank, felt that he should rescue the heroine.

‘We always keep the public well back and out of danger,’ he insisted. ‘No bystander would get past us.’

It took Daniel quite a little while to persuade the chief that for once the situation had to be otherwise. The previous day’s shots had been of Lisette at one of the upper windows of the doomed house, crying out for help with arms outflung. Behind her and out of sight one of the crew had wafted the smoke of some smouldering rags around her as if the house were already on fire. Then Ronald had been filmed running towards the house to rescue her. Now all was ready for the climax of the film.

Two firemen set light to the building and the spectators, whose numbers were increasing all the time, cheered. As the flames took hold Jim began turning the handle of his camera. Then, before it became too dangerous, Lisette and Ronald slipped into the front entrance to be ready for him to carry her out in his arms. But when Daniel’s voice boomed through the megaphone, telling them to emerge, Ronald held back.

‘Let’s wait a few more seconds!’ he suggested eagerly. ‘It will build up the suspense.’

‘No!’ she answered impatiently. ‘If we delay now the fire brigade will ruin everything by charging in to rescue both of us!’

The sudden crashing down of a timber beam upstairs ended any further idea he had of remaining longer. Snatching Lisette up in his arms, he rushed out of the building in a burst of genuine panic that was most effective and the camera captured it all.

The next morning, Lisette, in bridal attire, her veil flowing from a garland of flowers encircling her head, and Ronald in his best suit were filmed coming out of the resort’s ancient church in a final fade-out. The whole film would last a new, revolutionary fifty minutes. Its subsequent success put an end to a great many debates in the press and elsewhere as to whether a screen could hold an audience’s attention in the same way as action on a theatre stage.

Work continued every day at the Shaw Studio and the months slipped past. Lisette was not in everything that was filmed, because knockabout comedies were still being made as well as minor productions in which she played no part. During these times she dealt with scripts, some of which came by post from would-be scriptwriters. One of her former tasks on site had been keeping her eye on continuity, making sure that nothing was changed in clothing or props or anything else when the filming of one scene took longer than a day, but now an observant young woman had been employed for that duty.

In the spring of 1899 Daniel launched another major production, which came about by chance when a jumbled collection of dusty, neglected looking garments from an attic were among the items to be sold at a local auction. Mrs Leigh, always on the lookout for anything the studio could use, examined them with interest. Afterwards she reported to Lisette, who had taken charge of many behind the scenes matters to save Daniel from unnecessary work,

‘We could use those silks for all sorts of costumes,’ the dressmaker said eagerly.

Lisette went to view the garments the day before the auction and realized they were genuine Chinese kimonos. At the auction itself nobody was seriously interested in the garments and Lisette managed to get them for a surprisingly low price. Mrs Leigh and Ethel promptly went to work mending and washing and ironing what proved to be some lovely silks. They caused Lisette to remember a script that she had read not long after coming to England. She found it in a file. It was the story of a Chinese girl loved and abandoned by an English lord touring China, but rescued by the true love of a mandarin. Daniel, confronted with the need for a Chinese atmosphere and the virtual impossibility of getting any Chinese actors, baulked at first from giving the script serious consideration. But Lisette was persuasive and soon the production of
Passion Flower
was set into action.

The carpenters had made rickshaws and Mrs Leigh some Chinese coolie hats. With the absence of any Chinese actors the entire cast had black lines drawn by their eyes to give them an oriental slant, except Ronald, who was playing the English lord. He had shown signs of temperament before, his head turned by the flattering attention he received from women who came to watch him act whenever the opportunity arose, but this time he was being extremely difficult.

‘I should win the heroine!’ he declared fiercely, his cheeks flushed with indignation. ‘Casting her aside will put me in a bad light with audiences.’

He had an ally in Lisette, who agreed with him. Already he was an asset that she did not want the studio to lose to another company. Immediately she did some rewriting of the script to make the mandarin the villain while the English lord became the hero. It was a relief to her when both Daniel and Jim agreed that after all it would be a better ending for more reasons than one.

Daniel was having no problem with the outdoor scenes supposedly set in China. The local owner of a fine estate had collected and planted many exotic trees from warmer climes and, having met Daniel on several occasions, gave him permission to film there. The owner and his wife and all his family, including aunts, uncles and cousins, gathered on his veranda and watched rickshaws pulled by coolies and dramatic scenes enacted that could have been taking place in China.

For important indoor scenes Daniel went to nearby Brighton where the Royal Pavilion, once owned by the Prince Regent, had an exotic Chinese interior. Although Daniel had never visited the palace, for it had been closed for many years and was not open to the public, he had read about it. So he made his request to those in charge of the building and such was the enthusiasm for motion pictures that he was given special permission to film inside for one day only.