Movie Shoes (12 page)

The Painted Garden

The start for the Bee Bee studios was almost as grand as even Jane could have wished. Bee was taking her, and although neither Aunt Cora nor Peaseblossom said so, it was obvious that each wished she’d had the chance. There was almost the fuss Jane had wished for about getting her ready, enough to give her an idea of how it felt to be important.

The Bee Bee studios were in Culver City. Long before they got there, Jane and Bee could see the word s “Bee Bee Films Incorporated” written on what seemed to be storage tanks which were built into the air. Close up, the studio looked rather like a prison. There were high walls all around the lot, guarded by a great many policemen and a great deal of barbed wire. The car stopped at gates with a policeman outside; evidently the policeman knew the driver by sight, for he said nothing and let them drive in.

Jane had hoped that Mr. Browne would be waiting for them; he was not, but he had told somebody else to look after them. She was a nice woman who said her name was Miss Delaney, though everybody seemed to call her Dot. As they walked along, they met all sorts of people, who smiled and said, “How’s my darling Dot?” or, as if it were amazing to meet her, “Dot, honey!”

Inside, the lot was like a town. Wide streets ran up and down; only instead of houses on each side there were offices and studios. Cars and trucks drove up and down the and there were even street cleaners with brooms. Miss Delaney showed Jane a long, low white building standing back in little garden and said that was the Bee Bee school, where Jane would go for lessons if she got the part of Mary. Jane asked if that was where David Doe went to school, and Delaney said it was, that all the children under contract there. Jane would meet David as soon as he came out school. The test scene with him would be shot after lunch as not to interfere with his morning’s lessons, because if he missed even a few minutes of his lessons between nine and twelve, those minutes had to be made up in the afternoon for that was the law.

Miss Delaney took Bee and Jane to a big place she called the wardrobe. Evidently they were expected. A woman in a white linen coat came and was introduced as Mrs. Gates. She looked Jane over as if she could measure her just by looking at her; then she said to Miss Delaney, “Not far out. Of course, Ursula’s a bit bigger.” Jane was surprised to find Ursula was bigger than she was, for My-Mr. Browne had spoken of Ursula as “little.” She had no time to say her thoughts out loud, for Mrs. Gates led them over to a place where clothes were hanging under cellophane coverings. She threw back the cellophane. “What would you like to wear dear?”

Jane was thrilled. Of course, she liked dressing up, and this was dressing up in a big way. She had not thought of Mary in
The Secret Garden
as having a great many clothes, but evidently she had. There were whole rows of frocks and coats and some nightdresses and a dressing gown. Mrs. Gates said to Bee, “They look funny now, don’t they? You wait till I show the little petticoats and the frilled drawers that go with them. They’re just darling.”

With advice from Mrs. Gates and Miss Delaney, Jane chose one-of the plainer frocks. It was pink with a very full skirt. She was ashamed of the underclothes. Although the skirt of the dress was longer than her own, if she turned quickly the frilled pants showed. Miss Delaney said she thought they were cute, but Jane thought them awful. The dress needed a little altering, and while this was being done, Miss Delaney took Jane and Bee to another place where there was a hairdresser. He was a man with a lot of black hair and very sparkling eyes. He stood away from Jane, looking at her with his head on one side; then he made pleased noises, pulled out a chair, and gently pushed her into it. After untying her braids, he started brushing and combing her hair and trying out different parts in such a possessive way that Jane nearly asked him if he thought her head belonged to him.

Out again in one of the main streets of the lot, Jane felt dreadfully self-conscious. Her hair was brushed out and tied with a bow and the ends had been curled. A warm wind was blowing, and though she kept holding her skirt down, she was sure those dreadful pants were showing. But she was the only person who seemed to think her clothes queer, for though there were masses of people hurrying along, nobody looked twice at her After a while she saw why, for on a film lot it was more usual to be dressed up than not to be dressed up.

Mr. Browne was waiting for them in a huge room with lots of little rooms opening off it. Each of the little rooms had one wall missing, for they opened straight into the big room. The one nearest Mr. Browne seemed to be a bedroom, for there was a very grand bed in it.

They did not start on the test right away. Mr. Browne took Jane around and showed her things. The place they were in was studio twelve, where most of the interior scenes of
The Secret Garden
were scheduled to be shot. The garden was in another studio. Mr. Browne led Jane around and explained that what she had thought was a big room was a “floor”; would hear people say a picture was on “the floor,” and meant it was being shot in a place like the one they were in. He explained that what she had thought were little rooms were really like scenes in a theater. Each one was built to the scenes in the script. Most of them were rooms in Misselthwaite Manor. He showed her the script where it written that the scene was in Colin’s bedroom, and then showed her the piece of room with the grand bed in it and told her that she was going to act one of her test scenes there and did she know which?

“Of course,” Jane said promptly. “That’s the scene where Colin’s screaming and I tell him to stop.”

Mr. Browne asked if Jane would like to go over her line before the test and led the way to two chairs which were by themselves in a comer. Jane began to feel odd again the moment Mr. Browne mentioned lines.

Mr. Browne saw how she felt, for he laughed and said there was nothing to be scared of.

Jane knew all the words perfectly; she had almost known them when she had come home the day before, and Peaseblossom had been hearing them off and on until the car came but in the fuss of saying them at that moment, Jane felt Mr. Browne could not be trusted to remember what he had said, so she gabbled very fast both her lines and his directions.

“There’s steps I come down looking as if it were fairyland and I say how still it is how still and look at the tree Mrs. Craven fell out of and I remember-“

Mr. Browne stopped her. He said he thought she should take a deep breath and start again, and this time all she should do was to tell him what Mary said. This worked very well. Jane said every line in each scene perfectly, though with no expression at all, except a little in the scene by Colin’s bed, which was the scene she really liked. When she finished, Mr. Browne said they would go to the garden, as she was ready for her test.

The garden was the queerest garden Jane could imagine. It was partly real and partly painted. The trees seemed to be real, growing in real earth, but the roses were not real, nor were the little plants real-the pansies, delphiniums, larkspur, roses, pinks, poppies and all the other flowers that grew in the garden. Queerest of all was the grass, which looked like grass until Jane got close to it and saw that it was artificial. It was easier to understand a made-in-the-studio garden when she and Mr. Browne came to the end of path and found a different garden. That garden was not finished, the men were still working on it. It was going to be a winter garden; the trees had no leaves, and the ground was a tangle of plants all wound together. Jane said, “That’s going to be the place where Mary scraped about and found bulbs trying to come through.”

Many preparations had to be made for the test. The distance between the camera and where Jane was to stand was measured, and great big cameras were pushed around. A lot of people seemed to be gazing at Jane all at once; she hated that. Mr. Browne saw how she felt. He came and sat beside her on the top step leading into the garden. He said some people could be themselves one minute and then imagine themselves being somebody else the next, but he did not think Jane was that sort of person. That he did not want her to try too much; he thought that Jane and Mary could behave have very much alike, and it was his job to try to use all the bits of Jane that were like Mary. Only in this scene Jane would have to think about Mary. If she did not, there would be a piece of film showing Jane Winter walking into a garden, looking at it scornfully as if she were saying, “This isn’t a real garden, just a painted one.” Jane knew her words and knew what he wanted her to do. Would she try very hard to do it. This was a picture he very much wanted to direct, but if she was not good in this scene, he was very much afraid Mr. Bettelheimer would decide not to make the picture now, and he would hate that. He was sure Jane would try hard, but he thought a prize might help. If she were so good that Mr. Bettelheimer and the other important men thought she should play Mary, he would give her a prize. Did she have a watch, or would like one?

Jane gazed at him, her eyes shining. A watch! Would she like a watch!

“Oh! A wristwatch would be the grandest prize in the whole world.” Then suddenly, as she said these words, she thought of Chewing-gum. It was awful to say no to a watch but she had to do it. “There’s something I want more than watch. Something I made a secret vow I’d get somehow. A food parcel for Chewing-gum.”

Mr. Browne looked at Jane in a funny way; then he pulled one of the curls the hairdresser had taken such trouble to make.

“That’s a bargain. You get the part of Mary, and Chewing-gum shall get the best food parcel that’s to be had in Los Angeles. We’ll start shooting now; do what you can about those tears.”

A film studio in Hollywood was a difficult place in which to feel miserable about a dog in London, and nobody left Jane alone. First a woman in white coat combed out her hair; then somebody else dabbed at her face with a piece of paper, and then Mr. Brown brought up a fair girl in queer, old-fashioned clothes and introduced her. She said she was Betty, who was standing in for Mrs. Craven.

Jane thought Betty looked nice, but her mind was really on those awful tears.

“I do hope you won’t think me rude if I don’t talk much. You see, I’m trying to cry. If I do, Mr. Browne will buy a food parcel for my dog, Chewing-gum.”

“Well, isn’t that just darling! I suppose your dog is pretty hungry all the time.”

“Not hungry, exactly. He has horse. You don’t eat horse much in America, do you? It’s nice, but you get tired of it. I think Chewing-gum does.”

Betty was looking at Jane intently as if she were thinking or something. Then she said, in a dreadfully grave voice, “That’s right. Must have variety. I don’t think horsemeat is healthy food. I wouldn’t let my dog touch it. I buy her food in specially packed cans. Sterilized, you know. I’m scared stiffer than a statue of germs. One germ and... “ Betty did not finish but shook her head in a very frightening way.

Jane was horror-struck. She knew lots of things might happen to Chewing-gum, but that he might eat germs with his horsemeat was a new danger.

“You mean a germ could kill him?”

“Faster than an atom bomb.”

A voice shouted, “Quiet, everybody.” Lights blazed down on the garden.

Mr. Browne called, “Come along, Jane. Open the door, and come to the top of the steps.”

Jane was not actually crying but rather near it because the idea of Chewing-gum dead of a germ was dreadful to think of. She opened the door and came to the top step and looked down at the secret garden.

Film lights are queer things. They are very bright and very hot, but they give special color to everything as well. When Jane walked around the garden with Mr. Browne, there had been no bright lights; now that the lights were on, the garden had changed. Jane found it was like opening a book to a painting of a lovely garden and suddenly finding she had the power to walk into it. She forgot about Chewing-gum, but the tears that had nearly fallen were still in her eyes as she looked around, entranced by the strangeness.

That was the only nice moment of making the test of that scene. Mr. Browne and everybody were so slow, and Jane could not see why. There were the steps. There was Betty ready. There was even a toy robin
ready in a tree; all she to do was to come down the steps and say her lines. But the moment she had finished looking around the garden
before she had time to come down the steps, Mr. Browne said, “Cut.” All the bright lights were switched off, more measuring was done, and somebody came and dabbed at her face again with another piece of paper. It was even worse when they got to the place where she spoke. For no reason that Jane could discover, Mr. Browne made her say “How still it is! How still!” four times.

The bit with Betty was a little less tiresome, for Betty
seemed to expect to have to kiss Jane several times even though she did it right the first time.

“It’s so stupid doing everything so often.” Jane grumbled, “and I hate having my face patted with that paper every time the lights go out.”

Betty laughed and said they would look anything but pretty if it didn’t happen. Under the hot lamps everyone perspired and needed wiping off.

Jane pulled down her pink skirts, for she was still conscious of her frilled pants. “Do
lots of dogs die of germs?”

Betty’s eyes twinkled. “Got to cry anymore?”

Jane shook her head.

“Cheer up. I never knew a dog to die that way. I was just trying to jerk a few tears out
you so your dog would get his package.”