Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/193

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CAME DAWN AT HOLLYWOOD

as well ask me to be nauseated now and give me the emetic three weeks later."

But die I did, then and there. Cervantes saw fit to kill his hero of brain fever, but Hollywood's he-men all die with their boots on, and it was down in the scenario that I was to be shot. So I fell mortally wounded, why or by whom I had not then the remotest idea, and contorted my face and limbs this way and that way as the megaphone told me to do, for all the world like a fat woman on her bedroom floor taking her daily dozen to the voice of a phonograph record. I did sneak in a little dying of my own, and—may I say it?—it was pretty good; also as realistic as my cinema collapse, which was to come.

We were twelve weeks on "Don Quixote." The film ran seven reels in its final form. Its only success was in Latin America, where the story was more familiar to picture audiences than in English-speaking lands. Present-day audiences would recognize the names of only three members of that company, Monte Blue, George Walsh and Fay Tincher. Blue and Walsh have risen to stardom and Miss Tincher to a considerable fame as a comedienne and character woman.

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