“Are other occupations so much better?  A motion picture actress is quite different from the stage variety, you know.  Our performances are all privately conducted, and although the camera is recording our actions it is not like being stared at by a thousand critical eyes.”

“A million eyes stare at the pictures,” asserted Patsy.

“But we are not there to be embarrassed by them,” laughed Flo.

“We have but one person to please,” continued Maud, “and that is the director.  If at first the scene is not satisfactory, we play it again and again, until it is quite correct.  To us this striving for perfection is an art.  We actors are mere details of an artistic conception.  We have now been in Hollywood for five months, yet few people who casually notice us at the hotel or on the streets have any idea that we act for the ‘movies.’  Sometimes we appear publicly in the streets, in characteristic costume, and proceed to enact our play where all may observe us; but there are so many picture companies in this neighborhood that we are no longer looked upon as a novelty and the people passing by pay little attention to us.”

“Were you in that picture of the falling wall?” asked Beth.

“No.  We were rehearsing for ‘Samson and Delilah.’  But sometimes we are called upon to do curious things.  One night, not long ago, a big residence burned down in the foothills back of our hotel.  At the first alarm of fire one of the directors wakened us and we jumped into our clothes and were whisked in an automobile to the scene of the conflagration.  The camera-man was already there and, while we had to dodge the fire-fighters and the hose men, both Flo and I managed to be ‘saved from the flames’ by some of our actors—­not once, but several times.”

“It must have been thrilling!” gasped Patsy.

“It was exciting, at the moment,” confessed Maud.  “One of the pictures proved very dramatic, so an author wrote a story where at the climax a girl was rescued from the flames by her lover, and we took our time to act the several scenes that led up to the fire.  The completed picture was a great success, I’m told.”

“Those directors must be wonderfully enterprising fellows,” said Beth.

“They are, indeed, constantly on the lookout for effects.  Every incident that occurs in real life is promptly taken advantage of.  The camera-men are everywhere, waiting for their chance.  Often their pictures prove of no value and are destroyed, but sometimes the scenes they catch are very useful to work into a picture play.  A few weeks ago I was shipwrecked on the ocean and saved by clinging to a raft.  That was not pleasant and I caught a severe cold by being in the water too long; but I was chosen because I can swim.  Such incidents are merely a part of our game—­a game where personal comfort is frequently sacrificed to art.  Once Flo leaped over a thirty-foot precipice and was caught in a net at the bottom.  The net was, of course, necessary, but when the picture was displayed her terrible leap was followed by a view of her mangled body at the bottom of the canyon.”