U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [527]
"Oh, Margie," wailed Agnes from the other room,
"your lovely new gown is a wreck."
Margo and Sam Margolies flew to Tucson to be mar-ried. Nobody was present except Agnes and Rodney Cathcart. After the ceremony Margolies handed the jus-tice of the peace a new hundreddol ar bil . The going was pretty bumpy on the way back and the big rattly Ford tri-motor gave them quite a shakingup crossing the desert. Margolies' face was al colors under his white beret but he said it was delightful. Rodney Cathcart and Agnes vomited frankly into their cardboard containers. Margo felt her pretty smile tightening into a desperate grin but she managed to keep the wedding breakfast down. When the plane came to rest at the airport at last, they kept the cameramen waiting a half an hour before they could trust themselves to come down the gangplank flushed and smil-ing into a rain of streamers and confetti thrown by the attendants and the whir of the motionpicture cameras.
-424-Rodney Cathcart had to drink most of a pint of scotch before he could get his legs not to buckle under him. Margo wore her smile over a mass of yel ow orchids that had been waiting for her in the refrigerator at the airport, and Compton looked tickled to death because Sam had bought her orchids too, lavender ones, and insisted that she stride down the gangplank into the cameras with the rest of them.
It was a relief after the glare of the desert and the lurching of the plane in the airpockets to get back to the quiet dressingroom at the lot. By three o'clock they were in their makeup. In a smal room in the ground floor Margolies went right back to work taking closeups of Margo and Rodney Cathcart in a clinch against the back-ground of a corner of a mud fort. Si was stripped to the waist with two cartridgebelts crossed over his chest and a canvas legionnaire's kepi on his head and Margo was in a white eveningdress with highheeled satin slippers. They were having trouble with the clinch on account of the cartridgebelts. Margolies with his porcelainhandled cane thrashing in front of him kept strutting back and forth from the little box he stood on behind the camera into the glare of the klieg light where Margo and Si clinched and unclinched a dozen times before they hit a position that suited him. "My dear Si," he was saying
"you must make them feel it. Every ripple of your muscles must make them feel passion .
. . you are stiff like a wooden dol . They al love her, a piece of fragile beau-tiful palpitant womanhood ready to give al for the man she loves. . . . Margo darling, you faint, you let your-self go in his arms. If his strong arms weren't there to catch you you would fal to the ground. Si, my dear fel-low, you are not an athletic instructor teaching a young lady to swim, you are a desperate lover facing death. . . . They al feel they are you, you are loving her for them, the mil ions who want love and beauty and excitement,
-425-but forget them, loosen up, my dear fel ow, forget that I'm here and the camera's here, you are alone together snatching a desperate moment, you are alone except for your two beating hearts, you and the most beautiful girl in the world, the nation's newest sweetheart. . . . Al right. . . . hold it. . . . Camera."
NEWSREEL LXIII
but a few minutes later this false land disappeared as quickly and as mysteriously as it had come and I found before me the long stretch of the silent sea with not a single sign of life in sight
Whippoorwills call
And evening is nigh
I hurry to . . . my blue heaven
LINDBERGH IN PERIL AS WAVE TRAPS HIM IN
CRUISER'S BOW
Down in the Tennessee mountains
Away from the sins of the world
Old Dan Kelly's son there he leaned on his gun
Athinkin' of Zeb Turney's girl
ACCLAIMED BY HUGE CROWDS IN THE
STREETS
Snaps Pictures From Dizzy Yardarm
Dan was a hotblooded youngster
His Dad raised him up sturdy an' right
ENTHRALLED BY DARING DEED CITY
CHEERS
FROM DEPTHS OF ITS HEART
FLYER SPORTS IN AIR
-426- His heart in a whirl with his love for