Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/57

 Minnie listened breathlessly while Al told about his life on the stage and in the studios. He enjoyed the telling immensely for no one loved to hear Al Kessler talk better than himself. He drew a graphic and fascinating picture of studio life. He told her intimate details of the lives of the motion picture actresses and actors. He made them all beautiful and clever and extremely wicked. He told of his own work, of how he had left a very successful juggling act in vaudeville to go into the movies, not because he could express his talents as well on the screen as on the stage, but because "the great machinery of movieland was grinding out golden coins and showering them over the earth." He repeated this several times because Minnie seemed to find it so clever and original. He was eager to know if Minnie had seen him on the screen and named several pictures. She had seen two or three of them, but dared not tell him, afraid that she would hurt his feelings; she couldn't remember the parts he had played in them. Al was disappointed, but began at once to describe the rôles he had played, and to tell with elaborate detail how cleverly he had put them over. He never spoke of the characters as Sam, or The Weasel, or The Boy from the Country. They were all "Al's." . . . "I come into the room right after the old lady is killed, and I kneel down to see if I can't do something. And the door opens and the cops come in. And there's where I make the big stand and put up the big fight. Gee, honey, what a fight! But of course the story says that I have to go to prison. So I stall along and let up on 'em and they slip the handcuffs onto me. And off to prison I go."

"Oh, how wonderful!" repeated Minnie after everything he told her, "and what happened then?"

"They cut out the best part of the film, that's what they did," answered Al savagely, "they cut out the part where