Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/192

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN is shown on the screen. All the scenes falling on one location are taken in any order that the director sees fit, until that set, or location, is disposed of. The final fifty feet of a photoplay may have been among the first to be shot.

Our first set was a stable built in the studio. For five hours of a hot California day I rolled in the straw of the stable, which I shared with every sand flea and ant in California, clowning low comedy, much of it written, not by Cervantes but by a scenarist; stopping only to swab the perspiration that drenched me and doing that only because beads of sweat on the face photographed as pockmarks, when the director announced, "Now, Mr. Hopper, we will have the death scene."

It appeared that the stable set had to be removed to make way for another and that my death throes were down in the continuity for the stable.

I protested. "I want this death to signify something more than decomposition," I said bitterly. "It is symbolical. At least let me know why I die."

Not even the director, it developed, knew that at this stage of the proceedings.

"My dear sir!" I balked. "You might just