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Streaming Stars, Then and Now

The director of the Desperation Film Company was putting on what he regarded as the greatest "water tragedy" ever written. The heroine, a magnificent swimmer, is swept overboard from a yacht and drowned while her husband-to-be sheds bitter tears on the dock. The director wept when he read the script. His leading lady stormed when she scanned it, for, as she said, "that dinky little hero gets the curtain and I don't amount to a thing." Just the same, she went out with the company when they departed to take the water scenes and trouble began at once. Hiram Statio, the melancholy cameraman, forgot to take any films along and did not discover it until the leading lady was floating about in the surf on her face. She scolded the director, while Statio was getting the film, and the next time, Just as her supposedly dead body was being picked up by the hero, a crab bit her on the toe, giving her the cue to do some grand and lofty tumbling that utterly spoiled the scene. When freed from the crab, she resigned on the spot. The director sent a call to the studio for another leading lady, but the cast director did not have a satisfactory candidate on hand. He looked over his stock of pictures, found that Pansy was listed as a graceful swimmer, saw that her photographed face was pretty and ordered her to report to the director in a bathing suit. Pansy was a swimmer, all right, and once had been young and shapely, but now was about the size of the European war debt, with the grace of an elephant. She obeyed directions, joined the company at the beach, and introduced herself as the new leading lady. The director at first told her to go away, but his cameraman made things easy for Pansy by whispering to the director, "You'd better give her a try-out. The light is failing." And so the director did. In high diving and graceful swimming Pansy was all that could be asked for, but she managed to put some unexpected ginger into the big scene of the play. In this the heroine is on the deck of a sailing boat. There is a sudden squall, the boom swings around, striking her on the head and knocking her overboard. Her little brother witnesses the accident and falls in a faint on the bed. The director and cameraman were in a rowboat some little distance away from the yacht, prepared to take the scene. When the boom was pushed around Pansy was flirting with a handsome young actor, and the boom unexpectedly landed on the back of her neck. Afrightedly she grasped it and like a cat was swung out over the water. The director yelled to her to jump and she finally did so. Then she swung toward the rowboat. The director, not noticing that the cameraman was still grinding away, reached over to help Pansy. She grabbed his arms convulsively and dragged him into the water. There was a lively unrehearsed water scene and finally Pansy and the director were dragged aboard the yacht. There the cameraman followed them and whispered to the director, "Great stuff, boss, I got every foot of it." The director called him several kinds of a fool. They printed up the picture, and while it was being run off in the projection room for the inspection of the general manager, the director waited outside in an agony of fear. Through the closed doors floated the sound of laughter. Finally the general manager and his assistant came out still laughing, and greeted the director with enthusiasm. ''I thought you were putting on a tragedy," said the general manager, "but this is the funniest slapstick comedy I ever saw. You will do all our comedies hereafter. By the way, I have changed the name of the play from 'The Ocean Cemetery' to 'The Massive Mermaid" and then he walked away. The director took all the credit he could and never explained how the comedy came to be.

Arthur Cunningham: Leading Lady - the Mermaid

A Massive Movie Mermaid

Arthur Cunningham credited as playing...

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