Dragonflies Chapter One
As soon as the gunfire started, Callie O'Keefe hitched up her ball gown and ran like hell.
As soon as the gunfire started, Callie O'Keefe hitched up her ball gown and ran like hell.
Grateful she'd thought to wear her trusty work boots beneath the floor length skirt, she skidded around a crowd waiting to storm the Bastille and nearly collided with a vampire.
Jaunty marching music filled the hot, dusty air, clashing with a melancholic violin playing somewhere just out of sight. A group of young women dressed as circus acrobats hummed the latest jazz tune as they Charlestoned on the lawn in front of the studio building. A jalopy careened out of control up and down the main thoroughfare, with a second, open-topped car driving alongside. The second car carried a man perched precariously on the hood, steadily cranking a camera. Two young boys held onto his legs, and a director hollered instructions through a megaphone.
It was a typical day in a film factory in 1922.
Callie had been waiting outside the studio gates in the hot sun since dawn, waiting for her chance. Each day the line of hopefuls formed long before sunrise. Every hour or so, an assistant director would stroll through the gates to pick out an extra or two and usher them through the hallowed gates, steadfastly ignoring the desperation etched on the faces of those left behind. It was well known in the movie colony that extras who came prepared in full costume and makeup had the best chance of being chosen. The problem was that those not employed by a studio had little chance of knowing what pictures would be shot that week. Consequently, they had to dress in their best guess.
The line was, therefore, a dizzying array of resplendent evening dress, Roman togas and vagabond rags. One young woman was even clad shockingly in a bathing suit cut well above her knee, her hair tucked under a cap adorned with a large flower. She defensively claimed to have heard that RLP Studios was considering a swimming picture to rival Mack Sennett's bathing beauties. Several times, she reminded anybody who would listen that she had won many swimming competitions back home in Omaha.
Sometime the previous evening, a rumour had zipped around the bars and hostels of West Hollywood that RLP Studios would be starting work on an Alaskan gold mining picture. Several men were therefore decked from head to toe in thick furs. Around noon, one of them collapsed in the scorching sun. A couple of cowboys from a nearby ranch who had wandered by hoping to pick up a day's stunt riding hauled the fallen man over their shoulders and carried him away.
The black gown Callie wore wasn't quite as uncomfortable as a fur. Still, it was of a heavy fabric and adorned with sequins, and it seemed to increase in weight steadily throughout the day. At least her head and neck weren't as hot as they could have been. Three weeks previously, Callie had finally found a barber willing to give her the daring and mannish Castle bob (every woman’s hairdressers she tried had refused her, one even claiming that their shears were designed solely to trim long tresses). She had then persuaded her current beau Fred Atherton to purchase on her behalf a bottle of Brilliantine from the drugstore with which to smooth her mousy brown waves into something resembling submission.
She was the first of her friends to take the plunge, and every time she glanced in a mirror, she felt a little sliver of excitement at the modern woman who stared back at her. That woman was going places. She was afraid of nothing. Even if she still had Callie's upturned nose and the freckles of a pickpocketing urchin that were determined to undermine her every attempt at sophistication.
Several women's magazines had warned of headaches and other ailments caused by the female neck's sudden exposure to breezes, but today, Callie was more than grateful for the slight chill. She owned a second evening gown made of a light, pale grey satin, which would have provided a little relief from the heat. However, it had a straight skirt that clung around the legs (Fred had helpfully pointed out it made her look rather like a mermaid), and Callie needed to be prepared to run.
Now, as the vampire stepped aside with a flourish to let Callie pass, she flashed him a grateful smile and dashed on. She swerved around some sword-fighting actors and ducked a young man dangling from a tree by his ankles. He held a mirrored board to the sun to cast light on an actress's face.
Shots and angry yells rang out from the far end of the lot — safe so far, Callie thought jubilantly, slowing slightly to wipe sweat from her brow. She passed a Confederate soldier collapsing into the arms of his weeping friend while a woman in a long skirt and high-necked ruffled blouse shouted directions at him through a megaphone. Callie knew her. She had directed Callie’s friend Ruth in an adventure picture the previous summer, and had ended up drinking gin with Callie and Ruth late into the night after the premiere, crying over the fact that her beau refused to leave his wife. Callie had thought her fairly ridiculous, and now trotted past as quickly as possible lest she be spotted.
Rounding a corner, Callie came face to face with Caspar Gabor and thought her heart would cease functioning on the spot.
An enormous bear of a man with a shattered nose and cauliflower ears. Gabor was ostensibly head of production at Players Incorporated, but everyone knew his true role was as studio head Esme Holt's eyes and years. His position — and rumoured extremely generous salary — was in view of the fact that (so it was said) he had saved Esme's fiancé Archie Tanner's life, in a brawl in New York many years previously. The three had been a team ever since and had travelled out west together in 1909, amongst the first film pioneers to flee Thomas Edison's draconian patents and establish a sleepy ranching community in California as the centre of the picture industry.
Heart hammering, Callie ducked behind a couple of workmen carrying a beautifully painted backdrop of Ancient Rome. Marching in step with them, shielded by the Coliseum, she made it all the way to the workshop behind the white clapboard mansion that dominated the studio lot.
'Archie Tanner — has anyone seen him? He was supposed to be here hours ago.'
A flustered assistant director wrung his hands, peering into corners as though the actor would magically appear in a tree or under a pile of costumes. The AD had been squiring her friend Lillian around for the past few weeks, and just the previous evening, Callie had cornered him at a beach cook out to ask him about helping her get on the lot. He had primly replied that she ought to write in to the studio managers just like everyone else, which had made her even more determined to make it in today. She had always believed that contacts were one's only hope of getting anywhere in the picture business, but lately it seemed as though she knew entirely too many people in Hollywood.
She held her breath, willing him to carry on his way without looking in her direction. When he finally disappeared around a corner, Callie peered out of the workshop and carefully scanned the bustling crowd. No sign of Gabor or any of his security minions. She spied the old converted cowshed that was her destination, took a deep breath, and sprinted.