Book Description

Mr. Milton Smith, Executive Vice President in Charge of Production, was in conference. A half dozen men lounged comfortably in deep, soft chairs and divans about his large, well-appointed office in the B.O. studio. Mr. Smith had a chair behind a big desk, but he seldom occupied it. He was an imaginative, dramatic, dynamic person. He required freedom and space in which to express himself. His large chair was too small; so he paced about the office more often than he occupied his chair, and his hands interpreted his thoughts quite as fluently as did his tongue. "It's bound to be a knock-out," he assured his listeners; "no synthetic jungle, no faked sound effects, no toothless old lions that every picture fan in the U. S. knows by their first names. No, sir! This will be the real thing." A secretary entered the room and closed the door behind her. "Mr. Orman is here," she said. "Good! Ask him to come in, please." Mr. Smith rubbed his palms together and turned to the others. "Thinking of Orman was nothing less than an inspiration," he exclaimed. "He's just the man to make this picture." "Just another one of your inspirations, Chief," remarked one of the men. "They've got to hand it to you." Another, sitting next to the speaker, leaned closer to him. "I thought you suggested Orman the other day," he whispered. "I did," said the first man out of the corner of his mouth. Again the door opened, and the secretary ushered in a stocky, bronzed man who was greeted familiarly by all in the room. Smith advanced and shook hands with him. "Glad to see you, Tom," he said. "Haven't seen you since you got back from Borneo. Great stuff you got down there. But I've got something bigger still on the fire for you. You know the clean-up Superlative Pictures made with their last jungle picture?" "How could I help it; it's all I've heard since I got back. Now I suppose everybody's goin' to make jungle pictures." "Well, there are jungle pictures and jungle pictures. We're going to make a real one. Every scene in that Superlative picture was shot inside a radius of twenty-five miles from Hollywood except a few African stock shots, and the sound effects—lousy!" Smith grimaced his contempt.