The theme was of a cow-boy, born in England, revisiting his early home. Considering the Atlantic, I am not sure he would have come home on a buck-jumper with all his toggery on; but a producer knows exactly what audiences want. A film (I learned) requires ‘love interest’: so a pair of Stars made love outside the Hall House door. And an old inhabitant who came along, was so shamed at their brazenness that he could only gasp out, “Well, Now, There.”
There is a Wreyland theme that would have made as good a film. It is a story of John Dynham, who was lord of the manor here from 1381 to 1428; and, though it cannot be entirely true, it embodies some undoubted facts. Briefly, the Bishop of Exeter admonished him, for the avoidance of scandal, to cease from visiting the lady Isotta, even in the daytime; and as this had no effect, he excommunicated him. Dynham appealed to the Archbishop, which took up a year, and then he appealed to the Pope, which took up two years more: by which time he had voluntarily ceased from visiting the lady Isotta and was visiting the lady Muriel.
Films are dreary things when seen upon a screen; but the making of a film is as good as a play. You hear the heroine told to put more passion into it and look really moved, and then you see her putting in passion and looking really moved. And the villain who kidnaps her, is told to spring out like a tiger and put a sack over her head; and he springs out as like a tiger as he can, and there is no need for telling her to struggle and scream: she does that automatically when the sack drags down her hair. Theatrical rehearsals may be just as funny; but I do not see rehearsals on the stage.
I may just mention here that I was not the author of a Gaiety burlesque called _Cinder-Ellen up too late_. (Ellen was Nellie Farren, and the whole thing was a skit on _Cinderella up to date_.) Fred Leslie wrote it and also acted in it, and he took the pseudonym of ‘Actor’ but had it printed ‘A. C. Torr.’ He also wrote _Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué_, and (I think) some other Gaiety burlesques, with this same pseudonym of A. C. Torr; and people who knew me very slightly, assumed that I had written it all, although the style was not a bit like mine.