The Early Ayn Rand

The thing whose narrow door carried the faded sign CASTING OFFICE was not a building, was not even a shack. It was a dump heap of old boards, upon which no one had wanted to waste the precaution of beams or the courtesy of paint. It seemed to announce silently for whose entrance it had been designed and what the studio thought of those who entered here. Claire had not turned that corner for many years. She stopped, because she thought unreasonably that someone had just slapped her in the face. Then she shrugged, not quite so gaily, and entered.

The room before her had a floor, a ceiling, four walls, and two wooden benches. All these must have been clean sometime, Claire thought, but she doubted it. Without looking left or right, she walked straight to the little window in the wall across the room. A blond, round-faced, short-nosed youth looked at her and yawned.

"I want to see the casting director," said Claire; she had meant to say it; she commanded, instead.

"Gotta wait your turn," the youth answered indifferently.

She sat down on the corner of a bench. She was not alone. There were others, all waiting for the casting director. A tall, red-haired girl in a tight black dress with flowing sleeves of blue chiffon, tomato-red lips, no stockings, and a slave-bracelet on the left ankle. A tall, athletic young gentleman with dark, languorous eyes, a very neat haircut, and a not so neat shirt collar. A stout woman with a red face, a mans overcoat, and a drooping ostrich plume on her hat. An assortment of short, plump little things who remained determinedly "flappers," with fat legs squeezing out of shoes many sizes too small. A sloppy woman with an overdressed child.

Claire pulled her skirt closer to her and tried to look at nothing but the window. She did not know how long she sat there. But she knew that time was passing, for she noticed the flappers producing their compacts and remaking their faces several times. She would permit herself no such vulgarity in public. She sat still. Her right leg went to sleep, from the knee down. She waited.

A door banged against a wall like an explosion. She saw the flash of a man's heavy stomach and above it the face of an angry bulldog, which, she realized in a few seconds, was the man's face after all. "Who's first?" he barked.

Claire rose hastily. Something streaked past her toward the door, hurling her aside roughly in its progress; the door was slammed before she realized that it had been one of the flappers and heard consciously the angry words left in its wake: "Wait your turn, sneak!"

Claire sat down again. She felt damp beads on her upper lip. She took out her compact and remade her face.

Her turn came an hour later. She walked into the next room slowly, conscious of the precise grace of each moving muscle, timing her entrance as carefully as if she were advancing toward a grinding camera.

"Well?" snapped the bulldog behind the desk, without raising his eyes from the papers before him.

Well, thought Claire, what did one say here? She was suddenly, utterly blank. She smiled helplessly, waiting desperately for him to raise his head; no words would be necessary then. He raised his head and looked at her blankly. "Well?" he repeated impatiently.

"I... I want to work in pictures," she stammered foolishly. It was foolish, she thought, and it was not her fault; couldn't he tell at a glance what he had before him and what he should do about it?

It seemed as if he couldn't. He wasn't even looking at her, but was pulling some paper forward.

"Ever done extra work before?"

"Extra work?"

"That's what I asked."

"Extra work?"

"Yes, madam!"

She wanted to argue, to explain, but something choked her, and what did come out of her throat was not what she had intended to say at all:

"No, I'm just beginning my career."

The man pushed the paper aside.

"I see... Well, we don't use extras who've had no previous experience."

"Extras?"

"Say, what's the matter with you? Did you mean to ask for a bit straight off the bat?"

"A... a bit?"

"Lady, we have no time to waste here." He pushed the door open with his foot. "Who's next?"

There was no reason, Claire Nash was telling herself as she walked out into the street, there was no reason to take the whole farce so seriously. No reason at all, she was saying, while she twisted the handle of her bag till she wrenched it off and went on, the bag dangling violently on a broken strap.

But she went on. She went to the Epic Pictures Studio, and three hours later saw its casting director.

"Ever been in pictures before?" the lean, weary, skeptical gentleman asked as if her answer were the last thing in the world he cared to hear.

"No!" she answered flatly, as a challenge.

"No experience?"

"But... no. No experience."

"Whatchur name?"

"Claire-Jane Roberts."