The Early Ayn Rand

"No luck around the studios, eh?" she asked sympathetically, seeing Claire's eyes. "It's tough, kid, that's what it is, tough. I know." Then she brightened suddenly. "Say, want a bit of work for tomorrow?"

Claire jumped to her feet as if her life depended on it.

"You see," the girl was explaining, "they got a big crowd tomorrow morning and my friend, the propman, got me in and I'm sure he can fix it up for you too."

"Oh, yes!" Claire gasped. "Oh, yes, please!"

"The call's for eight in the morning — ready and made-up on the set. We'll have to be at the studio at six-thirty. I'll go phone the boy friend, but I'm sure it'll be okay."

She was turning to leave the room, when Claire asked:

"What studio is it and what picture?"

"The Wonder-Pictures Studio," the girl answered. "Child of Danger, you know, their big special with that new star of theirs — Heddy Leland."

Claire Nash sat, shivering with cold, in the corner of a bus. Snorting and groaning, the bus rambled on its way to the studio through the dark, empty, desolate streets of early morning. The bus shook like a cocktail shaker on wheels, jumbling its passengers against one another, throwing them up at each rut, to fall and bounce upon the sticky leather seats. All the passengers had the same destination — with their tired faces and old, greasy makeup boxes.

Claire felt cold and broken. Her eyelids felt like cotton and closed themselves against her will. She thought dully, dimly, through the crazy unreality around her, that a director, a real director, would know genius when he saw it.

She was still thinking it as she trudged wearily through the gates of the Wonder-Pictures Studio. Claire Nash had worked for seven years on the Wonder-Pictures lot. But it was for the first time in her life that she entered it through the shabby side-gate of the "Extra Talent Entrance." She kept her head bowed cautiously and her scarf under her nose, not to be recognized. She soon found that she had nothing to fear: no one could pick her out in the dismal stampede of gray shadows streaming past the casting office window; no one could and no one showed any inclination to try. The boy in the window handed her her work ticket without raising his head or looking at her. "Hurry up!" her companion prodded her impatiently, and Claire started running with the others in the mad rush to the wardrobe.

Three stern-faced, gloomy-eyed, frozen individuals in shirtsleeves stood behind a wooden counter, distributing the extras' costumes. They fished the first rags they could reach out of three hampers filled with filthy junk and pushed them across the counter into uncomplaining hands. When Claire's turn came, the lordly individual threw at her something heavy, huge, discolored, with dirty pieces of faded gold ribbon, with a smell of stale makeup and perspiration. "Your ticket?" he ordered briefly, extending his hand for it.

"I don't like this costume," Claire declared, horrified.

The man looked at her incredulously.

"Well, isn't that just too bad!" he observed, seized her ticket, punched it, and turned, with an armful of rags, to the next woman in line.

The extras' dressing room was cold as a cellar, colder than the frozen air outside. With stiff fingers, Claire undressed and struggled into her costume. She looked into a mirror and closed her eyes. Then, with an effort, she looked again: the huge garment could have contained easily three persons of her size; the thick folds gathered clumsily into a lump on her stomach; she tried to adjust them, but they slipped right back to her stomach again; she was awkward, obese, disfigured.

Suffocating, she sat down on a wooden bench before a little crooked mirror on a filthy, unpainted wooden counter — to make up her face. But she knew little about screen makeup and had long since forgotten what she had known. For the last seven years she had had her own expert makeup man who knew how to correct the little defects of her face. Now she realized suddenly that her eyes were a little too narrow; that her cheeks were a little too broad; that she had a slight double chin. She sat twisting the greasy tube helplessly in her fingers, trying to remember and do the best she could.

Around her, the big barrack was full of busy, noisy, hurrying and gossiping females. She saw half-naked, shivering bodies and flabby muscles, vapor fluttering from mouths with every word, barbarian tunics and underwear — not very clean underwear.

She was about to rise when a strong hand pushed her down again.

"What's the hurry, dearie? Put on yar wig, willya?"

A short, plump girl in a blue smock stood before her, with hairpins in her mouth and in her hand something that looked like the fur of a very unsanitary poodle.

"That... for me?" Claire gasped. "But... but I'm blond! I... I can't wear a black wig!"