Dear Liz: Three cheers, kiddo! Hoorayeureka! I’ve discovered the place where they bury the bodies. The secret is mine. Within six months, dearie, I’ll be drawing down a thousand a week and owing more money than the national debt. I’m going to be one of the big, bigger, biggest directors.

Don’t laugh, sweetie. I know I’ve been piking my way making good pictures for a slim three hundred a week for so long that you won’t believe I can step out. But listen—I’m going to be a big leaguer if I have to wear a pillow slip on my coat lapel. Watch my errors, Liz.

I’ve diagnosed my own case—and do you know what has been responsible for the anaemia of the bankroll that has afflicted me all these years? My early training was all wrong. Every time I spend a dollar I squeeze it till the birdie cuckoos “One hundred cents!”

I guess that year I spent in school spoiled me.

I took them there copy book Maxims too seriously. You know the stuff I mean. About—“Two bits saved is a jitney earned,” and “Save the pennies and the dollars will draw four per cent.”

Well, here I’ve been in the fillum flurry a dozen years little one, before the truth dawned on me. They shoulda put silencers on them Maxims or else handed them to you with interpretations and reservations. Chief of which same is this here: “Nothing in these articles shall be construed as referring to THE BOSS’S MONEY.”

His bankroll is made to be shot; he isn’t happy unless it’s riddled. He won’t say “Good Morning” to you unless you caused him to say “Good Night, Mr. Receiver,” the day before.

I’m starting on a new picture now, Liz, and to tell the truth if I hired an oil promoter for property man I don’t think I could spend more than fifty thousand dollars making it a good picture. But I’ve learned the secret—and if I break a leg doing it I am going to take more time on this picture than George Loane Tucker needs; I’m going to spend more money than Von Stroheim; I’m going to build more sets and tear ’em down faster than Mickey Neilan at his best; I’m going to have a bigger hospital bill than a Holubar production.

If I don’t spend more than two hundred and fifty thousand on this picture I’ll be willing to take a job making LoKo comedies. Of course, two hundred and fifty thousand doesn’t put me in the class with the big boys but it’s a pretty fair start for a guy with wrong upbringing.

It was this nut Stroheim that give me the idea. You know, Liz, when this Von got through serving the time in the army that all them Heinies has to, he came here and first broke into the United States histories in the packing room of a department store. He studied stagecraft wrapping planks around “This Side Up” signs.

He musta come to Los in one of his own shipping cases for when I first saw him hanging around the studios looking for extra parts he didn’t look as though he’d ever possessed Mister Santa Fe’s price. The boys gave him a rough deal in those days—you know it wasn’t a popular time for gents with the “Von” handle on their monickers. But we had so many beastly Berlin pictures that we all had to use him. He played more German captains than there were in the Kaiser’s army.

Then one day he negotiates a ten minute loan of Carl Laemmle’s ear and comes out of the office with the title “Director.” He earned the brackets by guaranteeing to make a picture for twenty thousand, and faithfully fulfilled his promise by spending not a cent more than fifty. What’s more it was a good picture.

Universal foolishly thought the gink would be grateful for the opportunity they gave him so they turned loose the noisiest advertising and publicity they could. That queered it. He started going loco then and he’s three laps ahead of a flea-bitten coyote ever since.

Stroheim spends more money now on his own clothes than he guaranteed to make that first picture for. Out here where every director has to look like a Hartschaffner ad touched up by a futurist painter he manages to hold the jazz record. What a swath he cuts with the extra girls!

As for his pictures—if he reaches a cent less than five hundred thousand on this “Foolish Wives” he’s making now he’ll probably be so peeved he’ll try hari-kari. Why, do you know, Liz, he’s spent enough money building Monte Carlo’s up at Monterey to relieve the housing shortage in six states!

Do I blame him? Not a bit. If he didn’t toss the coin that way people wouldn’t believe he was one of the biggest directors. His company would probably fire him for getting old-fashioned. Then they’d bail Ponzi and put him on the payroll.

Once you hadda put a close-up in every ten feet to be ranked an up-to-date director; now you have to find new ways for filling up the Home for Incurably Insane Cashiers.

Another fellow whose boss has to make the money with a machine is this here fellow Holubar. I think that Holubar and Stroheim musta formed some sorta grudge when they hung out together on the Universal lot. Now they take it out on the boss by racing neck and neck on the Expenditure Extravaganza.

Holubar’s just finished his first independent feature starring his wife, Dorothy Phillips. “Man, Woman and Marriage” they calls it. Al Kaufman, who supplied the money, must agree that this married life is expensive. Here’s one way they ran head-long into the subtreasury, Liz:

Holubar decides that a little prehistoric stuff showing a battle of the Amazons with the Male Brutes would be good stuff. So five hundred horses and five hundred dames are hired and turned loose for the action. The janes are in the near-nude, and beside you can’t expect that many girls in one city to know how to handle horses, so quite a few of them take a tumble when the battle reaches the rough stage. The first thing you know the ambulances are chasing to the Holubar lot as though they belonged in the story.

Continuity calls for the women losing the battle for the obvious reason disclosed when a later scene shows three hundred of them nursing babies. A hurry call is sent out for three hundred infants willing to yawl a few hours for the movies. How that assistant director got ’em I don’t know—but he did.

“Shucks,” says someone then. “Now we gotta get three hundred women to nurse the infantry.” That was a tough assignment—but some miracle worker produced the women.

Do you know what happened then, Liz? The kids went on strike! They might be of the nursing age but hang it, they were particular where and when they nursed And they had no sympathy for the battery of cameras anxious to grind.

All was at a standstill. What could be done? Then a clever chap who deserves a Croix de Gerry Society had an idea. A few whispered words, hurried telephone call, truck load of honey arrives. Honey applied to the proper spot, youngsters start to work with a will. Cameras click.

Isn’t it a great life in the West, Liz?—Your own ex-chauffeur friend, Bill.

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