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The Life of a Lousy Extra 253 Albert V. Ballin* c The Life of a Lousy Extra YES, I AM one of the thousands of those classed as “Extra Talent” who swarm and buzz around the casting offices of Movie Studios. I do not know how this term originated but I suspect it was invented as a sarcasm and derision, and it stuck ever since. As often happens, I have to get up at an ungodly hour, hurry and call at the Studio at seven in the morning. If late, my call would be cancelled. As I live in the heart of Los Angeles, it is quite a task to make the long, tortuous journey and to arrive on time at the distant suburb. At the first corner I have to wait for the street signal “Stop” to change to “Go” before crossing. Seeing no cop around, I take chances and dash ahead. You remember that I was hurled out by a measly little Ford sedan; and laid out flat in the hospital for some weeks a year or so back. Since then I could not decide which saved my life, the hardness of my skull or the over crowded condition in Hades. Confident, however, that such facts still exist, I take the risk regularly without any mishap to date. I came to the station two blocks way in two minutes, but then I have to trot two full block-lengths through the depot to reach the end where I buy my ticket; then retrace my steps zig-zag down through a maze of labyrinths to the point exactly a dozen feet below the upper street entrance to board my car. Invariably I arrive at the platform in time to wave a tearful farewell to the grinning conductor of his departing car. Thereafter I have to loiter a quarter or half an hour for the next car, thinking and wondering how the idea of building a stairway directly from the street above to the platform, as they have it in dear lil old New York subways, could have missed the ponderous brains of the great Pacific Electric Railway Company. Perhaps this idea would interfere with the rental of stores in the depot above. At last the next car started with me as one of its peevish passengers through the short tunnel. In passing along the dingy landscape I am always trying to learn the names of the streets, but the town is so ashamed of them that they hide themselves with tiny letters painted on small shingles away from your approach only at two corners For Albert V. Ballin’s biography, please see p. 236. “The Life of a Lousy Extra” is from The Silent Worker 40, no. 9 (June 1928). 254 Albert V. Ballin diagonically opposite. You are lucky if you can decipher one or two by suddenly twisting your neck as you whiz away. Don’t ask any conductor wearing fewer than two gilt bars on his sleeve representing over ten years of service; otherwise he will drop you a whole mile beyond or behind your destination. By luck, I stepped off at my right street at Cahvenga Pass to find the bus I am to board gone three and a quarter seconds ago. Not another expected for a whole hour. At the corner I wave an imploring appeal for a lift in deaf, dumb and blind hurrying autos. Usually it is the fiftieth car which stops and compassionately notices my shivering self and condescends to take me in. In about ten minutes I am brought to the studio gate, trembling for my cherished $7.50 check for that day’s work. I was twenty-five minutes late; but, thanks to goodness, there was an immense crowd ahead of me thronging the casting office window. I fell in line, crawled step by step until I arrived at the pigeon hole opening in the window. The officer behind it stared stonily at me and shook his head, signifying that I was not listed at all! O miserere miei! Some minutes later I espied Billy, the assistant director who promised me the job the previous day. He was very sorry. He forgot all about me. He had five million things on his mind. He will fix it all right for the next day. This I have to go through like rigmaroles many a time with all shades of difference in details. At last I came with a pass duly made...

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