Film Tempo

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Norman Dean, an impersonator in a cheap show, is told by a moving picture extra that movie companies are paying $100 a week for "types." Dean's act is a "flivver'' and the manager so informs him. Dean quits, with the idea of becoming a picture actor at a hundred per. He applies to the Titan Moving Picture Company for a job and is put on as extra at $5 a day. Dean goes with the company to Leadville, where he makes an impression on Charlotte Biggs, a susceptible small-town girl. He borrows Buck's best cowpuncher regalia and sundry other adornments from different actors and succeeds in making the infatuated little country girl believe that he is playing leads in big productions only and is the real thing in the actor line. Charlotte admires Buck Parvin, but Dean fixes Buck's case by telling Charlotte that he is only a cowboy and not the sort of a man she ought to know; that he has no "film tempo." Charlotte doesn't understand the last allegation, but it conveys the absence of a mysterious something in Buck which puts him out of Dean's class and awakens a feeling of compassion for him in her sentimental nature. Dean has a regular system of borrowing anything which he hasn't the ability or inclination to acquire for himself: money, smokes, clothes, and is cussed for his "crust." The day the picture is finished, he borrows ten from everyone who will lend to him and the men discover over a farewell crap game that they have all been worked. Charlie Dupree says he saw Dean buying two tickets for Los Angeles and Buck remembers a meeting between Dean and Charlotte in the park, so he leaves the crowd to go out and confirm his suspicions. Buck discovers the elopers at the depot, waiting for the limited and with a few well chosen and apparently innocent remarks concerning Dean's wife, induces the girl to repent before it is too late. Then he forcibly persuades Dean to "vamoose" and sees the misled Charlotte home. She confides her appreciation of Buck, "even if Dean said he didn't have any 'film tempo.'" This puzzles Buck and he doesn't see the joke until Monty tells him that "film tempo" means "timing your action." Then he concludes that Dean was mistaken and that there was nothing the matter with the way he timed his action at the depot.