THE END
THE FIREFLY OF FRANCE
_By_ MARION POLK ANGELLOTTI
This is not a story of laughter or tears, of shock or depression. It has no manufactured gloom. It preaches no reform. It has not a single social problem around which the characters move and argue and agonize. No reader need lie awake at night wondering what the author meant; all she intends to convey goes over the top with the first sight of the printed words. The story invites the reader to be thrilled, and dares him (or her) to weep.
Briefly, "The Firefly of France" is in the manner of the romance--in the manner of Dumas, of Walter Scott. It is a story of love, mystery, danger, and daring. It opens in the gorgeous St. Ives Hotel in New York and ends behind the Allied lines in France. The story gets on its way on the first page, and the interest is continuous and increasing until the last page.
And it is all beautifully done.
The Philadelphia Record says: "No more absorbing romance of the war has been written than "The Firefly of France." In a sprightly, spontaneous way the author tells a story that is pregnant with the heroic spirit of the day. There is a blending of mystery, adventure, love and high endeavor that will charm every reader."
FILM FOLK
"Close-ups" of the Men, Women and Children who make the "Movies."
_By_ ROB WAGNER
A book of humor and entertaining facts. It is a sort of Los Angeles Canterbury Tales wherein appears the stories, told in the first person, of the handsome film actor whose beauty is fatal to his comfort; of the child wonder; the studio mother; the camera man, who "shoots the films"; the scenario writer; the "extra" man and woman, whose numbers are as the sands of the sea; the publicity man, who "rings the bells," etc., etc.
All the stories are located in or near Los Angeles, a section more densely populated with makers of "movies" than any other section on earth. The author lives there, he has been in sympathetic contact with these votaries of this new art since its beginning, and his statements are entirely trustworthy.
"Film Folk" is not a series of actual biographies of individuals; the author in each case presents an actor, a director or one of the other characters for the sake of concreteness and to carry out the story-form, and he contrives to set forth in the course of the book the entire movie-making world. The reader gets a clear idea of how the films are made and he is immensely entertained with the accounts of the manners and customs of the inhabitants of the vast movie villages--manners and customs unique in many respects.
The stories are told in a style as easy to read as the author is good-humored.