the
Golden West Animal Education Studios on Sunset Boulevard. While they
waited Mr. Untz stood aside with Harold Potter. He mopped his brow--he
gestured at the whole group. "This," he said, "is the story of my
life."

"It is?" asked Harold.

Mr. Untz nodded. "Me, I am an expert on musicals. Musicals I can do
with my left hand. But ever since I am in Hollywood I do everything
_but_ a musical. And always something gets fouled up. Always there is
trouble. You will not believe this, Harold, but I am an unhappy man."

"I believe it," said Harold.

Mr. Untz looked at him sharply and said, "You don't have to believe it
so quickly. You could give me a chance to explain."

"Look," said Harold--now being truly interested and forgetting some of
the first principles of buttering-up one's boss, "take the scientific
attitude. Everything is _relative_."

"Yes," said Mr. Untz, "In Hollywood everything is relatives, believe
me."

"No, no--I wasn't referring to nepotism," said Harold. "I was thinking
that you and many others, of course, prefer musicals. But there are
vast other groups who prefer westerns, detectives, comedies or what
have you. One man's meat is another's poison.

"But nourishment stays the same in principle. The artistic demands
still hold and a good picture is a picture, whatever its field. Now,
if you, as a producer, can shift to the other fellow's viewpoint--find
out why the thing that terrifies you amuses him--or vice versa."

"Harold," said Mr. Untz, not without suspicion, "are you an assistant
producer or a philosopher?"

"Sometimes to be the one," sighed Harold, "you have to be the other."

The big jungle cage arrived presently. While it was being set up
another assistant came to Mr. Untz and said, "Jimsy LaRoche is
outside, yelling to get in, Mr. Untz."

Mr. Untz whirled on the assistant and said, "Tell that overpaid
brat--who I personally didn't want in my picture in the first
place--tell him in the second place the President of the United States
could not get in here this afternoon. No, wait a minute, that wouldn't
mean anything to him--he makes more money than the President. Just
tell him no."

"Yes, sir," said the assistant. He left.

About then the animal trainer, Etienne Flaubert, was admitted. He
walked right up to Mr. Untz. Flaubert was nearly seven feet tall. He
had tremendous shoulders and none of it was coat padding. He had a
chest one might have gone over Niagara Falls in. He had a