And there were close-ups of Metta Judson, who had never seriously contemplated a screen career, placing upon the table a tower of steaming hot cakes, while a platter of small sausages loomed eloquently in the foreground.
With eyes closed he would run this film again and again, cutting here, rearranging sequences, adding trims from suddenly remembered meals of the dead past, devising more intimate close-ups, such as the one of Metta withdrawing pies from the oven or smoothing hot chocolate caressingly over the top of a giant cake, or broiling chops, or saying in a large-lettered subtitle--artistically decorated with cooked foods--"How about some hot coffee, Merton ?" He became an able producer of this drama.

He devised a hundred sympathetic little touches that Henshaw would probably never have thought of.

He used footage on a mere platter of steak that another director might have ignored utterly.

He made it gripping--the supreme heart-interest drama of his season a big thing done in a big way, and yet censor-proof.

Not even the white-souled censors of the great state of Pennsylvania could have outlawed its realism, brutal though this was in such great moments as when Gashwiler carved the roast beef.