Summary
A dust-laden sunbeam cuts across the creaking floorboards of a provincial shack where Sis—skinny as a wishbone and twice as brittle—hushes her hunger with daydreams stitched from flickering nickelodeon light. Ostracized by smock-and-hobble farm kids who sling mud at her orphanage hem, she nurses a voracity for the limelight, a craving sharper than the thistle that scars her ankles. Fortune, capricious muse, arrives in the guise of a rattling excursion train; she vaults aboard, pockets rattling with copper coins and a single sepia photo of a mother she never met. The city greets her with a charcoal sky, clang of streetcars, and the mildewed grandeur of a theatrical boardinghouse where greasepaint ghosts prowl the corridors. By day she scrubs crusted pots and scours spit-shined boots; by night she absorbs thespian cadences seeping through floorboard fissures, memorizing the rise and fall of voices like rosary beads. Jim—matinee idol, all jawline and cigarette haze—stumbles upon her reciting his soliloquy while pushing a broom; he hears cathedral resonance in her throat, sees starlight in her sclera. Rehearsals become clandestine tutorials: he coaches breath control with a hand on her diaphragm, she teaches him how to counterfeit joy by thinking of birds taking off in fright. Their chemistry combusts just as Flossie’s diamond brooch vanishes; suspicion ricochets through the halls like a bullet in a cathedral. Sis, perpetually the outsider, is fingered by a tribunal of whispers. Ned—wan, out-of-work, marooned in gin—hides the trinket in his shoe to pawn for rent, but Jim’s sleuthing unearths the truth in a backstage trunk scented with mothballs and regret. Exonerated, Sis is thrust under the calcium glare when Flossie collapses in a fever of envy; she steps into the ingénue’s tulle, delivers a performance that liquefies the proscenium arch, and exits to a roar that rattles her ribcage. In the hush that follows, Jim confesses love not with sonnets but with the trembling admission that she has outshone every phantom he ever chased.
Synopsis
Sis, a poor orphaned country girl, is shunned by all the other children in the small town where she lives. It is Sis's ambition to become a famous actress, and when an opportunity arises for her to go the city, she seizes it. There she secures a position as a maid in a theatrical boardinghouse. Among the boarders are Jim, a leading man; Ned, an out of work actor; and Flossie, an ingenue. One morning while rehearsing, Jim sees Sis sweeping the floor and persuades the girl to help him rehearse his lines. Her acting talent astonishes him, and he begins to see real promise in her. Sis's future looks grim, however, when she is accused of stealing Flossie's jewelry. Sis is saved by Jim who discovers that Ned is the real thief. Upon Sis's release, Flossie is taken ill and Sis fills in for her on stage, becoming an instant success. Sis's happiness is then made complete when Jim pledges his love to her.
