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Actually, as I was to learn later when he became my valued friend and teacher, my voluble new acquaintance, whom we can call Rivers, was a conscientious, thoroughly informed student of trees and their therapy. He had been graduated by one of the big-company training schools and now had a thriving organization and practice of his own near Albany. At this first meeting of ours, he played up the picaresque just to get his profession some public notice. As things turned out, instead of a screen drama, what he got was a disciple. It so happened that just when Rivers entered my life I had been casting about to find a new story-line for one of the more two-fisted, daredevil screen actors of that day. As Rivers talked I formed this wondrous thought: why not, in a first act, send our Hollywood he-man up into the trees, keep him there for three acts, chucking rocks at him, finally let him down into the heroine's arms. In such a novel setting, with a lot of unfamiliar tools, rope tricks, and lingo, and any quantity of scary, offbeat camera angles, the picture would be sure-fire. |
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