American Dreams (16 page)

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Banquo. Fritzi caught him wrinkling his nose. She assumed it was professional jealousy. On the theater's ladder of status, he was only a featured actor, not a leading man or star.

During the lunch break she wandered into the theater's green room, where she found Mrs. Van Sant examining photographs of scenery.

Will you look at these?' the older actress exclaimed. 'I thought we were to have original designs. No! He's hauling this rubbish out of some warehouse.'

She thrust a photo at Fritzi. i ask you, darling. Is that a blasted heath? It's a garden drop left over from some silly operetta. The shrubs are trimmed. On a Scottish moor we have trimmed shrubs, for God's sake! I was a fool to agree to this engagement.'

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Fritzi examined the photo, then another of a unit set which included high rostrums stage right and left, and an even higher one center. Ramps zigzagged up the side of each; from the top, ladders and steps went up to notched battlements. In the lower face of each rostrum was a curtained arch. Mrs. Van Sant led the witness:

'Horrible, isn't it?'

'All those levels and ladders look dangerous.'

'Of course it's dangerous. This is the most dangerous play Shakespeare ever wrote. Twenty-six short scenes, one change after another. Nearly everything happens at night, so the lighting's always wretched. Thirty actors in armor rush about with swords, dodging scenery movers, marching and counter-marching with prop trees and hacking at each other --

how could there not be accidents?' From her silver handbag she took a cheroot and matchbox. 'Care for a smoke?'

'No, thank you.'

Mrs. Van Sant lit up. 'What's your name again, dear?'

'Frederica Crown, but I'm called Fritzi.'

,'Frankly, Fritzi, I don't believe a lot of the superstition attached to Mac-- our play. But I don't tempt Old Nick, either. I observe the rules as

a courtesy. One never knows. Very nice to make your acquaintance, dear.

We'll chat again.'

She sailed out, cheroot in her teeth, leaving a wake of blue smoke.

Very quickly the actors began to gossip.

'Doesn't Mrs. Van Sant have the most fantastic wardrobe?' Sally Murphy gushed to Fritzi and Ida. 'I suppose her lovers provide most of it.

She's had three or four husbands, including Brutus Brown.'

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Striving

Mr. Scarboro became a target of backbiting. He had an ego as big as Mrs. Van Sant's, without her credentials. He treated everyone but the two stars haughtily. Fritzi thought his English accent peculiar.

'Because it's phony,' said Mr. Allardyce, an elderly red-nosed actor playing the Porter. He sucked mints to mask a constant aura of gin.

'Name's Louie Scalisi. Bridgeport, Connecticut.'

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Late on Thursday, Manchester rushed off to the costumer's, leaving the actors at liberty for a half hour. Fritzi again went to the green room.

She was pouring coffee from a pot on the gas ring when Daniel Jervis, a fair-haired young man playing Malcolm, walked in whistling 'Hello, My Baby.'

Scarboro flung down his copy of a new trade paper called Variety. 'You stupid little bastard, don't you know better than to whistle in a theater?'

That outraged Fritzi's sense of fair play. 'Oh, come on, Mr. Scarboro. I know he shouldn't do it, but that's no way to talk to a fellow actor'

'Who asked you, Miss Nobody?' Scarboro was flushed, sweating - terrified.

'When you whistle up the Devil, he comes. Especially in this play.

Someone will pay for your mistake, Jervis.'

Mrs. Van Sant had just arrived, and Scarboro bumped her as he rushed out. Daniel Jervis withdrew to a corner, mortified. «?.

Mr. O'Moore, a grizzled actor playing the thankless part of Ross, lit his pipe and said, 'So. In addition to our peerless star, we have a second believer in the dark powers.'

'Lot of rubbish,' said Mr. Denham, Macduff. He rattled his London Times to emphasize his opinion. Fortyish, Mr. Denham had served in the British army in India. He resumed his reading.

Mrs. Van Sant drew Fritzi aside. 'Decent of you to stand up for the lad.'

'Mr. Scarboro's a boor.'

'We agree on that. I wonder, would you care to join me for tea on Sunday?'

'AttheAstor?'

'I wasn't thinking of the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, dear. Shall we say four o'clock? When I'm at leisure, I never rise before two.'

Manchester returned a few minutes later. Fritzi was standing with Mr.

O'Moore behind a stage left tormentor, waiting for the rehearsal to resume.

A faint sound made O'Moore look up. 'Get out of the way!'

He rolled his shoulder into her and knocked her off her feet. She landed Confessions

97

painfully on her spine and rear. Dazed, she sat up. The stage manager,
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Simkins, ran to her. 'What happened?'

A few feet away, visible to Fritzi between the toes of her shoes, was a large sandbag counterweight tied to a length of frayed rope. What had happened was clear. Up in the fly gallery the rope had snapped. Simkins lifted the bag. 'Blasted thing .must weigh fifty pounds.'

O'Moore clasped Fritzi's hand to help her stand. 'Anything broken?'

'Don't think so.'

Simkins said, 'I'll speak to the cheapskates who own this theater. Get

'em to inspect every rope and piece of machinery.'

'Scarboro predicted something like this, didn't he?' O'Moore said.

18 Confessions

wt

'hen Mrs. Van Sant woke, she felt low. Last night that bastard Charlie had deserted her. Quit his bellhop job and left without notice with a

kitchen girl. Hadn't even written a note. She'd heard about it from the staff.

¦»

She poured the remainder of a bottle of Mumm's into her bath water, i *

reclined, and idly read a few pages of Freud's book on the interpretation f

of dreams. She liked to delve into unusual or advanced ideas, but this afternoon the Viennese doctor couldn't seduce her. She looked forward to four, when the frizzy-haired Miss Crown, an undernourished but likable young person, would take tea with her.

Like Hobart Manchester, Eustacia Van Sant was self-created. She'd been born Sophie Zalinsky, in Liverpool. Her father, a woolens draper, never made much money and died when Sophie was ten. At fifteen she went to London, soon after being deflowered by her mother's landlord.

Battling through a succession of tiny roles, she purged her vocabulary of Scouse, the Liverpool argot, and her voice of the Merseyside accent. She learned to speak like an Oxford don's wife. Success came slowly, but it came, because she would have it no other way.

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Fritzi was waiting downstairs at the correct hour. Eustacia led them into

«*

the opulent Astor restaurant done, and overdone, in Beaux Arts style. It was

' >

spacious, with a high ceiling, many potted palms and ferns, and a live pea cock

in a gilded cage. A string quartet murdered 'The Merry Widow Waltz.'

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Striving

The head waiter ushered them to a remote table. 'Are you going to smoke, madam?'

'Yes, Viktor, I am going to smoke.'

'I do apologize,' he said as he set up a three-panel screen. To Fritzi he explained, 'We simply can't allow a woman to be seen using tobacco.'

'You colonials are so bloody puritanical.' Eustacia settled herself. 'Well, dear, how nice to see you.'

'Thank you, Mrs. Van Sant, I'm delighted you asked me. Sundays are always quiet.'

'Please, dear. Call me Eustacia. It's a privilege I reserve for those I like.'

She poured tea from a china pot painted with small blue flowers.

'All right,' Fritzi said, 'thank you.'

'You're doing well in your part. Need a little more authority, though.'

'So Mr. Manchester advised me yesterday.'

'Trust him. The old gas bag knows his craft, even if he can't keep books or stay within a budget. Are you getting on well with the company?'

'With most of them, yes. Do you know that Mr. Scarboro apologized for calling me Miss Nobody?'

Eustacia beamed. 'Indeed. Give me every detail.'

She did, concluding, "I can't imagine what brought him to it.'

'Oh, I can, dear. I took the preening ass aside and told him that unless he did, I'd speak to Manchester and arrange for him to be cast at once in another play we're all familiar with. It's called "At Liberty."' She guffawed, poured a second spoonful of sugar into her tea, and lit a cheroot with a flourish.

A miasmic blue cloud soon hung about the table. Tendrils trailed over
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the screen. A gentleman invisible to them coughed violently.

Fritzi said, 'May I ask where Mr. Van Sant lives?'

'There isn't any Mr. Van Sant. He exists solely in programs, and the imagination of my audiences. I have been married thrice, but Mr. Van Sant is an invention. Ever so helpful in discouraging undesirables at the stage door'

'That's delicious.'

'It's necessary because I have a following. I'm not being conceited, it's true. I am what is called a personality actor. Audiences do not come to see a fine talent personating Lady You-know; they come to see Eustacia pretending to be her. Sometimes they come merely to see Eustacia's frocks. For this engagement I brought thirty-five ensembles from England.'

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She quizzed the young lady about her background. Fritzi described her family, and the General's anger when she left Chicago.

'You'll show him, won't you, dear?' She swigged more champagne. 'I say, this is jolly. Help me finish the cucumber sandwiches, and we'll continue in my suite. Viktor? There you are, dear. Please send a cold bottle of '', Mumm's upstairs,

that's a love.'

*

'You gave my spirits a much needed boost this afternoon,' she said to the younger actress. 'Charlie, the chap I brought to rehearsal, left me. 1

don't choose liaisons wisely. I grew up with nothing, and tend to live thoughtlessly. That's particularly true as regards men. Bernard Shaw, nasty fellow, once told me I take men the way ordinary mortals take headache powders. Frequently, for immediate relief.'

Fritzi laughed and nearly spilled her champagne.

'What about you? Have you a lover?'

Looking at her lap, Fritzi said, 'Not just now.'

'Surely there have been some, you're very personable.'

'I'm afraid personable isn't enough.' A bronze boy on the mantel clock \ struck a bronze gong
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with a bronze hammer: half past five. The suite

|

faced east on Broadway, and Fritzi noticed it had grown dark as the sun sank beyond the Hudson.

'I'm homely, Eustacia.'

i

'Nonsense, you're quite attractive.'

'I'm homely and I know it. Too skinny.'

'Then eat more.'

'Oh, I've tried. I stuff myself and put on a few pounds, but then I get busy, or run out of money, or I'm in some greasy hotel serving vile food and I can't stand to do it.' Fritzi touched her bosom. 'Anyway, food doesn't help here. Too flat.'

'From the vantage point of someone overburdened in that department, it looks fine to me, dear.'

'Gay deceivers.' Fritzi covered her mouth. 'I can't believe I'm saying these things.'

'It's the champagne. Have some more. And don't be misled. Bosoms are overrated. A big prow cannot guarantee happiness. Remember Charlie, that ungrateful little sod.' She heaved a long, maudlin sigh. 'People think it's such a bloody glamorous life, the theater. Really it's lonely.'

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Striving

Fritzi said, 'I've found it so. In the theater you make a thousand acquaintances but very few lasting friends.'

'Well, you have one now. Yes, indeed.' She reached over to pat Fritzi's hand, pleased and warmed by the surprise and delight on the young woman's face. She reeled up from her chair. 'I'll ring down for another bottle. Where's the telephone?'

'Oh, thank you, I don't think I can--'

'Some light supper, too. It goes on Hobart's bill. If he objects I'll sit on him. He won't soon get over that^ Eustacia bellowed, slapping her rump.

She and Fritzi laughed like schoolgirl chums - naughty ones.

19 Reunions

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Cunard's Lusitania, the world's largest ship, brought Paul into New York harbor. He thrilled again to the statue he'd seen for the first time in 1892.

At the Hudson pier he supervised the unloading of trunks holding camera equipment, raw stock, and a dozen copies of the British edition of/ Witness History. Cleared through customs, he hired an electric taxi to haul everything to the New York Central terminal, then telephoned Fritzi at the theater number. She came on the line against a background of yelling and banging she assured him was just a sword fight in rehearsal.

'Is that really you, Pauli, you're here?'

'Yes, but I have to catch a train tonight. Could we have a quick supper beforehand?'

They met in a restaurant at Times Square, hugging joyously before they settled down at the table. Paul apologized for leaving so quickly; he would be traveling when Macbeth opened. 'I'll be sure to see it when I come back to New York to sail home.'

A chunky, well-set-up man about Paul's age hailed him and approached the table. Paul stood. 'Fritzi, let me present an old friend of mine, Bill Bitzer. We met in Cuba. Billy's a cameraman too.'

'The Biograph studio,' Bitzer said, shaking Fritzi's hand.

'Fritzi's in a play at the moment,' Paul said.

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'Shakespeare,' she pointed out.

'That's swell,' Bitzer said. 'If you ever need some extra work, drop down to Fourteenth Street, I'll introduce you. It's great pay. Five dollars for a day's work. You're mostly out in the open, we shoot a lot on the roof.'

'Thank you, Mr. Bitzer, but I'm afraid stage actors don't have time for the moving pictures.'