American Dreams (35 page)

'Hello, Miss Epsom,' he said as he let himself into the anteroom and shook off again. Miss Epsom, a spinster of fifty, greeted him with a polite nod and, when his back was turned, brushed droplets of water from her cheek. 'Has he arrived?'

'Twenty minutes ago, sir.'

Paul hung up his hat and umbrella and set a course for the inner door.

'Will you bring us tea?'

'Certainly, at once. I will say the young man doesn't strike me as a proper tea drinker'

Persistent back trouble, and Julie's gentle persuasion, had finally convinced Paul that he should hire a helper. The applicant waiting in his office was the seventeenth person to answer the advertisement; he'd rejected the first sixteen. Two were outright dunces, several were hungry but not really interested in the picture business, several more were liars and pretenders quickly unmasked with technical questions. The rest were pleasant but for various reasons hopeless.

'Good morning, sorry I'm late.' Paul's cluttered office seemed perfectly matched to his bent collar points, crooked cravat, bulging pockets, and generally careless style.

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The young man jiggling from foot to foot, cap in hand, was swarthy and thin as a stick. A large wen sat on his chin like a raisin. His hair was black and shiny. Paul noticed grime under his fingernails.

'I have your name here somewhere.' Paul searched through the hopeless mess of film cans, production schedules, bills, memoranda from his employer, Lord Yorke, cablegrams from the New Jersey office, trade papers,
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London papers, international papers, and the other miscellany of his trade.

'Silverstone, gov. Samuel G, for Garfunkel, Silverstone. I go by Sammy'

'Please sit down, Sammy.' The young man's jittering made him nervous.

Miraculously, he found a pencil, then a file card that hadn't been scribbled on. 'How old are you?'

'Twenty-two.'

'Do you have references?'

Sammy plucked a crumpled letter from inside a woolen coat that looked like it belonged to someone smaller. 'This here's from Mr.

Crutchfield, my boss at the Soho Strand.'

'That's a picture theater, isn't it?'

'Yes, sir, and a fine one. It's in Dean Street.'

'Any others?'

For a moment Sammy's bright dark eyes had a queer, speculative light in them. 'Well, gov, no, not unless you'd want to ask the warden at Brixton.'

Paul sat back in his squeaky swivel chair. 'Are you saying you were locked up?'

'Right, sir. Petty theft. My sister Belle didn't have nothing to eat.' He pronounced it nuffing; even Henry Higgins would be mightily challenged to correct the formidable accent. Paul presumed it came from the East End or some similar district.

'I only stole a couple of loaves for Belle,' Sammy explained. 'But I got pinched. I figured if you hire me, you'll find out about it one day, so I might as well tell you straight off and save time.'

'Very thoughtful,' Paul muttered, wondering what this rather sly-looking young man was all about. 'When were you incarcerated?'

'If that means locked up' - Miss Epsom tapped on the door and walked in with a tea tray - 'I did me time fourteen months ago. I grew up in the docklands, on the streets, mostly.' Paul felt an affinity for that; he'd been a street boy in Berlin.

'After I left the nick I swore I'd never go back to that hole, or any like it.

I'd get honest work. Always liked the pictures when I could afford the tariff, so when I saw this card outside the Soho Strand saying assistant Signs of Success

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operator wanted, I popped right in. There was one bloke ahead of me, but while we was waiting he had a little accident.'

'A little accident,' Paul murmured. 'Imagine that.' He poured hot Earl Grey from the pot. To his surprise Sammy Silverstone asked for a cup, with milk and sugar.

'Fell down and busted his ankle, poor lad. Had to go home. Guess he tripped on something. Never did see what exactly.' Paul tried not to smile.

'Mr. Crutchfield hired me. I told him about the nick. I been at the Strand ever since. I patch up bad splices and torn sprocket holes, post bills out in front, mop up, run the projector when the reg'Iar man's off- hard work, but I like it.'

'Why would you want to leave?'

' 'Cause this here situation is a step up. Helper to somebody who actually makes pictures. A bloke who's written a book.'

'You've read it?'

,

Sammy rolled his tongue beneath his upper lip, unable to hide his consideration of a lie. After a moment he replied:

'Can't say as I have. Frankly I don't read much. Mr. Crutchfield's got a copy, though. Says it's good, you go a lot of interesting places. I'd like that.'

Samuel Garfunkel Silverstone had a kind of cheeky candor that Paul liked. 'I'm leaving in less than a month to film army maneuvers in Germany. When could you be ready to go?'

With a grin Sammy said, 'Right now soon enough, gov?'

Paul took a long breath, pitched the card in the overflowing basket in the desk well.

'All right, let's discuss salary.'

Sammy lit up brighter than one of the electrical displays at Piccadilly Circus. 'You won't be sorry. I can carry twice my.weight, I'm a regular pack mule.'

'You'll have a lot of chances to prove it.'

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With some chagrin Fritzi found herself looking forward to each picture, and regretting it if there wasn't one immediately coming up. It wasn't the artistry of the one-reelers she enjoyed, because there wasn't any.

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It was the companionship. She liked Eddie, his wife, Rita, and their two children. She liked Nell Spooner despite white society's opinion that she oughtn't to, and, on Griffith's advice, she befriended the cameraman, solid, reflective Jock Ferguson. Sometimes, together, they accidentally made a scene that was almost respectable.

Even so, she regarded the work as temporary, a source of income until she found the right stage role. Her integrity as an actress was preserved by the continuing anonymity of picture players. A few directors such as Griffith were identified in titles and trade advertising, and an actress named Florence Lawrence was being billed as 'The Biograph Girl,' but that was the extent of it.

Hobart saw a third-run showing of The Lone Indian's Battle in Logansport, Indiana ('civilization at rock bottom'), and wrote to praise her acting. As soon as his contract ran out and he escaped 'this damned play Moriarty is hissed and threatened by the audience at every curtain call,' he wanted to visit Pal and study this new form of entertainment firsthand.

That helped ease her mind. If Hobart thought pictures were acceptable, so could she.

Fritzi began to notice certain signs of change at Pal Pictures. B.B. started passing out fifty-cent cigars to favored visitors. Over Kelly's objection, the company moved to its own suite of rooms on Fourteenth, just down the way from Biograph. It suggested to her that she might improve her own living situation now that she had funds. She said a tearful goodbye to Mrs.

Perella and relocated to two airy rooms on West Twenty-second Street, near the river.

B.B. proposed The Lone Indian's Baby, declaring that people loved babies almost as much as they loved money. This epic, which Eddie wrote under orders, put Owen in the role of temporary father of an infant left in a basket outside his tepee (an act never explained by the plot or title cards). Owen grew more conceited with each appearance as the heroic red man. He renewed his invitation to Fritzi at least once a month, hinting that she was passing up a chance to dine with one of the screen's new luminaries.

She cheerfully declined.

They risked filming the new Lone Indian picture in the vicinity of Fort Lee. In preparation Eddie bought a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson double
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action revolver with a short barrel. 'Damn thing scares me, I'm not a violent person. But I won't go back to Jersey without a gun.' He practiced Signs of Success

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shooting at bottles in a vacant lot in the evening. He said his wife was horrified.

Jock Ferguson hired an armed guard to accompany them and stand by the camera at all times.

After their first morning's work they motored back to Rambo's Hotel.

Two other cars and a wagon painted with the name of the Biograph were lined up in front. The Pal company trooped around to the rear of the hotel, where fifteen or twenty people were eating stew at plank tables set end to end under a grape arbor that must have measured a hundred feet long. She saw Billy Bitzer, and Mary Pickford, and Griffith. The director waved and smiled. He looked decidedly odd in a straw hat with the top missing.

Bitzer rushed over, Mary right behind. Mary's curls shone like gold leaf in the spring sunshine. Bitzer pumped Fritzi's hand. 'By golly, you're doing well. What do you hear from Paul?'

'Very little,' she admitted. 'He's traipsing around Europe, I think. He and Julie are expecting a new baby.'

When she asked about Griffith's hat, Bitzer laughed. 'You know actors.

Vain as hell. He thinks sunlight will keep him from losing his hair.'

He went back to his meal, but Mary lingered. She checked over her shoulder, turned her head away from Owen, who was regaling a Biograph actress with anecdotes about himself. 'I caught the Indian picture, the one where you fall off the horse and cross your eyes.'

Fritzi frowned. 'I thought it was a little degrading.'

'Come on. You were hilarious.'

'It isn't my ambition to be hilarious,' she said with a sniff.

Again Mary observed Owen, then whispered, 'What's degrading -- what you should worry about -- is appearing opposite that wooden Indian. You can practically smell his conceit. Talk to your director. Demand a different leading man. One who plays to you, not the camera.'

'I doubt they'd replace Owen--' Fritzi began.

'Then maybe you should find a new studio. You've got experience.

Think about it.' Fritzi had in fact entertained the idea once but dismissed it.

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Mary squeezed her hand. 'I wish we saw more of each other.'

'So do I.' Despite Mary's youth, her sweet face, her ability to project an angelic disposition, she was tough and wise, a friend to value. Fritzi watched her hurry back to her company, her curls dancing and bobbing over the collar of her pinafore.

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Two weeks after the release of The Lone Indian's Baby, B. B. Pelzer summoned FVitzi to his new office. It was a sultry afternoon, unusually warm and airless for spring. B.B. didn't improve the atmosphere with his smelly green cigars. A closed box of them sat in the center of his blotter.

'Fritzi, have a chair, 1 got something great to show you.' He looked ruddier, and happier, than usual. Always the gentleman, he was buttoned up in a stiff collar and white linen suit and vest. Fritzi sat forward, hands on knees, expectant.

'You like working for Pal?' he asked.

'It certainly is interesting and challenging, Mr. Pelzer.'

'Well, I'm telling you today, you got a great future with us. Magnificent.

Here.' He shoved the floridly decorated cigar box to her side of the desk.

'Mr. Pelzer, 1 don't smoke.'

He waved. 'No cigars in there. Take a look.'

She lifted the lid, decorated with some kind of goddess with a mighty bosom, a shield, and a spear. Puzzled, she peered at two stacks of letters and postal cards banded with red elastics. The letters on top were addressed crudely, one in pencil.

'You don't need to read 'em, I'll tell you what's in 'em. We got the first ones last fall. These people are crazy about the Lone Indian pictures, especially our latest. My wife was right, people are nuts about babies.'

With a twinkle he added. 'Those letters are asking about the identity of our talent.'

'I'm not surprised. Owen is a very attractive leading man.'

'Forget Owen! Nobody asked about Owen!' He tapped his fingertips on his paunch and grinned like an uncle about to bestow a lavish gift on a favorite niece. 'They're asking who's the funny one who fights the bad men, falls off the horse, rocks the cradle at the end of the new picture.'

Fritzi caught her breath. Was this some kind of negotiating ploy?

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B.B. whacked his palm on his desk; a small cased photograph of ex president Roosevelt fell over. 'Don't you get what I'm saying? They're asking, Who's the gel?'

She laughed, a short, nervous laugh of surprise and disbelief. 'Seriously?'

'B. B. Pelzer don't lie. I'm telling you, Fritzi, they all want to know one thing - who's the gel? I said to Eddie this morning, next picture we raise you to six dollars a day. Heck, make it six-fifty. Kelly wants to fight about it, I'm ready to go fifteen rounds.'

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Home at half past nine, she finished washing her hair and was drawing a bath when the tenant of the first-floor flat pounded on the door to call her to the communal telephone. Her wet hair was dripping, dark and stringy as seaweed. She wrapped a towel around it and ran downstairs.

'Hello?

Is this Fritzi Crown?'

'It is. Who's this?'

'Harry Poland. Your cousin's friend, remember?'

'I couldn't forget. You're the man who's got half the country stomping.'

'I finally found you,' Harry said in an odd, bubbly voice.

'You've been looking?'

'Well, ah, what I mean is, I saw one of your pictures. The Pal office told me where to locate you. May I treat you to supper tomorrow evening?'

Fritzi hesitated. 'But, Mr. Poland, aren't you married?'

'I am, oh yes. I'm not trying to be forward, Miss Crown. I only want to renew acquaintances, express my friendship. My admiration for your talent. What do you say?'

'Well, Mr. Poland--'

'Harry, please.'

'Harry. Since you're straightforward about it, and you're also the composer of my favorite song, I'll say yes.'

They met at Rector's. He could afford the best restaurants now. Arriving
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