American Dreams (56 page)

'He was a real grandpa,' Loy said. 'Look at the length of his rattles.

Back home we call 'em Texas rattlers, but they're all over the West.'

I Ie holstered his revolver. Despite her scare, the sight of the long blue barrel sliding into the leather sheath excited her. Jock Ferguson said, 'Do ^

you always carry live ammunition?'

Loy tugged his hat lower over his eyes. 'Why would I carry any other kind?' He sounded hostile, but his expression gentled as he walked over to Fritzi. 'Sure you're all right?'

'Yes. I do admit to being terrified for a few seconds. I've coped with mashers and hooligans, what I call hat-pin situations, but this was a lot worse. You were quick with that pistol. You're no scissor-bill.' He liked that i

and laughed.

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'I'll have to think of some way to repay you.'

'Not really necessary, ma'am.'

Go after him.

'Oh, 1 insist. Let's talk about it later this week.'

Eddie broke in, 'We'll get this shot, then move up the road and do the scene where the Ford dies and you cover it with a horse blanket to keep it warm, same as you do when Old Paint feels poorly.'

Fritzi rolled her eyes.

In the afternoon they returned to the lot. B.B. brought Sophie out to watch them shoot on the outdoor stage in front of flats simulating a log cabin porch. The scene involved an exchange with Fritzi's troublesome ranch hand, Loy. When he got fresh, she fended him off with a wrench and a motor oil can filled with chocolate syrup. At the end of the slapstick tussle he churlishly dumped the 'motor oil' on her head and walked away chortling.

After they shot the scene, Jock Ferguson moved in for a close-up of Fritzi peering through a mask of syrup, then one of Loy reacting with an evil leer that confirmed his base character. Close-ups had once been damned as The Day Things Slipped

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faddish and grotesque, but David Griffith's artful use of them had made them respectable and even commonplace.

During Loy's close-up Fritzi stood near the Pelzers, wiping syrup off her face with a makeup towel. Sophie elbowed her husband. 'That cowboy's a handsome fella. Very manly, don't you think so, Benny?'

B.B. looked cross about hearing his name in public. 'Didn't notice.'

'Well, notice, notice. Ought to have a better part, that fella.'

I have one in mind, Fritzi thought with a delicious shiver of anticipation.

Ordinarily Eddie didn't welcome visitors on his set. He made an exception when Fritzi's friend Charlie showed up unannounced on Thursday morning.

Charlie looked debonair in a smart new suit with a fine Malacca cane
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hung over his arm. She expressed surprise that he wasn't working.

'But I am. For a new studio. Essanay'

'Good heavens, since when?'

'Since Broncho Billy Anderson and his partners offered me a lot more dough than Mr. Cheapskate Sennett. I leave for San Francisco at the end of the week. I'm a little worried about accommodation. They won't be able to match what I have now.' Charlie had lately moved downtown to the Los Angeles Athletic Club, a sign of the success of his tramp comedies.

'What

happens here?' he asked with a nod at the set, flats representing the rear and side walls of a ranch house parlor doubling as an office.

'The rustler's driven my cattle off. He's robbing the safe before he escapes. The Model T gets me back in time to stop him. I drive it through that wall, jump out, and foil him.'

'Fascinating. Why not something simple, like walking in the door?'

, 'Because he's put some kind of cactus paste in the gas tank. It makes the car loco.'

This time Charlie rolled his eyes.

Fritzi was hot and uncomfortable. The muslin diffusers hung above the stage softened the summer sun a little, but even so the heat was brutal.

She tugged the front of her dress. The padding seemed loose. That damned pin again. Did she have time to run behind the stage and fix it?

No; Eddie's voice boomed through his megaphone:

'Everyone ready? Mo, start the car.'

Mo obeyed on the run. A few seconds later she heard the Model T puttering on a ramp behind the flat at stage left. Kelly had appeared from 350

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somewhere, folding his arms over his vest and planting himself next to the camera. I Ie scowled like a man eating bad oysters.

'Get it right the first time, Hearn. I'm not rebuilding this set.'

Loy pulled his bandanna high on his nose to conceal his face, crouched down behind a black iron safe that stood open. Fritzi smoothed her faded gingham blouse and climbed into the Model T. Eddie called camera and action. She gritted her teeth and accelerated up the ramp, smashing through painted wall boards rigged to break away easily. She braked in a cloud of plaster dust thrown by a stage hand out of camera range.

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On his knees at the safe, Loy reacted as Fritzi jumped out of the car.

'Caught you, Roy. This means jail.' Eddie insisted on appropriate dialogue rather than improvisations such as 'Stop hamming' or 'What time's lunch?'

She started a dash across the room, but someone had set a footstool in the wrong place, a foot to the right of the tape marking its correct position.

Seeing it too late, she fell over it and broke it. She saved herself by shooting her hands out and turning a somersault. Jock Ferguson called, 'Cut?'

'No, no, keep rolling, that was funny.'

'Wait a damn minute,' Kelly protested. Eddie outshouted him:

''Jock, keep cranking.''

By now Fritzi had bounded up, only to discover that her gay deceivers had betrayed her - come unpinned on one side and slipped down at a forty-five-degree angle, so that she had one lump more or less in the middle of her chest, the other near her hip. It struck her as hilarious in a macabre way.

Impulsively she turned her back to the camera. Reached under her collar and brassiere and with exaggerated wiggles of hips and shoulders, worked the padding upward to its right place. She turned around and smiled at the camera. Both bosoms promptly slid down to her waist.

She mugged, gave the padding a ferocious sideways wrench; the scene was beyond saving anyway. She popped her eyes at Loy, stuck out her index finger as a pistol, cried, 'Hands up.' Caught between surprise and mirth, he raised both hands. Fritzi grabbed them and began to waltz.

Not watching too carefully, she waltzed him into a chair. 1 Ie bumped it, reeled away, fell against a cuckoo clock on the wall. The cuckoo sprang out, twittered, then flopped at the end of its wire, dead. Fritzi was breaking up, laughing and unable to stop.

Trying to help him stand, she lost her balance. Grabbing the shelf of a china cabinet to catch herself, she spilled and shattered plates, saucers, The Day Things Slipped

351

and cups. Playing along, Loy charged her but misjudged his position and went headfirst through an open window painted on the canvas flat. I Iis legs stuck into the room, thrashing.

Caught up in the madness, Fritzi marched toward the camera. She wriggled her padding upward again, slapping her dress as though that
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might stick the gay deceivers in place. She looked down; the padding slowly sank to her navel. The effect was something like watching a pair of burrowing moles.

With a rueful smile and a shrug she gave up. She crossed her eyes, did a little curtsey, kicked up the hem of her skirt, and tripped out of the frame.

Kelly screamed. lCut. Cut, Ferguson, or I'll break your goddamn arm.'

Jock Ferguson let go of the crank. Everyone but Kelly was laughing. Mo Isenhour sat on the ground holding his sides. Eddie wiped his eyes with a red bandanna. Windy staggered around like a drunken man, not a difficult impersonation.

Charlie cocked his head and applauded. When Kelly glared, Charlie looked at him defiantly and cried, 'Bravo, bravo.'

Fritzi rushed to Loy, who'd extricated himself from the torn flat. 'I'm sorry, I'm really sorry,' she panted.

He managed to stop laughing. 'You didn't hurt me, don't worry about it. You're a sketch, you know that? I've never seen anything like it.'

'By God, I haven't either,' Kelly said. 'Will somebody tell me what's going on? Hearn, why didn't you cut?'

'Because she's hilarious.'

'You think George Eastman's running a charity? You think he's giving the goddamn raw stock away?'

'Oh, see here,' Charlie said with a flourish of his cane. 'I suppose you're one of the studio muckety-mucks, but carrying on like that, you're a sap.'

'What did you say?'

'Sap, spelled s-a-p. As in idiot. You're all idiots if you don't put Fritzi in a picture doing exactly what she just did, only without the cowboy claptrap.'

'We

don't need advice from a goddamn limey,' Kelly shouted.

'Al, wait a minute,' Eddie said. 'Maybe Mr. Chaplin's got something.

Maybe this is what we've been looking for. A character.'

'Character, what character? I don't see any character. I see hundreds of goddamn dollars of lumber and props shot to hell.'

'A character for Fritzi. A lovable imp who bangs up everything and
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everybody - breaks down doors, destroys houses, ruins fancy parties, never meaning to - and every time it makes the story come out right. I'm going to show this footage to B.B. and Hayman.'

'This is some kind of conspiracy. I won't stand for it.'

'Sure you will, Al,' Eddie said with a cheery smile. 'You want to make money. B.B. and Ham want to make money. We all want to make money.'

He walked up on the littered stage, slipped his arm around Fritzi.

Plaster dust blanched her face. Her gay deceivers hung crookedly inside her dress; the lumps of padding at her waist gave her a total of four bosoms, all unsatisfactory.

And now Loy knows I wear padding. Oh, God.

Eddie squeezed her shoulder like an accordion. 'Money, Al, you keep telling us that's what it's all about. Well, take a look. You want to strike it rich, I'm standing next to the mother lode.'

Every carpenter on the lot was dragooned to rebuild the set. It was repainted, refurnished, and ready by noon Friday. Fritzi crashed the Model T through the wall again and this time finished the scene as planned. Eddie made the last shot at half past four. He was thanking everyone when his wife arrived with the children and three hampers containing a picnic supper.

Fritzi helped Rita arrange the food on a trestle next to the stage. Rita said Eddie had worked most of the night writing a scenario for a new comedy inspired by yesterday's mishaps. He called it Knockabout Nell. He intended to present it to B.B. and Hayman on Saturday, along with the unusable footage.

Eddie sidled up. 'Fritzi, do I dare ask what slipped in your -- that is, inside--'

Rita poked him. 'No, you don't dare. Be a gentleman and eat this sandwich. It's liverwurst, your favorite.'

B.B. came stumping out from the main building. He approached Loy, who was chatting with Windy and the other extra. / 'Hardin, my wife saw you work this week. She likes your looks. Very manly, she said.'

Loy smiled and dipped his head in polite acknowledgment. B.B.

snatched his hand and wrung it. 'Sophie knows talent. Why don't we shoot a little test, hey?'

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'Mighty kind of you, Mr. Pelzer. But I've got to say no, thanks.'

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353

'You wouldn't like a real part? Maybe a chance at a steady salary?'

'Don't think I'm ungrateful. I like what I'm doing now.'

B.B.'s mouth dropped open. He ran over to Fritzi. 'I offered him a part and he turned it down. Can you feature that? I never heard of anybody turning down an offer to star in pictures.'

Fritzi murmured that it was certainly strange, but before she could say more, Loy set his high-crowned hat on his head and started his goodbyes.

'Excuse me,' she exclaimed, nearly knocking B.B. down as she dashed around him. 'Loy, I still owe you for saving me from that snake. May I treat you to supper. Say tomorrow evening?'

He was surprised and amused by her brashness. 'Why, sure, that'd be fun. Tell you what. If you can get free, come on out to the Universal ranch in the afternoon. Watch the big battle scene Griffith's shooting. Then we'll find some grub.'

Fritzi almost leaped into the air. 'I'll be there.'

'Don't dress fancy.'

'Oh, no. No!'

'See you then. Look forward to it.'

As he might say he looked forward to a good night's rest. Fritzi was disappointed again by his casual ways. She screwed up her determination.

She'd make him fall for her, no matter what it took.

65 Crash Landing

The consequences of Harvard's desertion were more inconvenient than serious, or so it seemed at first. The senior staff tongue-lashed Rene but could not really hold him responsible. The one who suffered was Major Ruiz, the army's liaison to the flyers. He was ordered to ride along on each flight armed with a five-shot bolt-action Mauser rifle for use not only against the enemy but a pilot who might take it on himself to defect.

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To accommodate a second passenger a new seat was installed on the Curtiss. The major fitted himself into it with all the composure of a frightened baby. In the wind fanning over his face as they flew, he sweated profusely. A strap had been rigged around the Mauser stock so it wouldn't 354

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fall and be lost. Twice on one flight the major's damp hand let the rifle slip.

Only the strap saved it.

Carl shouted at Ruiz repeatedly, ordering him to sit still, shut up, stop badgering him with questions. The major took the reversal of authority without protest, he was that scared.

Some ten days after Harvard left, Carl climbed into the shoulder yoke that operated the ailerons on the Curtiss, and he and his passenger went up the line for the third time. Rain had fallen for forty-eight hours, flooding fields and waterways. A dark and cloudy afternoon had given way to a livid sunset, copper-colored, with more thunderheads piling up in the north.