American Dreams (6 page)

Carl's fever heated up again when Reeves said, 'Two fellows in a Fiat are running practice laps for a hundred-mile race the end of the week. Go
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have a look.'

He ran out into the pale winter sunshine, wove between stable buildings to the track, where an engine roared in a cloud of tan dust. He stepped on the lower rail, dust settling in his hair and on his shoulders as the racecar sped toward the turn. It resembled half a tin can set forward on a chassis with unprotected wheels. The Fiat was right-hand drive, like all cars on the road. The driver and his riding mechanic perched in bucket seats, eating dust and wind. Each wore goggles and fancy gauntlets. Carl dreamed of being the man gripping the wheel.

On the back stretch the Fiat gathered speed. Carl's jaw dropped. 'My Lord, they must be doing forty or fifty'

He hung on the rail as the Fiat slewed through the turns, leaving a great rooster tail of dust behind. He watched it for nearly an hour. To Reeves, afterward, he said, 'I've got to learn to drive. I don't know where, or how, but I'm going to do it, you can count on that.'

6 Paul's Pictures

Nicky the chauffeur was waiting with the umbrella when Fritzi and her mother left Restaurant Heidelberg. On the drive home Fritzi said little. Obviously her mother was upset about her decision.

The Crown mansion on South Michigan was an enormous Victorian castle, twenty-six rooms, twice remodeled and forever symbolic of its owner's success in the brewery trade. Joe Crown owned the entire block Paul's Pictures29

from Twentieth to Nineteenth; the half lot nearer Nineteenth was given over to a well-kept garden with a reflecting pool, empty now; neat beds for rose bushes; a marble statue of an angel symbolizing peace, all screened from the traffic by high shrubbery. Ten minutes after Fritzi reached her room, lisa rushed in with a letter.

'Liebchen, your prayers are answered! See what came in the afternoon mail delivery? Pauli posted it in Gibraltar six weeks ago. He even sent a snapshot.'

lisa gave her the Kodak print. A smile spread on Fritzi's face as she gazed at her sturdy cousin, photographed with his motion picture camera and tripod on a hotel veranda. Paul had his usual cigar clenched in his teeth. One arm was hooked around his tripod; with his other hand he
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lifted his Panama hat to greet the lens.

Paul's vest was unbuttoned. His cravat hung askew. The knees of his white suit showed smudges. He was his old self, forever careless about his appearance though he was never careless about his work. Paul occasionally sent photos to his loved ones because of a lifelong habit of gathering, and distributing, souvenirs and keepsakes.

Quickly Fritzi read through the letter. Paul had visited North Africa, photographing nomads and exotic locales in Morocco and the Sahara, then Gibraltar to film the new British warship HMS Dreadnought steaming into the Mediterranean.

She is the first of her kind - 17,000 tons, faster than anything afloat. Her big guns can throw a shell for miles. My friend Michael says she has already touched off a naval arms race. Alas, the blasted British would not permit me to photograph her. N. African pictures will be edited and in theaters by December. Am planning another trip to the States next year, will surely see you. Till then much love to all.

'We must find out who shows the American Luxograph pictures,' lisa said with great excitement, i know you'll want to see them. We'll go together, have another outing.'

In one of those awful nickel theaters? Ye gods. But Fritzi couldn't deny the stout, graying woman she loved dearly. She sighed a small inner sigh and said, 'That would be lovely.'

The General made some inquiries at lisa's request. A foreman at the 30

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brewery happened to know an enterprising German Jew from Oshkosh who had jumped into the picture business that year. Carl Laemmle was his name. He distributed films and operated a nickel theater on North Milwaukee Avenue. Laemmle said a good downtown theater showing American Luxograph 'actualities' was the Bijou Dream on State near Van Buren, the very place Fritzi had noticed on her bicycle ride.

Fritzi and her mother bought their tickets at ten past two on a dismal afternoon. Looking around, she had to admit the Bijou Dream was better than the few other theaters she'd visited in occasional pursuit of her cousin's films. The windows of the converted store were hung with green velvet drapes. The projector was shielded in a curtained booth at the rear of the long, rectangular room. Fritzi didn't recognize the operator tinkering with the machine; the young man from the play group wasn't on
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duty. Thank heaven for that. She'd never bothered to hide her feelings about the moving pictures.

Instead of wooden benches there were chairs, a hundred or more, not an assortment from drugstores, ice cream parlors, and secondhand shops, but all alike. The Bijou Dream employed a piano player whose upright sat next to the canvas screen, and a lecturer, a gentleman in a midnight blue tuxedo who introduced and explained each batch of footage from a podium on the opposite side. Pictures shown in five-cent theaters typically carried no explanatory legends. Many didn't even have an opening title.

About twenty people attended the two - fifteen show. Fritzi and her mother were by far the best dressed. Some of the spectators reeked of garlic, wine, or a lack of bathing facilities. It wasn't snobbish, merely truthful, for Fritzi to observe that the pictures served primarily an audience of disfranchised immigrants. Pictures depended for success on a universal language of pantomime, and on accessibility. Slum dwellers could often walk to a theater, saving carfare.

In a roped area at the front, children were segregated. Half a dozen noisy boys in patched knickers and cloth caps joked and punched each other. lisa whispered, 'Truants?'

'Or artful dodgers,' Fritzi said. She and lisa responded to a lantern slide requesting ladies to remove their hats. The grand dame in the illustration wore a wide-brimmed number carrying enough fruit and wild fowl to serve a banquet.

The professor left the piano to separate two of the boys rolling in the aisle and pummeling each other. When they were back in their seats, the operator switched off the tin-shaded ceiling lights and a new lantern slide appeared.

Paul's Pictures31

The Latest

T. B. HARMS

SONG HIT!

-- Words and Music By ;

HARRY

POLAND

As Featured By

FLAVIAFARREL

LThe Irish Songbird1

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'Oh, it's Pauli's friend,' lisa said, meaning the composer.

Two faces filled oval frames on either side of the slide copy. The Irish Songbird was a pouchy-eyed woman who must have been pretty before middle age and sagging flesh caught up with her. The man in the other frame, Harry Poland, had crossed the Atlantic in steerage with Paul in 1891. A Polish immigrant boy, he'd adopted a new name, found his way into the music business, and now wrote popular songs successfully. Harry was a long-jawed young man with a broad smile and lively eyes. The photographer caught him lifting a summer straw hat off his dark curly hair; the pose reminded Fritzi of Paul's snapshot. Paul was light-hearted much of the time, and the composer looked like that, too. Maybe that's why they had become friends, and saw each other in New York whenever they could.

The first song slide appeared, illustrated by a photo of a man in goggles and a young woman in a big hat and dust veil seated in an auto. Song lyrics were superimposed on the machine's long hood. The professor played the catchy tune.

THATAUTO-MO-BIUNG FEELING

IS STEAL-ING O-VER ME

Next slide: stuffed doves hovering above the couple, who were hugging.

The rowdy boys jeered and made farting noises.

it's an ap-peal-ing feeling,

to- man -tic as can be

'Get the hook,' cried one of the boys. The lecturer stepped from the 32

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podium and thwacked the offender by flicking his index finger off his thumb, a painful reminder of Rudolf.

lisa sang along in her heavily accented voice. Fritzi found herself singing too. Paul's friend wrote infectious melodies.

When the song slides ended, a clackety noise in the booth said the operator was turning the crank of the projector. A beam of light shot over the audience. The boys clapped and whistled as a young woman with a
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leashed terrier paraded in a sunlit park. The picture was dim, the image scratched and filled with annoying bubble-like eruptions of light. The lecturer announced, 'Mary's Mutt, a comic novelty.'

The three-minute sequence started with Mary accidentally letting go of the leash, then reacting with outrageous mugging as her dog dashed off.

Chasing him, she enlisted a policeman, then a young gent eating a sandwich on a park bench. The crude film was no more than an excuse for the three actors to run around wildly, bumping into trees and each other.

'The Gigolo, a spicy import from Paris.'

This picture involved a dandy with a pointed mustache, an older woman, and a young waitress he attempted to pinch. The set consisted of table, chairs, and a canvas backdrop painted as a restaurant. Halfway through the silly story someone behind the canvas bumped it and made it ripple. The actors went right on. How could anyone be a steady patron of such stuff?

'The latest from the American Luxograph.'

'Oh, here it is,' lisa said, grabbing Fritzi's hand.

'Teddy in Panama.' Paul's first actuality showed President Roosevelt inspecting canal construction.

'Exotic sights of Morocco. Fierce Berber tribesmen.' Men in sheetlike garments and burnouses stalked past the camera, glowering and waving scimitars. This was followed by a camel race in the desert.

'The bazaar at Marrakech.' Though dimly lit because of heavy shadows, Paul's scenes of awning-covered stalls and veiled women examining merchandise caught the essence of the place. The bored urchins stomped and whistled.

The clicking projector filled the screen with an image of a hotel veranda, the same on which Paul had been photographed. British naval officers in white paraded in and out, many quite fat and most looking self-important.

An occasional gowned lady relieved the tedium.

With an unexplained jerk -- perhaps a repaired break in the film? - the scene changed. The audience had a glimpse of an immense battleship Paul's Pictures33

steaming past far below the camera, which was evidently positioned high up on the Rock. HMS Dreadnought? The image stayed only a few seconds; a hand swooped over the lens and the screen went black. One of the urchins booed. A new scene appeared: the Union Jack snapping on a
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flagstaff.

Another repetitive chase picture ended the fifteen-minute show. 'That was thrilling, wasn't it?' lisa said as they left their seats. Fritzi agreed that Paul's pictures were special, and worthwhile, in contrast to the cheap little dramas and comedies.

Outside, she turned up her coat collar. The weather had worsened.

Heavy gray skies pressed down on the city. A bitter wind blew off the lake. The air smelled of snow and was full of soot, the stink of horse dung, the rattle and roar of El trains trying their iron loop around the downtown.

'Pauli

has seen so much of the world. What an exciting life he leads,' Dsa said.

'He should write a book about it,' Fritzi said. The thought had just occurred to her. Paul wasn't a writer, like his friend the journalist and novelist Richard Harding Davis, but he was smart, and she was certain he could do it.

lisa and Fritzi bent into the wind, heading for the trolley stop. lisa had relieved Nicky of the duty of picking them up. On the corner she bought two roasted sweet potatoes from a vendor, to warm them up while they waited.

'Fritzi, those people in the little stories -- are they actors?'

'They may think so. What they're doing isn't real acting, it's old-fashioned scenery chewing. The style of fifty years ago. Modern acting is well, smaller. Intense but.restrained. Edwin Booth pioneered it in this country.'

'I suppose picture people have to play broadly to convey an idea. Would there be acting opportunities for you?'

Fritzi reacted emphatically. 'Not me, Mama. I'll never have anything to do with that kind of entertainment. I'd rather not act at all.'

'I thought acting was acting,' lisa said with a little shrug of puzzlement.

'Life was so much simpler in the old days.'

34

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7 The General and His Children

His Cadillac started on the second spin of the crank. It was a dependable
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four-cylinder 1906 model that developed 40 hp. Black with matching leather seats, it had its winter hardtop latched in place. The machine had cost a little more than $3,700 new, which put it in the luxury class. It wasn't the General's most expensive auto, though. That was the glittering $5,700 Welch touring car he kept garaged in bad weather.

He slid under the wheel on the right side. He put on his expensive driving goggles, resembling a domino mask made of leather inset with two front lenses and a side lens at each temple. He drove out the east gate into Larrabee Street, passing a line of delivery wagons piled high with kegs of the dark and hearty beer they brewed especially for Christmas.

Creeping along congested streets of the Near North Side, Joe honked at a Simplex that almost ran into him at an intersection. He cursed when horse dung splattered his fenders. He shook his fist at a Reo that swerved too close. In the east, clouds like gray granite slabs layered the sky. Sleet began to tick against the windshield. Fortunately, his velvet-collared motor coat had a warm leather lining. His mood matched the bleakness of the day.

The sleet had turned to snow by the time he drove into the big four bay garage at the rear of his property. He parked the Cadillac next to his prize vehicle, the beautiful cream-colored seven-passenger Welch touring car. Its four cylinders developed 50 hp. Brilliant brass coachwork and leather upholstery, fire-engine red with a diamond pleat, dazzled the eye. Made in Pontiac, Michigan, the Welch was a top-of-the-market vehicle for rich men. Joe had long coveted a chain-driven Mercedes, but they cost more than twice as much. He thought $12,000 for a motor car excessive.