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.”
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.”
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?”
“At the Astor?”
“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 painfully on her spine and rear. Dazed, she sat up. The stage manager, 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
When 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, reclined, and idly read a few pages of Freud’s book on the interpretation 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.
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 peacock in a gilded cage. A string quartet murdered “The Merry Widow Waltz.”
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 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.”
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.”
A few minutes later, they sat with glasses in hand, a silver champagne bucket between them on the suite’s Oriental carpet. Eustacia knocked back two glasses in the time it took Fritzi to enjoy three sips.
“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. I don’t choose liaisons wisely. I grew up with nothing, and tend to live thoughtlessly. That’s parti
cularly 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 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.”
“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.”
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
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 I 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.
“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.”
Amiably he said, “Oh, we know all about that. The flickers are beneath you Broadway folks. You’ll get over it as soon as we turn a few actors into stars. Offer’s open anytime. Call me when you’re back in town, Paul,” he said with a tip of his hat.
After Bitzer walked away Paul said, “You were pretty hard on him.”
Fritzi looked rueful. “I suppose I was, I’m sorry. It’s the way I feel. I should have kept it to myself.”
In Buffalo, after a day spent filming Niagara Falls, he delivered his first lecture, nervously, but with good response from the audience. Bill Schwimmer, the lecture agent, had taken a sleeper from New York to catch the performance. A quiet, scholarly man who made occasional unsmiling references to his wife, he called Paul a “natural”—said he could book him for an extended tour whenever he returned. On this trip Paul had only two more speaking engagements, Cincinnati and Louisville. By the time he left Louisville to photograph the splendid horse farms near Lexington, he felt like a seasoned trouper.
In Indianapolis he filmed a spectacular flagpole sitter, then arranged to look at the real object of his trip, the site of a proposed new motor speedway. One of the developers, James Allison, picked him up at his hotel and drove him out, talking the whole way about his company, Prest-O-Lite, makers of running-board gas tanks for headlights.
Allison and his three partners believed Indianapolis had a great future in racing. He proudly showed off raw land west of the city, but that’s all it was at the moment, raw. Paul thanked him, tipped his cap, and said he’d return when the track opened. At four a.m., he climbed aboard a train for Detroit, the new auto capital.
Americans hadn’t invented the horseless carriage, as it was called at first. A couple of Germans, Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz, took those honors. But America seemed to be developing the motor car faster and more aggressively than Europe. Companies sprang up like mushrooms, produced a few vehicles, or none, then sold out, merged or just disappeared. There were presently over a thousand different auto makers. Most assembled their cars from components bought outside.
Paul had read an article in Harper’s that enumerated the trades in which auto makers got their start. Colonel A. A. Pope had manufactured bicycles, confidently declaring, “You can’t get people to sit over an explosion.” Ransom Olds originally made stationary gas engines, White made sewing machines, David Buick plumbing fixtures. Studebaker was formerly the world’s largest producer of horse-drawn vehicles.
Of the many companies, the one bearing the name of Henry Ford seemed to emerge in the press oftener than others. Paul had read about Ford in the London Light, the flagship paper of the press lord who employed him.
Sometimes called a self-taught genius, Ford had been in the auto trade about ten years, starting companies, then dissolving or walking away from them in the wake of disputes with partners, which had included bankers, a coal merchant, and a bike racer. It was Ford’s latest model that Paul meant to photograph. The car had been designed and worked on in secret for two years.
The trip to Detroit in an old wooden day coach wasn’t exactly Paul’s idea of a high time, though this observation was tempered with an admission that success was probably spoiling him. The air blowing through the car reeked of coal smoke and toilets. Sandwich wrappers and broken peanut shells littered the floor. The water tank on the wall at one end was empty, the dipper missing. After the sun came up the car felt like a fiery furnace. Some god of discomfort had further decreed that all the windows would remain stuck in the closed position. Though Paul wasn’t the neatest of men, or much concerned with externals, he spent a lot of time on the open platform between cars, puffing a cigar.
The train arrived at the Michigan Central Depot on the shore of the Detroit River. Paul claimed his lacquered case from the baggage car, checked to be sure his camera had arrived unbroken, and hailed a hissing steam taxi. He consulted a tobacco-flecked card from his vest pocket.
“Hotel Ponchartrain.”
His first impression of Detroit improved his mood. It seemed a modern, bustling city. Its population of nearly four hundred
thousand included Poles and Finns, French and Sicilians, Rumanians, Armenians, and Chinese. And of course plenty of German-Americans, in a section called Little Berlin.
Some streets were old-fashioned cedar blocks sealed together with pitch; even on this cool, crisp day he could smell the tar. But the buildings were tall, the monuments imposing, and all the streetcars electric, a hallmark of progress.
He had an address for Carl, had telegraphed asking his cousin to meet him in the Ponchartrain bar when he got off work. Paul unpacked, soaked in a hot bath to relieve his back ache, then rested a while with his hands laced under his head, daydreaming of Julie. He strolled around Cadillac Square and the town’s central plaza, Campus Martius, for a half hour. At six-thirty he put his foot on the brass bar rail and ordered a Crown lager. They had it. Good for Uncle Joe.
A large and lively bar crowd, mostly well-dressed gentlemen, kept up a loud chatter. Eavesdropping, Paul found that much of the conversation had something to do with the auto trade. He heard the words “damnable unions.” Someone else said, “Don’t worry, the E.A. has four men undercover in that plant.”
One section of the back bar held an amazing array of auto parts, everything from a cast-iron engine block to fenders, brass coach lamps, dashboards, and radiators. A man set a coat tree near the engine block, hung a linen driving coat on it, and began to extol the coat’s virtues to a couple of prospects.
“Paul!” Carl waved a cloth cap as he charged across the barroom. His shoes were scuffed and his brown suit looked secondhand—too short in the jacket and trousers. But his smile was as broad and bright as Paul remembered. The cousins hugged each other.
Paul ordered schooners of beer. Carl asked questions about Julie and the children. After Paul answered them, he said, “What about you? How are you doing at Ford’s?”
“I love it, it’s an exciting place.” Carl planted his elbows on the bar with his palms cupping the frosted schooner. “Oh, I don’t love everything about it. I hate the time clock. Job’s taught me plenty about automobiles, though, and gotten me in with the racing crowd. Lots of automakers race to show off their cars.” He reached for a bowl of peanuts, clumsily let it slide out of his fingers, spilling some.