He rang a bell to bring down a freight elevator. Paul said, “My cousin works here. Carl Crown. He’s a driver.”
“I recognize the name.”
“Would you happen to know where he is?”
“We have three hundred and forty-six employees. I don’t keep track of all of them.”
The rattling elevator dropped into sight. Behind the gate was a shiny black Model T with its motor ticking. Couzens opened the gate, and they stood aside as the auto rolled across the wide aisle and out the door. “Where did that come from?” Paul asked.
“Manufacturing. Top floor.” Couzens slammed the gate and punched the button. Paul was getting angry. He figured Couzens for some kind of idiot bookkeeper who knew nothing about the power and reach of moving pictures.
Henry Ford couldn’t be found at the noxious paint booths on the second floor. They backtracked through another large machine shop, a storage area for frames and axles, a chassis-assembly room. Finally they were back at the north end of the building above Couzens’s office. “Design and experimental tool room,” he said, leading Paul through a closed door into a combined office and drafting room crowded with drawing tables and blackboards chalked with diagrams and sketches of parts.
“Well, well. There’s Henry where you least expect to find him.”
Ford’s corner office consisted of a plain desk and a few utilitarian furnishings. Ford saw them outside his door, jumped up, came out with a quick, energetic step. Men in the room worked in shirtsleeves, but Ford wore his coat and vest.
“You must be Crown. Henry Ford. Very happy you’re here.” They shook. “I’ll take over, Jim.”
“Good. I have work to do.” Couzens pivoted like a soldier and marched off without saying goodbye.
Paul said, “I saw a Model T in the elevator, Mr. Ford. How’s the reception been so far?”
“Call me Henry. Or Hank. The reception couldn’t get much better. We ran our first ad a week ago today. In the Saturday mail we had over a thousand inquiries. Envelopes full of cash have come in all week. It’s price, don’t you see? Our Model F touring car sold for a thousand dollars. The Model K, six cylinders with a torque drive, that was twenty-eight hundred. I designed those cars for the shareholders because they pounded the table and insisted. This one I designed for myself. The price is low, but we’ll drive it down even more. Let me show you around.”
“If it isn’t too much trouble.” The remark came out unexpectedly sour.
“Too much trouble to show off our prize offspring? Not on your life.” Ford laid an arm on Paul’s shoulder as if they were old friends. Put the lanky man in overalls and plow shoes, you’d take him for a hick. But he had charm. It worked on Paul like a drugstore nostrum. His anger popped like a boil, gone.
On the third floor, small areas were devoted to wood-pattern making and storage of frames and axles. The rest of the floor was final assembly. Chassis with wheels and motors in place stood in a row on either side, facing inward. A long line of these stretched away down a wide center aisle. The cars nearest Paul and Ford were the least complete.
The assembly floor was noisy, everyone running about like mad worker bees. Gangs of men pushed rolling carts along the line, stopping to lift a fender or dashboard out of the cart and mount it before moving to the next car. At the head of the line a finished Model T with everything in place and connected drove into the elevator. Ford kept up a running commentary:
“We have a new plant on the drawing board. Sixty acres. Everything on one floor. Much more daylight in the work areas. Architect’s name is Kahn. I don’t generally like Jew boys, but Kahn’s an honest one. Say, are you a Jew? You’ve got a little bit of the look.”
“I’m German originally, but not Jewish. If it matters.”
Ford missed or overlooked the sarcasm. “In the new factory we’ll do something about this system of bringing the parts to the car. It doesn’t work anymore, we can’t produce enough. Took me years to grasp that manufacturing is the key to this game. To build a lot of cars you need a different set of skills than you do to build one prototype. We’re in this for volume. My philosophy is, build a lot of cars for a lot of people and you’ll make a lot of money. Some in this town think I’m stupid. I’ll show them.”
They passed more gangs mounting brass-framed windshields, headlights, side lamps. Paul noted the litter-free floor, the aisle painted with hard enamel, the clean windows. He commented on it. “Can’t stand dirt,” Ford said. “Got that from my dear mother. Let’s go down, there’s a car ready to photograph.”
Paul retrieved his camera case, and they left the building by a rear door. He set up the camera in a large open area while Ford pointed out the power plant and paint barn. A fitful roar issued from a third building, little more than a shanty. As Paul adjusted his tripod, a man staggered out and collapsed on the grass, gasping. Paul’s inquisitive stare required an explanation. For the first time Ford was hesitant.
“That’s the motor test room. We set the carburetor, see that she’s running on all four cylinders. We don’t have machinery for taking out monoxide gas yet. Every so often we have to pull men out, sit them down and let them breathe.”
A finished auto, gleaming black, waited in a service bay of the factory. Paul reversed his cap. “All set.” He started cranking. “Bring it out.”
A driver pulled the Model T into the sunshine and swung it around in front of the lens. Paul photographed the same sequence twice more. Then he had the driver demonstrate start-up using the radiator choke wire and crank. Meanwhile Ford went on with his encyclopedic recitation of the car’s virtues: a cylinder block from a single casting; tough vanadium steel; a unique flywheel magneto. Since Paul couldn’t show any of that, they dramatized the price by having Ford carry a large show card into the frame. He set it down against the radiator. Below the company’s blue oval medallion with the word Ford in graceful script, bold lettering said
FORD MODEL “T”
ONLY $825!
Ford played to the camera as though born to it. He gestured to the card dramatically. Paul waved. “Good.” Before he could suggest something else, Ford ran back a few steps, then turned a perfect cartwheel in front of the Model T. He struck a heel-and-toe pose and grinned. Paul laughed. “Wonderful.” The man certainly had a knack for dramatizing himself.
The morning had grown hot, and Paul wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “I’d like some panoramic shots from the roof. I don’t need to bother you, I can do that by myself.”
“Let me give you a little souvenir of your visit.” Ford handed him a small paper-covered book titled Nuggets of Inspiration from R. W. Emerson. Ford’s signature slanted across the cover.
“Good things in here, Paul. High-minded moral things. I print these at my own expense.” He tapped the signed cover. “So you won’t forget me, or my cars.”
“Impossible, Henry. You strike me as a born promoter.”
“Why, so they tell me. I confess I like talking to the press.”
“You’re fast on your feet too.”
“Do you square dance? No? That’s a pity, it’s nice clean entertainment. Well, Paul, goodbye, and thanks for coming. Can’t wait to see those pictures.”
“In theaters in two to three weeks,” Paul said. As they walked back toward the service bay, he mentioned Carl in passing.
“That’s your cousin? I hired him personally. Fine sense of humor, I like that in a man. His boss says he doesn’t have pals in the factory, he’s more of a lone wolf. Handy new expression. Heard it the first time day before yesterday. Your cousin’s a hard worker. ’Course, no interesting work’s ever truly hard, don’t you know? I’ll send someone to find him.” Ford hurried into the building. His gait made Paul think of an overwrought stork. He was a dynamic man, though peculiar in some of his opinions; Carl had described Ford’s reincarnation beliefs. As for his dislike of Jews—where did that come from? You found the same thing in a lot of rural people, Paul had discovered. Middle Westerners were suspicious not merely of Jews b
ut of Wall Street financiers, journalists, painters and poets—all things “Eastern.”
Carl came out of the building as Paul was packing up. “I just got back from delivering a car to Dearborn. I’m off to Flint at noon with another one.”
“I’m catching a train to Chicago.”
“Will you see the folks?”
“Absolutely.”
“Give Mama a kiss and hug for me. Tell the General I’m doing fine.”
“I see that you are. Going to settle down in Detroit, do you think?”
Surprised by the question, Carl cocked his head and pondered it. “I’ve never thought of settling down anyplace. I don’t think it’s in my blood. That girl I met—Tess—she might change my mind, though.”
21. Jinxed?
On Monday in the third week of rehearsal, Manchester stopped the seventh scene of act one, Macbeth’s castle, to speak to Eustacia Van Sant.
“Madam, your delivery is too slow. The wife of the Thane of Cawdor is the driving engine of this act. She pushes her husband forward relentlessly. He is the one who hesitates.”
Eustacia was in no mood for a reprimand in front of the company. “I have my interpretation of the role.”
“That may be, madam. But I remind you that I have the pen which signs the salary vouchers.”
“See if I care, you dictatorial little bastard.” She stormed off.
Fritzi hurried to her friend’s dressing room and talked to her for ten minutes. “He’s excitable. The whole weight of this production’s on his shoulders, not just the leading role.” Eustacia returned to the stage in a half hour, without apologizing. Manchester shot an appreciative look at Fritzi, and the rehearsal went forward under a fragile truce. Fritzi wasn’t comforted. Nerves were raw, tempers shorter and shorter as they careened toward opening night.
Manchester insisted on a short break at tea time every afternoon, and that Monday, Fritzi took her coffee in the green room. She was visiting with cast members when a shout startled them. “Get out of this dressing room, you fucking idiot.”
They crowded into the hall to find a furious Scarboro confronting Mr. Allardyce. Scarboro had previously expressed displeasure about sharing a dressing room with the old actor, on grounds that the part of the Porter was inferior to Banquo.
Allardyce was blinking and weaving on his feet. Fritzi smelled gin. “Listen, Scarboro, I’m right sorry—”
Ida Whittemeyer interrupted. “Just a moment. Mr. Scarboro, your language is offensive.”
“I don’t give a damn. This old sot walked into the dressing room saying his lines. You do not say lines from this play aloud anywhere but on stage.”
Mr. O’Moore snorted. “What’s he supposed to do for punishment, open his veins?”
“He knows what to do. One of the exorcisms. Quote the line from The Merchant of Venice, Allardyce.”
Befuddled, the old actor said, “I don’t remember it.”
“Then stand outside the dressing room, turn around three times, spit, knock on the door three times, and beg for readmission.”
“What humbug,” O’Moore said. “Mr. Denham’s right. Tell you something, Scarboro. I’ll say lines aloud anytime I please. Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?”
“Don’t!” Scarboro cried.
“Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still—”
Scarboro’s lunge threw Sally Murphy against the wall. With a looping sideways punch he knocked Mr. O’Moore to the floor. Fritzi heard an awful snap.
Writhing, Mr. O’Moore clutched his thigh. “I can’t get up. Oh, God, I think something’s broken.”
By five o’clock Mr. O’Moore was in traction at a hospital, Manchester had fired Scarboro, and the demoralized company lacked a Ross and Banquo. As Fritzi and Mrs. Van Sant left the theater, the older actress said, “Perhaps I should buy a new pair of shoes.”
“Shoes? You showed me at least twenty pair at the hotel.”
“Cheap shoes, dear. Shoes that squeak. Squeaky shoes on stage are supposed to ward off trouble. I am beginning to share the dreadful feeling that we’re jinxed.”
Wednesday brought Mr. Charles Seldon, a new Ross. Their Banquo, Mr. Bruno Gertz, showed up on Friday. He was a disappointing little blob of a man with a thin voice. It didn’t matter that he knew the part perfectly; his poor appearance was discouraging.
Things were no better the following week. Bad feeling had developed between Ida Whittemeyer, playing a somewhat overage Lady Macduff, and her son, personated by one of the child actors, an obnoxious boy named Launcelot Buford. In rehearsal he accused Ida of upstaging him. When she laughed, he kicked her shins. She boxed his ears. Manchester frantically canceled rehearsal of the scene.
Next day when the scene rehearsed again, Miss Whittemeyer introduced a new bit of business. She grasped the boy’s hand to demonstrate affection. Launcelot looked down and shrieked. A large brown toad jumped out of his fingers and went hopping frantically toward a flat.
The murderers were convulsed. The boy actor had hysterics. Mrs. Buford charged up from the auditorium to confront Ida. She threatened her with her umbrella. It took Manchester an hour to negotiate peace terms.
How he managed to rehearse his own role amidst these alarms, Fritzi couldn’t imagine. She supposed it was experience combined with desperation. She watched admiringly from the wings as he spoke the beautifully tragic speech from act five. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace…. Out, out, brief candle!…A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage…. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
Macbeth was a complex part, physically demanding. Manchester not only carried it off but held his own in the duels. When he was acting you forgot his age, his paunch, his bowed legs. He was the doomed king. When he died, Fritzi had goose bumps.
“So thanks to all at once and to each one,” Daniel Jervis said at the end. He didn’t speak Malcolm’s final line; another superstition said the dark powers were provoked by the human conceit of perfection, so it was better to leave the play unfinished, the last line unspoken, until performance.
Perspiring in his rehearsal doublet, Manchester struggled to his feet. Fritzi and her fellow actors broke into spontaneous applause.
On Monday of the last week of rehearsal, a crew of four scene shifters reported. They were unremarkable except for one, introduced as Mutt. Whether Mutt was a first or last name, no one said.
Mutt tended to swagger and boss his three colleagues. He obeyed orders from Simkins or Manchester with a great deal of muttering and complaining. Mutt’s handsome profile caused a flutter among the ladies of the company. By the end of Monday’s rehearsal he was chatting up Sally Murphy. He and Sally left the theater together.
Next day Sally appeared in the dressing room all pink-cheeked and sleepy. She didn’t mention Mutt, who quickly proved fickle, spending the lunch hour in a back row, forehead to forehead with Launcelot Buford’s mother. Sally Murphy crossed the stage several times, shooting looks at them. That night Mutt left with Mrs. Buford.
Wednesday the weather turned warm. The run-through was a sweaty torment. Manchester complained about slow clearance of the banquet furniture in act three. Mutt blamed one of the other scene shifters, who told him to go to hell. Mutt grabbed the man, lifted and flung him. The man fell, and Mutt started to kick him. Simkins dashed between them. “We’ll have none of that.” He pushed Mutt away. Mutt glared and did his own push.
The stage manager went to Manchester. Keeping his back turned and his voice low, Simkins was clearly arguing for some action. Fritzi heard Manchester say, “I will speak to him.”
He approached the younger man; laid his hand on Mutt’s wrist, giving Mutt a look Fritzi found puzzling. Manchester said something, and the two walked off stage.
Afterward, Manchester astonished Fritzi by asking her to supper. This set her to worrying. Would he fire her this close to the opening? And would he s
pend supper money to do it?
They went directly from the Novelty to Shanley’s, a Times Square café popular with theatricals. It was a noisy, cheerful place; Manchester seemed to know a lot of people. He introduced Fritzi as “My friend and fellow player, Miss Crown.”
Over lobster tails, she wondered again why he was squandering money when he had so little. Yet, made comfortable by the fine food and two glasses of Crown lager, which induced sentimental thoughts of her father, she didn’t ask.
“It was a lovely meal, Mr. Manchester, thank you.”
“Away with formality. Henceforth Hobart. Now and always, Hobart.” He patted her hand. “Best we go now. Another intense day with the Bard awaits us.”
He greeted more acquaintances on the way out, effusively. He saw her to a taxicab, but she refused the fare money he offered. She leaned from the window, waving goodbye to the odd but oddly likable man as the taxi swung into the traffic of Broadway.
Several in the company including Ida had seen Fritzi and Manchester go off together. She was teased about it, and saw no reason to deny it. Mutt stopped her backstage, carrying a gory wax head which resembled Manchester—Macduff’s trophy at the end of the play.
“Have a nice evening with himself, did you? I guess he needs ’em to keep people fooled.”
“Fooled? How?”
“He doesn’t go with women. He’s queer as they come.”
“What do you mean?”
Mutt folded his arms. “You’re not that naive, are you? Manchester’s a sissy. Probably wears pink underwear with ribbons. One of the other boys warned me about him.”
She stammered. “I’ve heard of that, but I never met—I’ve never believed—” She couldn’t find words; she didn’t know what she was talking about. Vague references to men who loved men, heard in oblique conversations as far back as her Mortmain days, had largely passed over her because she didn’t understand the basic premise.
Mutt enjoyed her shock and confusion. “Now you know, sis. He’d only squire a girl like you for a beard. A cover.” He walked off laughing.