They touched their glasses. “Prosit.” After they drank Fritzi said, “Have you heard the latest joke about President Taft? On the streetcar he got up and gave his seat to three ladies.”
“That’s very amusing. But I’d prefer to hear all about this play which I regrettably missed.”
Fritzi gave a summary of her Macbeth experience. She’d become friendly with the director and leading actor, a Mr. Manchester, and with the leading lady. Ilsa knew Mrs. Van Sant’s name, and she was impressed.
Some of Fritzi’s colleagues sounded less winning. Fritzi’s mimicry of one, a Mr. Scarboro, made Ilsa giggle.
“Your imitations, they’re always priceless.”
“Carl and Joey and some of my teachers never thought so. Pauli liked them, though. I guess imitating people isn’t nice, but sometimes I can’t help it. I don’t tolerate fools very well.”
“Like your papa.”
Ilsa’s heart was overflowing with motherly concern. Very clearly, Fritzi was struggling. In Ilsa’s opinion she had stayed too long in New York already. Ilsa took another sip of Liebfraumilch for courage.
“Let me speak seriously a moment. Haven’t you grown discouraged here?”
Soberly, Fritzi said, “I’m discouraged sometimes, yes.”
“Then come home. Give it up.”
Fritzi looked at her. “To appease Papa?”
“No, no. To free yourself from this awful life.”
“I came to New York by choice, Mama. I dreamed of it for years. I’m doing what I want to do.”
“How can you say that after so many disappointments? What comes next? What you’ve done before, carrying dishes, making beds, typing for no-goods who don’t appreciate it? None of it’s fit work for a young woman of your intelligence.”
With an odd, nervous look Fritzi said, “I know where there’s an acting job that pays fairly well.”
“You hardly sound enthused.”
“I’m not. But it’s work. I’m thinking seriously about it. I don’t want to say more until I’ve investigated. Shall we order dessert?”
During her four-day visit, Ilsa bought Fritzi three new outfits, a pair of good patent leather pumps, a pair of galoshes, a set of handsome tortoise-shell combs for her unruly hair, a new flatiron, and a small potted palm to bring a little cheer into the rented room. At the Rogers Peet store she bought a tastefully striped madras four-in-hand for Joe. She couldn’t guess whether he’d wear it.
Fritzi accompanied Ilsa to Grand Central. Together they walked down the two-hundred-foot red carpet of the Limited. Fritzi had been with her mother every day. Whatever the nature of this new acting opportunity, it certainly hadn’t taken her time. Nor had Fritzi said any more about it.
On the noisy platform, Ilsa harked back to their conversation at Lüchow’s. “I wish you would come home.”
“To what? Amateur theatricals and charity work? No.”
“Why are you so determined? Is it to defy your father?”
Fritzi’s brown eyes sparked; Ilsa had touched something. “I want to prove to him that he’s wrong. That I can do this.”
“What will you do if this next acting job fails like all the others? Just keep marching on forever until you’re gray and no longer able?”
“I am going to make this one succeed, Mama.”
“Why won’t you tell me what you’re doing?”
“Plenty of time for that later.”
“Fritzi. It isn’t something to be ashamed of, is it?”
“No, Mama,” she answered,—a little too quickly, Ilsa thought. She did her best to conceal her dismay, her feeling of frustration, personal failure at the end of this rescue mission.
The conductors called final boarding. The huge black locomotive chuffed like an impatient horse. Ilsa threw her arms around Fritzi. As they hugged, she slid her right hand down to Fritzi’s left pocket with fifty dollars in folded bills.
The Twentieth Century Limited carried Ilsa north along the Hudson in a spectacular autumn twilight. The palisades were brilliant yellow and scarlet. A little steamer going downstream looked white as wedding-cake icing. She saw none of the beauty, only an imaginary reflection of Fritzi’s face in the glass. She sat with her elbow on the sill, her chin in her hand, and a tear shining on her cheek.
35. Biograph
Fritzi discovered Ilsa’s fifty dollars at the end of the day. She was touched and overcome. A few dollars put aside would stave off starvation again.
Ilsa’s gift didn’t remove the need for serious thought about the future, however, or the need of some positive step in that direction. She left messages at the Biograph studio all through the following week. Sunday evening she was in her room, trying to interest herself in copies of the Times and Tribune thrown away by other tenants. Through the ceiling came the talking-machine voice of Carrie Jacobs Bond singing “The End of a Perfect Day,” a sweet song, but not when played twenty times a night. Someone knocked.
“It’s Mrs. Perella. There’s a gent telephoning.”
“Thank you for calling back, Mr. Bitzer,” Fritzi said when she answered. “I didn’t imagine you worked Sundays.”
“We work seven days. Last week was hell. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to accept your kind offer. When we met, I know I made a rather sharp comment about the pictures—”
“Nothing we haven’t heard before. Forget it. I’ll be glad to introduce you to our star director, Mr. Griffith. Used to be an actor. A few months back he directed his first picture, and we sold twenty-five prints. The most we ever sold before was fifteen. Now he can’t make pictures fast enough.”
“When should I be there?”
“Tomorrow morning, six-thirty. Ask for Griffith. I’ll set it up. One little tip. No snooty words about pictures to him, or you’ll be out the door. Griffith wants people who take the business seriously. He thinks it’s a new art form.”
Daylight was rising above the East River when Fritzi came rushing along east Fourteenth Street, a cardboard portfolio of programs and reviews clutched tightly in her glove. She’d included a Macbeth review with a cast list, hoping the review itself would be overlooked. She’d been up since five, pressing her skirt and scrubbing a soup spot out of her shirtwaist and fretting.
Trash of all sorts sailed along the street. A west wind beating at her back blew ominous clouds. As always before an important interview she was frantically nervous. She almost tripped over a scruffy mutt raising its leg at the wheel of a milk wagon.
At the correct address, number eleven, she stared up at a five-story brownstone. Staring right back at her were four would-be actors shivering on the stoop in the chill morning light. Their expressions ranged from the mild curiosity of a handsome Negro boy in patched pants to the raging hostility of a hard-looking redhead. Fancy gold letters on a plate-glass window to the right of the high stoop said
THE AMERICAN MUTOSCOPE
& BIOGRAPH COMPANY
The redhead snarled at her. “You’re supposed to wait out here till someone looks you over, sister.”
Not feeling a bit genteel, Fritzi snapped, “Oh, thank you, I mistakenly thought this might be a new trolley stop.” The boy laughed.
She stepped aside to make way for men and women arriving with newspapers, lunch pails, makeup boxes. A young fellow who looked like an Irish ironworker said to a companion as they approached, “I don’t care what the boss says, I think cops are funny.” He winked at Fritzi, tipped his cap, and bounded up the steps.
Two young women, beautiful ash blondes and obviously sisters, followed close behind them. To the gathered hopefuls the pert one said, “Good morning.” The ethereal one said, “Good luck.”
Just as the crowd cleared and Fritzi prepared to go in, a man in a heavy football sweater came out. He studied a sheet of paper, then the actors. To the redhead he said, “Nothing today.” He repeated it to the two men and the boy. He looked Fritzi up and down. “You’re new.”
“Yes, sir, I—”
“Nothing for you either.”
“I have an appointment with Mr. Griffith. Mr. Bitzer arranged it.”
Though doubtful, he said, “All right, come on in. The boss is busy, but he does like to see new girls. Follow me.”
Allowing herself a little smile of vindication, she started up the steps. It was that moment Ellen Terry chose to hand down one of her opinions.
The galloping tintypes? Shameful. No good can come of this.
It might be true. Head high, she marched up the steps and into the building anyway.
Fritzi quickly decided the Biograph studio was one of the oddest, noisiest, grubbiest places she’d ever seen. The yellow walls were water-stained and peeling. The air reeked of paint and cigars. From upstairs came a din of hammering and sawing.
They climbed two flights to the second floor; there the din was worse. The man pointed at a bench. “Wait here. Don’t go in, that’s the main stage.” When he disappeared through a wide archway, though, Fritzi promptly stepped over to peek.
It might have been the ballroom of the once fashionable town house; certainly it was big enough. High-intensity arc lights hanging from overhead pipe battens lit the room. On the floor, banks of glowing purplish tubes shed a different, more diffuse light on the peculiar scene. A canvas flat rose up before her eyes to establish a wall with patently fake table and chairs painted under an equally fake, in fact, horrible landscape. A second flat appeared beside the first, propelled by invisible hands that butted them together while invisible hammers pounded invisible nails into invisible cleats.
A practical door in the flat opened; a man walked out carrying two potted plants. A scene shifter unrolled a faded Turkey carpet that exhaled clouds of dust. Off to one side a carpenter at a sawhorse sawed a two-by-four at maniacal speed. In another dim corner a wardrobe woman snatched garments out of a trunk, snarling, “Hell’s hard-boiled eggs in a basket, where is the goddamn thing?”
A young woman in Oriental pajamas bumped Fritzi from behind. To a stocky man wearing a straw hat she said, “Is the makeup okay, Billy?” The girl’s face was plastered with golden greasepaint; she looked like a terminal jaundice case.
“Definitely not. The lip rouge is too heavy. You dames keep forgetting, red photographs black. Hey,” he exclaimed, noticing Fritzi. “Good morning. You made it.”
“I did, Mr. Bitzer, thank you,” she said. “I really do appreciate—”
“Swell. Got to rush. Good luck.”
The man in the football sweater returned and crooked a finger. She followed him into the big room. He pointed.
“Someone’s with Mr. Griffith. Go in and wait till he speaks to you. Over there, in the corner. Don’t step on anything.”
Half blinded by the lights, she squinted at a folding screen decorated with golden peacocks. A third flat wobbled into place, creating a crude drawing room. Billy Bitzer left off polishing the lens of his camera and yelled at someone while the carpenter yelled at someone else and the wardrobe woman screamed epithets and yanked more costumes out of the trunk. What kind of crazy place was this? Fritzi had assumed that studios where silent pictures were made would be—well, silent.
Behind the Oriental screen a man held forth in a baritone voice almost as fine as Hobart’s. “I’m sick and tired of being hauled to the front office every week to explain how I cut my pictures.”
Hovering near the screen, she patted her hair, unbuttoned her jacket, smoothed her shirtwaist. This must be Mr. Griffith.
“If we end a scene in room A, we go right away to room B. It isn’t necessary to show the players walking from A to B. The dunderheads don’t get it because every other director does show the actors walking. Pack of illiterate damn Yankees. Never read Dickens or any other fine writer.”
Steeling herself, Fritzi stepped around the screen into an office improvised from a rolltop desk, two swivel chairs, and a gooseneck lamp. A tall, dignified man was speaking to the burly young Irishman who’d tipped his cap outside.
“Maybe I should look for another studio. Oh, good morning, my dear.”
“Mr. Griffith?”
“Yes, I am David Griffith. This is Mike Sinnott, one of our actors with ambitions to direct.”
“Only my kind of picture, boss.” Sinnott gave Fritzi a little salute. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Yes, likewise.”
Griffith ushered Sinnott to the ornamental screen. “You make your nonsensical comedies and I’ll make five-reelers that have room to tell a real story, and we’ll see who wins.” Over his shoulder he said, “Be back shortly. Please be seated.”
She took the guest chair, fidgeting. As a distraction she studied the director’s cluttered desk, a mad confusion of letters, memoranda, cost sheets, books—Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, several works by Dickens, Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman, a novel her father despised because it glorified the Ku Klux Klan.
A voice behind her made her jump. “Very sorry, my dear. We’re always plagued with last-minute details.” Griffith was nearly six feet tall, in his early thirties. His hair was thick and brown, his sideburns long and full, his nose sharp; he reminded her of schoolbook pictures of the Roman Caesars. Unlike most of the raffish inmates of the Biograph, he was smartly turned out in a suit, vest, cravat, high-winged collar.
He sat down, crossed his legs, and regarded her with deeply set blue eyes. “Now, my dear, to business. Billy Bitzer tells me you’re an actress.”
“Yes. Here are a few things I’ve done.”
He examined the contents of the cardboard portfolio. “I’ve heard this Macbeth was execrable.”
“I’m afraid that’s too kind.”
He smiled. Leaning back, he scrutinized her. His eyes were heavy lidded, with a hypnotic intensity. He seemed oblivious to the shouting, banging, cursing on the other side of the screen.
“Tell me something about your background, Fritzi. Please don’t mind my using your first name. In pictures there’s none of the stuffy formality of the stage.” Except, of course, everyone so far had referred to him as Mr. Griffith or boss.
She began with her Mortmain days. He drew her out with brief but precise questions. In his speech she heard the South. Not the deep cotton South but the border—Kentucky, Tennessee. He kept twisting a large ornate ring, silver and black enamel decorated with an Egyptian or Oriental character.
“Thank you,” he said when she’d finished. “Please don’t be offended if I tell you what I tell all applicants who come to us from the rarefied precincts of legitimate theater—in which I apprenticed as an actor, by the way. Motion-picture companies, particularly this one, are not fond of thespians who are merely slumming.”
“Mr. Griffith, I’m serious about applying to work in pictures. I have no experience, but I learn quickly.”
“Excellent, we’ve cleared the air. Most who gravitate here find that what we do is pleasant, even exciting. The pay is good, five dollars per day, whether one’s a featured player or an extra. There are no lines to memorize, though I insist my actors make up dialogue suitable to the context of a scene. Lip readers have caught us up short a few times. We work outdoors a good deal, so it’s healthful. As a matter of fact, certain members of the company will soon enjoy the balmy air of southern California. We’ll be filming out there until spring brings sunshine back to the East.” She decided that the word suiting him best was pompous.
“Please stand up, Fritzi.”
Nervously she did. He slid two silver dollars from his pants pocket, began to pass them from hand to hand, clink, clink.
“Turn toward me. That’s fine. Turn again. Now sit. Stand. Register sadness. Let it become happiness.”
She obeyed each instruction, feeling like a mugging chimpanzee.
“Now show elation. That’s good. Amusement. Scorn—oh, very nice. Hatred. Excellent.” He stood suddenly, slipped his right hand forward to rest lightly just below her padded bosom. “Are you free this evening? We might discuss opportunities over a bite of supper.”<
br />
Oh, no; he was that kind of director.
“Mr. Griffith, if that’s the price of employment at the Biograph studio, I refuse to pay it, thank you very much.” She pulled away and snatched her portfolio off the desk. He was still holding her; somehow her shirtwaist had come out of her waistband. He cocked his head.
“This is puzzling. You don’t strike me as a prude.”
“I am not. But the only thing I’m selling is whatever talent I may have.”
There was a long, horrible moment of mutual staring. The lamp threw glittering pinpoints in Griffith’s eyes. She was sure he was going to curse her. Instead, he tossed his head back and laughed.
“Can’t blame a fellow for trying, Fritzi.” He picked up her jacket. “I’m sorry I have nothing suitable for you at the moment. We employ several fine actresses in the company already. However, I do know of one opportunity.”
“In a picture?” She was fumbling, put off by his return to courtesy.
“Of course in a picture. From time to time I hear from other directors in need of particular talent. In this case I’m speaking of a young fellow who was assistant camera here for ten months. He’s good. When he came to work for me, I threw him in the deep end and he swam immediately. His name is Eddie Hearn. A Yale man, but don’t hold that against him. He’s working for Pelzer and Kelly, Pal Pictures. It’s a blanket company.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, just a technical term. Eddie is scheduled to start filming on Tuesday, but he hasn’t found a suitable leading lady.” Leading lady? Could she be hearing correctly? “If the weather’s bad, it won’t be too comfortable, I’m afraid. Eddie’s shooting outdoors.”
“I’ll wear a warm coat!” Fritzi’s cry amused him. “What type does he need?”
“An ingenue who’s a bit unusual. Not a jaded city woman, someone earthy. Countrified. Fresh-scrubbed, like you.” Ye gods, what’s next? “Wholesome”?