Griffith clinked the silver dollars. “I’d be happy to recommend you.”
Dumbfounded, she said, “May I ask why? I insulted you, didn’t I?”
“You spoke frankly. I like actors with backbone. They bring something to a part beyond a slavish desire to please.” He scribbled on a memorandum pad. “I’ll telephone Eddie this afternoon. You should go see him tomorrow. This is the address. It’s an exchange.” She didn’t understand what he meant. “Eddie rents a desk there.”
“Pal Pictures doesn’t have a studio?”
“They’re a small company. Sometimes they rent a loft on West Twenty-third.” Griffith’s answer struck her as curiously glib. She didn’t want to examine her luck too closely, though. Like a soap bubble, it might vanish.
A young man in knee breeches popped around the screen. “All set, boss. Billy’s lit the set. Do we have a scenario?”
Griffith tapped his forehead. “In here. It’s all we need.” Tall and correct, he took Fritzi’s hand between his. This time she didn’t resist.
“If Eddie hires you, here’s a bit of advice. Make a friend of your cameraman. He’ll soon know what lighting and makeup will show you to advantage.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, for the opportunity and the advice. I’ll remember it.”
He patted her hand almost paternally. “I have a feeling you will. Oh, I should ask whether you can ride a horse.”
“Why, yes, I rode a lot when I was growing up in Chicago.”
“Good. I don’t know that the role requires it, but Eddie’s picture is a western.”
“Western? Heavens, will I have to travel?”
He laughed. “No farther than the other side of the Hudson. Fort Lee, New Jersey, is the western capital of America these days.”
He hurried to the set, where preparations had escalated to a level approaching pandemonium. One of the sisters she’d seen coming to work, the pert one, didn’t like her gown and was cursing like a sailor. There was a lot of shouting, but no one appeared to be listening. The only calm individual was Billy Bitzer. Straw hat tilted over his eyes, he examined the lens of his camera. Griffith tapped him on the shoulder and began to speak. Others noticed the director; silence was instantaneous.
Fritzi was almost dizzy with excitement. She put her portfolio on the hall bench and stuffed her shirtwaist back in her skirt. An incredibly pretty young girl, sixteen or seventeen, raced up the stairs, long gold ringlets bouncing. She saw Fritzi straightening her clothes.
“Bet you were with the boss. Did he get fresh?”
“Well…” Fritzi’s hesitation amounted to a confession.
“Don’t think anything of it, it’s just his way. He’s married, you know.”
“Married!”
“One hundred percent. His wife makes pictures for the Biograph. He pretends he hardly knows her. In public he calls her Miss Arvidsen.” She giggled. “Is there any work?”
“Not here, but possibly with another company.”
“That’s grand. It’s really a lot of fun making pictures. Mr. Griffith’s a regular dictator, but we all think he’s a genius.”
“Thank you, miss—”
“Smith, Gladys Smith. But they bill me as Mary Pickford. My brother acts too. Jack Pickford.”
“Pleased to know you, Mary. I’m Fritzi Crown.”
“Hope I see you again, Fritzi.” Miss Smith-Pickford rushed off.
Bitter wind assaulted Fritzi the moment she stepped outside. A loose garbage can rolled east, clanging like a cymbal. Westbound pedestrians held their hats and leaned at a forty-five-degree angle. Fritzi clutched her cheap cardboard folder and fairly danced down the steps. Who cared if the picture was a western? It was work, and Ellen Terry would just have to shut up.
36. Westward Ho
David Griffith’s bad handwriting directed Fritzi to something called the Klee & Thermal Film Exchange on Fourteenth Street near Third Avenue. Going in, she was buffeted by a rude man with round metal cans under his arm. Five more men clamored for attention at a front office counter staffed by a lone clerk. He was examining a perforated strip of film.
“You damaged it, Cohen. We’ll have to cut out the frames with the torn sprocket holes before we rent it again. That’ll be an extra dollar.”
“Robber,” said the indignant customer.
Fritzi waved above Cohen’s head. “Excuse me, can you direct me to Mr. Hearn’s office?”
The clerk seemed pleased to see a rose among the thorns. “Mr. Hearn’s coat closet,” he corrected, “is that way, fourth on the left.”
She plunged into a musty hall decorated with lurid posters for pictures from Biograph and Vitagraph and other producers. Strong chemicals afloat in the air made her eyes water. Another clerk rushed at her with a stack of cans. She flattened against the wall to avoid being run down, then proceeded to Hearn’s open door.
A coat closet, all right. Its poverty was only slightly relieved by some black-and-white magazine advertisements tacked to the wall. All included the words PAL PICTURES and a logo, a racing palomino horse. A slogan appeared at the bottom of every ad. Follow the Pal Pony to Profitable Programs!!!! Someone loved exclamation marks.
Eddie Hearn saw neither the posters nor Fritzi. He was absorbed in a sheet of yellow foolscap. Silver wire spectacles were set on the tip of his nose. Unruly black hair over his ears demanded a barber. He wore riding breeches tucked into scuffed brown cavalry boots whose heels rested on the desk.
She knocked on the doorjamb. Hearn glanced up, showing her a long, narrow face, vivid dark eyes behind the spectacles. A holy medal gleamed in the V neck of his loose white shirt, a gold wedding ring on his left hand.
“Golly, I didn’t see you. Miss Crown?” He said it while swinging his feet off the desk; he nearly fell out of his chair.
“Yes, sir.”
“Please come in.” In his haste to stand he dropped the typewritten sheet. When he bent to pick it up, he banged his forehead on the wall. “Sorry to meet you in such surroundings. This office is too small. It’s only temporary.” For his sake she hoped so.
At his invitation she took the visitor’s chair. He looked her over. He seemed friendly as a puppy. “Have you ever visited an exchange?”
“No. I’ve no idea what goes on here.”
“What the name says. Exchange. When the picture business was getting started, producers sold their films directly to people who showed them. But that proved to be cumbersome and wasteful. What do you do with an old, scratched print no one wants to see again? About four years ago someone in San Francisco opened the first exchange and solved the problem. The idea of middlemen caught on. Exchanges buy the pictures, then rent them to owners of nickelodeons who show them, bring them back, and exchange them for a new program. There are lots of exchanges on Fourteenth Street—over a hundred in the U.S. This is one of the busiest. Klee and Thermal run a film-processing laboratory in back.” Which explained the chemical smell. “There’s also a projection room that can be rented.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hearn. That’s very interesting.”
“So here we are.”
“Yes. Here we are.”
Hands in her lap, Fritzi waited.
“I’m grateful to David for sending you over. The man’s aces with me, though working for him was like serving in the army of Attila. He taught me how to stage a scene, and how to cut it together. Billy Bitzer taught me lenses and lighting. Did David tell you what I’m doing now?”
“A western picture.”
“There’s a strong market, domestically and in Europe. Look at Broncho Billy Anderson. Essanay can’t churn out Broncho Billys fast enough. People are wild about him. And he has a paunch!” Eddie Hearn grinned in an apologetic way. “Excuse me if I get carried away. I love the West. I’ve seen Buffalo Bill’s arena show at least twenty times. When I was little, I hid dime novels under my pillow. They weren’t considered proper reading for rich boys in Greenwich.”
“Connecticut?”
“B
orn and bred.” He nodded. “Pop’s on Wall Street. He expected me to follow him there, but I heard a different call when I played an Indian in a prep school pageant. Pop insisted I follow him to Yale. I did, but in my junior year I switched from business to drama. Pop stopped paying my tuition. I had to wait tables and paint houses to graduate. Doesn’t matter, I’m doing what I want. I fell in love with pictures the day I saw Edwin Porter’s Great Train Robbery.”
He leaned back. He was good looking, with plenty of Irish charm. He spoke beautifully. His smile and his gregarious style made her feel at ease.
“What’s your acting experience?” After she summarized it he said, “Made any other pictures?”
“No, this would be my first.”
“I like honesty. I know a dozen actresses who’d lie like the very devil to get a part.”
“Can you tell me a little about the picture?”
“I grew up on Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales. I wondered why an Indian should always be portrayed in pictures as the skulking villain. Why not a noble savage? A true native American hero? So I wrote this scenario.” He showed the typed yellow foolscap. “My original title was ‘The Lone Indian.’ Mr. Pelzer, one of the partners, approves all the scenarios. He wanted money in the title. He said everyone’s interested in money.”
After his spurt of confidences Eddie Hearn seemed unable to think of more to say. They stared at each other. He blushed from his throat to his cheekbones. Fritzi smiled sweetly.
“Mr. Hearn, do I dare ask whether you have any interest in hiring me?”
“Yes! Definitely! I like your appearance, I love the way your eyes dance when you smile, and I take David’s word that you can act. We’ll soon find out, won’t we?” She was forced to laugh at his little jest, though its underlying truth was chilling.
“I can offer two, possibly three days of work if we have fine weather. Wages are four dollars per day. Mr. Kelly also pays for trolleys, the ferry, and your lunch over in Jersey.”
“Who is Mr. Kelly?”
“The other partner. In charge of the money. You know how they say all the Irish are merry and whimsical as leprechauns? They never met Kelly. He squeezes a dollar ten cents out of every dollar we spend.” His cloudy brow suggested it wasn’t a well-loved trait.
“Four dollars a day,” Fritzi mused.
“Yes, and—what’s wrong?”
She was on her feet, acting her heart out to register disdain. “Mr. Hearn, you may be under instructions to buy talent cheaply, but the standard salary at the Biograph and other good studios is five dollars a day, regardless of the role. I won’t take less.”
“I see.” He gnawed on his lip, tried to keep his expression that of the flint-hearted capitalist. He didn’t have it in him.
“All right. Five.”
From a drawer he pulled another typed sheet, folded it, and handed it across the desk.
“Please study the scenario. Tuesday morning report to the 129th Street ferry terminal at six-thirty sharp. We’ll meet our cameraman in Fort Lee, then proceed to Coytesville—that’s a little hamlet several miles farther on. Dress warmly. This time of year it may be cold even when the sun’s well up.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hearn. Thank you very much. I’ll do my best to repay your confidence.”
“Everyone calls me Eddie. You must too. See you Tuesday.”
She floated out of the exchange in a state of bliss. At a shop near Herald Square she treated herself to hot tea and a biscuit. She sat in delicious reverie, imagining how she’d splurge on Christmas presents. Then she pictured all the things she could at last buy for herself. An oval throw rug for the cold, bare floor of her room. A rectangular wall mirror without flaws or cracks.
Underwear.
What contortions and deceptions she’d gone through during Ilsa’s visit so Ilsa would never see the sorry state of her undergarments. Because of her inept mending, small rips had become lumps of thread hard as pebbles; they hurt when she sat the wrong way. Lace trim on one pair of drawers resembled a fringe of string, and the fabric was worn so thin, a man could have seen everything, had there been a man in the universe who cared to look. New underwear! She gave the thought a whole string of Pal Pictures exclamation points. New underwear was better than a gold strike.
Oh, the horizons that opened when you had a job and the huge sum of fifty dollars hidden in a tin box! The thought of Ilsa’s surreptitious gift, the love and generosity it expressed, always turned her teary. The moment in the tea shop was no exception.
She ordered a second pot and unfolded the scenario, noting its wretched typewriting, the many strikeovers.
“THE LONE INDIAN’S GOLD”
(I REEL)
SCENARIO BY EDW. B. HEARN JR.
The melodrama opened with Chief White Eagle of the Apache riding up to a general store. A “genial old-timer” ran the store, together with his “spunky daughter” (she would have to stand before her new mirror and experiment with various attitudes and faces that might register spunk). An interpolated note said the store interior would be filmed outdoors, using a canvas backdrop supplied by a relative of money man Kelly. This was not going to be high art.
The chief had a sack of gold from the “tribal mine.” He’d ridden to town to have it assayed. No expert on Indian affairs, Fritzi nevertheless doubted that a people who had been relentlessly harried and nearly annihilated by the United States cavalry had a tribal gold mine to fall back on.
Three skulking bad men spied on the chief as he showed his sack of gold to the storekeeper’s daughter. The head ruffian demonstrated by what the scenario termed “salacious leering” that he coveted the girl along with the gold. The bad men jumped the chief and fired pistols to make him “dance” (Fritzi rolled her eyes and hastily drank some tea).
With the Indian knocked unconscious, girl and gold were abducted. Of course, the chief found and rescued both, in the woods following a “titanic battle.” The girl clearly adored White Eagle, but he had other business, possibly further excavations of the tribal gold mine. He rode off with a wave and an “expression of manly stoicism.”
Title card
THE LONE INDIAN WILL RETURN!!!
Fritzi sighed. Eddie Hearn of Greenwich and Yale had stuffed one too many dime novels under his pillow. The scenario was hokum, cheap blood-and-thunder. Did it matter? Shamelessly, she felt that it did not. She had a part. She was going to act again.
William Gillette fell ill upstate; a week of the Sherlock Holmes tour was canceled. Hobart took leave of his role as the Napoleon of Crime and rushed back to the city from Buffalo—“the fundament of the world,” as he expressed it to Fritzi. His timing was perfect; she was dying to visit a new-style restaurant said to be popular with the acting crowd. She took him to supper.
The Forty-second Street “Automat” caught their fancy at once. You entered a bright and spotless dining area done in white tile. You laid a tray on a continuous counter and pushed it along in front of little metal-framed windows, each displaying its item of hot or cold food. You paid for each dish separately by putting two pennies or a nickel into a slot. The window sprang open, you placed your purchase on your tray, and a partitioned turntable revolved an identical dish into the window. American ingenuity!
Hobart saw several colleagues dining. He darted off to chat, bow, make a show of confidence while his food got cold. “Yes, The Tempest is a definite possibility. Belasco is interested.” Fritzi giggled as she broke her kaiser roll. Her friend had never met Belasco.
Finally he came back. He remarked that her decision to investigate the picture studio was wise.
“I’m nervous about next Tuesday, Hobart. Do you think I’ll be all right?”
“If you work hard and don’t leaven it with contempt, undoubtedly.”
Stuffed with good food and affection for her bombastic companion, Fritzi took his arm as they left. The cold night air made Hobart’s nose shine like a Christmas tree ornament. A wind blowing along Forty-second Street whirled a f
ew snowflakes around them. Hobart squired her to the elevated stairs where they embraced and wished each other luck. They promised to be reunited soon.
“You are a dear girl, Fritzi. I would propose marriage were I younger and, ah, inclined toward the female of the species.”
Fritzi kissed him and ran up the stairs. Hobart walked away jauntily in a cloud of snow swirling under the street light.
37. Blanket Company
Tuesday’s dawn was dark and foggy. Fritzi was in a state of nerves the moment she woke up, said state compounded by a bellyache. Last night she’d treated herself to a meal at a neighborhood saloon, entering in by the side door (“Tables for Ladies—Refined Atmosphere”). She’d enjoyed a bowl of navy bean soup followed by liver and onions; she wasn’t enjoying the aftermath. Her stomach gurgled like faulty plumbing.
She reached the ferry pier at six-fifteen. Other actors came drifting out of the murk, giving her a close look or casual nod. A pretty black girl in a thin wool coat arrived. She had a friendly face but stood well apart from the others, shivering.
Spears of light pierced the fog: a Stoddard-Dayton with headlamps blazing. Eddie Hearn was at the wheel. Seated next to him, arms folded, was a slight red-faced man in a high celluloid collar and dark gray double-breasted suit with a light gray shadow check. He had beautiful thick white hair and a slit of a mouth. Kelly?
A deck hand waved Eddie across the ferry ramp to a parking place. Eddie jumped out, summoned the others aboard, and performed introductions. The sour man was indeed Alfred A. (for Aloysius) Kelly. He grunted something to Fritzi while he eyed her up and down. It set her on edge, which was probably the effect he wanted.
A young man with blond hair and a bull neck was introduced as Owen Stallings. He was playing the Lone Indian. He looked about as Indian as Lief Eriksson. After shaking Fritzi’s hand enthusiastically, he sauntered to the rail and from there continued to smile at her, as though confident it would bowl her over. Handsome men were worse than beautiful women.