Because he spent so much time in town, Harry kept two rooms at the Hotel Mandrake on West Forty-fifth. There he shaved and dressed in a fresh suit, shirt, and cravat. Powdered and sprinkled with scented tonic, he turned up at the office of Florenz Ziegfeld twenty minutes before his ten o’clock appointment.
Ziegfeld kept him waiting until half past ten. “Glad to see you,” the producer said when Harry was finally admitted to his office. Ziegfeld was an impressive man, forty or more, tall and rakish and stylishly dressed. Some said his dark good looks and slanting brows gave him a Mephistophelian air. At the moment he was married to the famous soubrette from Warsaw and Paris, Anna Held, but that didn’t curtail his activity as a philanderer of renown. He consumed women like pretzels; single or married, it made no difference. Morals aside, he was known as a man who demanded and paid for the best in the shows he produced. He never shortchanged his audiences or his talent.
Ziegfeld noticed Harry eyeing a faded poster among many decorating the walls. The poster advertised an attraction called the Dancing Ducks of Denmark. A smile more like a smirk crossed Ziegfeld’s face.
“Would you believe I was only twenty-two when I produced that show back in Chicago?” He offered a cigar humidor; Harry shook his head. Ziegfeld lit up. “God damn SPCA closed me down. Said I had stage hands lighting matches under the ducks’ feet to make them perform.” A solemn wink. “I suppose it was possible.” Harry was too tense to do more than force a smile.
“You know what I’d like from you, kid?”
“I hope it’s a song for your new show.”
“No flies on you. What I’ve heard of your stuff I like. Time’s a little short, though. The next edition of the Follies starts rehearsal at the Jardin de Paris in four weeks.” The Jardin was a glass-domed venue on top of a theater building at Forty-fourth and Broadway, hell-hot in summer and leaky when it rained; patrons were urged to bring umbrellas.
“What I need is a jungle number. I picture forty or fifty girls”—Ziegfeld pranced around the desk—“a little palm frond hiding these treasures, another hiding this one, you get the idea. We’ll wind up with them dancing in the damnedest rainstorm ever seen on a stage. But I don’t have a song.”
“I’ll try to write something in a couple of days.”
“Can I count on it?”
“I’ll have something,” Harry promised. “If it isn’t right, I’ll work until it’s what you want.”
“You sound like a professional. I like professionals. I hate bullshit artists who promise and don’t deliver. I never hire one of those more than once. Then I make sure the whole street knows, so they don’t hire him either.”
His brow popping with little dots of perspiration and his voice cracking with excitement, Harry said, “I won’t let you down, Mr. Ziegfeld.”
The producer put a comradely arm over Harry’s shoulders as he escorted him to the door. “Flo,” he said. “Flo to my friends and fellow artists.”
In the anteroom, two song pluggers of Harry’s acquaintance looked at him with virulent envy. Both strained forward in anticipation of a few seconds of Ziegfeld’s time.
“Go peddle your papers, boys. I’m auditioning chorus girls in ten minutes.” Ziegfeld aimed his index finger at Harry. “Make it good.” He went back in his office and slammed the door.
Harry was elated. He fairly danced through the noontime crowds. America, the land of opportunity! How right he’d been to dedicate himself to reaching these shores, there to work tirelessly at a profession he loved.
Harry’s songs came out of his head through his fingers, but the music was in the city. He heard syncopated melodies all around him as he strode down Broadway devouring a hot roasted sweet potato bought from a vendor. He heard boats tooting on the river, feet trampling the pavement. He heard elevateds clattering and trolleys clanging and autos honking, a mouth organ growling and a black ragamuffin with thumb tacks in his shoes tap-dancing on the curbstone while an older black boy played a banjo. The song was “The Cherry Blossom Man.” Harry gave them each a dollar.
He was perspiring and short of breath, filled with excitement. This was the year, this was the moment, he felt it. Getting a song included in Girls Galore had been the first step, but a Ziegfeld production would put him on top, especially if the song was a hit. Once he was in demand on Broadway, asked to write complete scores, he’d soon reach his other goal, his own publishing company.
Harry hated all the sordid things in the music business: composers who stole melodies, performers who demanded payoffs to perform a number, publishers who doctored royalty reports in their favor. But he forgot all the negatives when he dreamed of his own company. He had a wonderful name for it. Homeland Music. Its symbol, inevitably, would be a waving stars and stripes. Harry had never considered anything else.
“Wilbur, watch out for the gentleman.”
The mother’s cry roused him from his walking reverie. A lad of six or seven ran into Harry while examining a toy.
“Madam, my fault entirely,” Harry said with a gallant tip of his bowler. Never mind that the little boy looked mean and ugly as a toad; Harry was willing to forgive almost any sin on this day of glorious opportunity. Suddenly his gaze became fixed on the toy in the lad’s grimy fingers. A small elephant cut from tin and painted gray with white tusks. Although Harry was nominally a Jew, he was familiar with Christian literature, including St. Paul’s vision on the Damascus road. Hardly daring to breathe, he said:
“Madam, may I buy this toy for a dollar?”
Startled, the woman said, “Why, it isn’t worth a fifth of—”
“I insist.” Greedy little Wilbur eagerly took the money. Harry clutched the tin elephant and fairly raced to his office, weaving in and out of the pedestrian mob like a football runner. He flung his bowler on the floor and slammed the keyboard open. By five o’clock he’d written “The Elephant Rag.” He even forgot Fritzi while he did it.
“Oh, the trunk will wag
Like a jungle flag
When the pachyderm does
The elephant rag.
All join in and (stomp foot)
Do the elephant rag.”
Flo Ziegfeld was wild for the number. Something about the combination of silly lyrics and catchy tune made the Follies audience jump up as one, screaming with joy, when forty-four girls hoofing in the artificial rainstorm all came down at one time with a thunderous stomp. An eight-foot-high elephant operated by two men inside danced in the final chorus.
Sales of “The Elephant Rag” curved up like a Fourth of July rocket trail, with deals made for the song in England and throughout Europe. Singing the song and stomping became a craze. Young and old stomped in schoolyards, on streetcars, in feed lots, even in church halls when the choirmaster wasn’t looking. Proper Englishmen and stolid Germans stomped. Volatile Frenchmen and passionate Spaniards stomped. Eventually reports drifted out of Africa about Zulus stomping.
Every paper from the Herald to the Police Gazette sent reporters to the Hotel Mandrake for interviews with the man who had set the world stomping. A colleague expressed his admiration simply:
“Harry, you’re a goddam genius.”
41. Sammy
Across the ocean in London the sun rose unseen behind sheets of rain. Paul tramped from Leicester Square to St. Martin’s Lane, poorly protected by his black umbrella. He turned into dark and narrow Cecil Court, where several film companies, including Pathé Frères and American Luxograph, kept offices.
He dodged a torrent of water coursing off the roof slates above the building entrance, shook himself like a wet spaniel, and dashed up the stairs. He’d stayed home with Julie an extra half hour to get the children started with their nanny, and to sit at Julie’s bedside, holding her hand and worrying. Childbearing had never been easy for her. She was huge now, nearly full term, confined to bed most of the day. She insisted she was fine, able to handle all of her family duties, but her pale and haggard face told a different story.
Climbing the
stairs with water dripping from his wet shoes and fedora, Paul hoped the long spell of bad weather didn’t persist through the autumn; he was scheduled to photograph German army maneuvers in Bavaria. He’d been invited because his name, and his book, had drawn him to the attention of the German general staff. They valued publicity and cultivated those who could provide it. Kaiser Wilhelm II, ever eager to play soldier, always took part in the annual maneuvers.
To Englishmen the kaiser was the living symbol of “the German menace.” He continually professed to be a great friend of England—was not his grandmother the late Queen Victoria, and King George V his first cousin (like the Russian tsar, Nicholas)? Michael Radcliffe sneered at these family connections. “A rotten club of inbred hemophiliacs and paranoid war lovers pretending to be the dearest of friends while awaiting the perfect opportunity to stab each other in the back.”
Michael was right to be suspicious of the European monarchs. Vicious animosity lurked behind their friendly pronouncements. Kaiser Wilhelm II had mourned at his uncle’s funeral but on other occasions had called the dead king “Satan,” and “the worst intriguer in Europe.” And Germany’s aggressive naval program seemed directed against Britain. Admiral Tirpitz was building two dreadnoughts a year. The kaiser insisted this was solely for defense against unnamed enemies, but a large segment of the British population, including many Whitehall diplomats, felt sure the fleet would be used to attack their country. The penny papers were full of fanciful scare stories with titles such as “The War Inevitable” and “How the Germans Took London.”
“Hello, Miss Epsom,” he said as he let himself into the anteroom and shook off again. Miss Epsom, a spinster of fifty, greeted him with a polite nod and, when his back was turned, brushed droplets of water from her cheek. “Has he arrived?”
“Twenty minutes ago, sir.”
Paul hung up his hat and umbrella and set a course for the inner door. “Will you bring us tea?”
“Certainly, at once. I will say the young man doesn’t strike me as a proper tea drinker.”
Persistent back trouble, and Julie’s gentle persuasion, had finally convinced Paul that he should hire a helper. The applicant waiting in his office was the seventeenth person to answer the advertisement; he’d rejected the first sixteen. Two were outright dunces, several were hungry but not really interested in the picture business, several more were liars and pretenders quickly unmasked with technical questions. The rest were pleasant but for various reasons hopeless.
“Good morning, sorry I’m late.” Paul’s cluttered office seemed perfectly matched to his bent collar points, crooked cravat, bulging pockets, and generally careless style.
The young man jiggling from foot to foot, cap in hand, was swarthy and thin as a stick. A large wen sat on his chin like a raisin. His hair was black and shiny. Paul noticed grime under his fingernails.
“I have your name here somewhere.” Paul searched through the hopeless mess of film cans, production schedules, bills, memoranda from his employer, Lord Yorke, cablegrams from the New Jersey office, trade papers, London papers, international papers, and the other miscellany of his trade.
“Silverstone, gov. Samuel G, for Garfunkel, Silverstone. I go by Sammy.”
“Please sit down, Sammy.” The young man’s jittering made him nervous. Miraculously, he found a pencil, then a file card that hadn’t been scribbled on. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Do you have references?”
Sammy plucked a crumpled letter from inside a woolen coat that looked like it belonged to someone smaller. “This here’s from Mr. Crutchfield, my boss at the Soho Strand.”
“That’s a picture theater, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, and a fine one. It’s in Deane Street.”
“Any others?”
For a moment Sammy’s bright dark eyes had a queer, speculative light in them. “Well, gov, no, not unless you’d want to ask the warden at Brixton.”
Paul sat back in his squeaky swivel chair. “Are you saying you were locked up?”
“Right, sir. Petty theft. My sister Belle didn’t have nothing to eat.” He pronounced it nuffing; even Henry Higgins would be mightily challenged to correct the formidable accent. Paul presumed it came from the East End or some similar district.
“I only stole a couple of loaves for Belle,” Sammy explained. “But I got pinched. I figured if you hire me, you’ll find out about it one day, so I might as well tell you straight off and save time.”
“Very thoughtful,” Paul muttered, wondering what this rather sly-looking young man was all about. “When were you incarcerated?”
“If that means locked up”—Miss Epsom tapped on the door and walked in with a tea tray—“I did me time fourteen months ago. I grew up in the docklands, on the streets, mostly.” Paul felt an affinity for that; he’d been a street boy in Berlin.
“After I left the nick I swore I’d never go back to that hole, or any like it. I’d get honest work. Always liked the pictures when I could afford the tariff, so when I saw this card outside the Soho Strand saying assistant operator wanted, I popped right in. There was one bloke ahead of me, but while we was waiting he had a little accident.”
“A little accident,” Paul murmured. “Imagine that.” He poured hot Earl Grey from the pot. To his surprise Sammy Silverstone asked for a cup, with milk and sugar.
“Fell down and busted his ankle, poor lad. Had to go home. Guess he tripped on something. Never did see what exactly.” Paul tried not to smile. “Mr. Crutchfield hired me. I told him about the nick. I been at the Strand ever since. I patch up bad splices and torn sprocket holes, post bills out in front, mop up, run the projector when the reg’lar man’s off—hard work, but I like it.”
“Why would you want to leave?”
“’Cause this here situation is a step up. Helper to somebody who actually makes pictures. A bloke who’s written a book.”
“You’ve read it?”
Sammy rolled his tongue beneath his upper lip, unable to hide his consideration of a lie. After a moment he replied:
“Can’t say as I have. Frankly I don’t read much. Mr. Crutchfield’s got a copy, though. Says it’s good, you go a lot of interesting places. I’d like that.”
Samuel Garfunkel Silverstone had a kind of cheeky candor that Paul liked. “I’m leaving in less than a month to film army maneuvers in Germany. When could you be ready to go?”
With a grin Sammy said, “Right now soon enough, gov?”
Paul took a long breath, pitched the card in the overflowing basket in the desk well.
“All right, let’s discuss salary.”
Sammy lit up brighter than one of the electrical displays at Piccadilly Circus. “You won’t be sorry. I can carry twice my weight, I’m a regular pack mule.”
“You’ll have a lot of chances to prove it.”
42. Signs of Success
With some chagrin Fritzi found herself looking forward to each picture, and regretting it if there wasn’t one immediately coming up. It wasn’t the artistry of the one-reelers she enjoyed, because there wasn’t any. It was the companionship. She liked Eddie, his wife, Rita, and their two children. She liked Nell Spooner despite white society’s opinion that she oughtn’t, and, on Griffith’s advice, she befriended the cameraman, solid, reflective Jock Ferguson. Sometimes, together, they accidentally made a scene that was almost respectable.
Even so, she regarded the work as temporary, a source of income until she found the right stage role. Her integrity as an actress was preserved by the continuing anonymity of picture players. A few directors such as Griffith were identified in titles and trade advertising, and an actress named Florence Lawrence was being billed as “The Biograph Girl,” but that was the extent of it.
Hobart saw a third-run showing of The Lone Indian’s Battle in Logansport, Indiana (“civilization at rock bottom”), and wrote to praise her acting. As soon as his contract ran out and he escaped “this damned play—Moriar
ty is hissed and threatened by the audience at every curtain call,” he wanted to visit Pal and study this new form of entertainment firsthand. That helped ease her mind. If Hobart thought pictures were acceptable, so could she.
Fritzi began to notice certain signs of change at Pal Pictures. B.B. started passing out fifty-cent cigars to favored visitors. Over Kelly’s objection, the company moved to its own suite of rooms on Fourteenth, just down the way from Biograph. It suggested to her that she might improve her own living situation now that she had funds. She said a tearful goodbye to Mrs. Perella and relocated to two airy rooms on West Twenty-second Street, near the river.
B.B. proposed The Lone Indian’s Baby, declaring that people loved babies almost as much as they loved money. This epic, which Eddie wrote under orders, put Owen in the role of temporary father of an infant left in a basket outside his tepee (an act never explained by the plot or title cards). Owen grew more conceited with each appearance as the heroic red man. He renewed his invitation to Fritzi at least once a month, hinting that she was passing up a chance to dine with one of the screen’s new luminaries. She cheerfully declined.
They risked filming the new Lone Indian picture in the vicinity of Fort Lee. In preparation Eddie bought a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson double-action revolver with a short barrel. “Damn thing scares me, I’m not a violent person. But I won’t go back to Jersey without a gun.” He practiced shooting at bottles in a vacant lot in the evening. He said his wife was horrified. Jock Ferguson hired an armed guard to accompany them and stand by the camera at all times.
After their first morning’s work they motored back to Rambo’s Hotel. Two other cars and a wagon painted with the name of the Biograph were lined up in front. The Pal company trooped around to the rear of the hotel, where fifteen or twenty people were eating stew at plank tables set end to end under a grape arbor that must have measured a hundred feet long. She saw Billy Bitzer, and Mary Pickford, and Griffith. The director waved and smiled. He looked decidedly odd in a straw hat with the top missing.