Fritzi and her mother bought their tickets at ten past two on a dismal afternoon. Looking around, she had to admit the Bijou Dream was better than the few other theaters she’d visited in occasional pursuit of her cousin’s films. The windows of the converted store were hung with green velvet drapes. The projector was shielded in a curtained booth at the rear of the long, rectangular room. Fritzi didn’t recognize the operator tinkering with the machine; the young man from the play group wasn’t on duty. Thank heaven for that. She’d never bothered to hide her feelings about the moving pictures.
Instead of wooden benches there were chairs, a hundred or more, not an assortment from drugstores, ice cream parlors, and secondhand shops, but all alike. The Bijou Dream employed a piano player whose upright sat next to the canvas screen, and a lecturer, a gentleman in a midnight blue tuxedo who introduced and explained each batch of footage from a podium on the opposite side. Pictures shown in five-cent theaters typically carried no explanatory legends. Many didn’t even have an opening title.
About twenty people attended the two-fifteen show. Fritzi and her mother were by far the best dressed. Some of the spectators reeked of garlic, wine, or a lack of bathing facilities. It wasn’t snobbish, merely truthful, for Fritzi to observe that the pictures served primarily an audience of disenfranchised immigrants. Pictures depended for success on a universal language of pantomime, and on accessibility. Slum dwellers could often walk to a theater, saving carfare.
In a roped area at the front, children were segregated. Half a dozen noisy boys in patched knickers and cloth caps joked and punched each other. Ilsa whispered, “Truants?”
“Or artful dodgers,” Fritzi said. She and Ilsa responded to a lantern slide requesting ladies to remove their hats. The grand dame in the illustration wore a wide-brimmed number carrying enough fruit and wild fowl to serve a banquet.
The professor left the piano to separate two of the boys rolling in the aisle and pummeling each other. When they were back in their seats, the operator switched off the tin-shaded ceiling lights and a new lantern slide appeared.
The Latest
T. B. HARMS
SONG HIT!
—Words and Music By—
HARRY POLAND
As Featured By
FLAVIA FARREL
“The Irish Songbird”
“Oh, it’s Pauli’s friend,” Ilsa said, meaning the composer.
Two faces filled oval frames on either side of the slide copy. The Irish Songbird was a pouchy-eyed woman who must have been pretty before middle age and sagging flesh caught up with her. The man in the other frame, Harry Poland, had crossed the Atlantic in steerage with Paul in 1891. A Polish immigrant boy, he’d adopted a new name, found his way into the music business, and now wrote popular songs successfully. Harry was a long-jawed young man with a broad smile and lively eyes. The photographer caught him lifting a summer straw hat off his dark curly hair; the pose reminded Fritzi of Paul’s snapshot. Paul was lighthearted much of the time, and the composer looked like that, too. Maybe that’s why they had become friends, and saw each other in New York whenever they could.
The first song slide appeared, illustrated by a photo of a man in goggles and a young woman in a big hat and dust veil seated in an auto. Song lyrics were superimposed on the machine’s long hood. The professor played the catchy tune.
THAT AUTO-MO-BILING FEEL-ING
IS STEAL-ING O-VER ME
Next slide: stuffed doves hovering above the couple, who were hugging. The rowdy boys jeered and made farting noises.
IT’S AN AP-PEAL-ING FEEL-ING,
RO-MAN-TIC AS CAN BE
“Get the hook,” cried one of the boys. The lecturer stepped from the podium and thwacked the offender by flicking his index finger off his thumb, a painful reminder of Rudolf.
Ilsa sang along in her heavily accented voice. Fritzi found herself singing too. Paul’s friend wrote infectious melodies.
When the song slides ended, a clackety noise in the booth said the operator was turning the crank of the projector. A beam of light shot over the audience. The boys clapped and whistled as a young woman with a leashed terrier paraded in a sunlit park. The picture was dim, the image scratched and filled with annoying bubble-like eruptions of light. The lecturer announced, “Mary’s Mutt, a comic novelty.”
The three-minute sequence started with Mary accidentally letting go of the leash, then reacting with outrageous mugging as her dog dashed off. Chasing him, she enlisted a policeman, then a young gent eating a sandwich on a park bench. The crude film was no more than an excuse for the three actors to run around wildly, bumping into trees and each other.
“The Gigolo, a spicy import from Paris.”
This picture involved a dandy with a pointed mustache, an older woman, and a young waitress he attempted to pinch. The set consisted of table, chairs, and a canvas backdrop painted as a restaurant. Halfway through the silly story someone behind the canvas bumped it and made it ripple. The actors went right on. How could anyone be a steady patron of such stuff?
“The latest from the American Luxograph.”
“Oh, here it is,” Ilsa said, grabbing Fritzi’s hand.
“Teddy in Panama.” Paul’s first actuality showed President Roosevelt inspecting canal construction.
“Exotic sights of Morocco. Fierce Berber tribesmen.” Men in sheet-like garments and burnouses stalked past the camera, glowering and waving scimitars. This was followed by a camel race in the desert.
“The bazaar at Marrakech.” Though dimly lit because of heavy shadows, Paul’s scenes of awning-covered stalls and veiled women examining merchandise caught the essence of the place. The bored urchins stomped and whistled.
The clicking projector filled the screen with an image of a hotel veranda, the same on which Paul had been photographed. British naval officers in white paraded in and out, many quite fat and most looking self-important. An occasional gowned lady relieved the tedium.
With an unexplained jerk—perhaps a repaired break in the film?—the scene changed. The audience had a glimpse of an immense battleship steaming past far below the camera, which was evidently positioned high up on the Rock. HMS Dreadnought? The image stayed only a few seconds; a hand swooped over the lens and the screen went black. One of the urchins booed. A new scene appeared: the Union Jack snapping on a flagstaff.
Another repetitive chase picture ended the fifteen-minute show. “That was thrilling, wasn’t it?” Ilsa said as they left their seats. Fritzi agreed that Paul’s pictures were special, and worthwhile, in contrast to the cheap little dramas and comedies.
Outside, she turned up her coat collar. The weather had worsened. Heavy gray skies pressed down on the city. A bitter wind blew off the lake. The air smelled of snow and was full of soot, the stink of horse dung, the rattle and roar of El trains tying their iron loop around the downtown.
“Pauli has seen so much of the world. What an exciting life he leads,” Ilsa said.
“He should write a book about it,” Fritzi said. The thought had just occurred to her. Paul wasn’t a writer, like his friend the journalist and novelist Richard Harding Davis, but he was smart, and she was certain he could do it.
Ilsa and Fritzi bent into the wind, heading for the trolley stop. Ilsa had relieved Nicky of the duty of picking them up. On the corner she bought two roasted sweet potatoes from a vendor, to warm them up while they waited.
“Fritzi, those people in the little stories—are they actors?”
“They may think so. What they’re doing isn’t real acting, it’s old-fashioned scenery chewing. The style of fifty years ago. Modern acting is—well, smaller. Intense but restrained. Edwin Booth pioneered it in this country.”
“I suppose picture people have to play broadly to convey an idea. Would there be acting opportunities for you?”
Fritzi reacted emphatically. “Not me, Mama. I’ll never have anything to do with that kind of entertainment. I’d rather not act at all.”
“I th
ought acting was acting,” Ilsa said with a little shrug of puzzlement. “Life was so much simpler in the old days.”
7. The General and His Children
His Cadillac started on the second spin of the crank. It was a dependable four-cylinder 1906 model that developed 40 hp. Black with matching leather seats, it had its winter hardtop latched in place. The machine had cost a little more than $3,700 new, which put it in the luxury class. It wasn’t the General’s most expensive auto, though. That was the glittering $5,700 Welch touring car he kept garaged in bad weather.
He slid under the wheel on the right side. He put on his expensive driving goggles, resembling a domino mask made of leather inset with two front lenses and a side lens at each temple. He drove out the east gate into Larrabee Street, passing a line of delivery wagons piled high with kegs of the dark and hearty beer they brewed especially for Christmas.
Creeping along congested streets of the Near North Side, Joe honked at a Simplex that almost ran into him at an intersection. He cursed when horse dung splattered his fenders. He shook his fist at a Reo that swerved too close. In the east, clouds like gray granite slabs layered the sky. Sleet began to tick against the windshield. Fortunately, his velvet-collared motor coat had a warm leather lining. His mood matched the bleakness of the day.
The sleet had turned to snow by the time he drove into the big four-bay garage at the rear of his property. He parked the Cadillac next to his prize vehicle, the beautiful cream-colored seven-passenger Welch touring car. Its four cylinders developed 50 hp. Brilliant brass coachwork and leather upholstery, fire-engine red with a diamond pleat, dazzled the eye. Made in Pontiac, Michigan, the Welch was a top-of-the-market vehicle for rich men. Joe had long coveted a chain-driven Mercedes, but they cost more than twice as much. He thought $12,000 for a motor car excessive.
In the house he handed his automobiling clothes to Leopold, the steward. Leopold was middle-aged, phlegmatic, less of a trial than his martinet predecessor, Manfred. Leopold hailed from Bavaria, but Joe saw none of the lazy traits he associated with Germans from that region.
In the kitchen, Ilsa and the cook, Trudi, were mixing batter for stollen, the traditional raisin- and sugar-dusted cakes of the season. Joe kissed his wife, who laughed when she saw she’d transferred flour to his chin. He said he’d be ready for Abendessen, the evening meal, by eight o’clock.
“I’ll be in the office going over sales reports. Sound the buzzer.” Joe operated the house with an elaborate system of bells and buzzers that suited his orderly nature, while annoying others. Ilsa buzzed at five past eight, and Joe proceeded to the dining room.
The Crown mansion reflected the season. A nine-foot fir tree stood beneath the huge electric chandelier in the two-story foyer. A marvelously detailed wooden crèche was arranged beneath. The tree wore a festive cloak of glass balls, enameled ornaments, gold chains, and silver tinfoil. Scores of white candles were clipped to the branches. They wouldn’t be lighted until Christmas Eve; that was the German way.
In the dining room, two candles in the Advent wreath in the center of the long table were already lit. On the sideboard stood a carved St. Nicholas, two feet high with his long beard, miter, and bishop’s crozier appropriately painted.
Joe sat at the head of the table. He heard his older son coming, announced by the scrape of his artificial foot and a hacking, phlegmy cough. Joe Junior smoked too much; nothing his parents said would make him stop. The General bridled his annoyance and unconsciously brushed nonexistent specks from his immaculate vest.
Joe Junior created fierce pity and anger in his father. The boy was a tragic misfit. Mired in socialist dogma—he was friendly with the very red Gene Debs—he’d taken part in a strike at a shingle factory out in Everett, Washington, where he worked for a time. The strikers fought a bloody brawl with hired goons. Two of the goons threw Joe Junior onto one of the buzz saws that split cedar blocks into shingles; the saw tore off his right foot.
Only the quick action of a Norwegian woman, Anna Sieberson, kept him from bleeding to death. He later married Anna, and was planning to adopt her son when influenza carried her off suddenly. The boy went to live with relatives, and Joe Junior slunk home to Chicago, a bitter and defeated man.
“Good evening, Joe,” the General said as his son limped in.
“Hello, Pop.” Joe Junior sat—no, that wasn’t quite right, he took his seat and slouched, his right shoe stuck out as if to defiantly remind everyone of the cork foot it covered. Look at him, Joe thought. Dirt under his nails. Sweat rings on his shirt. Joe Junior was always demonstrating that he was one of the “common people,” although he lived under Joe Crown’s roof at no cost, and ate Ilsa’s food, and enjoyed a life monumentally better than any other man who did low work at the brewery. Joe Junior was thirty. The same height as his father, he’d resembled Joe Senior until beer and overeating ballooned his stomach and dissipation put gray rings around his blue eyes.
Ilsa and Fritzi came in. Ilsa sat at the far end of the table. Fritzi kissed her father’s forehead, murmured, “Papa,” and took her place opposite Joe Junior on the side. The two serving girls set platters on the long table, a family heirloom of dark walnut with fat carved legs. Ilsa kept it covered with a lace tablecloth of intricate design.
Joe said to Fritzi, “Did you and your mother see Paul’s pictures this afternoon?”
“We did.”
“How was the theater?”
“Dark, but clean. Mr. Laemmle’s recommendation was all right.”
“You know he named his own theater the White Front, hoping it would suggest cleanliness and respectability, and attract a better crowd. A vain hope, in my opinion. Thank you, Bess.” Joe nodded to the girl who set his stein of Crown lager by his right hand.
Ilsa said, “Pastor Wulf claims picture theaters are spawning grounds for vice, but we saw nothing immoral. Just some loud boys wasting their afternoon.”
“Paul’s films are really remarkable,” Fritzi said. “They show places and events that people would never see otherwise. We saw Morocco, and watched the president operate a big steam shovel.”
Joe helped himself to a large slab of Ilsa’s dry pot roast and passed the platter. Careless, Joe Junior almost dropped it. Joe shot him a look, then said, “Theodore’s energy and curiosity are boundless.”
“It’s a shame Paul’s work is exhibited only in five-cent theaters,” Fritzi said. “The other pictures, the ones that try to tell stories, are trash.”
“We agree on that,” her father said with an amiable nod. Joe Junior looked bored, sitting head down, devouring mashed potatoes. He continued, “I saw a few story pictures a year ago. What a mistake. They offer nothing but low comedians chasing girls in scanty outfits or running around smashing down picket fences and trampling flower beds. Total disregard for property.”
Joe Junior snickered. “Property. Of course.”
“We all know what you and your friend Debs think of the idea of property,” his father shot back. “I need no commentary from—”
Loud knocking at the front door interrupted. Ilsa looked toward the foyer as Leopold rushed to answer. The front door opened; Joe heard the wind. Ilsa said, “Who on earth can be calling at this hour?”
Leopold rushed in. “Sir—madam—it’s your son.”
“Carl? Mein Gott.” Ilsa leaped up, ran past Leopold exclaiming, “Where did he come from?”
“Pittsburgh, Mama,” Carl’s voice boomed. “Pittsburgh and South Bend, on the boxcar Pullmans.”
Elated but baffled, Joe followed his wife into the foyer. Snow was melting on Carl’s hair and the shoulders of his patched overcoat. A long red scarf wrapped round and round his neck trailed to the floor. Carl hadn’t shaved in several days. His boots dripped water on the marble.
Carl rushed to hug his mother, swinging her off her feet and whirling her. Ilsa’s flying heels nearly knocked over a tall Chinese jar. When Carl’s clumsiness combined with his boisterous energy, there often was damage. Tonight no on
e cared.
Carl released his mother and shook his father’s hand. “Greetings, Papa. Hello, Joey. Fritzi, let me hug you.” She received a three-hundred-sixty-degree whirl like Ilsa’s. She was breathless when he put her down.
“No one expected you, Carl,” she said.
“I’m on my way to Detroit.”
“Detroit?” Joe Crown said in a baffled way.
“To look for a job. I’ve been studying fast cars lately. I want to find out how they’re built. I want to drive one.”
Joe said, “You looking for employment? In an auto factory?” He was almost afraid that asking would hex the whole thing. Carl grinned, threw an arm over his father’s shoulder, and leaned down to him.
“Yes, Papa, your wayward boy has found something he wants to do. It happened back East—Baltimore. Tell you all about it later.”
“You’ll be here for Christmas, won’t you?” Fritzi asked with a curious look of expectancy.
“Through the holidays, but that’s all,” Carl said.
“This is wonderful news,” Ilsa exclaimed. Only Joey, leaning against the door jamb at the dining room entrance, looked indifferent. It maddened Joe.
“Come in, come in, there’s plenty of food left,” Ilsa said, fairly bubbling.
“Could use some,” Carl said. “No dining-car service on the boxcars.”
“You could be killed riding that way without paying,” Ilsa said.
“Oh, no, I had an expert teacher. Paul. He learned to do it in Berlin.”
“Glad you’re home, Carl,” Joe Junior said as the others trooped back to the dining room. “But I’m bushed, we’ll talk tomorrow.” He limped to the staircase with his crippled right foot scraping, scraping—Joe clenched his teeth as he watched his son drag himself up the long staircase.