Los Angeles: June 19, 1923
“Action!” an off screen voice shouted. Two men dressed as cowboys, ran forward with their backs bent down and dropped their heads behind a rock outcropping, looking around them as they pretended to be panting with exertion. Only their white hats showed above the rocks. From behind a tree twenty meters away a man in a black hat stepped out and aimed his rifle.
“One, two, three, fire!” shouted the voice again and the man in the black hat lifted the rifle slightly as if it sprung up by the kickback of a shot that never happened. At the same time a man out of sight from the cowboys yanked on a fishing line and a white hat flew off a man’s head and to the ground. The man put his hand over his bare head and ducked down.
“Cut!” came the loud voice again and the men stood up and looked at each other, bored. “Okay, good take boys,” Thomas Roinner said, stepping his large bulk forward from behind the camera and strolling over to the actors. He was directing this film shoot and in his element.
Thomas had ignored the rumors and naysayers and left the center of the movie world in New York and headed west to Hollywood, to chase his dreams. It is the armpit of the film business, they said; a hide out for criminals and thieves; mismanaged wildcat and piratical operations trying to escape the law; mark my words, it’ll be a ghost town in no time; it would be death for the movie industry to move from New York to some desert town surrounded by oil rigs, “authorities” declared.
He had come anyway, leaving everything behind, including a mistress, debts and several outstanding contracts. He packed his family in their rickety Ford made his way to Hollywood. He was a self-taught director and eager to make any script come to life on the big screen. Few people attended a school to try to learn to make films in his day — they mostly watched what others did and figured it out as they went. With the dozens of production companies having sprung up around the Hollywood town in the last few years, it had become an intensely risky venture that utterly ruined the many and made rich the few. Thomas’ boastful and embellished talk about his shallow resume got him work and he was eager to prove he belonged. He dreamed that soon he would have his name on one of those stars that hung on the ceiling in the Hollywood Hotel on the corner of Hollywood and Highland avenues — an accomplishment that signified you had made it.
Today was the final shoot for a western short, Raucous Ranch, which had brought his small production crew into the hills above Hollywood at the southwest corner of Griffith Park. He was in a hurry to complete this film for several reasons, the main being he and the producer were cutting all sorts of legal corners to make it happen.
“Now, I want to get close ups of you, Jack, firing your rifle and of Murdoch without the hat on and with fear in your eyes.” The camera operator lifted the rickety camera and tripod and moved them close up to the cowboy in the black hat and prepared himself to wind the crank at the director’s order. “Now, when I yell ‘fire’ you need to snap the gun up, like it has gone off,” Thomas instructed like this was some delicate task.
“Eh, Thomas, we got company,” an actor said, pointing down the mountain a couple hundred meters. Thomas turned around and looked. A black Buick roadster, followed by two police cars had pulled up to the end of the dirt road and several men had gotten out and were heading up the mountain to where they were.
“Quick, hide the camera!” Thomas said to the camera operator, who began clumsily trying to disconnect it from the tripod. An actor came over to help and they managed to get it off, falling over each other in the process. Thomas reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a hip flask and tossed it into the bushes.
Down below, a man in a suit and tie and sporting a brown derby, clearly a detective, got tired of climbing and shouted up to them, “Thomas Roinner?”
“That’s me!” Thomas shouted back.
“Can you show me your permit for this film shoot?”
Thomas rolled his eyes in disgust over the intrusion. He pulled a piece of paper from a satchel and handed it to an assistant, who went down the mountainside with it.
While the paper was being delivered, Thomas paced back and forth in deep thought about how to get out of this predicament. He started to issue instructions. “Get the camera in the bag and get the props together. We’re going to have to make a run for it.”
“Wasn’t that a permit?” Jack asked, raising his hands.
“Yes, but it was for a different shoot last week.”
“Great! So why don’t we stop the shoot and do back down the mountain. They can’t arrest us for not having a permit. Don’t they have to give us a warning?”
“Technically they have already given me more than one warning. So, yes, they could arrest us. But the bigger concern is they will want to confiscate the camera and the film.”
“Why would they do that?”
The detective had received the paper at this point and was yelling something at the assistant that couldn’t be heard. He now directed his attention up to Thomas.
“We have a warrant to arrest you, Mr. Roinner,” he shouted up the mountainside. “And your equipment is being taken for patent violations.”
“That’s our cue boys! Grab the bags — we’re going up the mountain,” Thomas said and threw a bag over his shoulder and started to climb. The actors stood there, undecided. Thomas turned back around. “If you stay they’ll arrest you and you won’t get paid. If they get the equipment, the film will never be seen again and all your work will be lost.”
“Why?”
“Those boys work for Thomas Edison and he owns the patents to movie cameras, demanding ridiculous royalties for their use. Why do you think all these production companies are now out here in Hollywood and no longer back in New York?”
The actors each grabbed a bag and the small party started to climb the mountain.
Between gasps for breath, Thomas explained further: “It was said that the main reason that the industry was migrating to Hollywood was for the year round mild weather and easy tax and labor regulations. But there was another reason: Thomas Edison. That famous inventor of the light bulb and scores of other useless gadgets and machinery — you know the one. He holds the patents for the movie camera. And he is sending these stupid agents all the way from New York to try to make him some money.”
“So that’s why the companies moved away from New York — to get away from Thomas Edison?” Murdoch asked, struggling and panting with the large tripod on his shoulder.
“Well, it’s the reason our production company moved here anyway. And Edison has singled them out. That’s why they are constantly moving their office location and why you guys are being paid in cash.”
They looked down and saw the detective and three cops were continuing to follow them.
After climbing for a couple minutes and stumbling on the rocks and scratching himself on the brush, Murdoch had had enough. “This is ridiculous. I quit. I’m not going to play this game.” He dropped the tripod and looked up at Thomas and shrugged.
“Fine, go ahead and quit. Give me the tripod.” Thomas was panting and sweating heavily, but showed no sign of quitting.
“I’m quitting too,” Jack said and placed the film bag he had grabbed at Thomas’ feet and turned to walk back down the mountain. Another actor and an assistant stopped as well and Thomas could see he was now alone.
“Damn you all! Don’t you guys ever have any dreams worth fighting for?” He balanced the camera and film bags over his shoulder and pick up the tripod, heaving with the heavy load. He went a few steps further up the mountain and tossed the tripod behind a nearby bush, noting its location to come back for it later. He continued up the mountain, looking behind him a few minutes later to see that the actors had now caught up with the detective and the cops and were engaged in some conversation. Thomas continued on, wishing he had a little less of his own bulky weight to carry.
Twenty minutes up the mountain he stopped and sat down on a rock, the sweat pouring down his face and pooling between his doub
le chins before dripping like a leaky faucet onto his shirt. The mid afternoon sun seemed to have doubled in strength over the last half hour and was making the climb unbearable. He was parched now and his body ached in places where he didn’t know he had muscles. His chest hurt more than any other body part and while he sat he could hear his heart thumping loudly in his ears. He looked out in the distance at the burgeoning city of Hollywood. From here it mostly appeared as dusty streets with scattered buildings and palm trees. Some real estate mogul had erected an ostentatious “HOLLYWOODLAND” sign on the mountain to his left to promote his housing development project, which Thomas thought was going to ruin the site as a future backdrop for movies.
No sooner had he caught his breath than the detective appeared some hundred meters down the mountain, still climbing upwards. Damn! This guy doesn’t quit! He strained to pick himself back up and lift the bags. He barely managed to get them onto his shoulder and began plodding further up the mountain, heaving with each step. There is no way I can stop now, he thought. His entire life had been invested in this project. He was riddled with debt; barely able to keep his family fed and had bet all he had on this project. He needed it to succeed or he was lost.
Over a small ridge, he lost sight of the detective and began to cut across the mountain, hoping to lose him by taking a different course and making it easier on him to no longer have to fight the incline. He cut around small trees, bushes and shrubs, losing his footing here and there and starting small rockslides when he fell on his side and scraped his arms and legs.
To keep himself going he tried to distract himself by thinking about his wife, washing pots and pans at a soda fountain to make some money to help pay rent and buy food, and about his two children, long overdue for new shoes and dentist visits. He urged himself on further, finding it a little easier to breath but his body’s desperate plea for water and the stabbing pains in his chest were unrelenting.
He came around another rise and was met by a small plateau, occupied by a large oak tree. The tree’s canopy stretched to the ground around it. Maybe he could hide here, he thought.
He stepped under the canopy and was thankful for the tree’s shade. He lumbered over to its trunk and dropped the bags and his whole body with a thump.
Pains shot out from his chest and down his arm, sending him into a convulsion. He rocked his head back and clenched his teeth, gripping his chest with his hand, desperate for the pain to go away. When the climax subsided he was gasping for breath and leaning forward, shaking. Numbness had crept down his left arm. He was scared. Gawd, what is happening to me?
“Mr. Roinner!?” the detective’s voice echoed across the mountainside. “Give up, you can’t keep this up all day!” It stirred Thomas and he struggled to get himself to his knees and stand up. He looked back around the tree trunk and through the foliage. The detective wasn’t visible. He looked up into the tree, seeing its many boughs and branches jutting this way and that and had an idea. Vertigo hit him, causing the tree to twist and spin around him. He swayed and fell forward onto his hands and knees. He remained like that for a minute, shaking his head and trying to get the earth to stop spinning around him. Eventually things settled and became normal again.
Ignoring the pain shooting through his body as best he could, he got to his feet again and undid a strap on the equipment bags. He retied the camera and film bags together so they could be lifted as one. He clambered over to the nearest bough, a few feet off the ground and hauled the bags onto it. He climbed onto the bough himself and struggling against the trunk, he lifted the bags on top of the next highest bough. Each move was incredibly painful and he had to wait a minute between each exertion, trying to get the pain to subside and his lungs to settle.
Approximately twenty feet up the tree the vertigo returned and he quit. He had no more energy. He shoved the bags into a corner between two boughs and laid back on top of them, watching the branches and leaves twist and spin around him. His mouth was dry, his pulse was racing and the numbness had made his left arm useless. Let them find me. He thought about his two children again and started to cry, whimpering between gasps for breath.
The pain in his chest shot up again to an unbearable level, feeling like someone had shoved a crowbar right between his ribs and was sadistically twisting it.
All went black.
Detective Johnson, sweating and panting as he climbed the mountain in penny loafers, cursed his job. Working for Edison to hire cops to chase after patent violators through Hollywood was having as much success as the Prohibition. There were violations by the hundreds every day and for every increased effort made by Edison to pursue the patents, the numbers kept increasing. Now he was on top of a mountain chasing after some fat, lazy criminal with a camera in desert-like heat. He should be busting Mafia or investigating murders or shutting down brothels and god knows, there is enough of that in this crazy town, he thought.
Following Thomas wasn’t hard. The man seemed to slip regularly, leaving large slide marks in the dry earth. At times he could tell he was dragging the equipment he carried, leaving an easy trail.
Detective Johnson approached the Oak tree and followed Thomas’ trail under the canopy. He observed the flattened leaves and grass at the large roots where Thomas had lain and he picked up a lens cap that must have fallen from a bag. He looked up into the branches of the tree. No Thomas. He walked around the tree trunk slowly, staring up from bough to bough and made sure Thomas wasn’t anywhere in the tree. There is no way that fat man could have climbed very high, he thought, even if he did get into the tree.
He went out from the tree’s canopy and looked around carefully, trying to pick back up the trail. He couldn’t find it. He walked around again and looked carefully through the tree branches again. He scanned the mountainside all around and saw no sign of anyone.
Amazing, that blob has somehow given me the slip!