At lunch, as I consumed cup after cup of black coffee, Renee described her own nightmares to me.
“It began after Sydney left,” she said. “I must have been asleep for less than half an hour, but the nightmare felt like it lasted forever.”
“We all ate and drank too much last night,” I said. “And then Sydney started telling us about his latest horrid idea.”
“I’m quite sure that you’re right,” said Renee with a sip of her own black coffee. Both of us usually preferred our coffee sweet, with plenty of sugar stirred in, but this morning nothing would do but the bitterest of brews. “I dreamt that the film went in reverse. Rather than the mask dissolving to reveal my face, I was watching my face become the mask, just a silver mask that reflected everything but me. It was as if I was being erased.”
My nightmares of a lost Renee reflected in a mirror showed me a tangle of hallways, all leading into shadows. Behind the shadows, someone watched us. Sydney? It felt like something older, something more terrible. But I shook off my memory of the dream, and convinced Renee of the source of her fears. “Sydney’s ideas for the mask. I’m sure that prompted your dream.”
“Sydney called me this morning, just to talk more about Arkham,” Renee said.
I felt relief that he had just telephoned and not come downstairs to share our breakfast. An excited Sydney, planning a new picture, was the worst companion for a headachy morning. “He kept talking about how long it had been since he had been in Arkham but how he was sure that it hadn’t changed. How much he was looking forward to going home.”
“It’s hard to imagine,” I said. “Sydney as a boy in an idyllic little New England town.”
Renee smiled. “Yes. I never think of him as anything other than the Sydney Fitzmaurice striding through the world in his silk cravats and stylish hats. Do you suppose he wore short pants and had skinned knees from falling off his bicycle?”
For some reason that thought doubled us up with laughter. Wiping those cheerful tears from her eyes with some choice words about the impact on her mascara, Renee swore that this would be her last nasty nightmare picture for a while.
“Sydney’s brilliant,” she said. “But I need to find a lighter script, a romance or a comedy, or I’ll end up playing nothing but murderous women in impossible hats. Remember what Sennett said to me? That I had a flair for comedy.”
“That’s just because he wanted to stick you in one of his silly bathing suits,” I said. “And those caps are far less fetching than any hat that I designed for you.”
She shrugged. “Better that than another terror role with a costume that weighs two tons.”
“My costumes never weigh more than one ton,” I countered and we both giggled again.
I left Renee’s apartment feeling much more cheerful. She was right. Sydney’s nightmare stories were starting to turn into real nightmares. What we needed was a picture that wouldn’t stay with us in our dreams.
One trip to Arkham, and a summer trip at that. By the time we returned in July, at worst August, if filming went long, we could look around for the perfect project for the fall. Renee’s contract was with the studio, not Sydney, and they always wanted her to work with other directors. Fairbanks had approached her about an Arabian Nights fantasy that summer, but she disliked the script and especially the character of the girl who betrayed the hero to his enemies. “Not another scheming spy,” she said. “I don’t want to be known only as the beautiful but murderous woman.” But I loved the idea of working on such a picture, with palace scenes and fairytale characters. I discussed it with Fred, who had heard about the flying carpet being built, and he suggested that I go to United Artists with my costume designs and see what was available. It would be easier for me to work outside our studio too. Our studio was less possessive of costumers than they were of their few proven stars like Renee and Sydney.
Chatting with Renee that morning, I asked, “Would you mind if I talked to other studios? Just when you’re not working on a picture.”
Renee looked a little startled. We’d been together our entire careers in Hollywood, but now it seemed like we might have reached a time to grow more apart.
“Jeany,” she said, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand, “you should do what you want. As long as you promise to design all my hats when they cast me as the romantic lead!”
“All your hats and your party dresses,” I promised.
So I packed for Arkham with far too light a heart. While my sketches of shadows and masks, still scattered across my unmade bed, made my hand tremble a little as I gathered them up, I stuffed the pages with great determination into my portfolio and knotted the ribbon around it twice. Thus I thought that I could contain the nightmares spawned by Sydney’s description of the silver mask.
Chapter Two
The first problem with Arkham was that it was in Massachusetts. “Could have been worse,” said Fred. “Could have been Maine.”
I looked at the map spread across the table in the train’s dining car. Then I checked my timetable. “I think we have to go through Maine to get there,” I said. “Isn’t Boston in Maine? Don’t we change trains there?”
“Well, ma’am,” said Joseph, the porter, coming to fill our water glasses, “you’ll transfer in Boston but that’s in Massachusetts. And your company paid for all your cars to be switched. So you folks don’t have to do more than sit tight and wait for a little bump.”
I found the right spot on the map. It still seemed a terrible long distance from California, the only state that I’d ever known. Unlike Joseph, who had worked as a Pullman porter all across the country, I’d never been farther north than Oakland or farther south than Los Angeles.
“How did Max talk the studio into paying for our own cars all the way to Arkham?” said Fred.
“Because it was cheaper than the private train that Sydney wanted them to commission. As is, we have four cars, including baggage, on this one,” said Max, shifting a cup so Joseph could see that there was no coffee in it. The porter smiled and took the water carafe away to exchange it for a silver coffee pot. Four private cars, including baggage, meant the studio had bought out first class. The first class dining car was ours throughout the day and night, although we probably didn’t tip as well as the regulars would. The porters were nice about it, and nice about me riding up front with the rest. We were taking a northern route, and Joseph didn’t anticipate any objections, although he warned me to stay away from compartments further down the train. “There’s some folks with no manners at all sitting in second class,” he said. I looked into his warm brown face and wondered what he’d heard over the years.
“Just tell them that we’re in pictures,” said Fred on the first day, when some conductor or other fussed about the sleeping arrangements and, possibly, a Chinese-American woman riding with the others. Even after nearly five years at the studio, I ran into stupid prejudices despite others like me in Hollywood. There were successful actresses like Anna May Wong, cameramen like James Wong Howe, who started with DeMille in 1917, and more. I wanted to make my own career, my own way, but it was a battle. I owed my early assignments to Renee and later Sydney insisting on my designs. It probably helped that I worked behind the camera and not in front of it. Still, I appreciated that Sydney kept the executives and other busybodies off his sets, insisting on working with his favorite artists in picture after picture. In return, he made the studio a lot of money and they gave him funding for his next picture. And, for the last couple of years, that studio funding came with a Max tied to it. Luckily we liked him.
And, for this trip, Max had persuaded the studio to pay the extra expense of leaving California in style.
Renee and Sydney each had a private compartment and a sitting room in between in their car. The rest of us, the men and women, were bunking in two open-section sleepers but it was only us, no other passengers allowed. All the bunks had privac
y curtains and converted to seats during the day. A furiously contested poker game raged there when people were not sleeping, which is why Fred, Max, and I preferred to work in the dining car.
Joseph, with his knowledge of train gossip and ready hand with the coffee pot, was another reason to stay there.
“Oh, everyone working on the train knows you work in the movies, sir,” said Joseph. “Couldn’t miss you all getting aboard at La Grande.” Our parade of luggage and chattering actors had been followed to the steps of the train by an equally large crowd of reporters and fans. Also, Fred made the biggest fuss as we boarded the train in Los Angeles, because they wouldn’t let him sleep with his nearly new Bell and Howell camera. They insisted on stowing all the gear in the baggage car. Fred wanted to move his bed to the baggage car, just to keep close to his equipment. A couple of porters and the stationmaster finally convinced him that the camera was safe enough where it was.
Now we were east of Chicago, passing by cornfields, and trying to get as much work done as possible in the nearly four-day trip. The dining car turned into our workshop. Joseph kept us well supplied in coffee and ignored the times that Max or Fred tipped a little extra into their cups from their hip flasks. He even brought me a pot of tea on the first morning, but I told him that I preferred coffee with sugar.
“I still don’t see what Sydney wants in our opening scene,” said Fred. He looked at some notes scrawled in Sydney’s atrocious handwriting. “They enter a house, it is not clearly their house,” he read. “How do we show that?”
“They carry luggage but nothing too large,” I suggested. “As if they were gone for just a few days. Or it could be that they are new to the house and moving in. The audience decides.”
Max scribbled something in his notebook. Because this was the start of production, his tiny pocket notebook had neat crisp corners and a blank cover. By the end of the shoot, it would be dog-eared, dripping with receipts, and numbers would be scribbled on every corner of the cover. The notebooks were legendary. Rumor stated that each one was specially done for him in a stationer’s shop. Max did have his name stamped in gold inside the front cover of every notebook that I saw, which argued for the truth of the custom-made rumor.
Max never lost a notebook, no matter how many times he pulled it out and was interrupted by some request by Sydney. His ability to hang onto it, and to turn all the many jotted notes into coherent reports to the studio, was truly magical. What happened to the notebooks after a film was done and the final report filed, I never learned. Fred was of the opinion that they deserved a ceremonial burning, like a Viking funeral, and more than once offered to build a little ship so Max could launch them flaming on the Pacific. As far as I knew, Max never agreed to that.
“Do you need to buy bags or can you just use ours?” Max said with a pencil poised to jot down that potential expense. “It would make the studio happy if we could keep away from too many purchases on this trip.” Max liked to keep the studio bosses happy, and apparently endless reports on expenses made them very happy indeed. We all suspected that the studio paid Max a bonus whenever he whittled down Sydney’s budget. Which was good, because Max liked buying costly clothes and accessories for himself.
“Renee can carry her hat box,” I said. “The one with black crocodile trim. She has that white ensemble with the small round hat that would look good with it.” I flipped open my sketchbook, quickly turning past page after page of masks sketched with shadows dripping across them. The nightmares continued on the train. I often found myself awake and drawing to relieve my terror. Joseph had become used to me arriving in the dining car well ahead of everyone else and juggling my breakfast around my propped-open sketchbook.
“That settles Renee’s costume. What about the other girl?” Max asked.
“Is she supposed to be the maid or the best friend?” We hadn’t seen a full script from Sydney. Not unusual. He often hid details until he was filming, just to shock the actors and create a stronger reaction from them. At least that’s what Sydney said. Often we felt it was because he didn’t know the end of the story until he was halfway through it. “Is Betsy playing her?” Our usual ingénue, Betsy Baxter, was back in a sleeping car, betting next month’s salary on poker. Betsy most often portrayed girlish servants, the kind who flirted madly in the corner and caught the audience’s eye with her smile and dimples. Betsy always cleaned up in card games, as she looked so sweet and spoke with a bubbly squeak that made the men go mushy and miss that she was counting the cards. Fred refused to play with her after she took twenty dollars off him in one night of gin rummy.
Max checked his cast notes. “Betsy is the maid. Renee is the older sister and Lulu plays the younger.”
“Renee has a sister?” I drew a belt to add to Renee’s traveling coat so it wouldn’t look so much like what she wore in the last picture. I could borrow a belt from another dress that we probably wouldn’t use. I wondered how we could dress the other actress to make her relationship clear with Renee. It would be a new challenge. Renee usually played the lone temptress. The hero often had family, a kid brother or kid sister, that helped him out. Or mourned him after he died. Sydney could go either way with his stories. “Who is playing her? Maggie stayed behind for that role with Chaplin.” Maggie often played the hero’s kid sister or an innocent friend of the heroine.
“Maggie is never going to get cast with Chaplin,” said Fred, fiddling with a bit of wire. He had spent the morning checking his hand-cranked Bell and Howell model 2709 (serial number 242, as Fred would tell anyone foolish to ask about the camera) and the rest of the gear still stored in the baggage car. Though he visited his beloved camera regularly to make sure nothing was joggled loose, there wasn’t much else that he could do until we arrived in Arkham. Except drive the engineers crazy by pestering them to let him ride up front and see how all the engine’s levers and switches worked. Actually the engineers liked Fred. He disappeared for several hours each day to return coal-dusted and grinning, his ragged old checked cap further scarred by smuts and stray sparks.
“Sydney isn’t planning to bring Maggie later, is he? We don’t need two fainters,” asked Max.
“No, Sydney hated that Maggie stayed behind for that Hollywood film,” I told Max. “Where everyone in the cast is a star playing themselves except the girl who comes to town to become a star. There’s a bit with Chaplin. Maggie wants the role of the flapper who goes off with the tramp.” The film itself was a stunt, a gimmick more than a script with famous actors in dozens of parts. Sydney sneered when he heard about it, and frowned even more when nobody from our company was invited to take part. His nightmare movies might sell well at the box office but we definitely weren’t as famous as some. Even if Maggie got a bit in Hollywood, she wouldn’t be playing herself like Chaplin and the rest. She’d just be a “Flapper” in the credits.
“Maggie never hits her mark and has two left feet,” said Fred. “Can’t see her making the final cut with Chaplin. So, Max, who is our fainter for this picture?”
Once Maggie got into place – and Fred was right, she never remembered where she was supposed to walk – she was a champion fainter. Sydney often had her hit the floor just as a shadow crept up the wall or a hand reached around the door. It never failed to make the audience jump. It was hard to imagine a terror picture without a fainter.
“Yes,” I said, “who is going to be terrified by Sydney’s tricks so the audience knows when to gasp? Is he planning to use Renee? She hasn’t played the innocent for a while, but it worked in The Vampire’s Doom.”
“Lulu McIntyre,” said Max. He flipped a page in his notebook and looked over some information there with the suggestion of a sigh. “She’s driving from New York and meeting us in Arkham. She asked for quite a lot to do this picture.”
The name sounded familiar but not too familiar. “She’s not in the movies,” I said, and it wasn’t a question.
Max nodded. “S
he’s been on Broadway the last few years in those plays by Eleanor Nash. That’s part of the contract. She’s coming with Nash, who will be working on the script with Sydney.”
“Sydney hates sharing a writing credit,” I said. He generally got first billing as “Written and Directed by Sydney Fitzmaurice,” in letters that filled the screen. Renee had been arguing for the last few pictures that her contributions to the scripts be acknowledged, but so far Sydney had slithered out of that.
“Oh, he wanted the writer as much as the actress,” said Max. “But it was the headlines about Lulu’s performances that caught his eye.”
“The Screamer?” said Fred and then I remembered. There was an actress famous for her “haunting wail” starred in something very like The Bat. Except it wasn’t The Bat. Sydney had been obsessed with the reviews for that show, especially about the technical tricks played on the stage to terrify the audience. He kept reading Lulu’s reviews out loud almost as often as his own. Something about her voice driving men mad.
“What does it matter if she can scream?” I asked. “Nobody will hear her except us.”
“She can open her mouth,” said Fred, “and the organist can let out the train whistle or something like that. Will there be a score for these films?”
“There will be a score. You know Sydney. But he doesn’t want the organ tricks,” Max said. “Sydney wants you to try recording her. Something about sending a cylinder with each film for playing.”
Fred shook his head. “Won’t work. Better to just mark the score and have the organist or piano player make a shrieking noise.”
Max objected to that. Fred started a long explanation on why recording sound to sync with film was a fascinating idea but not practical for large distribution. Something about microphones, and speakers, and why nobody would bother to convert a movie theater because it would just be too much money. Also everybody was making more money with silents than live theater, so why bother going backwards and adding spoken dialogue to a story. Then he talked about the work being done by DeForest that had been inspired by a Finnish scientist. For a kid from Brooklyn who never quite finished high school, Fred liked to read, only he read the type of articles in magazines that sent the rest of us to sleep. He also went to demonstrations, as many as he could find. Inventors flocked to Hollywood, all convinced that they could make a fortune in pictures. Fred loved to listen to them and discuss their new ideas. He’d been terrifically excited with some radio magazine that had reported a director using a radio to signal directions to large groups of extras in an outdoor scene. He thought it would be much more efficient than Sydney’s megaphone.
Mask of Silver Page 3