Chosen for Power

by Rex Baron

  Mary Miles Minter, a baby-faced, adolescent actress had dropped in unannounced, to solicit the help of her mentor, William. She was dressed in a ruffled organza formal with her hair in voluminous banana curls that hung to her waist. She wore a large diamond clasp on her party dress that glinted in the light from the lamp with such a brightness of veracity that Paulo did not even think to question its value.

  William's large fingers plowed restlessly through his own wheat-colored hair, juxtaposing a gesture of frustration against a timid and kindly luster in his eyes. He was clearly the confidant of many, carrying the burden of privileged knowledge, the romantic secrets and personal shame of the young industry's glittering Sonnenkinder. He was their chosen father, confessor in a pagan order that worshipped the sunlight, the shark that filled their pocketbooks and kept the cameras turning.

  “You know Mary,” he said, “if your mother, Charlotte, finds out about this, you'll end up in hot water. And I don't mind telling you, I resent you involving me in your romantic escapades. I had every intention of spending a quiet evening chatting with my friend Paulo here, when you turn up on a clandestine run from your mother, to meet some no-account heir from a manufacturing family.”

  “Honestly Bill,” the girl rolled her eyes. “I thought I could count on you to help me. It's not that I care for this man. You should know that better than anyone.”

  She shot an insinuating glance at Paulo.

  “It's only that I want to get out. I'm 19 years old, one of the biggest stars in this town for years already, and my neurotic mother won't even let me out to go to a party at the Coconut Grove, where there are hundreds of other people as chaperones.”

  “I realize your mother is difficult Mary, but she's just protecting your image as the chaste little thing you're supposed to be for the great American public,” William patted her small, pale hand.

  Once again, her eyes narrowed into insinuation.

  “The hell with the American public. You and I know better, don't we?”

  Paulo shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat.

  “Don't worry Paulo, I know you're there,” Mary said, adopting a child's voice, “and I promise to go and leave you two alone. All I want is for Bill to let me telephone Tom Dixon from here and have him pick me up out front. Is that so much of an intrigue to get mixed up in?”

  William did not wait for a comment from Paulo.

  “All right, make your call. But if your mother catches you and locks you up in the closet again, I'll swear I had nothing to do with it... and you'll tell that young pencil magnate to pick you up at the corner. I will not have you seen lolling around in front of my house.”

  Mary kissed him on the cheek and scurried to the hallway to place her call.

  William shook his head in dismay.

  “If it isn't little Mary with her overactive libido, it’s nervous little John Gilbert or dim little Mabel with her drug problem.”

  “Mabel Normand?” Paulo asked surprised.

  “Yes, I'm afraid Charlotte Shelby isn't too far off, trying to keep Mary at home. That Ambassador Hotel crowd is a bad lot. I feel guilty helping her, but if I try to stop her, she'll get pushed even farther away and we will have lost her entirely.”

  “Well, you know what they say about the picture business,” Paulo suggested, “it's filled with perverts and circus performers, and anyone else who has secrets to hide or a life they've run away from.”

  “Possibly,” William smiled. “The celebrated are a pack of liars, and sometimes perverts, at best. You know perfectly well that I have left behind a name and identity myself. I am the last to cast scorn on others for wanting to start over.”

  At that moment, Mary returned from the hall, excited.

  “Tom will be here in a flash,” she said. “Colleen Moore and some of the other girls are going with us, so my virtue is preserved, at least for another night,” she sighed. “If my mother only realized how innocent these parties were.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and kissed the tall man on the mouth. Her lips lingered for an uncomfortable instant. Then, she jolted back into agitated jubilance.

  “I'll wait on the corner, like you asked. Thank you my dear William. You're the only one I truly love.”

  She kissed the tip of her finger and wrote his name in the air before disappearing through the screen door like a winter night’s apparition in white.

  “A sweet child really, with such pressure on her to make everyone rich. I feel sorry for her.”

  Paulo placed his hand on his friend's shoulder.

  “You're so very good,” he said.

  William drew his attention away from the space in the hallway where the shining apparition of Mary had last stood. His face brightened.

  “Now, my dear friend... Mary is gone and we are alone.” He stepped to the corner table and lowered the light. “Perhaps now we can have that quiet little chat we hoped for.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  1921 Los Angeles, Lasky‘s studio

  The glare blasted through the windows of the car, blinding Lucy as she rode east into the morning sun. Groves of shrubberies and trees stretched on endlessly past streets that bore their names, Citrus, Orange, Sycamore, and Poinsettia. It was as if she had been dropped in a great formal garden, a maze of vegetation that she needed to navigate to a secret pocket somewhere in its heart, where the movie studio was planted. Jesus steered a course through the dusty paths leading to the gate, sending up a fine powder that settled on Lucy's skin and around her lips and triggered a violent sneezing attack in poor Miss Auriel who had come along as an aide-de-camp.

  Jesse Lasky met the car at the entrance. He had sent a note with a driver the evening before, asking that she arrive by eight o'clock for her first day of shooting.

  “One shoots snooker, grouse and film,” he instructed, as he led them to Lucy's dressing room, a small cabin-like hut made of brightly painted planks. “Your job is to see that we shoot it without murdering it.”

  A young man with a makeup kit and a maid appeared from inside the dressing room.

  “This is your staff. Ask them if you have any questions,” Mr. Lasky informed her. “In the meantime, I'll let you get comfortable.”

  Lucy nodded and shook his hand. Ellen Auriel wiped at her nose with a handkerchief and stifled a sneeze until the interview was over.

  The opera singer settled in as he suggested, while layers of makeup were applied to her face. The young man coated her skin in a thick layer of white, to serve as a backdrop for the painted eyes, black orbs accented with painted-on lashes.

  It was a painstaking process. Each lash was rendered separately with a tiny silver handled brush. Her own mouth was camouflaged with clown-white to eliminate its vulgar fullness. This was the word the makeup man had used to describe it. In its unfortunate place, he darkened in a tiny tulip shape.

  Lucy was surprised at how unlike herself she looked. The face in the mirror was waxy and deathlike, but she was reassured, it was necessary to accentuate all the features in order for the camera to be able to “pick them up” and record them properly.

  “We mustn't frown, Miss von Dorfen,” the makeup man coached her. “We wouldn't want your cosmétique to crack now, would we?”

  “If it did, it would probably fall off and break my foot,” Lucy answered without expression.

  The makeup man pulled away and began sullenly fussing with his pots of paints and brushes.

  “I was merely joking,” she said, trying not to move her mouth. “I had no intention of offending you.”

  He broke into a giddy artificial laugh, as if he were expected to laugh on cue. “What a relief,” he said. “I was terrified we might be getting some Prussian mad woman, a temperamental Diva and all that, but you don't seem at all that way. I mean, one doesn't know what to expect... there are so many stories.”

  He let his words trail away.

  “What sort of stories do you hear?” Lucy asked, lev
eling her eyes on him.

  The young man shot an anxious look in the direction of Ellen, who glowered back at him from her quiet place in the corner of the hut.

  “About the wonderful performances you give,” the young man answered weakly.

  Lucy waved her hand impatiently for him to get on with it. “What other stories, unusual stories?”

  “Well, about you and Paulo Cordoba.”

  “Newspaper rubbish to sell tickets, what else?”

  The young man hesitated, dropping his silver handled brush into his bag, anticipating a quick getaway.

  “I heard that you were a member of the Golden Dawn Society and believe in Spiritualism.”

  Lucy threw back her head and laughed heartily, opening grotesque cracks around her mouth. The black painted lips split into fissures that revealed a blood red core, like an over ripe fig bursting on the tree.

  “Is that what you hear?” she said regaining control.

  “The Golden Dawn Society, that misguided band of miscreants is in England, not in Germany,” Lucy hastened to inform him. “I assure you I have very little interest in societies, and none at all in an occult one. And as for Spiritualism, it was an excuse to have the occasional evening out while in New York. Everyone there seems more fascinated with the dead than the living, and judging by who I met there, I can't say that I blame them.”

  The studio had hired a full orchestra to accompany Lucy when she sang for the filming, a foolish extravagance in recording her talents on mute film, but one that had been set down in her contract and insisted on by Mr. Lasky to make her feel more comfortable.

  Other than what had been contractually provided, there were few comforts in this makeshift business. Lucy was led to a large open field, upon which four precariously and cheaply constructed sets, consisting of two L-shaped walls, served as backdrops for the four separate moving pictures being made simultaneously.

  The maid, who had been assigned to her, and her dresser, Miss Auriel, held up the skirt of Lucy's heavy brocade costume to keep it out of the dust, while they led her in a circuitous path to keep her out of viewing range of the turning cameras.

  They stopped in front of a backdrop representing the darkened workshop of Doctor Faust. It was painted to appear three-dimensional. Even most of the furniture was painted convincingly onto the backdrop.

  An elderly man with a moustache, dressed as if he were an officer in the mounted horse guard, clicked the heels of his dusty boots together and bent down to kiss Lucy's hand. He introduced himself as the director of her picture, and she could not help but notice that in spite of the heavy foreign accent to his English, he sounded like no true European she had ever met. When she asked him where he was from, he waved his hand to curtail the pleasantries and hurried on with the business of this so-called shooting.

  She was instructed that she should make exaggerated gestures of sorrow and passion as she sang. The director assured her that on film it would appear to be not only beautiful, but artistic as well.

  There was little resemblance in this acting to the Faust she had done in the theater. One of the bright young screenwriters sauntered over to them, as they were discussing her opening scene, and suggested changing the ending to allow an escape for the good Doctor Faust. He repeatedly promoted the idea of resetting the story in present time, with Lucy playing herself as a celebrity instead of Helen of Troy, but the director prudently refused the idea.

  “Then who would I play, W.W. Woolworth?” a stout little man asked dryly. He spoke from under a tent of gauze, shielding himself from the sun as he ate a plate of ham and eggs. Lucy turned to see who was addressing her.

  “Excuse me, Miss von Dorfen, if I don't get up and introduce myself,” the man continued with a mock nod of gentility, “but they have me so padded out, I can hardly get my legs under this dinky table as it is. I'm Phillip Claxton, laughingly known around here as your leading man.”

  She shook his hand, careful not to let her rigid face betray her surprise at his ugliness.

  “Not exactly what you expected, I'm sure. But we ARE doing Faust, and I am playing an old man. Granted, when the makeup comes off, my metamorphosis is still somewhat disappointing, but I think you'll hear nothing but complimentary things concerning me around here. Call me Claxton, everyone else does.”

  “You're obviously not nervous doing this,” Lucy said, indicating the calmness with which he poked a large forkful of ham into his mouth.

  “Not in the least, are you?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “A bit. I'm not quite certain what's expected of me.”

  “Everything and nothing. They want it to be brilliant, but don't know it when they see it.” Claxton laughed, adding more wrinkles to those already painted around his mouth. “Take a tip from me and give them plenty of attitude. You tell them when they have a good take. Just shout out... “My God that was wonderful!” They'll look at each other for a minute, then call for a wrap.”

  “I didn't bring a wrap. Should I send the maid for one?” Lucy asked bewildered.

  Claxton choked on his ham as he laughed.

  “God, you poor thing. You know less about it than they do. A wrap means the end of the scene, to stop rolling film, and give it a rest for a while.”

  Lucy was indignant and annoyed that this horrid little man should take such delight in her inexperience.

  “I come to this business from the opera, perhaps you've read about it in the papers,” she informed him coolly, hoping to elicit the respect she felt suited her position.

  “Now don't get all agitated,” he said, putting down his fork and turning his undivided attention on her. “I didn't mean to get you riled up, as we poor Westerners say. There are so few of us birds in this gilded cage town, we better decide to sing in tune and get along. All of us here know each other's business... who's in love with whom and every little indiscretion, from an illegitimate baby to dipsomania. It's all secret though, hushed up by our friends here at the studio.” He pressed his finger to his lips and whispered. “What's true they make untrue. What is mere illusion, they convince you is real, and sell tickets to it for the great unwashed public to see.”

  “I'm only here for a few months, under a short term contract,” Lucy explained in her defense.

  “Poor you,” Claxton said wiping his mouth. “I'm a box office favorite, under a contract for life.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  1921 Los Angeles

  They waited outside the casting office for the eight-thirty call. Since dawn, a carnival of faces, stretching around the block for nearly a quarter mile. It was a daily occurrence, a standing advertisement in the trade papers requesting interesting and talented actors to fill the crowds of Roman citizens needed for one picture, or the rabble storming the Bastille in another. By the broadest description, they were interesting. Each face in the line, fired with the hopeful enthusiasm of a possible discovery, glared intently at the door, like disincarnate souls at the gates of eternity, waiting to hear their name being called. Many faces were fresh and radiant, having seen the whole country from the train on their way to this expectant patch of concrete outside Lasky Famous Players studio. Others, who had stood here day after day, never hearing their name, painted their faces to imitate Mary Miles Minter or Claire Windsor in the hope of sharing the brightness of a talent that was not their own.

  A young woman with lovely dark hair, dressed in yellow, seemed to appear out of nowhere near the front of the line. She touched her tongue to a silver ring on her finger, and smiled demurely at the man reading the names. Suddenly, he stopped reading and glanced about in confusion for a second. He looked up and stared directly at the young woman in yellow. Without returning his eyes to his list of names, he pronounced a name aloud.

  “Helen Liluth,” he called out, as if the name had just come into his head.

  “I’m Helen Liluth,” the dark-haired beauty responded, pushing her way past a short blonde who was dressed and ma
de up to look like Marion Davies.

  She was waved into the inner sanctum, where another man with a clipboard waited with an assignment sheet, the daily roster of films in production that week.

  He took her hand and pulled her along into the queue of waiting extras.

  “Name,” he called out without looking up.

  “My name is Helen,” she replied, “Helen Liluth.”

  The man filling in the application glanced appraisingly, but impersonally down the length of her body.

  “We've got at least two days in Faust as an extra. You understand that? You've got nothing to say on camera, you run with the pack, and probably never even see yourself on the screen. But it's money, three dollars a day and lunch.”

  He held out a clipboard and she signed her name.

  “Go out the door on your left, turn right on Lasky walk and report to the wardrobe building at the far side of the lot. They'll fix you up.”

  He did not return her smile as she crossed the room and closed the door behind her.

  •••

  This was not Helen’s first job as an extra. She had worked in several other filmed photoplays in the three months that she had been in California, but she had never been able to catch the eye of anyone important enough to help make her career. In fact, there was only one famous person of influence that she knew in all of Hollywood, Richard Barthelmess... and she hated him.

  She had met him a year earlier, in New York City, when she was working as a model, of sorts, for a company that manufactured lingerie. She was one of ten girls that would walk a runway in what they called a fashion parade, so that out-of-town buyers might see samples of the newest designs the company had to offer. When Helen first got the job, she thought that it would be glamorous, like working as a mannequin in one of the top fashion houses of Paris, but she soon learned that it was neither fashionable nor glamorous.