Cry Wilderness

by Frank Capra

  This is a Genuine Vireo Book

  A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books

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  Copyright © 2018 by Frank Capra Productions, Inc.

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  Set in Dante

  epub isbn: 9781644280171

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Names: Capra, Frank, 1897–1991, author.

  Title: Cry Wilderness : A Novel / Frank Capra.

  Description: A Genuine Vireo Book | New York, NY: Los Angeles, CA:

  Rare Bird Books, 2018.

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781947856301

  Subjects: LCSH Tourism—Fiction. | Conservation of natural resources—Fiction. | Environmental protection—Fiction. | Nature conservation—Fiction. | Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.)--Fiction. | BISAC FICTION / General | FICTION / Small Town & Rural.

  Classification: LCC PS3603 .A68 C79 2018 | DDC 813.6—dc23

  Every effort has been made to preserve the original text of Cry Wilderness as penned before Frank Capra’s death in 1991. Where the original text was unable to be recovered or faithfully transcribed, the passage has been omitted and marked with the following symbol:

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Introduction

  To the reader—

  In 1971, I was a teenage actor who privately held the unlikely dream of one day directing movies myself. The stories I read and heard about Frank Capra’s spirit, tenacity, and vision inspired me as much as his array of great and enthralling movies that had already left me in awe of his truly unique talent.

  It Happened One Night (1934), You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)—he directed and produced them all, the first two earning him Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. A Caltech graduate in chemical engineering, he had waited tables, worked at a campus laundry facility, and played banjo at nightclubs. Frank Capra was no “goat,” as they say in Italian. For Frank, directing movies was a calling and the hard work was simply second nature. In addition to being a rags-to-riches example of the American Dream, Frank Capra was one of a kind and considered by many, and many legends, to be one of the best directors ever.

  John Ford: “Frank Capra heads the list as the greatest motion picture director in the world.”

  John Cassavetes: “Maybe there never was an America. Maybe it was only Frank Capra.”

  He worked at all levels of the film industry. From a gag man under Mack Sennett to an editor, script writer, producer, and as a brilliant director. Because of the stories he told, people say Frank had a deep insight into people and events and that he loved the “little man.” Whether Mr. Smith was going to Washington or Mr. Deeds was going to town, Capra swept us all along on the journey with characters we can all relate to. In any case, there is no denying that Frank Capra brought some of the greatest stories of American life to the screen.

  In The Name Above the Title, Capra tells the story of his life so masterfully that when I read it, it was the rocket fuel I needed to propel me to new levels of passion and ambition to be a moviemaker and to, by god, dare to quit being quiet about it and declare it to the world!

  This expansive autobiography winningly frames the stories of Capra and his family coming to America as poor, illiterate Italian immigrants; how he worked his way up to the top of the business; his service in World War II; the McCarthy era, and beyond. Spanning decades, Frank Capra served his country with distinction both in military and civilian life. Earning many medals while serving the United States during World War II, he also earned the Order of the British Empire from Winston Churchill. Throw in six Academy Awards and many other awards too numerous to mention and Mr. Capra cuts an historic silhouette.

  Yet his career success never dulled his compassion for writing stories about the human condition and creating work such as the perennial, decades-long holiday favorite: It’s a Wonderful Life, an unparalleled pan-generational hit built on values and the characters who stand up for them.

  Unfortunately, when Frank was in his mid-sixties, it seemed the film industry had turned its back on him. He couldn’t find a studio willing to hire him to make a motion picture he believed in and he began losing his confidence. At some point he went north to his family’s second home in the High Sierras, did some soul-searching, and it was then that he began to write stories again. To this date, the extent of his writing output can’t be known for sure, but over three decades after his passing, his family found galleys of two unpublished novels in an old storage locker. These two novels titled Night Voices and Cry Wilderness were both written in 1966 with changes made in 1968, and prove that Capra’s drive to tell stories was still alive!

  Told against the backdrop of two famous mountain ranges, the geologic masterpieces known as the Sierra Nevada and White Mountains, Cry Wilderness is yet another classic Capra story. In this tale, a seemingly minor investigation leads to an epic court case that pits two points of view of human nature against each other. These two perspectives and the definition of civilization and culture itself are brilliantly put in play here by Capra who, without question, gives the reader much to ponder after turning the last page. The story is articulate, thoughtful, profound, and, most importantly, told without pretension.

  Cry Wilderness is a classic Capra tale we can all fall in love with and indicates in sharp relief that well past the supposed “peak” of his professional directing career, Frank Capra was creating characters and scenes that were quintessentially his own. Once again Capra has brought pages to life with his undiminished and unparalleled humor involving an abundance of great characters and, in an ironic twist, includes himself!

  Yes, at center of it all is Frank Capra, the Hollywood big shot, called to action and moved to take on the establishment. The story could certainly suggest that maybe he never really left Hollywood, that perhaps it was Hollywood that left him, and well before his time. Nevertheless, here it is on the page, evidence that roughly twenty-five years before his death in 1991, the undaunted Frank Capra was creating a new chapter in his career. He was writing a book. A novel. And then some.

  Cry Wilderness is genuine, intriguing, and wonderfully Capra-esque. Read it and enjoy! It is my sincere hope that you’ll be inspired by Frank Capra the same way I was.

  —Ron Howard

  Chapter One

  I feel in the mood to tell a tale in print. All my professional life I’ve tried to tell tales with film. Now I’m seized with this strange yen to tell one with words. Nothing new, this yen. Writing is a virus that strikes almost everybody at some time.

  Fortunately the disease, though virulent in some, lasts only a short time, building its own immunity against reoccurrence. The victims recover nicely to pursue their own trades. Any aftereffects? Yes…an increase in their humility count, a bruised ego, awe and admiration for Chekov, Maugham, de Maupassant, and Twain; and adoration and reverence for such gods as Tolstoy, Dante, and Shakespea
re.

  For such unique men the writing virus is symbiotic. Disease and victim combine to grow and flourish into an artistic marriage, pollinating each other into producing such imaginative fruits as novels, plays, poems, and tales. But for us mortals?

  Anyhow, the bug has bitten and driven me to pleasant wanderings in the forest of words. If you, too, feel like wandering, come along and help me unravel this odd tale—a tale full of half-truths, whole-truths, and no-truths at all.

  What probably started this nonsense was spending a few months in our wilderness cabin on Silver Lake in the High Sierras; where the air is like wine, the wine is like vodka, the vodka like women…and the women? Well, they’ve got one more rib. Honest. I counted my wife’s. But don’t go around trying to prove this by counting your wife’s unless you know some good Judo holds. Wives object violently to being undressed just to have their ribs counted. They squirm and fight with tooth and nail. But it’s okay. Before you get to the fifth rib you get other ideas. The resulting romp is—Mamma Mia! You never knew you had it in you.

  Anyway, three months ago I realized a certain Hollywood studio was giving me the salami treatment; you know, cutting off one slice at a time, which you don’t miss until you wind up with just the string.

  So I said to hell with Hollywood! And anyway, trout season was opening, and I have a wife (Lu) who’ll fly right out of a beauty shop in the middle of a hairdo to go fishing. So Lu and I pack up and drive 350 miles to our cabin on Silver Lake. I had a plan, of course. I always have plans. But this one was the best plan I’d thought of in years. I was going “native”! Yes, sir—forget Hollywood, and go native. While I’m still young. In the most primitive mountains in the world.

  But which path should I follow in “going native”? There were two well-known hermits that had already gone native in our neck of the woods. One was known as “Bear Bait,” a wino; the other they called “Dry Rot,” a kind of a wraithlike fellow. Should I go “animal” like Bear Bait, and maybe freeze happily while soused? Or go “aesthetic” like Dry Rot, and desiccate into dust and let the winds blow me round the world? Should I roam, and marvel, and write as a modern John Muir? Or should I create an original way, worthy of an Academy Award winner? A creative way?

  All this I tell Lu, in the hope that she would tell me which road to going native I should take. Flatly she listens, and flatly she flattens me with, “Oh, be your age… And will you please button that bottom button on your fly!” And off to the kitchen she goes to make coffee.

  I’m crushed. Sometimes I wonder if woman is the best thing that’s happened to man. After all, she was just an afterthought, something the Almighty took more pains to make attractive after He looked at Adam and said, “What has God wrought?” Anyway, I up and bellow at her through the kitchen door: “All right, laugh. But I’m going native in my own way. You’ll see. I’m going to build me a hutch on top of the highest peak. And I’ll roll snowballs down on the stinking world. And when planes fly over me, I’ll write dirty words in the snow with you-know-what. And I’ll write left-handed so they won’t recognize my handwriting, and…”

  Lu comes running in with a light in her eyes. “Look, darling, the fish are rising!” I look. They are jumping.

  “Oh, boy. Come on!” I yell. “Get your fly rod…put on a mosquito…number twelve…” And we both go flying out to our boat. When brownies rise on Silver Lake, going native can wait.

  Where’s Silver Lake? It’s in Mono County, California, nestled in the Eastern High Sierras. Switzerland can’t even hold a yodel to it. It’s a jewel of sparkling water set deep in a circle of towering tree-green peaks and capped with snow-white diamonds. When sun and ripple combine their magic, the lake is a sea of shimmering silver. But when in the depths of its stillness it reflects the cobalt of the sky, the passing white clouds stop, Narcissus-like, to primp and admire themselves in this most exquisite of mirrors.

  I was introduced to Silver Lake by that great actor, Wallace Beery. Around 1925, Wally and Raymond Hatton (co-stars in several film comedies) each built a cabin on Silver Lake. Wally built his on a very small island, about fifty yards from shore. It became known as Beery’s Island. And Wally had two boon fishing pals: Al Roscoe, a good-time Charlie actor, and Frank Capra, a Mack Sennett gagman. Al and I loved to pal around with Wally, mostly because he’d send us into hysterics with his exaggerated animal noises while eating, drinking, or at stud. Then, too, he owned a Travel Air biplane, which he could fly into the craziest places, as he did on our many fishing trips to his Silver Lake cabin. If men needed proof that they are born fools, those trips provided ample evidence.

  The nearest landing strip to Wally’s cabin was in Bishop, sixty-five miles away and about three thousand feet lower. But Wally had to have a closer runway. So he, Roscoe, and I hand-cleared the sagebrush off a sloping sand dune at the edge of June Lake (four miles away) and called it “Beery Field.” The quarter-mile “runway” ran downhill from the top of the sand dune to the icy waters of June Lake. A four-wheel-drive Jeep would have spun its wheels on “Beery Field.”

  Beery managed to land on Beery Field—with the three of us in the plane—with all the comforts of landing a roller-coaster that had jumped its tracks. Coming in low, he’d bounce his wheels off the top of the sand dune, make three or four kangaroo leaps down the runway, then, squashing the Travel Air in a slithering side-skid, he’d finally jackass the gutty plane to a shattering stop in a cloud of sand and dust.

  But taking off down that sand dune, with three people in the plane, at an altitude of 7,600 feet, was sheer suicide. So Wally would take off alone, leaving his chauffeur to drive Roscoe and me to the longer, lower airstrip at Bishop. But the takeoff with Wally alone was also impossible with a normal “rolling” start. In the deep sand, the plane couldn’t pick up enough speed to keep from plunging into June Lake. So we contrived a goofy way to give the plane a “jump” start. The boggled June Lake natives always managed to gather on nearby hills to see the “fun.”

  On the top of the sand dune—the beginning of the “runway”—there was an old, lightning-shattered pine stump, to which we hitched the tail of the plane with a looped rope. I crouched at the tail with a hatchet, ready to cut the rope on the signal. When Beery yelled, “Contact!” Roscoe spun the propeller by hand.

  Wally warmed up the motor, then shoved the gas throttle to full power. The earsplitting noise bounced back in thundering echoes from the surrounding peaks.

  Up went the tail of the Travel Air. Like a leashed hound eager to chase a cat, it leaped, shook, and tugged at the tie-rope. I scrunched against the stump to keep from being blown away by the cyclonic sand blast, a blast that would have flayed my hide off had I not been muffled and hooded with gloves and raincoat. In the roar of the motor and the hurricane of sand, I was deaf, dumb, and blind to any normal signal. But tied to my ankle was a long rope that led off to Roscoe.

  When Wally waved out of the cockpit, Roscoe yanked the signal rope. I whacked at the tie-rope. Unleashed, the plane leaped forward in a cloud of dust and noise and rolled like a drunken sailor toward the icy water. Only Roscoe could see what was going on as he ran after the plane yelling, “Keep her tail up, Wally, keep her tail up!” I would be blind for half an hour. The plane teetered and jounced right to the water’s edge, then—by some miracle known only to Saint Jude—with one last death-defying lurch, it lifted its wheels and lumbered slow and low over the water like a pelican that had swallowed a horseshoe.

  Each takeoff was heart-stopping. Each should have been the last. And each time Wally got airborne, Roscoe would jump up and down, shouting, “He made it! He made it!” To which I—prostrate, blind, too sandblasted to give a blasted damn—weakly answer, “Olé.” Then Roscoe would lead me to the lake, wash a quart of sand out of my eyes, ears, and nose—and lift my tail feathers with a slug of bourbon. (And all the blahs were quickly replaced by laughs and the joy of being alive again.)

  After
our marriage, Lu and I spent many happy weekends in Wally’s cabin. And when in the early thirties a snow avalanche engulfed Beery’s Island and spread his plush cabin over Silver Lake’s ice in pieces no bigger than matchsticks, we rented Raymond Hatton’s cabin, or stayed in one of Pop Carson’s leaky log huts in what is now Silver Lake Lodge. In 1947—in celebration of making my favorite film (It’s A Wonderful Life)—we built our own cabin right on the edge of Silver Lake. It will sleep thirteen. And it is, without question, the most heavenly place on earth. Allow me to drool a little.

  Around our cabin are the he-men lodgepole and Jeffrey pines, standing Texas-tall and straight as branding irons. Huddled head-to-head in excited groups below them, like teenage girls adoring their heroes, the quaking aspen quiver and giggle. A nod from one of the pines sends them into a dither of leafy applause. While in between them, gnarled, stunted junipers look up at the pines with the same sour expression potbellied men once cast at Valentino.

  But through them all the fresh winds blow; on them the clean rains fall and the sunlight glistens, pristine and unfiltered. Breathing here is a joy, not a prelude to coughing. And when it thunders in the peaks…oh, man…like giants bowling strikes. Add to this a half-mile, hard-to-negotiate forest road, which isolates us from the nearest pavement… Ah, Wilderness!

  And just one more beauty only Lafcadio Hearn could describe—before I get on with the plot. Sure I’ve got a plot. I’m not one of those new breeds of directors to whom a plot is something they sell at Forest Lawn…Autumn: summer surrendering to winter in a month-long ceremony of pomp and panoply, with riotous colors flying; refusing to yield the flaming sword until the last autumn leaf has floated past in review.

  Autumn! You stand in a patch of quaking aspen…in an aura of red, yellow, and gold; the shimmering colors suffusing and warming everything they touch—especially your heart. In the mountains around you, the aspen that line the tumbling creeks are now transfigured into waterfalls frozen in gold!