Jack and Susan in 1913

by McDowell, Michael

  “Miss Nethersole,” called out the director to the wanton lady in the opium den, “please, when you faint, will you simply fall to the floor? Do not fall on to the couch, even though it is softer. I want you on the floor. Mr. Westermeade, please do not step on Miss Nethersole’s head as you are murdering Mr. Perks. Mr. Perks, please die quickly today, we’ve not yet gone into three reels. So would you mind—oh, no—stop the action.”

  He’d been interrupted by Hosmer, who’d suddenly stopped turning the crank on his camera. Something appeared to have gone wrong with the instrument. The director threw up his hands and turned away with a sigh of disgust.

  Miss Nethersole got up off the floor and lay down on the divan, while Mr. Perks—one of the policemen—sat at the end and tickled her bare feet. Mr. Westermeade, the dissolute lady’s dissolute lover, took out a harmonica and softly played an old Stephen Foster melody. The other actors wandered off toward a table laden with plates of food and an urn of coffee.

  The other two scenes, on either side, went on uninterrupted.

  “Who are you?” the stage director suddenly demanded of Susan and Mr. Beaumont, whom he’d nearly wandered into.

  “We are friends of Mr. Collamore,” said Mr. Beaumont, “and he asked us to visit him today.”

  “Well, there he is, having just ruined that entire act, so that the whole thing will have to be done over. Props!” the stage director called out suddenly, “get us a new door and reload those pistols.”

  Susan and Mr. Beaumont went over to Hosmer, who had pulled open the side of the camera, exposing the film inside.

  “I lost it,” he said with a grimace.

  “Let me see,” said Mr. Beaumont, peering into the workings of the camera. “Do you know what happened?”

  “The film slipped from the sprockets and jammed,” said Hosmer dismally. “This is the second time this week. The first time it was during the filming of a burning building down on Houston Street. No props man to set that one up again.”

  Mr. Beaumont turned the camera on its side so that light from above spilled into the interior. “Hosmer,” he asked, “do you happen to have an old camera like this one around? One with the same parts?”

  Hosmer glanced at Susan and said, “You see, Suss, I told you he was a tinkerer.” With that Hosmer hurried away toward the other side of the enormous room.

  “Suss?” Mr. Beaumont inquired with raised brows.

  “No,” she replied, “Susan, Susan, Susan. Never Suss.”

  “I promise I will never call you Suss if you will call me Jack,” said Mr. Beaumont. He turned away, toward the rowboat scene, but not before Susan caught yet another blush mounting his cheeks. The reddening skin actually seemed to turn his beard darker.

  After a few minutes, Hosmer returned, carrying two battered cameras, one over each shoulder. “Trust men,” he explained mysteriously, putting the cameras down.

  “Trust men?” echoed Jack, tugging at the side plate of one of the beat-up cameras.

  “The Trust men are hooligans hired by the Patents Trust—the nine companies who control all the motion picture patents. They try to break up independent operations like ours, because they feel we’re infringing on ’em. Come in at night, expose our film, smash our cameras, tear our canvas.” Hosmer shook his head ruefully. “I got hit on the head once, and they’re promising to do more soon. This is their work, these cameras.”

  “Why don’t you just go to work for a company with patents instead, then?” asked Jack simply. He’d borrowed a screwdriver from a passing workman and was prying loose a geared wheel on the inside of the camera.

  “Because they’re boring stick-in-the-muds,” said Hosmer. “They’re still going to be doing one-reelers in 1933. Lord, Tom Edison is still filming on a rooftop over in New Jersey, and when it rains everybody has to run inside. The Patents are like a velocipede with dented wheels, and the independents are like a big red sixty-horsepower automobile.”

  This last sounded to Susan very much like something that Hosmer had heard or read somewhere rather than something he came up with on the spur of the moment.

  “Also,” Hosmer admitted after a moment, “the independents pay better. They pay the players better, and they pay their cameramen better, and pretty soon—”

  “Pretty soon what?” asked Jack, handing back the first camera. “This one’s no good,” he added parenthetically, and took the second one and began work on that.

  “Pretty soon,” said Hosmer, “the independents are going to be on top, and the Trust will be coming to us for help and advice. I think it’s probably happening already.”

  By this time, the quadrille was finished and the actors were told to take a break while the setting was being altered. Ida Conquest, after spending some moments talking with the director, wandered over to the little group gathered about the broken cameras.

  Ida pulled her wig off and beat it against the side of her massive costume. White powder billowed into the air and a fair amount of it was deposited on Susan’s skirt.

  “Lord, Suss,” she said, “is that you? On two feet?”

  Jack Beaumont glanced up over the top of the camera at Ida briefly, but then he went back to his business.

  Susan was surprised that she felt a little inward murmur of relief at Jack’s apparent indifference to Ida’s considerable physical charms. Conquest wasn’t that girl’s name so much as it was the way she lived her life.

  “Yes,” said Susan to Ida, “I’m fascinated by this entire business. I watched you, Ida, and it seemed to me you were quite splendid.”

  “It’s a wonderful part,” Ida admitted. “One I’ve been aching for ever since I was tapped for the Follies.”

  “Miss Conquest is playing Martha Washington,” said Hosmer.

  “It’s a historical episode,” said Ida complacently. “That was the wedding dance you saw. Next we’re doing the scene where General Lafayette asks me to go back to France and be a countess and Mr. Washington comes in and I pretend the reason the general is on his knees is that he is showing me a picture of his little boys back home and then when Mr. Washington leaves I tell the general I can never go with him to France because number one, I am married, and number two, I have eighteen children of my own and couldn’t leave them behind. I have this stemmy blue frock and wear flowing ribbons down my back.”

  Susan and Jack exchanged repressed smiles.

  “Miss Conquest appears very elegant and refined on celluloid,” said Hosmer. “Next week, we will all go to the theater and see her.”

  “So soon?” said Susan.

  “We shoot this week, and on Saturday and Sunday the film will be developed, printed, and put together in proper sequence. On Monday copies will be made, and on Tuesday they will be delivered to the New York theaters and will go by mail to every theater in the country where Cosmic pictures are shown. Next week, all of Kansas City will be talking of nothing but Miss Conquest, the new Cosmic star, in her role as the mother of our nation.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment,” said Susan, and in her heart she did rather believe it.

  “Hosmer,” said Jack, holding up a narrow toothed wheel, “here was your problem. This crack here.” He twisted the wheel between his hands, and a tiny gap could be seen in the metal. “Once in a while, when your rhythm in turning the crank was off, the film dragged on this, the sprockets got out of alignment, and the whole business was gone. I’ve switched wheels, and from now on the thing ought to go right.”

  Delighted, Hosmer thanked Mr. Beaumont profusely, then loaded the exposed film in the repaired camera and ran it quickly through without a hitch, proving that the job had been done properly. While doing this, Hosmer introduced Miss Conquest to Mr. Beaumont. Ida smiled a quick, cold smile. Cold and quick was all that was due, in her estimation, to a mere mechanic, friend of Mr. Collamore’s or not.

  The stage director returned, still not in a pleasant frame of mind. He said to Hosmer, “If you’re quite finished with your friends, Colley—”
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  “My friend here fixed the camera, Mr. Fane. I’m sure it won’t give us any more trouble.”

  The director’s expression instantly changed to one of surprise, and then it deepened into satisfaction. “Thank you,” he said politely to Jack. “I take it you are mechanically adept?”

  “Yes,” replied Jack. “And in fact, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to work on a couple of these smashed-up jobs and see what I can do with them.”

  “By all means,” said Mr. Fane magnanimously. “By all means take away as much broken machinery as you please, Mr.—”

  “Beaumont.”

  “I’ll bring them uptown this evening,” Hosmer offered.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Fane blandly, already walking away. “Now Colley—”

  Hosmer hurried after the man, and Jack looked about the Cosmic factory. “Have you seen enough?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Susan, and then added in a quiet voice, “did you ever hear such nonsense as that ‘historical episode’?”

  “No,” he laughed, “I never did.”

  “I could do better than that,” said Susan.

  “Then give it a try,” said Jack. “I think Hosmer told me Mr. Fane pays twenty dollars apiece for his picture stories.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  AS JACK TURNED and started to lead Susan back toward the elevator, she suddenly said, “Oh, just a moment, please. I’d like to have a look at this.” She was gazing in the direction of the spooners in the rowboat in the tin tub.

  Susan recognized the actor—a great, funny fat man called Manfred Mixon. Susan had seen enough of the countless Cosmic productions to realize that this was yet another comic epic in which an impecunious Mixon wooed a spinster for her money. With only slight variations, that seemed to be the plot of every one of his improbable farces, and the endings were of two sorts: he was driven out of the woman’s life ignominiously, or he ended up chained to her at a wedding ceremony, wondering if he really had got the better of the bargain.

  “I could certainly write one of these,” Susan said, casually picking up the typewritten scenario that lay face up on the director’s table. The cameraman, the director, the actors, and all the others were paying attention only to what was going on in the scene. Turning a little in order to use Jack as a shield, Susan folded the pages, slipped them into her wrist bag, then began hobbling slowly away toward the elevator.

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier simply to ask for one?” Jack asked when they were out of earshot.

  “They might not have given it to me,” replied Susan, surprised at herself. For in one lightning-bolt moment she had suddenly understood how she could get money, despite a broken leg, despite vagaries of the theater and despite theatrical producers’ prejudices against ingenues with decided limps. She would write a scenario for the Cosmic Film Company. And to do that, she needed only to see how such things were done, and toward that end she had purloined the typewritten scenario—an act less of desperation than inescapable logic.

  “Is there anything else you’d like to steal before we have lunch?” Jack asked with mild amusement as they stood waiting for the elevator.

  Susan sighed. “A typewriting machine would be a great blessing, I suppose, but—”

  “But your bag is too small,” said Jack, pulling open the door of the elevator. “I happen to own a typewriting machine. I took one apart once to see how the thing worked, and then put it back together again. We need only to steal you a manual of instruction.”

  “I insist,” said Jack. “I allowed you—against my better judgment—to pay for the taxicab, so you must allow me to buy lunch.”

  “Just a dairy bar, please,” said Susan, thinking not of her appetite, which was large, but rather of Jack Beaumont’s budget, which was obviously not.

  Around the corner from the Cosmic Film Company’s offices they found a tiny restaurant catering to the meager stomachs and purses of secretaries and typewriters in this quarter of New York. Since Jack and Susan hadn’t even such regular employment as that, such a place seemed not beneath their dignity. Susan seated herself at a little round marble-topped table at the front window, and in a few minutes Jack brought her a sandwich and a cup of coffee and sat down beside her. He’d taken the same for himself, and Susan had the satisfaction of knowing that, even if they decided to have dessert pie, Jack would not have spent more than thirty cents altogether.

  “Tell me what else Hosmer told you,” said Susan eagerly, as soon as Jack had sat down. He appeared tall and awkward in this place that seemed to be frequented exclusively by bustling working girls.

  “What about?” he asked, mystified by her question.

  “Scenarios, of course.” She had already taken the folded pages from her bag, spread them out on the table, and was reading them through with great concentration. As she read, she had less and less doubt that she would be able to produce something at least as good—and possibly a great deal better.

  Jack took a bite of his sandwich thoughtfully, and after a moment recalled, “Hosmer said that Mr. Fane produces about three two-reel pictures a week as well as a couple of one-reelers for theaters that still want to show them. He says Fane can’t get enough good scenarios to suit him, and sometimes he just makes them up as he goes along.”

  “And he actually pays—” prompted Susan.

  “I think he said twenty dollars for a two-reeler. I might have got that wrong,” Jack warned, “but—”

  “But even if it were only ten—”

  Jack glanced away, blushed, and said hesitantly, “Am I right in assuming that you are not exactly—”

  “‘Replete with pecuniary emoluments’?” Susan said with a laugh. “You might say that, Mr. Beaumont. You might even say, as Miss Conquest undoubtedly would, that I am just about ‘stone broke.’ Even if Mr. Fane paid only ten dollars, that is more money than I am likely to make on the legitimate stage with a broken leg.”

  “But once your leg is mended—” Jack protested.

  “Once my leg is mended, I am likely to be walking the rialto with most of the other actors in the city.”

  “Walking the rialto?”

  “Unemployed.”

  “Oh,” said Jack, taking another bite of his sandwich. Even his neck turned red when he blushed, Susan noticed. Looking at him this closely she saw also that his eyes were not the blue she’d first thought them, but rather a startling gray.

  “So you see,” she said, “I will consider ten dollars to be a perfectly adequate recompense.”

  Jack opened his mouth to speak, but evidently then thought better of it. He took a sip of coffee instead, but choked on it. Susan slapped him hard on the back a number of times and he finally recovered himself.

  “I know what you were going to say,” said Susan. “That I shouldn’t get my hopes up. I know that. I’ve had a lifetime of disappointments, because nine times out of ten, my hopes were ‘dashed against the stony walls of circumstance.’ That’s the problem with actors, you know—they’re always quoting lines from bad plays they were in. I quote terrible speeches and I still get my hopes up. I’m afraid my hopes are up now, and it doesn’t do a bit of good in the world for you to tell me they ought not to be. Wasn’t that what you were going to say?”

  “Yes,” Jack admitted quickly, fearing his choking attack would return if he said more.

  Susan smiled, and then asked—with a tentativeness that was rare with her—“Would you really like to be of some help to me?”

  Jack nodded, not trusting himself to more speech.

  “Then you can spend a few hours with me this afternoon—in the nickelodeon?”

  It was by no means difficult to find a theater exhibiting moving pictures, even in this neighborhood that was mostly devoted to business. Three doors down from the little restaurant where they’d eaten was Parker’s nickelodeon, and though Jack suggested that they might find a much more up-to-date and grander place on Broadway or Sixth Avenue, Susan said, “I don’t want to see the best, I’m intere
sted in seeing the ordinary.” So she paid her nickel entrance fee, and insisted on paying Jack’s as well.

  Parker’s was an old-fashioned place, having been in business at this location for almost a decade. It was just one long narrow room with a stained canvas sheet secured to the wall at the end; on this the moving pictures were projected. Rows of cane-seated chairs were arranged on either side of a narrow aisle, and a dejected looking man with a wracking cough played music on a spavined piano directly below the screen. There weren’t more than a dozen patrons in the place when Susan and Jack entered, and all of them were bunched down front on the right—more interested in the warmth of a stove in the corner than in what was being projected onto the canvas.

  What was showing was a jittery travelogue that purported to be authentic scenes of the Casbah in Fez, though the faces of the natives looked as if they’d been dyed with berry juice rather than burned by the Moroccan sun. Jack and Susan sat in the back with their coats drawn tightly about them. It was colder inside the theater than it had been on the street.

  After the phony-looking travelogue came several equally inauthentic-looking newsreels, then two dismal vaudeville skits, and then at last an installment—somewhere in the middle of the story—of the serial, “The Adventures of Kathlyn.” Kathlyn was a singularly naive young woman who got herself into one scrape after another, and seemed to have a penchant—strange for such a wide-eyed innocent from the country—of falling into the clutches of the most dangerous criminals on the North American continent. Susan entertained a little fantasy of Ida Conquest playing the part of Kathlyn as she watched Kathlyn get tossed off the edge of a precipice, locked in a bank safe with a bomb suspended from her neck, hypnotized into the desire for assassinating the governor of Illinois.

  Parker’s being a Patents Trust theater, there was no feature at all, only a couple of two-reelers, no longer than the one serial. The first was a bit of melodramatic nonsense called The Siren’s Serenade in which a husband with a fake mustache was tempted to leave his wife for a woman he met on board an ocean liner, but true love conquered in the end when the wife, employing a nom de stateroom, somehow appeared on the boat and won her husband’s love anew. The siren drowned when she washed overboard during a storm. The second feature, Boarding House Barney, was purportedly a comedy, though no one in it was funny, and its portrayal of so universally known a situation as a paying boarder bore no remote relation to reality.