by Susan Daitch
I pushed hair out of my eye. I had worked overtime and so was sleeping late. The call not only disrupted my sleep but the edgy equilibrium of a life lived in dark rooms.
“Hello, is this Frances L. Baum?” A man’s voice, respectful but authoritative boomed in my ear.
“Yes.”
“This is Julius Shute, director of Alphabet Film Conservation. You were recommended to me by . . .” Groping for my eye patch in the dark while he searched for the name of my current boss, a displaced Iowan who, though he had no complaints about my work, saw me as a rootless cosmopolitan who would soon move on, the phone slipped from my shoulder and fell into the space between the bed and the wall. I was alone, I didn’t need the eye patch, but felt as if a public event were taking place, as if this Shute were watching me sit up in the middle of a twist of bedsheets. “I’d like to ask you to consider working for me at Alphabet.” His muffled voice came from somewhere under the bed. In the silence while I felt for the phone, Shute continued to speak, filling the void. “Occasionally people are reluctant to leave the Library of Congress for West 22nd Street. Arbergast, that was who recommended you.”
“Yes, that’s my boss.”
Apparently, unbeknownst to me, Arbergast, a faultless technician with a phenomenal memory for film trivia which he regaled us with constantly, was greasing the rails of my move which, he believed, was inevitable. I managed to tell Shute I was interested in West 22nd Street, wherever that was.
“I’m traveling to Washington in a week to testify at congressional hearings on film colorization, and thought I could set up an interview with you while I’m in town.”
We agreed on a time and place, then I hung up as if nothing unusual had happened, but in my excitement I was completely unable to find matching socks. Mentally I began to prepare my answers to his questions, believing when we met he would back out of his offer as instantly as he’d extended it.
How did you lose an eye? Does it impair your ability to do painstaking work?
Am I wearing glasses?
No.
I see perfectly well with my left eye.
Responding to the usual second question and avoiding the first, I had learned how to be a master at evasive answers when they were needed. It’s difficult to say: a letter bomb and let it go at that. People want to know more. These kinds of bombs have been delivered in Rome, Istanbul, Argentina to scientists and governors but rarely to isolated high school students. I didn’t want to explain the arrests, the trial, senders not convicted. I knew Shute’s name had originally been Shulevitz, but his mother had changed it. In the name Shulevitz there might have been sympathy, but I was no longer looking for it.
Despite Julius’s eagerness to meet and his effusiveness about my work, I felt unprepared, a one-eyed amateur, a fraud who should back out of the interview, but lulled by the man’s voice, I was prepared to go ahead and make a fool of myself. Alphabet had an international reputation, and I wanted to move to New York.
One week later we met at a Greek diner. Julius disliked expensive restaurants. They made him uncomfortable. Any place with a maître d’ was like a hair salon with a perfumed atmosphere, as far as he was concerned. He needed to walk in and find his own place to sit. From a distance he looked like a young Frank Sinatra in thick glasses: angular face; calm blue eyes that drew you in, meaning no harm, interested in only you absolutely, but when one walked closer, sat across from him at a small table, one could see the fraying around the edges, and he was much older than a young anybody. You could still smoke in restaurants back then, and he did, with the kind of assurance that came from years of practice. But Julius was not overly confident either. Despite his accomplishments, his expense account must have been limited, or so his choice of the diner signaled to me. A man who meant business, who didn’t bother with the language of extravagant lunches, meals that stretched into the afternoon were of little interest to him. I was too nervous to eat anyway. My spanakopita remained a square brick on my plate, and although I tried to concentrate on Julius’s questions, as well as his descriptions of his business, my eye wandered to the revolving display of heavily frosted cakes ringed with glazed cherries, mountainous meringue pies, and other desserts positioned just behind Julius’s head
He was a man without a niche so he used expressions that would appear to give him one, to make him seem to be in the swim and a heavy hitter, sounding me out from the get go. He knew all about the films I’d worked on. I wondered if English was his first language. I asked him how his testimony went.
“Colorization is like tossing a ball into a cocked hat.”
The hearings had been somewhat controversial. Many celebrities and film stars had appeared. Julius enjoyed rubbing shoulders with them and denounced the colorization of old black-and-white films, a process he viewed with disgust and refused to undertake, no matter how lucrative coloring might be.
“Painting Barbara Stanwyck’s dress red in The Lady Eve, for example, sends a signal to the audience that she’s duplicitous. Let them figure it out for themselves.”
It was an argument I would remember when Julius and I would discuss how far to go in conserving a particular film.
“Even the word restoration represents a threat. To restore often means to impose someone’s idea of what a picture should look like, means a heavy dose of tampering, means this: going too far. Colorization, like putting arms back on Venus, is out of the question.” He turned around and asked the waitress for more coffee, then just as abruptly changed the subject.
“I grew up in Los Angeles. My mother worked in the costume department of Universal Studios,” Julius said, and I imagined the man I barely knew sitting across from me as a child careening around this or that set. “I stole a costume once from a stuntman who was doubling for Clint Eastwood in Hang ’Em High. It was a great cowboy suit with these Technicolor yellow suede chaps with green fringe. I wore the suit to school thinking other kids would pay attention to me. They did, but not in the way I imagined.”
He didn’t reveal what kind of attention he received, but because of this story I felt some affection for him, and this was a mistake. Julius knew how to elicit sympathy and attention, and my response, my laughter, made him comfortable, so he plunged on. Actually, I’d worked on Hang ’Em High, admittedly restoring only one section of the film, but couldn’t remember Clint Eastwood in yellow chaps. Perhaps the scene with that particular stunt had been cut when the film was edited. In any case I said nothing about it.
“She used to get calls from gossip columnists because actors, even extras, often made startling confessions during fittings, revealing liaisons and uncomfortable memories as if she knew magic words of absolution, as if she had the answers which, believe me, she did not. She was as good as they were at theatrical expressions of shock and sympathy that she recycled from the movies, and sometimes when I’m working on a film I see her raised eyebrows or hand over her mouth. The talent also spoke to one another as if she was invisible, and in this way more gossip was overheard. An uncle got me into the preservation business because they thought I was brainy and useless, but I learned from my mother. My telephone number is unlisted.”
Julius, a displaced Californian who took his profession east, was never entirely at home in New York where hundreds of miles of trains rumbled underground, where the odds of an actual earthquake were small, and business was conducted in dark rooms high above street level. He was constantly a bit bewildered, as if looking for a switch in order to turn on the light. Yet Julius could read damaged and deteriorating film history as if it were a large-print book. The old films became a pedestal he lectured from. Without me, you’re nothing, he’d say, and this always got a laugh from whoever was in the room.
Julius was meticulous, this I knew from his reputation, but ill at ease with responsibility, the kind of man who belonged nowhere and who had landed in a profession that only once in a while demanded he communicate with a live human being. He didn’t like the idea of exercise, was gym phobic, but
every once in a while would take the stairs. Julius lit another cigarette but held it so his hand dangled over the edge of the booth.
“I don’t want to blow smoke in your eyes. Eye,” he corrected himself and turned red. I wasn’t annoyed, in an odd way his embarrassment and the dangling hand were persuasive.
Over the cash register a television was suspended. The Garwood case was being discussed briefly on the news. Garwood, a Vietnam POW — some believe he was falsely accused of treason. We stood up to leave, and I had my eye on that particular story when suddenly Julius kissed me good-bye awkwardly but deliberately. As he bent over I noticed he colored his hair orangey brown (against colorization but dyed his hair) and his eyes were shut. Somehow he made me feel I’d asked for that kiss since I’d laughed at his self-deprecating jokes. His implication was that there was more where it came from; still, I accepted the job. I guess at the time I didn’t mind all that much.
When I left the Library of Congress to work for a private company in New York I cut my hair so that no strand would accidentally fall across the frame, and I tried unsuccessfully to quit drinking coffee, which was making my hands shake a bit if I was tired. I made more money but still affected an appearance that combined seriousness with attention to certain kinds of ironic details, like narrow-waisted jackets that looked as if they’d been pinched from old movies and frayed trousers because I wore clothing until it fell apart. This created an image of studied slovenliness, as if my mind were completely on my work and not on the body I actually inhabited. A ten-dollar good-luck ring set with a square, magenta piece of glass was my prize possession until I lost it in a public swimming pool my first week in the city. No longer working with a large number of people as I had in Washington, and knowing no one in New York, I could go for days barely speaking to anyone. I felt like a prisoner in my own skin and began to wonder what the relationship might be between my sense of physicality, my vanity, all unacted upon, and my vocation that was so concerned with preserving the display of others.
The editing rooms of Alphabet Film Conservation are in the Mayflower Building downtown. You walk in through the main entrance, a double door centered like a mouth, windows for eyes. A sculpture, a large statue of Hermes built into its own recessed aedicule above the door; that’s the nose. Hermes is sinewy, his arms and legs an abstract collection of metal rods, yet in his winged cap he is identifiable as the god of rogues, gymnasts, and travelers. Other mouths: curving balconies, Gaudí-like but functionless flourishes since no one uses them. More windows resemble other pairs of eyes. How is an office building like a human body? Banks of elevators function like arteries, the furnace is a giant sweat gland, air-conditioning ducts are drawn-out branches of lung. The building directory located in the lobby might be the brain, flat and simple, tin and industrial felt, a banal yet practical mind.
Alphabet is on the fifth floor. The labs where the films are treated branch out from the reception area and offices of the director, Julius Shute, his assistant, and the accountant. The walls are covered with framed posters from a few of the films we have preserved: Go West, The Cameraman, Wages of Fear, Out of the Past, The Runaway Bride, and photographs of Julius as a boy shaking hands with Charlie Chaplin in one picture and Montgomery Clift in another. Julius believes that in the eyes of our clients these photographs are the equivalent of medical school diplomas.
Chaplin bent over to meet Julius’s gaze and smiled broadly, cane stuck out behind, yet this was an older Chaplin, perhaps tired of little boys, although perhaps not. Montgomery Clift playing Freud didn’t look happy. He may have been pressed for time, the shutter snapped, and Julius, a confused but polite boy, thanked him and disappeared back into the ranks of the crew. Peanut lights, 200-watt midget solarspot, stingers (a 25-foot extension cord), horsecock (feeder cable), Mighty-Moles, Mickey-Moles, inkies, tweenies, leekos, optima 32s, brutes, and HMI 6Ks. He could hear gaffers’ and electricians’ banter, and he ducked behind a trailer grabbing a doughnut as he ran. Behind the camera, behind it, not in front, stay out of harm’s way, kid. Do us a favor. Get that boy out of here. Keep him out of the light. And so they did. The photographs of Julius represent his history, and at the same time the images have the aura of standard publicity shots.
The waiting room also contains a Mr. Coffee, newspapers, magazines, and a few plants, but only a few, since the work done in Alphabet is performed in the dark. On a table near the receptionist are stacks of letters addressed to members of Congress and institutions representing the motion-picture industry, letters of protest against the colorization of old black-and-white films.
When she isn’t reading or answering the telephone, Antonya, the accountant and occasional receptionist, suggests that anyone visiting Alphabet should sign one or more of the letters and mail them to Washington and Hollywood. Washington and Hollywood, Washington and Hollywood, she repeats every
few hours.
Julius increasingly shaved days or weeks off the amount of time needed to complete a job. There had always been quarters of any given year when Alphabet wouldn’t have made any money without quickly turning around a number of jobs, but it was happening all the time now. The urgency was caffeinated and articulated in tones bordering on hysteria. Only Antonya was relaxed. “Deadlines have nothing to do with me,” she said when Julius wasn’t around, and plunged back into her martial arts books with enviable composure.
“He’s a compulsive gambler.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at this, girlfriend.”
Antonya showed me a log of accusatory letters from people who claimed Julius owed them money.
“Why did you take them out of the office?”
“I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t talk to me about this kind of thing. Do you listen to his phone calls?”
“Sometimes. Then he talks to himself. He’s pissed at Shylock this and Shylock that. One more thing about these letters, I figure these are the people who write letters, you know what I’m saying? There are others who made him loans who may not put their terms in writing, if you know what I mean.”
Antonya and I were having lunch at Burrito Fresca. Her cousin was a manager, and we got free meals when he was on a day shift.
“Shute’s got a son who’s always calling asking for handouts and whatnot, and an ex-wife who hates his guts.” Antonya splashed more hot sauce on her rice. “Sometimes I wake up and I wonder how I ended up in this job. All I’ve got here is my cousin and my two kids.” She jerked her head in Luis’s direction. Apart from her daughters, aged five and seven, Antonya didn’t talk about her family very much. The one time she mentioned them was when we decided to get tattoos pricked into our ankles. She wanted to have a quetzal, half-bird, half-snake, painted permanently on her body. Alphabet was in a neighborhood that was no stranger to tattoo parlors, tai chi studios, boxing gyms, X-rated video stores. We simply went across the street during lunch. She persuaded me to have one done too, and although at first I had no intention of joining her, I agreed to get small wings on my ankles. We started out small because both our absent mothers would have exploded if they saw our bodies decorated with patterns that had no meaning for them. That was the only time Antonya talked about her mother, and I stupidly realized only after it was done just what tattoos meant to mine. For this reason I wore black tights the few times I visited her in Florida.
A stretch limo with smoked-glass windows pulled up in front of the Burrito Fresca, and a chauffeur opened the door for a man in a leather suit who ran into a yellow brick apartment building across the street. His suit looked like an ordinary business suit fashionable about a decade or two ago, but it was obviously new and the reference to another decade meant expensive irony — and it was leather. He looked vaguely familiar, maybe a man from talk television, some kind of actor, I wasn’t sure. Antonya swiveled around and stared as if to imply the oversized car and passengers were a mystery that had no business in our neighborhood.
“How can he live like he does?
” She pointed with the stick of a purple-brown lipstick before running it over her lips, but I wasn’t sure she meant the man in leather or Julius, who teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. “Someday I want to make a film called What Do You Do? I’ll go into restaurants, knock on doors, ask people what they do for a living, what are their jobs, how do they afford to live where they live, eat what they eat, drive what they drive, and so on. I, personally, would pay money to see a movie like that.”
Antonya had little interest in old movies. The accounting job allowed her an H-1 working visa while she finished school.
“Méliès,” Julius said.
I opened the can. “Mealies,” I said.
Inside were long shreds of film, glutinous and flaked. Single reels looked like hockey pucks, gummy sweat exuding along the edges. These were rare films whose footage was almost obliterated, yet they continued to cling to life. Old silent films are the most difficult to preserve or restore. They are brittle, shrunken; images are distorted as if burned, or figures appear drowned under a bubbled, warped surface. The films’ perforations, round or straight edged with chamfered corners, won’t fit on the Steenbeck editing table whose teeth are designed to accommodate only film with the standard square sprocket holes. Unless the teeth are filed down, the machine will only shred the film. Prints have to be matched to the original, if possible, but in the case of some very old prints, no original has survived.
“Be careful with these. Remove the film slowly, as if you’re moving through Jello.” Julius spoke to me as if I was a child, and I winced.
“I’ve done this kind of work before, you know.”
Julius’s eyes were weak and strained so he himself could no longer spend long hours at the Steenbeck, although in his examination of films he still compared himself to a mortician who wouldn’t give up, there was always one more line to draw or bruise to cover. Ordinarily we worked in separate rooms and he left me alone once a job was assigned.