A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking
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I knew plenty about big-city crime and state executions, yet Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco-and everywhere in between-were just names on a map to me. I had to see them for myself. I figured I could hit the road and work my way across the country as a freelance reporter. One of my heroes, Mark Twain, had made it his business to know about the people and the places that made this country great by sailing the Mississippi. It was time for me to get a little firsthand American experience too.
The time and distance away from my mother would do us both some good. Rebecca and I were really getting on each other's nerves. Yet she was completely against my leaving town, worried about unforeseen calamities. I told her everything was going to be fine, promising to stay in touch and to send her money to help her through those tough times. As things turned out, I was able to sell not only freelance articles but also cartoons satirizing the political and social issues of the day. The cartoons went for twenty-five bucks a piece, a lot of dough in Depression times. I regularly wired money back home to Rebecca. Still, she couldn't fathom why her cherished son wanted to bum around the country with a typewriter. Hell, when you're eighteen years old, full of piss and vinegar, and you get a notion to do something, nobody can stop you-nobody-not even your own mother!
Before I left the Graphic in the spring of 1931, 1 had my first brush with Hollywood. I'd covered a big murder case involving a wealthy businessman named Ridley and his male secretary who were both killed by the same bullet. My story about this unusual double-murder case had run under a big headline that said "WHO KILLED SANTA CLAUS?" See, Ridley was a miserly octogenarian and loved foreclosing mortgages on Christmas Day. I'd written several pieces about the developing investigation, but the murderer had never been found.
Some of the ink from my Graphic articles must have rubbed off on the busy fingers of a Hollywood studio story hound. A very classy letter showed up from an executive at Loews Incorporated, the company that owned MGM and a ton of movie theaters. The studio man offered me five grand to write a script based on the Ridley murder case. Five thousand bucks! It had to he a practical joke. I called the studio in Los Angeles and got this fellow on the phone.
"Is this on the level?" I asked.
"Yes, Mr. Fuller," he said. "We think this case would make a good movie."
"Yeah? Well, you know about everything I know. The story's there in my articles. It's public information now."
The studio man explained that they couldn't just lift the story from the newspaper, because of legal restrictions.
"Besides," he said, "we need to find out who was the murderer by the end of the picture."
"The murderer!" I laughed. "The entire New York City police department would like to know that too! They're offering twenty-five grand for any information that leads to his or her arrest."
"We could up the offer," said the studio man.
"You don't get it," I told him. "I'm not hitting you up for more dough. See, this crime may not be solved. Now or ever!"
"You don't understand, young man. We're a movie studio. We're just interested in a good story. Make up an ending."
"Make up an ending?"
I thought hard about the Hollywood offer, then turned it down. The money was sure tempting, not for me, but for my family. I just wasn't ready to make up endings for movies. I was a reporter trained to track down the truth. At the time, I wasn't interested in writing fiction. All I could think about was traveling across the country, banging out articles about the people and places I ran across. Real people and real places.
One heard plenty of talk about Park Row newspapermen, not to mention renowned novelists and playwrights, going out to Hollywood, basking in the sun, and writing scripts in feathered opulence. Fowler was already out there, having accepted a writing gig on State's Attorney (1932), thanks to his buddy John Barrymore, who was starring in the picture. As Gene liked to say, "Let's take the big money and run."
A seed had been planted in my head. Why not give Hollywood a whirl someday, turning stories into movies that would be seen in hundreds of darkened theaters across the country? After all, the great Flaubert had lifted the basic tale of Emma Bovary out of a story in the newspapers and turned it into a magnificent novel, giving journalistic facts a psyche and a soul. What I really wanted to do was write a book like Emma Bovary, colorful, succinct, a page-turner full of blood and thunder that would grip readers, embroidering philosophy and morality into a heartrending story of love and betrayal. Hollywood could wait for a while.
Without too much fanfare and only a couple of all-night drink fests, I kissed my mother good-bye, said so long to my buddies on Park Row, and hitched a ride on a truck loaded with magazines heading for Pennsylvania. I'd start my American journey in Philadelphia, where our nation was born. I had to cross the Delaware River and see the Liberty Bell for myself. I visited Independence Hall, in Philly's historic district, as well as Carpenter's Hall, site of the First Continental Congress and Christ Church, where Benjamin Franklin is buried. It was really inspiring for me to see where the Declaration of Independence had been signed, in 1776, and where the U.S. Constitution had been drafted, in 1787.
The most exciting thing about Philly was walking in the footsteps of one helluva writer, Thomas Paine. On January 1, 1776, his magnificent Common Sense was published, a pamphlet spelling out how the American colonies received no advantage from their mother country, how common sense called for breaking loose from Great Britain. Paine shot straight from the hip, and people loved it. His pamphlet sold more than five hundred thousand copies. That meant that out of a population of about two and a half million, one out of every five colonists got one. Holy mackerel, can you imagine a best-seller today doing that kind of business? What's important is that one man's passionate, straightforward words got through to the people, convincing even the conservatives to declare independence from England half a year later and form a government of their own. Every generation needs to reread Paine's words. They helped create a nation:
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
One of the Hoovervilles I visited in -1932 was south of downtown Seattle, where the residents elected their own mayor and city council.
From Philadelphia, I started zigzagging across the country by hitching rides on any truck or freight train that was going my way, my typewriter tied to my backpack with a cord. I ended up spending most of my time with people who had no real home. I wrote my first articles on the road about them.
See, outside most cities were "Hoovervilles," where families who'd lost everything had erected shacks made of cardboard, apple crates, scrap lumber, whatever the hell they could lay their hands on. These poor people had been thrown a nasty curveball by the Depression and gone down swinging. Now they were fighting to survive, a brassy, cantankerous lot who lived from hand to mouth. After arriving in some city, I'd get myself out to wherever the local Hooverville was pitched. I'd bring along something to eat, which I shared with the homeless around an open fire, talking to them about their lives, looking for an angle for a story. I'd sleep in a cardboard box or under a sheet of tin leaning against a tree, using my overcoat, my blanket, and my typewriter as a pillow. At the first light of dawn, I'd be typing a story about these forsaken folk, or drawing a cartoon about the lighter side of their gypsy-like existence.
Everywhere I traveled, the poor were trying to make the best of a nasty situation. Even those with homes and steady jobs lived in miserable conditions, almost impossible to understand with the level of affluence we have in America nowadays. This was the low ebb of the Depression, before anyone had heard of rural electrification, agricultural relief, or Social Security. Roosevelt was vigorously pushing through New Deal programs, but it would be years before the effects would take hold and improve conditions for the people I'd visited along my route. I wrote articles and drew cartoon
s about so many different Americans, coal miners in West Virginia, cowboys in Oklahoma, crab fishermen in Louisiana, cotton pickers in Georgia, milk farmers in Illinois, railroad workers in Florida. My stuff was published regularly in American Weekly. A decent check would be waiting for me at the local newspaper office in the next city along my itinerary, addressed to "Samuel Fuller, Freelance." Such was the trust that existed between editors and journeymen reporters in the newspaper business back then.
The closest I got to New York was a stopover in Rochester. I walked into the offices of the Rochester Journal, and the city editor handed me a check from the American Weekly. He bought one of my cartoons for his own paper. It was times like those that I could afford to check into a cheap hotel and smoke a cigar in a long, hot bath. I hung around Rochester for a few days, did a couple more stories for the paper, and was out of town on the next freight train.
I sent my mother postcards from all over the United States. I was having a terrific time. Sure, I didn't know where I'd be sleeping that night or with whom I'd be having my next meal. Nevertheless, seeing the Appalachians, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, the Florida Everglades; hearing the train wheels clack, clack, clacking under my feet; breathing in the tingling air of the Rockies; watching the sunrise from a truck barreling through the wheat fields of Missouri; hitching a ride with a carload of cotton pickers rolling along Route 66; gazing at the glorious sunset across the big skies of West Texas, I was connected to my country like never before. Young people, if you want to understand America, get off your asses and go see it for yourselves! It's a big, breathtaking place!
One day I landed in a suburb of Chicago called Cicero. I was looking for a journalist pal of mine who was supposedly running a publication called Chicago, America. Maybe I could sell him some articles, or get some reporting work around the Windy City. I took a room in a cheap boarding house. Around the corner was a huge billiard hall whose owner befriended me. He let me set up my typewriter on an unused pool table in the back of the place under one of those low-hanging, stained-glass lamps. There was an awful racket in there, but I felt right at home because it sounded like a city newsroom.
One night, I was smoking a cigar and banging away on my Royal when all the noise in the billiard hall suddenly evaporated. I stopped typing and looked up. A short, stocky, well-dressed man walked in like he owned the place. Everybody froze and watched this little round guy and his entourage of big toughs.
"Who the hell is that?" I asked the shoeshine kid in the corner.
The kid held his finger up to his lips.
"They call hint Mister Brown around here," whispered the kid. "But everyone knows he's really Capone."
"Al Capone?" I said as quietly as a mouse, excited and trembling inside.
Capone and his henchmen came over to play a game of pool at a billiard table not far from where I was sitting. The noise in the place gradually ratcheted back to normal, and I tried to resume writing. But it was hard to concentrate. Then one of Capone's men walked over toward me. I stopped breathing. The guy looked like a butcher in his best Sunday suit, his neck bulging under his starched white collar and tie. The big lug put his massive hand on the edge of the pool table, leaned over my shoulder, and stared at the paper in my typewriter.
There was no denying that Al Capone, circa 1932, despite his murderous profession, had unmistakable charisma.
"Hey, kid," he said. "Mister Brown wantsa know what you're writin'."
I looked up and saw Al Capone peering at me with a little smile. He had thick eyebrows and a double chin. I could make out the famous scar on his cheek.
"I'm writing articles about the homeless," I said.
The guy went back over to Capone and whispered in his ear. Capone smiled at me, calling out in a high-pitched Italian accent, "Another Winchell!" His henchmen got a big laugh out of that line. "I'm homeless, too, kid," continued Capone. "Look me up and I'll give you an interview."
His goons started laughing again. I smiled and waved respectfully. I wished I were a million miles away from that pool hall in Cicero, Illinois. But I knew I had to sit tight. Capone and his men loosened their ties, shot some pool, and had plenty of laughs only a few feet in front of me that night. Prohibition was still on, but they were served mug after mug of cold beer as if the Volstead Act of i9i9 didn't exist. If you hadn't known they were some of America's most dangerous gangsters, you'd have thought it was just a group of traveling salesmen having some hearty fun. I'd never forget that disturbing mix of charm and menace in America's greatest mobster.
The next time I saw Capone's mug, it was plastered all over the front page of a newspaper. He'd been convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced to eleven years in prison. Released in 1939, Capone spent the rest of his life an invalid, crippled by syphilis. I never looked him up to get that promised interview.
My travels took me across the country to the West Coast, ending up in San Francisco, a city I adored. There I found a temporary job as a crime reporter for the Chronicle under editor in chief George Cameron and stayed on for a while. I was in Frisco in 1934 when the General Strike was called. It grew out of a labor dispute on the docks that spread like wildfire. As the strike date approached, food supplies trickled into the city, then ceased being delivered altogether when trucks, trains, and ships stopped running. Hospitals closed their doors to the sick. Garbage piled up on street corners. Public transportation ground to a complete halt. Communication, whether by telephone, telegraph, or mail, was next to impossible. The putrid smell of decay wafted through the streets. For Chrissakes, it was like a war zone!
The city teetered on the edge of a violent confrontation between its hungry citizens and police. On the eve of the General Strike, it happened. A riot broke out in front of the Ferry Building, where hundreds of panicked people raided food stands and counters. The looting rapidly turned into general chaos. Wearing gas masks and armed with riot guns and tear gas, the police couldn't control the mobs. So they called in the army. I'll never forget that scene as the big green trucks rolled in, soldiers leaping out, firing their rifles in the air, then turning to shoot machine guns at some of the most virulent rioters, wounded men and women falling in the street, finally crushing the insurgence. Perched in the back of a jeep, calmly directing the madness, was General Douglas MacArthur himself. At the time, MacArthur was army chief of staff and only at the debut of his illustrious career. He would leave a bitter taste in people's mouths that day in San Francisco by attacking fellow Americans.
I wrote my mother from San Francisco on Sunday, July 15, 1934:
On the eve of the General Strike, 1934, San Francisco police prepare for trouble. They wouldn't be able to contain the violence.
Darlink Mammy!
War is declared!
No kidding-there's actual warfare in this town now! What scenes! Hundreds of cops with machine guns riding up & down the streets in autos. Soldiers & sailors parading the streets
-windows smashed!-people starving! The main street-Market-is deserted! Can you imagine Times Square deserted?
Anyway, don't worry about me! I'm actually seeing Martial Law for the first time. I saw soldiers fire machine guns into 500 strikers! I saw more cutthroats hanging in the alleys for holdups than I ever could hope to imagine.
Well, this store may have to close. I have a job on the local paper for $2s a week if I remain steady. Love to all-Gee, what a sight!
Sammy
A couple days after the riot, I was walking by Tiny's Waffle Shop, a San Francisco landmark. The city editor had sent me out on the street to get local-color stories about how the crisis was affecting Frisco residents. There was a long line of people waiting to get into the restaurant. I stood in line too, striking up a conversation with the friendly old lady behind me.
"Do you like pig knuckles?" she asked me confidentially.
"I'm so hungry," I said, "I guess I'd eat anything."
"Follow me, then," she said.
We walked over to the Francis Hote
l, where the old lady lived in a tiny room that hardly had enough space for a bed. She was secretary to one of the organizers of the strike, Communist Party chief Earl Browder. She opened her closet. Where clothes should have been hanging up, she had suspended pig knuckles, dozens and dozens of them.
"How'd you get all these?" I asked.
"Before MacArthur and those army bastards opened fire on the people, I filled up two bags with pig knuckles and got the hell out of there."
"Did it feel like stealing?"
"Hell, no!" she said. "When you're hungry, you'll do anything. Anything!"
"Why were you waiting in line at the Waffle Shop?"
"Because I love waffles!" she laughed. "Can't get them at the hotel. I don't think I could eat another pig knuckle!"
Things got worse before they got better. No grocery store owner was safe because people were so hungry, they were on the verge of killing for food. Public order had totally broken down. As a reporter in New York, I'd seen a race riot in Harlem, with people looting stores for food. But that was nothing next to the panic and desperation of the 1934 General Strike in San Francisco. Hell, I saw corpses in the streets that weren't even picked up by the city morgue! My articles for the Chronicle described the hunger, violence, and anarchy I saw firsthand, mixing in some of the lighter aspects of the chaos, like the pig-knuckles. The Chronicle syndicated my stuff to other papers across the country. There were many angry reactions. People thought that scenes like those I'd described just couldn't take place in America. But they did.
It was the first time I realized how much human behavior was controlled by the belly, not the brain. I thought about Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, and the deeper truth of Jean Valjean's plea for a little bit of bread. When people hear the growling of their empty stomachs in their own homes, it will soon turn into screams heard in their towns and cities and finally a roar throughout their country. At the root of social upheaval was poverty and hunger, breeding discontent and hatred.