by Howard Fast
‘I will not sit here and endure this!’ Byron said.
Avanti hammered his gavel.
‘Asshole,’ Abel hissed. ‘If you walk out, your Machiavellian majority is up shit creek. But don’t let me keep you, dear man.’
‘Do I have to listen to this loathsome homosexual?’ he asked Feldman pleadingly.
Feldman shouted, ‘For God’s sake, Cliff, you’re only making matters worse!’
‘Could they be worse?’
‘Come on, Cliff, shut up,’ Snyder told him.
Leaping into a moment of silence, Avanti said, ‘I think we can all remember that we are adults – and that includes you, Mr Abel. This is probably the most important board of directors meeting in the history of our company. Let us treat it as such.’ He pointed his gavel at Bert Bellamy. ‘I think Mr Bellamy would like the floor.’
Now it was his own good time. Bert rose to his feet slowly, his face grave but not stripped of compassion by any means, and he said gently, ‘I can understand Max’s feelings. To ask a man to condemn his own brothers is more than obscene. It’s un-Christian and vile –’ So there it was at last, slipped in gently like the sharpest, most slender dagger, the sheep separated from the goats, the designation pinned on this skinny little Jew who had the effrontery to challenge them to mercy. ‘– and I, for one, would never dream of asking Max to take action against his brothers.’ He paused and looked from face to face. ‘Nevertheless, some justice must be served. So does our society function. As Max suggested, we should put this matter to rest, put it in the past, let it die here behind these closed doors, and, if Mr Feldman agrees to the legality of such a thing, destroy the minutes of this meeting.’
Again he paused. Julies Holms cried, ‘Hear! Hear!’ Max smiled bitterly. Sharp, sharp, old buddy, he said to himself. You always did the routines better than I did, especially when we played the high-class gigs, and this is the classiest of all.
‘Nevertheless,’ Bert continued, ‘as I said before, some justice must be served. We have no desire to put Reuben and Benjamin Britsky behind bars, and we will not, but they must make restitution. There can be no quibbling on that score.’ He looked around the table again, nodded, and resumed his seat.
‘I would like to know, Bert,’ Feldman said, ‘How many members of the board concur in your statement? I say this because it sounded to me less like a suggestion than like a decision.’
‘I have consulted legal opinion on my own. I have been assured that any single member of this board – indeed, any stockholder – could bring charges against the Britsky brothers.’
‘Quite true. I have been explicit on this matter in my discussions with Mr Britsky. But since I am keeping the record of this meeting, I would like to poll the members. May I make a motion to that effect, Mr Avanti?’
‘A motion is on the floor.’
‘I second it,’ Snyder said.
‘I would rather not put this to a vote,’ Avanti said. ‘If anyone objects to Mr Feldman polling the board, would he raise his hand?’
No hand was raised, and Feldman began, ‘Mr Britsky?’
‘No.’
‘Mr Avanti?’
Hesitation. ‘This is my first knowledge of this suggestion. Could I wait?’
‘Mr Holms?’
‘I think yes. I would want to expand on that opinion.’
‘Mr Abel?’
‘Oh, no, Freddy. The suggestion is sheer nonsense. You know that.’
‘Mrs Upperman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Byron?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Snyder?’
‘Of course not, Freddy.’
‘And for the record,’ Feldman said, ‘I would oppose it too.’
Max asked for the floor. ‘I said no as to Bert’s suggestion. I am very much aware of the compassion he expressed, and it’s exactly what I would have expected from a dear old friend,’ refraining from adding: who happens to be the slimiest son of a bitch I ever broke bread with. ‘But the truth is that restitution for seven million dollars, well –’ Max spread his arms and shook his head. ‘My brothers don’t have a nickel. They’re worthless, penniless bums. Benny is a poker player and a big man with low ladies. Ruby has dropped at least a million at the crap tables in Reno. It adds up to nothing. They can’t make restitution.’
‘But you can,’ Sally said.
‘Thank you, my dear.’
‘I think,’ said Feldman, ‘that restitution is out of the question. We can take the time to run an audit of Ruby and Benny, but it won’t change a thing. If we sold them down to their underwear, we might generate a few hundred dollars, and that’s it. For my part, I simply do not see the necessity for restitution. We have a large, healthy, powerful company. Every other studio here – Fox, Metro, Columbia, Warner’s – every one of them has dropped millions on bad films, bad decisions. It’s in the nature of the business. The cash flows must be generated with a degree of risk. We don’t make automobiles. We make moving pictures. It may appear incredible to say that seven million dollars is of no consequence, but if you will examine the balance sheets of this company, you will realise that is the case. It is of no consequence. Therefore, I make a motion that this board, in the light of Mr Britsky’s years of dedication to this company, vote not to prefer any criminal charges against Reuben and Benjamin Britsky.’
‘Second!’ Abel cried.
‘Before there’s any vote,’ Royce Byron said, ‘I wish to remind the board that such a vote is not binding. As a stockholder, I have the right to prefer criminal charges.’
‘Is that your intent?’ Avanti asked.
‘It certainly is – unless restitution is made.’
‘We’ve been through that. There’s no way restitution can be made.’
‘There certainly is.’
The sheep from the goats, Max thought. He liked Avanti. He was glad Avanti was not a part of it. Who was it, then – Bert, Sally, Byron, and most likely Holms? That would be it. They must have planned it step by step – not Bert now, not his old buddy, but Royce Byron, New York, Wall Street, the telephone company – all the standard stock villains. Bert had to come out smelling like a rose. He was the only one who could step into the driver’s seat.
‘Then enlighten us, Mr Byron,’ Avanti said.
‘I’ll be happy to. The person most interested in keeping the Britsky brothers out of prison, the person who has the most to gain by it, is Mr Britsky, our president. Mr Feldman assures us that the corporation has not been damaged. I wonder whether, if that assurance were offered to the stockholders, they would agree with him. Myself, I do feel damaged, both morally and financially. So I say that if the miscreants are not to be punished and pay their debt to society, if not to our company, restitution must be made, and since it cannot be made by the culprits, then the interested party, Mr Max Britsky, must make it.’
A hubbub broke out, a half-dozen people speaking at once, Avanti pounding his gavel, and Max sitting back in his chair and watching the board members and listening to their angry words almost with detachment. Finally restoring a semblance of order, Avanti asked for a vote on the motion, regardless of whether it was binding.
Max, Snyder, Abel, and Feldman voted for the motion to drop the matter and take no criminal proceedings against the Britskys.
Bert, Sally, Holms, and Byron voted against the motion.
Avanti did not vote, and when Feldman asked him to please make his preference known, he explained that since his bank had extended a large credit line to Britsky Productions, it would hardly be proper for him to vote – certainly not without consultation with his home office. Therefore, he must abstain. ‘And,’ he added, ‘I can say that in a matter of this nature, I am almost certain that San Francisco would advise me to abstain.’
‘But, you see,’ Byron said, ‘the vote is only a formality. There is no way for Mr Britsky to avoid the question.’
‘It does come to me,’ Max agreed. ‘Let me put my cards on the table, gentlemen. B
ritsky Productions pay me a wage of two thousand dollars a week. That’s comfortable, but a number of our stars earn much more. I also charge some expenses to the lot – a studio car when I use it, occasional business dinners or lunches off the lot – never comes to more than a couple of hundred a week, mostly less. A thousand a week I turn over to my mother to run her home. The rest – well, it goes. I’m an easy touch, and between out-of-work actors and charities and the surprising number of people who need loans – well, like I say, it goes. I’m not poor. I got about eighty thousand in my bank account, but seven million dollars – that I don’t have.’
‘You’re pulling our leg,’ Byron snorted.
‘Mr Britsky has a keenly developed sense of humor,’ Sally said.
‘Max,’ Bert said, ‘I think they’re referring to the fact that you do own fifty-one percent of Britsky Productions.’
‘I’m sure they were,’ Max said. ‘As Mrs Upperman observed, I got a sense of humor.’ Snyder started to say something, but Max silenced him with an outstretched hand. ‘Just hold it, Sam. It’s my turn. I’ve been quiet and listening. Now I’ll talk.’ He turned back to Bert. ‘Never mind the bullshit, Bert. Wherever it is, I been there. So let’s talk tachlis. Right? No shit anymore – the ganse emmes. You worked it all out before you set foot in here, you and that strange woman who was once my wife and this cookie from the telephone company. So ahf an tisch – you remember enough Yiddish for that. You got me by the balls, and there ain’t one fucken thing I can do.’ The language was for Sally’s benefit. ‘So spell it out and let’s wind it up. I’m bored as hell, anyway.’
‘All right, Max. It’s better that way.’
‘You’re damn right it is.’
‘We want seven million dollars’ worth of your stock – at market, to be turned over to the company to become company stock. Then we want your resignation, since we feel these new conditions would be too abrasive for you to continue to be productive here.’
‘Who is we?’
‘Sally, myself, Byron.’
‘Who gets my job?’
‘I do. We’ll have the votes for it.’
‘You won’t have them. I can still swing a majority.’
‘No. You see, you will give us a proxy voting right that gives us the majority. No negotiating, no bargaining. The stakes are too high, and we’re prepared to go down to the wire. Either you agree, or we walk out of here and drive to the office of the district attorney of Los Angeles County, turn Humboldt’s statement over to him, and initiate proceedings. At that point, it is doubtful that you can survive the scandal and continue to run the company. Life is not over, Max. You still come out worth over a hundred million dollars.’
‘Bert, Bert, you’re a patient son of a bitch. How long have you been planning this?’
‘Ever since Ruby and Benny and Jake began to steal you blind. First I tried to warn you. Then I decided to use it. If Jake hadn’t died, I would have sprung it next year.’
‘And now you and my darling Sally got it all.’
‘More or less.’
‘All right, Bert, you got it all, the whole kit and kaboodle. You also got Max Britsky on the other side, not a nice man to have as an enemy. So we’ll see what the future brings. As of this moment, I don’t want to talk to or look at either you or that bitch who’s your partner. Freddy!’
The table had been silent, silent as a windless sea. Now Feldrrian said, ‘Yes, Max?’
‘Work up the papers for this shithead. Meeting’s over.’ And with that, he stalked out of the boardroom.
[ E L E V E N ]
Max passed away very quietly, sitting in the last row of the Bijou Theatre on West Broadway in New York City, about four o’clock in the afternoon in the year 1937. He was fifty-eight years old, and as the autopsy later revealed, he had two heart attacks of which he was probably unaware prior to the one that killed him. He died very quietly, in his seat as if he were asleep, and everyone said it was like Max to depart without putting anyone to very much trouble.
Max had left Los Angeles two weeks after the board of directors meeting in which Bert Bellamy replaced him as president of Britsky Productions. His friends had expected Max to mount some kind of counteroffensive which would undercut Bellamy and restore Max to leadership in the company, but nothing of the sort took place. Max packed his bags and left Los Angeles, and from that moment until the day he died, he did not see or speak to any member of his family, including his mother. Britsky Productions was one of the few stocks that rode through Black Thursday and the Depression that followed with scarcely a tremor, and Max was never in want of funds. Indeed, he was quite wealthy. He took a suite of rooms at the old Murray Hill Hotel at Park Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street, and he never returned to Los Angeles. He made no attempt to return to the film business, nor did he interest himself in any other financial venture. He walked a good deal, always fascinated by the city which had produced him, astonished by the changes that had taken place while he was away. He joined the Players club, and he became a familiar figure in the lounge, a small man in a large leather chair, reading his newspaper, smoking a cigar, and sipping at a glass of beer. But he invited no intimacy, and aside from the handful of people who knew him, he was left alone.
He went to most of the openings, both plays and film, and always with an attractive woman, usually middle-aged, on his arm. The women were old friends from the days of the New York studios – bit players, supporting players, women who had been married and divorced, married and abandoned, and sometimes never married, just kicked from pillar to post – but they all enjoyed being with Max, because he spent freely and he was never judgmental and he never rubbed salt into open wounds; and some of them were a little bit in love with him but also aware that he was alone and would remain so.
About once a year, in the beginning, Sam Snyder or Freddy Feldman would come into town, and Max would take one or the other to a good restaurant and hear the news from the Coast. But a few years after Max came East, Feldman left the studio and Sam Snyder decked Bert Bellamy as a result of an argument on the studio street. For all his fat, Snyder was a powerful man, and Bellamy suffered a cut face and lost a tooth, and while he did not bring assault charges against Snyder, it was plain that Snyder’s tour at the lot was over. Snyder retired, set up his own workshop, and made several significant improvements in the camera. Fred Feldman opened his own legal firm in Los Angeles, and Clifford Abel burned down the design studio at the lot and then went off on an around-the-world cruise. It was never proven that he had torched the place, but it was a sort of open secret.
In America, the public has a very short memory, and no one was too curious about what had happened to Max Britsky. He preferred it that way. If he had gone to a psychiatrist, he would have learned that he was living in a state of depression, but then he probably would have denied it. He would have pointed out that he did not feel particularly depressed, but neither was he very interested in anything. Since the last years of his life were Depression years, he was constantly approached for money. He never turned down a request for a charitable contribution, and he always had a coat pocket loaded with half-dollars, whereby he was known to every panhandler between Park Avenue and Ninth Avenue and south from Forty-second Street. Curiously enough, he died intestate. His fortune had shrunk to a few hundred thousand dollars – understandable, since he had Fred Feldman continue payments to his mother at the rate of five hundred dollars a week and since he had given away several million dollars.
After Max died, a reporter from the New York Times was sent to see Clifford Abel, who had returned to New York. Abel was sixty-two. He was quite wealthy and too old, he felt, to return to architecture. He opened a studio and looked around for Broadway plays he might design. The reporter found him at his studio.
‘We’re trying to put something more than the ordinary obit together about Max Britsky. I understand you knew him well?’
‘You might say that. I met Max in nineteen twelve. For the next fifteen years w
e worked together. Max was not an easy man to know – I mean deeper than the surface. I would say that in his entire life, he had only two very close friends, myself and Sam Snyder.’
‘You liked him?’
‘Adored him, respected him. He was a great man utterly without any sense of his own greatness.’
‘I wish you would explain that.’
‘I’ll try,’ Abel said. ‘But you must think of Max as I thought of him. I saw Max, not in that damn blue serge he always wore, but in a damask robe over silk and satin. He sits upon a white horse and wears a turban pinned with diamonds and rubies, and he is followed by twelve sumpter beasts loaded with silks and spices and other things wonderful. Well, that’s a bit fanciful; let me bring it down to earth. Max brought something new into the world, and because of him, for better or worse, the world will never be the same again. Oh, I know there were others, but Max was always a step ahead. Of how many men can that be said?’
A Biography of Howard Fast
Howard Fast (1914–2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast’s commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.
Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast’s mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London’s The Iron Heel, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.