The Dream Merchants

by Harold Robbins

I began to agree with him almost before the words were out of his mouth, before I knew what he was saying. Anything, anything to get him out of the office. Not to have to look at him standing there, so calm, so strong, so easy. Not to feel that insatiable, ruthless surge of power that flowed out of him.

  His eyes first narrowed with surprise at my quick agreement. He turned and left the office as if he were in a hurry before I could change my mind.

  I stared after his straight back as the door shut behind it. With trembling fingers I tried clumsily to tighten the strap around my thigh. I couldn’t get it to set right. I began to curse silently as I wrestled with it.

  I felt so damn helpless without my leg on.

  THIRTY YEARS

  1917

  1

  Johnny came out of the projection room, his eyes blinking at the strong light in the corridor. He stopped and lighted a cigarette.

  A man came up to him. “Okay to print it, Johnny?”

  Johnny threw his match into a sandbox. “Sure, Irving. Go ahead.”

  The man smiled. He was pleased. “We got some good shots of Wilson as he took the oath, didn’t we?”

  Johnny smiled back at him. “Damn good shots, Irving.” He started to walk down the hall, the man walking with him. “Now get it into the theaters and we’ll beat every newsreel in the business.”

  Wilson had taken the oath of office for the second term of his Presidency just that morning, less than three hours ago, and Johnny had hired an airplane to bring the negative to New York instead of waiting for a train. The way he figured it, he was at least six hours ahead of any of the other companies. Those six hours meant he would be in the Broadway theaters tonight instead of tomorrow. It was a scoop in the full sense of the word.

  Irving Bannon was the editor of the newsreel. He was a short, stocky man with thick black hair who had been a cameraman before Johnny recommended him for this job. What Johnny had liked about him was that he got the picture, he did not ask for elaborate setups and preparation. All he needed was enough light to see by; that was enough for him to get the picture. He was a bustling little man, full of drive, and just the type needed for the job. Johnny was pleased with him.

  He scurried along with Johnny, his short little legs taking almost two steps for every one of Johnny’s. “I got those war clips from England, Johnny,” he said, panting a little from the effort of keeping step with Johnny’s long strides. “D’ya want to look at ’em today?”

  Johnny stopped in front of his office. “Not today, Irving, I’m jammed up. Make it tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay, Johnny.” The little man scurried off down the hall.

  Johnny looked after him and smiled. The little man had it. No sooner was one reel out of the way than he was already working on the next. You had to hand it to him. It was to his credit that Magnum Newsreel was considered the best in the business. He went into the office.

  Jane greeted him with a smile. “How was the reel, Johnny?”

  He grinned at her. “Good,” he said. “Very good. Irving did a hell of a job.” He walked over to his desk and sat down. “Have you got that call in for Peter?”

  She nodded and got up from her desk. She took several papers from it and put them in front of Johnny. “You’ll have to look over these,” she said, separating them into two neat stacks in front of him. “And these you’ll have to sign.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes smiling. “Anything else, boss?”

  She went back to her desk and looked at her memorandum pad. “Yes,” she answered seriously, “George Pappas is coming in at twelve and you’re taking Doris to lunch at one o’clock.”

  He looked at his watch. “Golly,” he exclaimed, “it’s almost twelve now. I better get this stuff out of the way before George comes.” He looked over at her. “You’re a slave-driver, Janey.”

  She made a move at him. “Someone around here has to be,” she said with a shake of her head. “Otherwise you’d never get anything done.”

  Johnny looked down at the papers on his desk. They were the usual contracts with the states’ rights distributors, a part of the work that he detested. They were routine and annoying. Janey was right. If it were left to him, he would never look at them. With a sigh he took his pen and began to sign them.

  The last five years had filled out his frame. He was still thin, but the lean, hungry look had gone from his face. Magnum had done well. They had a studio in California. Peter stayed out there and took charge of production. Joe was with Peter. Peter determined the policy and Joe executed it. They worked well together. Magnum’s pictures showed the results of that teamwork; they were among the best in the industry.

  Johnny was in charge of the New York office. He had been right in predicting that the major portion of production would shift to the coast. He had been right too in his surmise that the distribution center would remain in New York and that the production of shorts would for the most part be carried on there. The unexpected victory of William Fox’s suit against the combine, forcing them to give film to the independents back in 1912, had given impetus to the change. Since that time several other victories had been won. Now the fate of the combine was in the hands of the United States federal courts, and all indications were that the court would order the dissolution of the combine.

  When they had learned of the initial Fox victory, Johnny persuaded Peter to let him go back to New York and reopen the studios there. Jane had been working as a script girl with Joe and he asked her if she would like to come back to New York with him. She had accepted. Sam Sharpe had joined them as casting director. He had remained in that job until the fall of last year, then he went back into business as an agent.

  “There’s a lot of talent out here,” he said, explaining his motives to Peter, “and nobody to represent ’em. Besides, I liked the business and I haven’t been happy since I left it.”

  Peter could understand his viewpoint. “All right Sam,” he said. “What you want to do is okay with me. And for a start I’ll speak to all my people here and see that you represent them.”

  Sam Sharpe smiled. “I already do,” he said, “I got ’em all signed up already.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Peter said, congratulating him.

  When they had finished shaking hands, Sam sat down in the easy chair in Peter’s office.

  “When do you plan to go to work?” Peter asked him.

  “Right now,” Sam answered. “About that Cooper contract. I think the gal ought to get more money. After all, her last picture grossed a young fortune.”

  Peter’s mouth hung open. “Thieves have been feasting at my table,” he said, beginning to smile.

  Early in 1912 The Bandit opened on Broadway. It was the first of the big premieres in the business. Admissions were set at one dollar a ticket. They expected to do good business, but even Johnny couldn’t foresee what would happen.

  By noon of that day, two hours before the theater was to open, a line of people had formed in front of the boxoffice that went clear down the block. Traffic on the sidewalk was blocked and people in order to pass had to walk in the gutters. Gradually the street became more crowded and confused. Someone looking out of an office window had called the police and told them there was a riot taking place. Out came the police in full force, ready to let fly with nightsticks.

  The manager of the theater tore his hair and ran out to talk to the police. He spoke to a grizzled captain and explained to him that the people were waiting to see a moving picture.

  The captain, a red-faced, gray-haired man, took off his cap and scratched his head. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said in a fine Irish brogue. “To think that Bill Casey would see the day people started a riot to get into a movie.” He turned and looked at the crowd of people and then back to the manager. “Well, they can’t stay on the street and block traffic like that. You’ll have to get them off.”

  The theater manager turned to Johnny in despair. “What’ll I do? The picture isn’t starting until two o’c
lock.”

  Johnny looked at him and smiled. “Open up now and let them in,” he said.

  The manager was bewildered. “If I let them in now, what will I do about the two-o’clock show?”

  “If you don’t get ’em off the street,” the captain told him, “there won’t be a two-o’clock show. I got orders to break ’em up.”

  The manager wrung his hands in despair.

  “Tell you what,” Johnny said, coming to a quick decision. “Let them in now and at two o’clock start the show over again.” He began to smile. “Keep running the picture until they stop coming.”

  “But they’ll get mixed up if I let them in in the middle of the picture!” the manager protested.

  “They can always stay until they come around to the part they came in on,” Johnny told him. “We do it with shorts, don’t we?”

  The manager turned to the police captain and looked appealingly at him. The captain shook his head. Slowly the manager turned and went to the boxoffice. He tapped his hand on the closed window. The girl inside opened the glass.

  He turned once more in mute appeal to the captain. There was no reply. He turned back to the girl. “Start selling your tickets,” he said unhappily.

  The people at the head of the line heard him. They surged against the two policemen who stood there and pushed them out of the way. They poured up to the boxoffice.

  The manager struggled through the mob and over to Johnny. Johnny took one look at him and began to laugh. Buttons were torn from his jacket, the flower hung askew from his lapel, one side of his wing collar had been torn away, and his tie hung over his shoulder.

  The manager stared at Johnny. “Who ever heard of such a thing?” he asked in a shocked, proper voice. “Continuous performances? You’d think this was a merry-go-round.”

  And it was. Magnum had grabbed the brass ring.

  It was only the beginning. Other companies and other pictures followed. Later that year Adolph Zukor, a New York theater operator, brought the long-heralded Queen Elizabeth to New York and then formed his Famous Players Film Company to make longer features.

  In 1913 it was Quo Vadis? followed in rapid succession by Carl Laemmle’s Universal Company’s Traffic in Souls and then by Jesse Lasky and Cecil B. DeMille with The Squaw Man, which starred Dustin Farnum. And every year after that there were more. The first big theater devoted exclusively to motion pictures, the New York Strand, was opened in 1914. That same year saw Mack Sennett’s production of Tillie’s Punctured Romance, starring Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler. The next year brought Griffith’s Birth of a Nation and Theda Bara in William Fox’s A Fool There Was.

  Names like Paramount Pictures, Metro Pictures, Famous Players, Vitagraph, were beginning to be bruited around the trade. The public was beginning to recognize players such as Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Clara Kimball Young, Douglas Fairbanks, and Theda Bara. The newspapers woke up quickly to the news value in those names. These actors and actresses made news. Reporters were assigned to chronicle daily every action, every statement they made.

  The public had taken motion pictures to its heart, and the industry was growing up. It was not without its faults, however. There were long wars within it. One producer would fight with another. Competition for star names was fierce. Stars were signed by one company at a fabulous sum, only to find that the next day they could go to another company for an even more fantastic figure. Contracts were made and broken every day. But the industry continued to grow.

  As Johnny said smilingly to Peter one day, half in jest, half in earnest: “For the first time there is truly a theater for the people. They can call moving pictures their very own. They made it.”

  And the public backed him up, with long lines that stretched in front of the movie theaters’ boxoffices across the United States.

  2

  Johnny pushed the papers away from him and looked at his watch. It was almost noon. He looked over at Jane. “Check on that call to Peter,” he said. “I gotta talk to him before George comes in.”

  Jane picked up the phone on her desk and Johnny got up and stretched. He walked over to the window and looked out. It was raining slowly. He stood there at the window thinking.

  George Pappas had done well in the last few years. There were nine theaters that carried his name and he was planning to add more. He had come to Johnny with a proposition that they form a partnership to buy up ten theaters in New York City. He would do it himself, he explained in his gentle, halting manner, only he didn’t have enough money to swing it. There was this man who was sick and was almost ready to sell out. They were ten good houses spread around the city. None on Broadway, but in good locations throughout the various boroughs, and it would take a quarter of a million dollars to swing it. George would put up half if Magnum would put up the other half. They would be equal partners and George would run them.

  Johnny had thought it over carefully and decided to recommend it to Peter. Borden, Fox, and Zukor owned theaters, and Johnny could see how profitably they played their own product in them. They would give their own pictures the preferred playing times, the long weekend dates; and of course they paid themselves the top prices. It worked very profitably for them, and Johnny thought it would work as well for Magnum.

  Jane’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Peter will be on in a few minutes.”

  He turned back to his desk and sat down to wait. He hoped Peter would not run true to form this time and give him an argument on it. He smiled to himself, remembering how Peter had fought with him six years ago when he had wanted him to go into bigger pictures. But he had been right then and he felt he was right now. Peter, however, liked to argue.

  Peter didn’t call it arguing, though; he said he was talking a thing out. Johnny remembered some of the things Peter had talked out with Joe. Some of the ideas for pictures that Joe wanted to make and Peter didn’t. To an outsider their discussion sounded as if the two men were almost ready to come to blows. Then suddenly there would come a silence. They would look at each other sheepishly, a little embarrassed by the unexpected heat of their argument, and then one or the other would give in. It didn’t matter which one, for when the picture was made they would be loud in their praise of each other. Each would protest that the other played the most important part in the making of the picture. But the results were good and Magnum’s pictures were considered among the best in the industry.

  He shrugged his shoulders philosophically. Well, if Peter balked, he thought, he was ready for him. He had accumulated quite a few statistics on the profits there were to be made from the marriage of production and exhibition.

  “He’s on the phone now, Johnny.” Jane’s voice was a little excited. The wonder of these daily and sometimes twice daily coast-to-coast calls had never ceased for her.

  Johnny reached for the phone. “Let him argue—I’m ready for him,” he thought. He placed the receiver against his ear and leaned back in the chair. “Hello, Peter,” he said.

  “Hello, Johnny,” came the reply. Peter’s voice was thin across the wire. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” he answered. “And you?”

  “Good,” Peter said. His voice seemed to carry a little better over the phone now. It was funny how the telephone seemed to emphasize Peter’s slightly German accent. “Did you see Doris?” he continued. “She get there all right?”

  Johnny had almost forgotten about her. “I was in the projection room when she came in,” he explained almost apologetically. “But Jane met her and she’s in the hotel now changing her clothes. I’m taking her to lunch.”

  Peter laughed. His voice was proud. “You won’t recognize her, Johnny. She’s a young lady now. She’s grown a lot in the last few years.”

  The last few times Johnny had been out at the studio he hadn’t seen her. She was away at a young ladies’ finishing school. He added up the years in his mind. She was eighteen now.

  He laughed with Peter. “I bet I won’t!” he said. “I didn’t real
ize how time flew by.”

  Peter’s voice grew even more proud. “You wouldn’t know Mark either if you saw him. He’s almost as tall as I am.”

  Johnny was properly astonished. “No!”

  “I mean it,” Peter assured him. “He grows out of his clothes faster than Esther can get them for him.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Yep,” Peter said. “I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see for myself.” He was silent for a moment. Then his voice became more businesslike.

  “Did you get the figures for last month yet?”

  Johnny picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. “Yes,” he answered. He read some figures rapidly from the sheet and concluded with the statement that they would net sixty thousand in profit for that month.

  Peter’s voice sounded contented. “If we keep up this way,” he said, “we’ll make over a million dollars this year.”

  “Easy,” Johnny told him. “Last week’s business was close to seventy thousand gross.”

  “Good,” Peter said. “You’re doing all right. Keep it up.”

  “We’ll keep it up,” Johnny answered. “I got that Wilson reel today.” Now there was a note of pride in his voice.

  “Terrific!” Already the idiom of the picture business had impressed itself on Peter’s tongue.

  “It will be in the Broadway theaters tonight,” Johnny continued. “And at feature charges, too. When I told them it was rushed up by plane, they didn’t give me any argument on its cost.”

  “I’d like to see it,” Peter said.

  “Your print will be on the train tonight,” Johnny told him. “What’s new out there?” He had to give Peter a chance to brag.

  Peter spoke for several minutes and Johnny listened attentively. Magnum had completed several pictures and now they were editing the final picture of that season’s series. As Peter came to the end of his discourse an idea struck him.

  “I think I’ll come to New York when we’re all cleaned up here next month. I haven’t been there for almost a year and Esther would like to spend Pesach with her relatives. The vacation would do her good.”