Kitabı oku: «Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel», sayfa 10
XX
"To tomorrow's morning star of the screen, Linda Lee!"
Thus Lynn Summerlad, mildly exalted, graceful and gracious even beyond his studied habit, flourishing a glass of California champagne above the dinner table in his bungalow in Beverly Hills.
The toast went by acclamation, and Lucinda laughed, at once gratified, diverted, and disposed to deprecate the spirit of these felicitations as premature.
It all seemed rather ridiculous, when one stopped to think, this taking for granted the success of a venture projected so lately, by no strain of imagination to be considered as already launched, and based wholly upon the postulation that the greenest of novices might by some sorcery of the cinema be ripened overnight into a genius of sorts.
A phrase of Culp's recurred unbidden: "A lot of kids, that's what we got to make pitchers with, a lot of kids."
It was childish, in a way; on the other hand, it was undeniably pleasant to think of oneself as one was being tempted to, as a sort of Sleeping Beauty of the screen only waiting to be awakened to vivid life by one wave of the witching wand of courage and self-confidence; pleasant to let oneself go and believe such things might be.
Nor was this difficult. Whether it resulted from the catching enthusiasm of her company, or from self-reliance new-born of her success in doing without Bellamy, or whether it were the glamour of this romantic land, where man since time out of memory had been accustomed to see his maddest dreams come true, certain it was that there seemed nothing essentially improbable in the assumption that "Linda Lee," could figure if she would as "tomorrow's morning star of the screen."
One had only to listen to the gossip of Lontaine and Summerlad to appreciate that stranger things had happened in the history of motion-pictures. Nothing, indeed, was conceivably more strange than that same history, more fantastic and incredible than the record of its growth, almost within the span of a single decade, from the status of a toy to that of an institution forming an inseparable part of the fabric of life, taking its toll of the humblest, and throning and dethroning kings of finance with the impersonal ruthlessness of an elemental force.
One of the greatest of the producing organizations, whose studios covered whole blocks of the heart of Hollywood, had had its beginnings in a trifling story photographed under a big sun-umbrella in a vacant lot. Its most formidable rival, with which it had ultimately amalgamated, had been first financed with the mean savings of a fur-cutter from the lower East Side of New York. Men whose abilities had proved inadequate to command steady employment at fifty dollars a week in the legitimate theatre were drawing a daily wage of five hundred dollars as directors of motion-pictures. The one-time pantomime comedian of an English company presenting a knockabout vaudeville act had made himself a multi-millionaire through clowning before a camera. Young men whose dramatic equipment was limited to the knowledge of how to show their teeth and slick their hair, young women who had walked into favour on the strength of their noble underpinning alone, were selling their services to the cinema under contracts running for terms of years at five thousand dollars a week; and you could take it from Mr. Summerlad that most of these had come to Los Angeles with not more than one dollar to click against another.
"Why, look at me," he invited in an expansive moment: "never had earned a dollar in my life. Didn't have to, you know: folks had a little money. Six years ago my little sister caught a bad cold and the doctor prescribed a Winter in California. Mother and I brought her out and rented a bungalow in the foothills, up back of the Hollywood Hotel. One day while I was wandering about I saw a car-load of people in paint and evening clothes stop in front of a house with good-looking grounds. I stopped, too. So did others; quite a crowd collected while they were setting up the camera. Presently a little fellow in riding-breeches, with an eyeshade, a shock of red hair, and more freckles than anybody ever saw on a human map before or since, came weaving through the crowd as if he was looking for somebody. When he saw me, he stopped and said: 'You'll do. Got a dress suit?' I laughed and said I had. He took out a little book, wrote down my name and address and said: 'Studio tomorrow morning at eight, made up. We'll need you about three days. Five a day.' Then he hustled on. I went home and told my mother and sister the joke. They egged me on to try it for the fun of it. Within two months I was on the payroll at a hundred a week, and now…"
Summerlad flashed an apologetic smile. "One of the worst faults we movie actors have, Mrs. Lee, is talking big about our salaries. So I wont say any more than this: outside the Big Four – Mary and Doug and Charlie and Bill Hart – there's mighty few that drag down as much green money a week as I do."
"I'm glad to absolve you of the sin of boasting, Mr. Summerlad."
"I suppose that did sound funny; but then, you see, I am a movie actor, I don't pretend to be better than the rest of us… You wouldn't guess who that director was – assistant director he was then – who gave me my first engagement: Barry Nolan!"
The name was apparently known to Lontaine, for he exclaimed "You don't mean it!" as if no more exciting information had come to his ears in many days.
"The man I've got in mind to direct you in your first picture, Mrs. Lee; that is, if you can get hold of Barry. You couldn't do better, but his salary's ee-normous. He's working down in Culver City now, and I don't know how long his contract runs, but you might be lucky enough to make a deal of some sort. I'd give him a ring and find out for you, but I happen to know Barry's got a party on at Sunset tonight. We might jump into my machine and blow down there, if you like."
"There's no hurry, Mr. Summerlad. Remember, Mr. Lontaine hasn't taken the first step toward forming a company yet; he isn't in a position to make Mr. Nolan any definite offer."
"Well, but I'd hate to have you lose a chance. Barry's a wonder. Even Griffith takes a back seat when Barry Nolan picks up the megaphone. And there isn't anything I wouldn't do for him. Lord! how he worked to break me in."
Summerlad sighed, reminiscent. "Them was the happy days. We worked hard for little money, but we had a good time and a healthy one, out in the open air practically all day long. Light effects were then just beginning to be discussed; I don't believe two studios on the Coast had enclosed stages. Generally speaking, all our work was done either on location or on open stages under diffusers."
Lucinda repeated the last word with an enquiring inflexion, and Summerlad explained.
"You see, in those days we had to depend on the sun to light our interior sets, and direct exposure meant hard contrasts of light and shadow that didn't look natural. So we stretched great sheets of thin cloth on wire frames overhead, and they broke up the sun's rays and diffused an even glow all over the sets. But of course that restricted us to overhead lighting for all interiors, and that was monotonous and unnatural besides, because ordinary rooms aren't lighted from the ceiling. And my! but it used to be cosy, working under diffusers on a summer's day!"
"But if you depended on the sun so exclusively," Fanny wanted to know, "what did you do in the rainy season?"
"Loafed, that's all: just loafed. There wasn't anything else to do but loaf around and watch the sky for signs of a break and tell each other how good we were. That was another reason why artificial lighting had to come; it cost too much to carry studio overheads with all production at a standstill during a rainy season that would maybe last five months, or a heavy production payroll when often the rain would stop camera-work for five days on end, and you never could count on two clear days together. So, one after another, the big studios began to build enclosed stages and work more and more by Kliegs and Cooper-Hewitts, till at last – well, today the open stage is almost a thing of the past, and acting for the camera isn't the good fun it used to be – kenneled all day long on a sweltering stage, and the lights getting your eyes like they do. Sometimes, after a spell of work on interiors, I'm as good as blind for a week… Funny to think – isn't it? – the California studios are using artificial light almost exclusively, except of course for location work, when what brought them out here was steady sunlight that didn't cost anything seven or nine months out of each year."
"But if there is no longer any real reason, such as the economy of sunlight, why do the producers stop on here?"
"Because they took root in Los Angeles in the early days, before people had forgotten that principles of ordinary economy might be applied to making pictures, and what took root grew, till today there are hundreds of millions invested in picture plants here. Also because all the picture people have dug in around the plants. Nearly every good actor has his permanent home here, likewise most of the bad ones; and those who do get a job in the East hurry back as soon as they finish up, so as not to be among the missing if they're wanted for another job. You can cast almost any picture perfectly in a few days in Hollywood, whereas any place else, except maybe New York, it would take weeks to locate your people and bring them together, and there'd be transportation to pay for into the bargain."
Lontaine interposed a question of a technical nature, and as Summerlad answered him at length, Lucinda's attention wandered, she began to think more about the speaker, less about what he was saying. Undeniably a most satisfying creature, at least to look at. Bending over the table, his face glowing as he illustrated his meaning with an animated play of hands: though his words were all for Lontaine. Summerlad's consciousness was constant to Lucinda, his quick eyes were forever seeking hers… Hard hit and making no secret of it.
Not that it mattered, more than for the good it did one's self-esteem to be respectfully if openly adored by a personable young man whom one found agreeable. Vanity had been sorely sprung by Bellamy's sacrifice of his wife's love to his appetite for the cheap excitement of flirting with women of cheap emotions. His pursuit of her Lucinda valued at no more than one last effort to salve the hurt her desertion of him had dealt to his vanity. Neither had Daubeney's devotion meant a great deal: being something too familiar through old acquaintance not to be misprized. It had needed some such new conquest as this to make Lucinda think well of herself again; this at least proved her charms not yet passée. Reassurance for which she was disproportionately grateful; and gratitude is commonly the most demoralizing of vices.
Lucinda inclined to approve the style in which Summerlad maintained himself. The bungalow, secluded in wide and well-kempt grounds, might have served as the warm-weather retreat of a Grand Duke. And if there was a suspicion of rule-of-thumb in some of its effects, at least it could be said that Summerlad had shown sound judgment in selecting an interior decorator of sound taste.
The dinner had been well cooked and served by a deft Japanese. As it neared its close a more cheerful partie carrée would have been far to seek. Indeed, had Lucinda entertained genuine misgivings as to the wisdom of her decision to try her luck on the screen, they must have been compensated by its action on the spirits of her friends. And it couldn't have been anything else, for they had partaken sparingly of the native champagne which, while fair enough of its kind, was nothing to seduce palates educated on London Dry. Yet Fanny's effervescence outvied that of the wine. Lontaine's eyes had lost altogether their tense expression, Summerlad was on his mettle in his dual rôle of host and courtier, Lucinda herself was stirred by a gayety she had too seldom known since the first years of her marriage.
By merely turning her head she could look out through an open casement to a lawn where moonlight like liquid silver slept between mysterious, dense masses of purple shadow. The breath of the night was bland and fragrant. Somewhere at a distance a sentimental orchestra was playing, possibly at the Beverly Hills Hotel. In Chicago the thermometer had shivered in the neighbourhood of zero; New York, according to telegraphic news, was digging out from under a snowfall second only to that of its legendary blizzard.
"I want to purr," Lucinda confessed, finding Summerlad's eyes upon her.
"You're beginning to fall under the spell of California."
"I told you this afternoon I was already sensitive of its enchantment. Tonight, I think, completes its work: I am enslaved."
"I must make the most of these moments, then. Presently we'll both be busy, you in especial far too busy to give me many evenings like this."
"I'm not at all afraid of being doomed to ennui through any lack of ingenuity in you."
"If I'm not mistaken, that's a dare."
"It's as you care to take it."
He accepted with a smile the smiling gage of her eyes. They understood each other perfectly.
When it was time to return to the Alexandria, Summerlad insisted on driving them home himself; and as they drew near to Hollywood swung the car sharply off the highroad, and took a by-way leading into the foothills. In a few minutes more they had left behind every hint of civilization, other than the well-metalled way they travelled, and were climbing a road that wound snakily up precipitous mountainsides, threaded unholy gulches, or struck boldly across spine-like ridges from which the ground, clothed in chaparral, fell dizzily away on either hand into black gulfs of silence. The air grew colder, Lucinda and the Lontaines grateful for the wraps which Summerlad had pressed upon them. In the course of half an hour the car halted on an isolate peak, and all the lowlands lay unfolded to their vision, from the foothills to the sea, a land like a violet pool with a myriad winking facets of blue-white light; as some vast store of diamonds might be strewn by hands of heedless prodigality upon a dark velvet field.
Pointing, Summerlad began to recite the names of places represented by lines and groups of lights: Hollywood at their feet, the Wilshire district with Los Angeles beyond, Culver City, Pasadena away to the left, Santa Monica far to the right, Venice, Del Rey, Redondo… "The kingdoms of the world you're come to conquer, Mrs. Lee."
"I shan't say 'Get thee behind me,'" Lucinda retorted; "I've a sensible notion you're safer where I can keep an eye on you."
It was true enough that the facile infatuation which California inspires in the uninitiate already held her senses in fee; she felt as one might who had miraculously found the way to cross the far horizon and go down into the magic realms of true romance.
But she fell asleep that night to dream of coursing a will-o'-the-wisp through a land whose painted illusion failed and faded as she fled, till in the end there was no more beauty, nor happiness nor hope, but only the bare grin of the desert savage and implacable.
She started awake with her husband's name trembling on her lips.
XXI
The room the Lontaines occupied in the Alexandria adjoined Lucinda's, and while she was lazing over breakfast and trying to find her way about in newspapers whose screaming local patriotism made one feel vaguely ashamed of having been born elsewhere, Fanny tapped on the communicating door and drifted in, en négligé, with a cigarette and an airy nonchalance oddly at war with a problematic shadow that lurked in her eyes.
"My amiable first husband," she announced, "has charged me to arrange for an audience at your convenience."
"As soon as you like," Lucinda laughed – "I mean, give me time to crawl into some clothes."
"Sure you don't mind? – and the day so immature!"
"Not a bit. In fact, I've been thinking, if we're really going through with this lunatic adventure, the less time we lose the better."
"If!" Fanny caught the word up quickly. "Does that mean you want to reconsider?"
"No, dear; merely that I've been wondering, ever since I woke up, whether the night might not have brought your husband perhaps wiser counsel."
"So much depends upon what you mean by 'wiser.' But if it's a change of heart, I'm in a position to assure you nothing like that has happened to Harry."
"I only meant – between ourselves – I can't think it quite wise of him to risk much on my chances of making good as a movie star."
Fanny achieved a ladylike snort of derision. "Never worry about what Harry risks! Besides, I won't for an instant admit there's any chance of failure, so far as you're concerned, Cindy. But I will admit I'm counting on your common-sense to hold Harry down to earth."
"How do you mean, dear?"
"Oh, it isn't that I question his grasp of business conditions and fundamentals. But he's got such an active mind, he finds it hard to let well enough alone, he's everlastingly embroidering everything he takes an interest in with the most amazing arabesques. Let him run wild, and by nightfall he'll have the motion-picture industry of the United States pooled under one Napoleonic directing head, whose identity I leave you to surmise – and all on the basis of his undertaking to shape the film destinies of Linda Lee. And he'll draw diagrams and produce figures to prove what he predicts can't fail to come true, he'll even name the date of the coming millenium in the Lontaine fortunes. So somebody's got to keep a check on the accelerator, and I'm incompetent, I don't know the first thing about business, and I'm looking to you."
"Afraid you're leaning on a broken reed, my dear."
"Don't believe it. You're so wonderfully level-headed about things, Cindy, I have implicit confidence in you. Now this morning Harry has waked up with his poor dear bean more than usually addled with gorgeous schemes, and says he wants to consult you. What he really wants is your unconditional approval of everything he has to propose. It's only fair to warn you, any other attitude will prove inacceptable in the extreme. That's what Harry calls 'talking business.' So do be wise as well as kind."
"I'll try," Lucinda promised.
Considered in the light of this semi-serious warning, all that Lontaine had to lay before her seemed almost disappointingly conservative. But perhaps he was more subtile than Fanny knew. Uncommonly grave and intent when he presented himself for the conference, in business-like fashion he went at once to the heart of things.
"I've been thinking it over all night," he assured Lucinda seriously, as she and Fanny settled to give him attention, "and it seems to me I ought to let you know more specifically what you're letting yourself in for, before I ask you to hold yourself pledged."
"That sounds suspiciously like preparation for letting me down easily."
"Please don't think that." There was a convincing glint of alarm in Lontaine's look. "Never more enthusiastic, more sure of anything than I am of your eventual success. But it's going to mean hard work for both of us, slavery for many months, and hindrances may crop up we ought to be prepared against."
"I shan't mind hard work," Lucinda replied. "In fact, I can't think of anything that I'd find more agreeable than consciousness of at least trying to do something worth while with my life. As for disappointments, I don't expect much, so I can't be very hard hit if everything doesn't turn out as happily as one might wish."
"If that spirit won't win for us, nothing will," Lontaine declared. "Now for a tentative programme… Our first step, naturally, will be to incorporate. And since it seems to be the fashion on this side, and our corporate name will serve as a trade-mark, I venture to suggest 'Linda Lee Inc.'"
"One name is as good as another, don't you think?"
"Good. Call that settled. Then as to finances. Going on my own judgment and observation, I'm all for a small capitalization, just enough to give us working capital with a fair margin to insure against loss of time."
"I don't think I understand."
"Well, it's like this: My study of American studio conditions has satisfied me that production costs this side are normally excessive. Of course, allowance must be made for exaggeration; it seems to be a custom of the trade for the producer to multiply several times his actual outlay on a picture and broadside the result as if dollars made pictures and not brains. But I happen to know the average cost of a well-made picture today is between eighty and a hundred and twenty thousand – too much by half."
"Mr. Culp's secretary told me Alma Daley's pictures cost between a hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand each."
"If so, Ben Culp is throwing money away through ignorance or bad management or indifference. The returns are so tremendous from a really good picture, or almost any picture with a popular star, nowadays, the cinema financier can count on getting his money back and as much more in the first year of a picture's life and still have a going property, one that will bring in clear profits for a couple of years to come. So he isn't much inclined to worry about costs. Then again, in the big organizations, production costs are inflated by heavy overhead charges."
"I haven't the faintest idea what that means."
"Overhead means a proportionate charge against each production of the cost of maintaining the entire organization, including all expenses, many of which have nothing to do with the actual making of pictures. In a small organization, such as ours will be, overhead will be cut to the bone. We can make as good pictures as anybody at an average cost of not more than fifty thousand dollars; with care and ingenuity, once we get going, we'll be able to pare that down considerably. But say a picture does cost fifty thousand, its gross earnings, the first year, should be two-hundred and fifty thousand. Of that the producer gets sixty-five per cent., in round figures a hundred and sixty-five thousand. We ought to turn out not less than four pictures a year, which will mean at least four-hundred and fifty thousand clear profit to be split up between the star, the executive, and the capitalists."
"It sounds like a fairy tale."
"It is a fairy tale – come true in real life. Nothing else could account for the present-day tribe of motion-picture millionaires. Some of them have a certain shrewdness, almost all have business cunning of a low order, I daresay a dogged Diogenes could run to earth one or two who are honest, but precious few of them are men of either education, taste, artistic instinct or appreciation."
"But how could such men – ?"
"They had imagination enough to see cheap amusement for the masses in what most intelligent people, a dozen years ago, considered merely a mechanical curiosity. So they invested their small savings, these fur-cutters and petty tradesmen and barnstorming actors, in the venture that high finance scorned; and the boom, when it came, found them securely in the saddle. That's why the public gets so much perfunctory and stupid stuff thrown at it today."
"But our pictures aren't going to be in that class – are they?"
"Rather not! We're going to go at this thing in an intelligent way. We'll pick a good staff, select our stories with care, get the best men to write our scenarios, and gather round us a group of actors, like those who have made the Continental cinema what it is today, more interested in their work than in themselves, willing to take their chances of scoring in fine ensemble acting instead of insistent that every story shall be distorted, every scene directed, every picture cut to throw a so-called star into prominence. Even in America such sincere actors exist, and we'll find and bring them together and prove that cinema production can be an art as well as a money-grubbing scheme."
"Bravo! bravo!" Fanny interpolated. "Hark to the dear man! Now if only he'll perform one-half as bravely as he promises – !"
Lontaine flushed a little but paid no other heed. "To get back to the question of capitalization… Arbitrarily setting fifty thousand as a fair production cost, we'll want at least a hundred and fifty thousand to begin with."
"But surely we won't need a hundred thousand margin for safety?"
"Not for safety – for economy. When we finish our first picture it will be a matter of six months at least before it can be exhibited, before, that is, it will begin to repay its cost. Meantime, we can't afford either to disband our company or hold it together in idleness. We ought to start our second picture the day after we finish the first. Thus we will waste no gestures. And allowing three months to each, we should have our second and third ready by the time the first is released. Do you follow me, Mrs. Druce?"
"I think you're quite right. You said yesterday you had some people ready to furnish the necessary capital?"
"In half an hour I can find half a dozen who'd jump at the chance," Lontaine replied without a quiver. "They don't know you, of course, Mrs. Druce, I mean they don't know Linda Lee and what she's capable of, and naturally they would be inclined to boggle at such a proposition coming from anybody but me. But they do know me, they have faith in my ideals and my practical knowledge of the business, and nothing would please them better than to see their money at work in my hands. The question is: Do we want to take them in? Is it necessary? Is it good business?"
Lucinda shook her head. "I'm sure I don't know," she said, smiling. "Please be patient with my stupidity in money matters."
"I mean to say: With profits of approximately half a million a year in sight, do we want to see the third share that would ordinarily go to capital diverted to the pockets of people who have no interest in our business except as a source of revenue?"
"Can we avoid that?"
"Simply enough, if you care to take the risk. I'll be frank with you and confess I'm not financially in a position to invest in the business myself. But if you should decide to back yourself, use your own money to finance Linda Lee Inc. you would ultimately receive two-thirds of the profits instead of the one you'd be entitled to as the star. And no outsider would have anything to say about the way we conduct our own business."
"I don't think I care about that," Lucinda observed thoughtfully. "But it does appeal to me, the idea that if I use my own money nobody but myself can suffer if we're making a mistake."
"Then – you will find the capital yourself, Mrs. Druce?"
"I think I can manage it without too much trouble."
Lontaine sighed quietly and relaxed. The contented glow of last night crept back into his eyes. He produced his cigarette-case, and began to smoke in luxurious puffs.
"Need there be any trouble?"
"I'm only wondering what Harford Willis will say." Lucinda laughed quietly. She could imagine the horror that would overspread the carven countenance of the gentleman of the old school when he learned that she meant to add the unpardonable solecism of play-acting to the heinous but after all fashionable estate of divorcée. "An old friend of my father's who looks after my estate," she explained to Lontaine's echo of the name. "He thinks I've disgraced myself as it is. When I tell him what more I mean to do, I'm sure he'll think I'm damned beyond redemption – socially, at all events."
"Need he know?"
"I'm afraid so. I don't believe I've got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars on deposit altogether. You see, most of my income is reinvested promptly as it comes in, leaving only enough to meet my usual, everyday expenses."
"Surely you can fob him off with some excuse, Mrs. Druce." Lontaine was frowning at the carpet. "Of course, you understand, I'm only thinking of your peace of mind."
"I'll think it over. But whether he likes it or not, we'll go ahead as we've planned. And as for money to get started with, I'm sure I can put something over fifty thousand at your command."
"Famous!" Lontaine's brow cleared instantly. "I may call on you for a cheque in a day or two, for preliminary expenses, a retainer for our lawyers, incorporation fees, and the like, you know."
"That brings up a question that bothers me," Lucinda confessed. "You see, my cheques will be signed Lucinda Druce, and I don't like to risk my incognita as Linda Lee. I don't want Bellamy to find out where I am – and I don't want anybody else to know but the three of us – and Mr. Summerlad, I'd almost forgotten he knew – unless I really do succeed."
"Nothing to fret about," Lontaine declared. "Simply make your cheques payable to me. I'll open an account with a local bank in my name first, and transfer it to the account of Linda Lee Inc. as soon as we incorporate."
