The Dream Merchants (24 page)

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’clock.”

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 realize 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.”

Johnny smiled to himself. Peter said nothing about his own desire to visit the home office and see for himself just what was going on. “Do that,” he urged. “You’ll both enjoy it.”

“I think I will,” Peter said.

“Let me know when you’ve decided on the date and I’ll make arrangements for you,” Johnny told him.

“I’ll do that,” Peter said. He was silent for a second; when he spoke again, his voice was hesitant. “How do they feel about the war in New York?”

Johnny was reserved. He remembered Peter came from Germany. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Joe wants to make a picture showing how the Germans are overrunning and oppressing the people in Belgium and France and I was wondering whether it would be a good thing to do.” Peter’s voice was slightly embarrassed. “I didn’t know if a picture like that would do business.”

“The sentiment here favors the Allies,” Johnny answered carefully. He knew about the picture. Joe had called him to talk about it. Joe had also told him that Peter had objected to the idea. While Peter had no illusions about the land of his birth, he could not bring himself to the point of making a picture that would actually point a finger of scorn at it. But, on the other hand, word had leaked out to the trade and the newspapers that Magnum was planning to make a film about the German atrocities, and if Peter announced that the picture would not be made, he would be labeled pro-German. He pointed this out to Peter.

He could almost see Peter nodding his head as he made his points. Peter’s voice was doubtful as he replied: “I guess we’ll have to go ahead with it, then.”

“That’s about the situation,” Johnny said. “It’s a case of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

Peter heaved a sigh. He knew when he was licked. “I’ll tell Joe to put the script in work,” he said heavily.

Johnny felt a twinge of sympathy for him. He could understand how Peter felt. He had heard him talk many times about his family and relatives in Germany. Some day he planned to go back there and visit them. “Tell Joe to take his time with it,” he said quietly. “Maybe things will be settled before you’re ready to start shooting.”

Peter understood Johnny’s consideration of his feelings. “No,” he said, “there’s no use stalling. We might as well get it over with.” He was silent for a second, then he laughed half-ashamedly. “After all, why should I worry so much about it? I’m not a German any more. I’ve been an American citizen for over twenty years. I haven’t seen the country since I left there more than twenty-six years ago. The people could have changed a lot since then.”

“That’s right,” Johnny said kindly. “They must have changed since you were there.”

“Sure,” Peter agreed with him. But he knew better. He could still remember the Prussian officers riding disdainfully down the streets of Munich and their big black horses. The way everybody bowed to them and was afraid of them. He could still remember the conscription forays that dragged his cousins from their families when they were only seventeen years old. That was why his father had sent him to America. He was sure they hadn’t changed.

“All right Johnny,” he said with a funny sort of finality. “We’ll make the picture.” With that statement his doubts seemed to ebb away and he felt better. “Tell Doris to call us at home tonight.”

“I will,” Johnny answered.

“I’ll be talking to you tomorrow, then,” Peter said.