My speculations with Fred on leading men and plots were interrupted by the return of Sydney with a lovely blonde clinging to his arm. Her other arm was clutching a pug of particularly unpleasant expression. Ropes of glistening glass beads were entangled with embroidered scarves that floated all around her. Sliding off her bare shoulders was a gorgeous coat trimmed with feathers and fur. The effect was, as intended, quite startling. An elegant brunette followed them into the room. She wore the most beautifully tailored checked suit and dangling earrings that emphasized her long neck and narrow features.
“My dears,” said Sydney, “my company. Here’s the famed Lulu McIntyre and her writer friend Eleanor Nash.” The blonde Lulu waved at all of us with a great fluttering of scarves and a slight growl from the pug.
The brunette Eleanor bared her teeth in a smile that radiated even less good humor than Lulu’s dog. “Sydney, it’s been in the headlines for weeks. For goodness sake, call us lovers. That’s what we are. And if any of you gossip to the press about us, just know that I am descended from Salem witches and will curse you from here to California.”
“Oh, Nell,” said Lulu, “you don’t mean it. We’re just so very, very excited to be in pictures.”
Renee rose out of her chair and crossed the room to shake hands with Lulu and Eleanor. “We are delighted that you could join us. I hear that you are quite the screamer.”
Lulu blinked at her. “Oh yes, you’re the one who plays my sister. So fun to have a film actress to work with. I’ve only worked with real actors before. In a legitimate theater.”
At that fatal statement, silence filled the room. Renee ignored it. With a smile just as broad as Eleanor’s and just as deadly, she said, “Yes, Sydney cast you as the younger, sillier sister. So lucky that the camera doesn’t reveal true ages. Mary Pickford is able to carry off young girls even though she’s past thirty now. I’m sure as a real actress that your age won’t set you back at all.”
Eleanor gave a snort that might have been a laugh. Lulu let out a howl for Sydney, still standing close at her side, that argued for the veracity of the claim that she was the greatest screamer in showbusiness. Renee continued to smile.
And thus that particular battle began. Later it would seem trivial.
Chapter Five
By Friday, Fred and I decided to leave the house, and the warfare within, to find a diner. While the meals served up by Ethel were large, filling, and often even delicious, the ongoing battle between Renee and Lulu over the importance of Camilla, Renee’s role, versus Cassilda, Lulu’s character, continued to engulf the whole company.
Lulu’s inexperience with movies didn’t help. Her first attempt at makeup proved to be a disaster and delayed filming for a couple of days. She was used to preparing for the stage but almost everything she did was wrong for film. Fred explained, patiently, that red would photograph black, so she couldn’t use her normal lip rouge. She didn’t believe him until he carefully photographed her with a still camera he used for such tests and processed the pictures in the darkroom that he’d created in the basement.
“We sometimes rouge the cheeks,” I explained as Lulu moaned about how hideous she looked in the photos. “That creates dark shadows and makes your face look hollow. You can put it on your eyelids for the same effect. But light carmen looks best on the lips.”
Betsy chimed in. “Yes, don’t worry. We all looked terrible at first. Once you’ve got the grease paint and powder on, it’s just finding the right shade for your eyes. Jeany and Fred are a whiz at it.”
Many older actresses and actors still preferred to do their own makeup, figuring that they knew best how to make themselves look right for their parts. After all, many made their own costumes until just recently. Chaney famously insisted on creating all his creature makeup himself. But as I started to design costumes and props for each of Sydney’s pictures, I’d also taken over the initial design of the makeup for the characters. The greatest emphasis, of course, was on how Renee would appear as the mysterious temptress, but Pola and Betsy were used to my laying out their basic makeup, even though both were quite capable of doing themselves up without my help. Fred added a few more tricks that he learned from cameramen around town, like Howe’s technique of placing black velvet in a large frame around the camera to make somebody’s eyes appear larger and darker.
Of course, the studio, and their proxy Max, loved that I could double up as both costumer and makeup person. Probably if I hadn’t done it, they would have insisted on all the actors continuing to do their own. They definitely didn’t like it when I started buying Factor’s shades, deeming them more expensive than other brands, but his blends were meant for movie work. I had nearly thirty colors by then in my kit and kept them locked up when we weren’t filming. Not that Pola or Renee would ever steal my makeup. But Betsy and Maggie both “borrowed” some when going out on dates. Hence the locked case by the time we went to Arkham.
“Listen to Jeany,” advised Pola. “The stage is not the same as film. We all must learn this.”
“I am known for my beauty on stage,” said Lulu. “That’s why all my husbands married me.” Turned out that Lulu’s divorce was her third and, according to Lulu, the only one that gave her any trouble. The others, again according to Lulu, were sweethearts who had been most generous and understanding when she decided that the time had come to part. As she probably was still in her early thirties, it was an impressive history. Later, Eleanor would tell me not to be deceived by the feathers and beads. Like Betsy, Lulu was far sharper than she pretended to be. Although married at a very early age, in part to escape a managing stage mama, she had left her first husband before she turned eighteen. She quickly went from being in the chorus in Chicago to headlining Broadway shows in New York.
“The important thing was,” said Eleanor, “Lulu really married men for love and the fun of it. The first two were creative but very poor. One was a painter and one was a trumpet player. She still sends them gifts every now and then to help them out. She always sends money to her mother and even lets her visit. Lulu’s biggest mistake, and probably her only one, was marrying a rich man the third time. He was used to owning things. Lulu will never be owned.”
“And her affair with you?” I said in those days after Arkham when I tried to understand all the motives of the people who Sydney gathered under his roof for his horrific film. “How did that come about?”
“She rather swept me off my feet,” said Eleanor with an uncharacteristic blush. “I just was looking for the perfect woman to place in peril in my horrid little plays. And there she was, all feathers and pug dog, and as perfect for me as she was for my plays. You saw her at her worst, at the start. She was terrified about going into moving pictures and didn’t want to show it.”
Finally during that first week of filming, to mollify Lulu’s anguish about how different it all was, Eleanor intervened. With her help, we got Lulu to listen to our advice as we changed her look into something that would work in the movies.
“We can shadow the corners of your eyes with brown,” I told Lulu. “And then outline them. You will look lovely.” Lulu had very light blue eyes. Renee and I had learned various tricks to make Renee’s eyes look rounder and lighter. Looking at the photographs rather than Lulu herself, I could see a different style was called for. Perhaps even a little red near the ears to make Lulu’s face longer and less full.
“Lulu’s character is supposed to be the frailer of the two sisters,” said Eleanor, looking at notes that Sydney had given her. “Perhaps recovering from an illness. So her older sister has brought her to this house for her convalescence. Can you convey that and not make her look like a walking corpse?”
I nodded as I showed Lulu how to powder her face properly, a tricky technique until an actor got used to layering the grease paint and film powder for the right effect of flawless skin. “You’ll look very lovely and frail,” I promised her.
And she did.
After a few more experiments, and photographs quickly processed by Fred, we settled on a look for Lulu that made her appear very young and innocent. So much so that Eleanor laughed and asked if she could send a few copies of the photographs to the press that had bothered them so much in New York. “Not that those hounds would care,” she said. “But given all the stories that her husband spread about us, it might make a few of the readers doubt his claims of Sodom and Gomorrah on West 57th Street.”
Lulu professed herself equally charmed and ready to start her film work. Which led to the next disaster, a simple scene in which Sydney wanted Renee and Lulu to enter the house with “bewilderment and trepidation.”
Lulu had taken one look at Renee’s ensemble, which I had created by retrimming her traveling coat and hat, and insisted on an entire new costume for herself. Which had to be sent from her apartment in New York, another delay but one that gave us a couple of days to settle the question of her makeup
After Lulu’s desired coat and hat arrived, and were approved by Sydney, with Max muttering about telegrams and express charges, Lulu then upstaged Renee’s entrance twice. The first time she dropped her bag as they descended from the car. The second time she stepped in front of Renee in an awkward cross that left them both teetering slightly on the stairs.
Fred sighed and stopped the camera. With the clatter stilled, we all stood in awkward silence.
“Twelve cents a foot for film,” muttered Max beside me. “And this is only the first scene.” He took the slate in his hand and changed the chalked take number to a three. Max excelled at numbers, was a disaster at acting like Fred, and never could be trusted with anything too mechanical. But from the beginning, when we all wondered what to do with the upright accountant that the studio had sent to keep an eye on Sydney, Max had fallen in love with the slate. Keeping track of the take numbers was an important task. We all knew of productions where somebody forgot to do it, which led to disasters in editing. Max never made a mistake. He always had the right numbers written on the slate and waved it with quiet dignity before the camera lens at the start of every take.
The second time that Lulu ruined Renee’s entrance, Sydney removed his cigarette holder from his mouth and used it to gesture Lulu up the stairs. Renee, recognizing what he was about to do, stood with great tranquility by the open car door. Jim, costumed as their chauffeur and disguised with a large pepper-and-salt mustache so he could play other roles later in the picture, leaned against the hood and napped in an upright position.
“Lulu, my dear, I fear you may have misunderstood my directions,” Sydney said with the purr that indicated that his voice could grow much louder. “You are not to rush into the house in girlish glee, knocking over your sister on the way.”
Lulu laughed. The rest of the cast, knowing Sydney, kept quiet. I watched Paul and Hal, neither of whom had any part in this scene, head around a corner of the house with their pipes. We’d put a couple of decrepit willow cane chairs on the back lawn. The gentlemen had turned those seats into their favorite smoking spot.
“While some directors prefer to film the scenarios willy-nilly, I follow the course of a script as closely as possible,” Sydney continued. “The emotions seen on the face of my actors must remain as true to nature as can be contrived. This is your first encounter with the house, your first trip to Arkham. In this scene we should see a vague fear, the trepidation that some great shadow is about to descend upon you. That is what must show in this scene. Not your petty desire to be first through the door!”
The latter came out as a roar. Lulu, neither foolish or reticent, stood her ground and stared Sydney straight in the eye. “I have been acting since I was three and my mother placed me in a lion’s cage,” she said. “If there is one thing I know is how to walk into a room so the entire audience notices and cares about my character.”
Renee now added her bit. “Sydney, be patient. Circuses and vaudeville shows call for exaggerated motions. You can’t expect Lulu to know about your technique of absolute realism. That movie actors must act as naturally as possible. What did you tell me? That our expressions must be no more pronounced than they would be in real life. That the slightest deviation leads to mortifying results on the screen. Petty physical tricks cannot be a crutch for the performance. Unless we are thinking about what we are trying to portray on the screen, the audience will become instantly aware that the emotion is false.”
Sydney thrust the cigarette holder between his teeth and rushed down the stairs to grasp Renee’s hands. “You are always my bright muse,” he said. “My wise Camilla. That is it exactly. Now, Lulu,” he turned and faced her. “Do you think that you can contain your natural enthusiasm and portray a delicate young lady beset by illness and fear?”
With a huff, Lulu turned on her heel and marched back to the car. “Of course,” she said. “Shall we begin again? Lead, dear Renee, and I will follow, properly fearful of shadows.”
After that, Lulu behaved, but Sydney struggled to find the angle that he wanted, making Fred circle about and film them from various positions, through a half-open door, looking up the steps, and once halfway down the drive looking back at the house. All of that took time as Fred shifted the black metal camera and its solid wood tripod from place to place. Then he would begin to crank again, smooth and even, and the clatter of 242 would drown out the crows cawing from the trees.
“Twelve cents a foot,” Max groaned with every change of Fred’s position as he jotted notes in the notebook he carried in his breast pocket. The take number on his slate was erased and rewritten and rewritten again.
Betsy discovered a croquet set stashed under the veranda and dragged it out. Half the balls were missing. But the iron wickets still bore white chipped paint and very little rust. We set it up on the lawn and played round after round while the filming dragged on. Pola proved particularly wicked at knocking away her opponents’ balls. Even Hal and Paul abandoned their pipes to join the game.
When the sun finally dipped below the hills and real shadows swamped the veranda, Sydney called a halt for the day. Renee and Lulu trod up the stairs a final time. Both disappeared into the house with strained smiles. Eleanor had pleaded a need to work on the film scenario for the next day’s shooting and had left much earlier.
Fred stowed his camera and then collapsed on the lawn next to Betsy. He watched me ricochet a ball through two wickets and smack the final stake. “How about dinner in town tonight?” he asked.
I glanced at the house. If they came to dinner, there was sure to be tension between Lulu and Renee. And Eleanor dropping her own barbed comments to Sydney about the scenario that they were supposed to be scripting together. Although Sydney had hired her to script out the entire film, and seemed to want her talent for creating terrifying scenes as much as he wanted Lulu’s scream, he had decided that he wanted her to write only “the next twenty-four hours of filming” rather than a complete scenario for the movie. It was an unusual choice. His vagueness about what was to happen next had reached new highs with this film and was not to Eleanor’s liking. The rest of the cast and crew tended to tuck their heads down and swallow their dinner without comment. Even voluble Betsy grew uncommonly quiet at the table these days. None of us wanted to be drawn into the warfare raging between Renee and Lulu, and, in a slightly different but equally poisonous manner, Eleanor and Sydney. I would, of course, support my sister, but I found that I quite liked Eleanor and even the vainer Lulu. I think the rest of our small company felt the same. Eleanor and Lulu made us all laugh, when we weren’t wincing at the barbs flying around the table.
“I think a dinner in town would be splendid,” I said. I hadn’t been past the hedges since we arrived. Max had taken various trips down to the train station and into town to fetch items for Sydney. Fred had gone with him as he waited for filming to begin. I’d been spending most of my time sketching out ideas for Sydney’s silver mask as well as various possible designs for cost
umes and props. Like Eleanor, I was frustrated by Sydney’s vagueness. I felt more than ready for a night away from the house. “Where do you want to go?”
“Max and I found a diner not far from here. They aren’t fussy. The food’s good and cheap,” said Fred. “We can take the big car.”
Max had hired an ancient but stately touring car for the arrival of the sisters in the first scene. Sydney loved the double row of leather seats and yellow painted wheels. As soon as he saw it, he told Max to keep the car for future excursions. Max had sighed, made another note in his notebook, and arranged that we would have the car for the rest of our stay in Arkham. “Do you want to ask Max and Betsy to come along?” I said.
“Still trying to promote that romance?” said Fred with a chuckle.
“I have no idea what you mean,” I said. “But she’s sweet and better at math than he is. He’d be lucky to have her.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Fred said. He turned his cap right way round. It had been pushed backwards so he could peer into the lens without interference. “Let’s grab them and go.”
I was still wearing my working slacks. “Do I need to change?”
“It’s just a diner. They’ll think you’re an amazing Oakland doll when they see you.”
“So none of the other women in this town wear pants?”
Fred shrugged. “Not that I’ve seen. But they have a university. There’s women students and professors. Bound to have been a few pants wearers among them.”
In the three years since women got the vote nationally, hemlines had crept up. But pants were still considered fairly scandalous outside of certain cities. I glanced down at my working pants, a pair that I’d styled for myself off the linen trousers favored by many men for the summer. Side-fastened, wide-legged, and with deep pockets, I had more than one actress approach me after a shoot and ask where they could purchase a pair. I’d run up several for the more daring women of Hollywood. But I wasn’t sure that New England was ready for ladies in trousers.
Mask of Silver Page 7
