Screening Room

by Alan Lightman

  Papa Joe died in 1928, two decades before I was born. I own two relics he touched with his hand. One is a yellowing scrap of paper, dated March 26, 1907. It was found beneath a cornerstone of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association building and says:

  I want to be remembered when this cornerstone is being removed that I am one of the few that started the Y.M.H.A. in Nashville TN and also that I was the contractor for building the foundation for that building. I am a Hungarian by birth, now in Nashville 25 years, and expect to die here.

  The other item is his pipe. It is a fine old English briar, with a solid bowl and a beautiful straight grain. Most peculiar is a silver band at the base of the stem, engraved with three symbols no one has been able to identify. Papa Joe’s pipe lay tucked away in a drawer for years until my father sent it to me on my thirtieth birthday. I immediately ran a pipe cleaner through it, filled it with tobacco, and settled down to read and smoke. After a few minutes, the most wonderful and foreign smells began wafting from the pipe. Evidently, all the various tobaccos that Papa Joe had ever smoked at one time or another had left their aromas in that wooden bowl and were now released into the air in a ghostly plume. All the places he had been that I will never know, all the occasions of love and despair and joy when he had lit that pipe, all came wafting out into the room. I was transported in time. I imagined him sitting at his magistrate’s desk a century ago, with a head full of hair and young women waiting for him outside. I imagined him going on walks with my father in the mid-1920s, Papa Joe dressed in his long heavy overcoat and dark hat even in warm weather. I even imagined that I could smell his stone quarry, the powdered limestone and the dust filtered through afternoon light.

  “May His Substance Never Grow Less”

  Looking through a closet, I find a box of old clippings and, among them, the June 1930 issue of Film and Radio Review. I’ve never seen this magazine before. M.A. is on the cover. In fact, the entire issue is devoted to M.A. Near the beginning is a dedication by the Motion Picture Theater Owners of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi:

  A TOAST TO

  M.A. Lightman

  May his substance never grow less; may he live long and continue to prosper; and may the lofty business principles which characterize all his dealings be recorded on the tablets of time.

  In a section titled “Leaders Pay Homage,” H. M. Warner, president of Warner Bros., writes: “Mr. Lightman has made his influence felt by encouraging good pictures and lending his valuable support to any project designed to benefit the exhibitor.… His reputation for integrity, fair-mindedness, and sincerity needs no further emphasis.” Adolph Zukor, president of Paramount Publix Corporation, writes: “In dedicating this issue to M.A. Lightman, the Film and Radio Review is to be congratulated for recognizing one of the leaders of our industry.” Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, writes: “Selfish ambition is entirely lacking in M.A. Lightman.” Annie Mae Day, editor of Film and Radio Review, writes: “He has done more for the small independent showmen in the South than any other man. M.A. Lightman is a charming character, plain, simple and unaffected.… To know him is to love him.”

  Shanghai Express

  I am out driving again with Nate in his ten-year-old green Honda Civic with a busted fan belt that goes clap, clap, clap, clap. He refuses to have it repaired. Lennie drives a late-model Cadillac, but Nate prefers his old Civic. “No one talks about how M.A. got to where M.A. got,” says Nate. “The man had a ferocious ambition. Had to. To do everything he did.” Nate looks over at me and whispers, “I know things about M.A. that nobody else in the family knows. Or wants to talk about.”

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  In mid-March of 1932, at age forty, M.A. was reelected president of the Motion Picture Theater Owners of America (MPTOA). Immediately afterward, the two hundred members and their wives gathered in the grand ballroom of the Willard Hotel, in downtown Washington, D.C. At this point in his life, M.A. possessed considerably more polish than when he had visited his uncle in New York fifteen years earlier. He had traveled to Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, and Las Vegas for bridge tournaments, to various other cities for the annual MPTOA conventions, and he been out to Los Angeles to visit the film studios in Hollywood. Malco Theatres, Inc. now owned some forty movie houses in half a dozen states. Film and Radio Review had recently written: “No man in the motion picture industry has made such rapid strides as M.A. Lightman.”

  At 6:00 p.m., showered and shaved and dressed in a gray herringbone suit bought for this occasion, M.A. stood by the west portico window looking out. The grand ballroom of the Willard, at an altitude of twelve stories, had a magnificent view of the city, including the White House, only a stone’s throw away. Destroyed by a fire in 1922, the cavern of a room had been completely restored, including the marble columns framing the walls, the white-paneled porticos, the extravagant chandeliers, and the ornate ceiling moldings. Unfortunately, Celia could not be there that night. She had planned to come, to help celebrate another of her husband’s victories, but nine-year-old Lila had suddenly been stricken with chicken pox. M.A. was always more comfortable when Celia was by his side. She could talk to anyone about history and art and the affairs of the world.

  At 6:30 p.m., “cocktails” were served. This was a cruel joke. Uniformed waiters wearing tuxedo waist sashes walked about with silver trays of Coca-Cola and cranberry juice, alcohol being forbidden. The movie men grumbled. Back home, each of them had his illegal speakeasies and personal liquor supplies. “What’s wrong with this country?” said a man from Houston, trailing a young woman in a lavender evening gown and a jeweled cloud of cigarette smoke.

  M.A. worked the crowd: “Congratulations.” “Congratulations, M.A.” “Thank you. How’s that boy of yours, the lawyer?” M.A. could name half the theater owners and even some of their children. Several years earlier, he had instructed Fannie, his secretary, to keep a running notebook of the members and their families, and he routinely memorized the book on the long train rides from Memphis to national conventions, as readily as he memorized the cards played in a game of bridge. M.A. had two strikes against him: he was a southerner, and he was a Jew. Despite these liabilities, he was well liked by his peers. He was athletic and could talk sports. He was good-looking and smart, but he did not condescend. He was a fierce competitor, but also a straight shooter. M.A. was honest, but he didn’t see any reason to be overly trusting with people, and certainly not with his business competitors. He had watched his own father work his way up from a dusty stone quarry bought with borrowed money, get beaten down, and rise again, and he knew that behind the smiles of most people were personal ambitions and greed. He accepted that. The world was what it was. He was generous to those of less fortune, quite generous, but he always watched his back.

  (photo credit 21.1)

  M.A. would have pulled out his pocket watch and looked at the time: 7:00 p.m. His surprise was two hours away. He dropped the watch back into his suit pocket. The cheap watch had run perfectly for over a decade. Near the end of tedious business meetings, he would take it out and place it on the table with a slight tap.

  Dinner in half an hour. He knew how these theater owners thought. They liked a good show. And so did he. Some people had already sat down at their numbered tables, and he wandered from table to table saying hello and shaking hands. The air bloomed with the fragrance of roses and gardenias from the ladies’ perfumes. Many of the women were beautiful, M.A. must have noted, and young, and not all of them the recorded mates of their male partners. Their eyes darted about the room.

  “You got the scene,” says Nate.

  M.A. had a lot of friends at the convention. One of them was Tully Klyce, from Omaha. M.A. would have sat down next to Tully, whose wife had just left him. Tully, a little man with a sympathetic face, leaned close to M.A. “Did anything seem funny about Jane when you saw her last fall?” he said in a low voice.

  “I didn’t notice anything,” M.A. whi
spered back.

  “Something was going on,” whispered Tully.

  “You look terrible,” said M.A.

  “I know,” said Tully.

  “Call me next week,” said M.A. and he patted his friend on the back. “How’s business in Omaha?”

  “Not bad,” said Tully. “We’re setting records with Shanghai Express.”

  “Memphis too,” said M.A. In fact, the movie business was doing well through the Depression—some sixty to eighty million customers per week, according to Variety magazine—and you could see the success in the lamé gowns and diamond necklaces of the women at the tables. The theater owners were not hurting. As people sipped on their Cokes, the conversation shifted back and forth between the blockbuster Shanghai Express, released in early February and still playing in theaters nationwide, and the sensational kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby only two weeks earlier. From time to time, women would leave their tables in pairs, to powder their noses in the ladies’ room.

  About this time, M.A. would have walked to the south window and gazed out, triumphant. Of course he would have been triumphant. The lights of the city gleamed in the night. He could see the great buildings on the Mall and the reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The future was coming so suddenly, rushing and loud like thunder. And he was riding that thunder, here in the capital of the nation, sometimes called a southern city, but actually so different from Atlanta and Louisville, Nashville and Memphis, to which he had moved with his family just three years ago, bought the copper-colored house on Cherry, bought himself a new Ford Cabriolet with a yellow canvas top and tires with yellow sidewalls, and had several lunches with young Mayor Watkins Overton, who kept asking M.A. to introduce him to movie stars. Memphis was more flamboyant than Nashville. Memphis had the Mississippi River and the riverboats and the barge parties with music; Memphis had Beale Street; Memphis had the Monarch Saloon with its cast-iron storefront and the mirrors encircling the lobby and the barricaded gambling room in the back; Memphis had cotton and the new Cotton Carnival, started by his friend Arthur Halle, a week of costumes and dancing and marching bands. And he could do business in Memphis. He had already twice met the warlord of Memphis, Edward Hull Crump, and had received Mr. Crump’s blessing.

  At 8:30 p.m., M.A. took the elevator to a room on the tenth floor to check on the arrival of his special guest and to make sure that she and her people were comfortable. The room would have been full of cigarette smoke and half-open suitcases. It was a long flight, said one of the agents from Paramount, and no booze. M.A. whispered something in the ear of his special guest, and she smiled at him. He held her hand for a moment, then returned to the ballroom, where dessert was being served.

  At 9:00 p.m., M.A. climbed the stairs to the stage and announced that he had brought a surprise for the evening. And out walked Marlene Dietrich, star of Shanghai Express, Paramount’s answer to MGM’s Greta Garbo, dressed in a strapless black gown with silver sequins and black gloves that went halfway up her arms but stopped short of her creamy white shoulders. There was a gasp and a moment of silence. Then the house exploded in applause.

  “Recorded history,” says Nate, “most of it. And I know the rest from Tully Klyce’s son Martin. But you won’t hear one word of this from Lennie or Lila or your father. No sir.”

  “This Is Memphis, Gentlemen”

  In the 1930s and 1940s, M.A. consolidated his empire. He bought out his business partners, so that he was sole owner of Malco Theatres, Inc. Memphis never sank into the black pit of the Depression as many other cities did, because Boss Crump was in Congress and steered public works projects to Memphis. Still, you could see white men cutting their own lawns. You could see men with college degrees working for practically nothing in the seed and hardware stores on Front Street near the river, and in the farming supply stores, and the cotton traders on Cotton Row out of work. You heard about customers taking money out of the glass donation box in the Toddle House restaurant instead of putting money in, after they’d eaten. You saw whole families loitering in front of Schwab’s Clothing and Dry Goods Store on Beale Street, and not only Negroes. Other homeless families congregated in the fifty-odd churches in downtown Memphis. But people still went to the movies.

  Using his background in engineering and his technical knowledge, M.A. researched improvements in Vitaphone and Movietone before his competitors and always had the most advanced sound systems in his theaters. Sometimes, he would spend a few hours in the projection booth watching everything the operators did, just so he would understand every aspect of the business—every aspect, because M.A. didn’t want a single detail that he didn’t understand. That was M.A. Lightman for you. In the evenings, when he wasn’t away traveling on business or to bridge tournaments, he would lie on the sofa in the living room, next to the grand piano, and read crime novels. Celia was in charge of reading to the children and caring for them. He loved his children, of course, but after spending a half hour with them, he found himself bored. M.A. would never admit such a thing, even to Celia. His children just weren’t as interesting as the other activities in his life. His bridge games kept his mind sharp, and he craved the high-adrenaline national tournaments in the luxury hotels of Chicago and New York. He relished the looks of surprise and defeat on the faces of other players, the best players in the world, when he outmaneuvered them in battle. And his movie theaters. The way M.A. saw it, he was contributing to the mental and spiritual life of the nation. The movies not only entertained people, the movies helped people make sense of their lives; the movies were stories, and people needed stories. The movies sustained people. Many times—and this is well documented—M.A. sat in one of his theaters with the audience and watched customers laugh or cry, and he watched them come out of the theater excited and moved and dreaming new dreams for their lives. In his mind, and maybe in reality, he was an agent of change. He was creating something new from nothing, something from his own hands, something that had never existed before. He, the son of an uneducated Hungarian immigrant. Malco Theatres, Inc. It would last a century, maybe longer. The generations of human beings, tiny specks in the cosmos, came and went, came and went, but he had made something that would last.

  There were few people M.A. could talk to about his vast ambitions. Few people would understand; not even Celia, as intelligent as she was. He had plucked her out of the University of Kentucky in Lexington when she was only twenty. She was refined and cultured and well educated. But her aspirations were grains of sand compared with his. She read her art and her history books, she attended the symphony with her friends. And minded the children. That was just as he wanted. On Sunday evenings, they listened together to the Chase and Sanborn comedy show. They especially loved Edgar Bergen and his dummy. After the hour was up, M.A. would go up to Lila’s room and make a voice for each of her stuffed animals, ignoring Celia’s pleas not to act silly, and sometimes he would don one of the costumes he kept for the Memphis Little Theater. M.A. was a ham, a trait that came out ever so slightly but devastatingly in his bridge tournaments, when his facial expressions sometimes conveyed just the opposite of the cards he held. His bridge opponents feared his extraordinary tactical skills, but they feared his unpredictable and impulsive theatrical ability even more.

  Before the comedy hour, M.A. and Celia would often have lunch at Britling’s cafeteria on Union. This was their favorite place to eat. Although M.A. had many business meals in fancy restaurants, he actually preferred simple food for himself, and he could get it at Britling’s. Baked cod without much seasoning, turnip greens, black-eyed peas. He and Celia were usually joined by their friends—Will Gerber, Milton Binswanger, Ike Myers, Hank Davis, Douglas Jemison, and their wives. Will was city attorney. Milt was president of the Memphis Natural Gas Company. Ike underwrote arts productions in Memphis and was president of the board of the Memphis Art Academy. Hank and Doug were fishing buddies. The same crowd went dancing to swing music at the Peabody Hotel and the Rainbow Terrace Room o
n Lamar, where pretty young women sometimes came without male partners.

  Hank Davis, who owned a clothing store on Third Street and had a glass eye from World War I, was the only white person M.A. knew who was Baptist. In the Christian religions, M.A. must have observed, Baptists were at the bottom of the totem pole, mostly because most Baptists were Negroes. Methodists were next up the ladder. The Methodists were the most evangelical and sang at every opportunity, whether the occasion called for it or not. Next were the Presbyterians, then the Episcopalians. The Episcopalians were the financial and power elite. FDR was Episcopalian. Boss Crump had married into an Episcopalian family. Mayor Chandler was Episcopalian. The Boyles were Episcopalian and attended Grace St. Luke Episcopal Church. Being a Jew, M.A. couldn’t have understood the Gentile religions too deeply, but he endeavored to grasp the social distinctions to do business in Memphis.

  The Sterick Building, on Third and Madison downtown, was where M.A. had many of his business meals. Here is where he would reserve a private room and talk to Mayor Overton, and later Mayor Chandler, about what was happening in the city, whom he should look out for, and whom he needed to help. During the war, M.A. held meetings of the War Activities Committee, which he chaired, in the Sterick Building, as well as meetings of the United China Relief campaign, which he also chaired, and the Jewish Welfare Fund, of which he was president. When it opened in 1930, the Sterick Building was the tallest building in the South. It was called the “Queen of Memphis.” The Gothic-style tower housed two thousand workers on twenty-nine floors, who were whisked up and down in high-speed elevators operated by uniformed female attendants. The exteriors of the lower floors were made of granite and limestone, and the massive chandelier in the lobby cost more than a new car. M.A. took visitors from Chicago and New York to lunch at the Regency Room of the Sterick Building. He would give his northern guests a tour of the building and then say, “This is Memphis, gentlemen.”