Mendoza in Hollywood (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “Okay, here’s the great leitmotif,” said Einar. OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING, the screen told us, and there was Lillian Gish rocking the biggest cradle I’d ever seen, while the Three Fates looked on from upstage. There followed something incoherent and vaguely poetical about eternal hopes and fears, eternal joys and sorrows, and then we were watching a grand ball for a wealthy modern (early-twentieth-century) industrialist and his spinster sister.

  “What is that woman wearing on her head?” Oscar inquired, frowning at the screen. “She looks like a circus horse.”

  She did, too; she was aging and plain, which made her easy prey for the Uplifters, a villainous society of ladies who wanted her money so they could ruin everybody else’s fun. Now that she was no longer attracting the boys, she just naturally fell into their clutches, and was persuaded to hand over her brother’s millions to the cause of Reform.

  “Notice the subtle misogyny in Griffith’s depiction of older women,” said Imarte with a sniff.

  “Subtle!” I scoffed through my popcorn.

  Now we got to meet the Little Dear One, portrayed by Mae Marsh, a teen miss given to hysterical displays of affection, living happily with her aged father (a mill worker for the wealthy industrialist) and a host of small barnyard animals. Next we met our hero, Bobby Herron, as the Boy, who sported a black mustache in defiance of all heroic convention.

  “He looks like Gomez Addams,” said Juan Bautista. Our giggles died as the scene advanced and Griffith showed us the gray laboring masses shuffling in lockstep through the gates of the mill. This was the Future, this was the Metropolis, this was the century that would bring us to 1984. Where would I be in 1984? Or 1996? I reached for my martini and had a bracing gulp.

  The scene changed. There was Lillian Gish with the cradle again and then the two tablets of Mosaic law, and we were at the Jaffa Gate watching camels and old bearded men in striped headdresses. Griffith explained what a Pharisee was, making sure we didn’t miss the parallel with the Uplifters, and then showed us some of the Judean variety praying ostentatiously.

  Wham! Scene change to France, A.D. 1572, where problems between the Catholics and the Huguenots were about to come to the boil.

  “Hey! Really good clothes,” I said in surprise. Everyone nodded except Juan Bautista and Oscar, who hadn’t lived through that century. Then we were shown Catherine de Medici, the villainous queen mother (“That meddling old hag!” snarled Imarte, with such venom, we all turned to look at her) and her two sons: the king, a slender fellow with a tendency to curl up sideways on his throne, and his brother the prince, an effeminate who kept puppies in his codpiece. We were shown the French court milling around in a large room; then we met our Huguenot heroine Brown Eyes (with a tight close-up on her face, so we got the idea) and her nonentity boyfriend, Prosper Latour. We also met an obviously villainous soldier who was smitten with lust for Brown Eyes.

  “I bet I know what’s going to happen,” said Juan Bautista, sitting forward.

  But before we could guess, we were whisked back to the twentieth century, where the poor mill workers were innocently dancing at an ice-cream social. The Little Dear One was there, gleeful as usual, and so was the industrialist oppressor, snooping on his workers and scavenging dropped change from the sidewalk. This was straight out of Dickens, only grayer and more banal.

  “When do we get to Babylon?” I complained.

  “Right about now,” Einar said, and lo, we beheld the Imgur Bel Gate of Babylon! Intricate, massive, worked by twin capstans carven with lions rampant, manned by dozens of slaves. Elephants plodding through the streets, looking small as cows before the vast walls. Enormous winged bulls with the heads of bearded kings. Now this was imagery. We cheered and applauded.

  “Shot right here, folks, on Griffith’s lot off Hollywood Boulevard,” said Einar.

  “Actually it didn’t look at all like that,” Imarte said.

  “Well, it ought to have,” Porfirio said.

  In the midst of the gorgeously costumed bustle there were a few people just sort of sitting around in the street as though they were waiting for the next bus, and Griffith made sure we noticed one of them, she whom the title card declared to be the Mountain Girl.

  “So, is there some reason he never gives these people names?” Porfirio asked.

  Einar shrugged. “It’s poetical or something. The actress is Constance Talmadge.”

  “Good Lord, what does she have on her head?” Oscar exclaimed. We all looked intently. No gorgeous robes for this chick; she appeared to have a couple of fur rugs tied around her boyish figure, and on her head were eucalyptus nuts sewn to a felt beanie.

  “Needless to say, this is not an accurate historical costume,” Imarte remarked.

  The Mountain Girl was no drooping harem lily; she was a tomboy, as cute and spunky as Mary Pickford. And here was somebody else waiting for the same bus: Griffith explained that this handsome bare-armed guy with flowers in his hair was the Rhapsode, a warrior-singer-poet. He made eyes at the Mountain Girl, who of course—the little spitfire—rejected him indignantly.

  “Now, get a load of his seduction line,” said Einar.

  “Dearest one—in the ash heaps of my backyard there will be small flowers; seven lilies—if thou wilt love me—but a little,” read Juan Bautista uncomprehendingly, and we fell about laughing. The Mountain Girl wasn’t impressed either. The scene changed, and we met the High Priest of Bel-Marduk and his god, both of them pretty sore that all the people were worshiping Ishtar these days. Another scene shift, and Griffith advised us that we were about to meet the ruling Prince of Babylon, Belshazzar, riding in his chariot along the top of his city walls, which were careful historical reconstructions of the real ones.

  “Really?” we all wanted to know.

  “They weren’t quite that high,” admitted Imarte. “But when you were arriving from a three-hut village and seeing them for the first time, the effect was very nearly the same.”

  Belshazzar, a slender creature in a tall hat, was the Apostle of Tolerance and Religious Freedom; and here was his bodyguard, the burly Two-Sword Man; and here were the Handmaidens from Ishtar’s Temple of Love and Laughter. They came dancing crazily out through the gate before the big parade float that bore the statue of Ishtar. Next we met the Princess Beloved, much more the conventional harem-lily type, and she and Belshazzar made a lot of pseudo-Biblical protestations of love for each other. Yes, all was happiness in old Babylon. But now, Griffith told us, the Mountain Girl’s Brother (he had no name either) was having trouble keeping her in line, so he was going to drag her off to “the First Known Court of Justice in the World” to make her behave. A scholarly title card explained how Babylon’s ancient laws were the first to protect the weak from the strong.

  “Occasionally,” Imarte said. “And of course you’re all aware that the Babylonians were not the inventors of law.” We all nodded, watching the antics of the Mountain Girl before the judges. We knew about the Neanderthal Code of Punishable Acts. Of course, there’d always been the rumor that the Company had been involved in that, somehow . . . Whoops! The judges sentenced the Mountain Girl to be dragged off to the marriage market. We all leaned forward in anticipation.

  “Damn,” said Porfirio, as we jumped forward through time over the Cradle Endlessly Rocking and found ourselves back in the twentieth century, where the nasty old Uplifters had spent so much of the wealthy industrialist’s money that he was obliged to cut wages at the mill by ten percent. So we got to see one of the dreary labor strikes of the twentieth century, complete with soldiers—or were they Pinkerton men?—firing on the protesters, THE SAME TODAY AS YESTERDAY read a sign painted on a fence; and we immortals silently acknowledged that bitter truth. The Loom of Fate wove death for the Boy’s Father when he took a bullet, and in the aftermath everybody went off to the big city to look for other work: the Boy, the Little Dear One and her father, and another girl, the Friendless One.

  “I want to see Babylon again,” Osc
ar complained.

  Instead, we got to watch as our nameless ones suffered the inevitable consequences of urban relocation: the Boy rolled a drunk and turned to a life of crime, the Friendless One met a pimp called, for no reason any of us could figure out, the Musketeer of the Slums, and the Little Dear One’s hysteria grew more pronounced.

  “This is depressing,” said Juan Bautista, and then: “All right!” because there was Ms. Gish and her Cradle again, and we were back in Babylon at the marriage mart.

  Griffith explained that in the ancient Babylonian marriage market, the money spent to purchase pretty girls was given to plain girls for dowries, so that all might be happily married, and that “Women Corresponding to Our Outcasts of the Street” became wards of church and state for life. Imarte shook her head sadly when I looked to her for commentary. The men in the room were keeping their eyes on the screen, however, as Griffith’s camera moved slowly past pretty girls in various states of undress. And here was the Mountain Girl, swaggering little hoyden, chewing on a couple of scallions as she awaited her turn and sticking them sullenly in her bodice when told to stop.

  “This episode is pure fabrication,” Imarte said. “I find the scene noteworthy for what it reveals to us about the sexual repression of the early twentieth century, however. Of course, you’re all aware that white slavery will be a popular motif of escapist cinema during that period, and it’s interesting to regard the paradox of sexual bondage viewed as a liberating experience. In The Sheik, for example . . .”

  I tuned her out. Of course the Mountain Girl was a failure in the marriage market, winsomely scowling and threatening her prospective husbands, and then raging when they laughed and refused to buy her. But, out of nowhere, Belshazzar appeared with his attendants and wanted to know what all the fuss was about. When her plight was explained to him, Belshazzar granted her the right to marry or not as she wished, with a nifty bit of stage business involving a cylinder seal rolled over a clay tablet, shown in tight close-up (Imarte interrupted her lecture long enough to remark approvingly on its verisimilitude). Exit Belshazzar, followed by moony stares from the Mountain Girl, clearly smitten with him.

  But what was this? Now we had the Rhapsode, working in the tenements to convert backsliders to the true worship of Bel.

  “So he’s a missionary?” Oscar said with a frown. “I thought he was a poet-warrior-singer or something.”

  “He’s an utterly imaginary creature,” said Imarte dismissively, but I was intrigued. He was a potentially interesting character, this Rhapsode. Was Griffith going to develop his warrior and zealot sides? Was he a hero as well as pleasure-loving esthete? Was he going to have some kind of relationship with the spirited if somewhat gauche Mountain Girl? Maybe so, because here she came, and again he was making protestations of love to her. But the Mountain Girl drew back from him, declaring:

  “Put away thy perfumes, thy garments of Assinu, the Female Man,” read Oscar. “I shall love none but a soldier.”

  “I guess she told him” Porfirio said. But then the scene changed to the interior of the Temple of Ishtar, and the attention of all gentlemen present was riveted on the screen, as Griffith treated them to a nicely detailed study of the Virgins of Ishtar frolicking in various pools and fountains, or lounging around in—well, in no clothing at all, one or two of them.

  “Wow,” gasped Juan Bautista.

  “Pre-Hays Code, guys,” said Einar. “Cool, huh?”

  “Now, this, actually, is fairly accurate,” Imarte said. “Though there would have been rather more nudity. The ancients were considerably more realistic about sexual needs, to say nothing of the issues of climate and comfort. Notice the continual depiction of Babylon by Griffith as a model of humane and sensible government, which will be really rather daring of him, considering that American audiences of that era are inclined to take the Old Testament view of Babylon as depraved and vice-ridden.”

  Here was Belshazzar again, with the Princess Beloved, billing and cooing in the Temple, and he was promising to build her a city of her very own, because:

  “The fragrant mystery of your body is greater than the mystery of life,” read Juan Bautista.

  “Roughly translated as, Gee, did you step in something one of the elephants left?” I jeered. But Griffith just kept piling on the splendors, the Virgins of the Sacred Fire of Life dancing in the Love Temple, the harpists and yawning harem guards, Belshazzar and the Princess Beloved standing at a high window viewing the magnificence of Babylon spread out below them. When he stuck to the images, the phenomenal images, you were caught up in this silly thing in spite of yourself.

  “The Cradle again,” said Juan Bautista, and here was the Little Dear One in her tenement, trying to get a Hopeful Geranium (actually a pelargonium) to thrive. When she wasn’t doing that, the innocent creature was watching whores from her tenement window, practicing their walk so she’d be popular too. Griffith was inviting us to smile in fond amusement here, but you could see where it was leading, and, sure enough, the next scene took us to the Friendless One in her new job: sitting in a bar in her negligee, drinking gin. She got up to go solace herself with the Musketeer of the Slums, but their passionate moment was interrupted by the Boy, who was now a Barbarian of the Streets. You could tell, because he’d taken to wearing a derby and smoking.

  Next scene, the Little Dear One and the Boy encountered each other at his newsstand (a blind for his more criminal activities, we were told) and she did her prostitute walk for him. It worked! The next thing we saw was the two of them in her hallway with him vowing eternal love, a little less poetically than Belshazzar. (“Say, kid, you’re going to be my chicken,” read out Juan Bautista.) But the Little Dear One’s old father broke it up, dragging her upstairs to pray for forgiveness before a little plaster statue of the Holy Mother and Child. (“Notice the recurring goddess images here,” instructed Imarte.) After a brief Cradle shot, we saw the old man lying stiff in his winding-sheet and the Little Dear One weeping by his corpse.

  “We want Babylon, we want Babylon,” chanted Einar. Instead we got the Wedding at Cana, with a very bouncy and giggly young couple being fed the first mouthful of chickpeas at their reception. Whether or not the bride was expected to smear the next handful on the groom’s face we never got to see, because the scene shifted to a shot of some white doves and then the entry of Jesus. He looked just like Belshazzar, except he didn’t have a hat. But here were those mean old Pharisees again, snooping around and remarking that there was Too Much Revelry and Pleasure-Seeking among the People. Not for long, though—the wedding party ran out of wine!

  I set aside my popcorn and leaned forward, wondering what special effect Griffith had to wow us with the water-into-wine miracle. But all we saw was a long shot of Jesus praying over some jars, only you couldn’t quite make him out. At first I thought it was some defect in the print, but then I got the trick: Jesus was nearly obscured by a cross-shaped shadow. “Notice the metaphor,” Imarte said, “Divine Love being blotted out by the instrument of torture and execution.”

  “We noticed, thank you,” I said. A thought occurred to me. “Hey, did you ever meet Jesus of Nazareth?”

  “No.” She took a sip of her martini. “I was stationed in Turkey at the time.”

  “But somebody must have. Surely the Company was in on that moment in history too, right?” I wondered aloud. “Is there footage in a Company archive somewhere of Jesus trashing the temple vendors, Jesus on his bloody cross, Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount?”

  “Yes,” Einar said, as we watched the wedding guests celebrate the miracle. “A fundamentalist group paid the Company big bucks to catch the man’s act on film. They didn’t like what they saw, so they paid more big bucks to have it suppressed.”

  “You’re kidding!” I leaned forward. “So he was real? So he worked miracles?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Einar, nodding. “That wasn’t the problem.”

  “What was the problem?” Had he been a Crome generator too?
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  “Sorry, guys, that’s classified information,” he said, and we booed him and threw popcorn until Juan Bautista cried:

  “Whoa, how did we get to France again?” Because we were back in France, no question, and Brown Eyes and her family were having a cozy evening at home with visiting swain Prosper Latour. (“How come he gets a name when nobody else does?” asked Porfirio.) Prosper left to go home, and Brown Eyes saw him to the door, where the same mercenary soldier spotted her again. He made his moves, but she was a nice Protestant girl and declined his advances.

  I took my eyes off the screen long enough to quaff some martini. When I looked up again, we were back in the twentieth century, and the Boy and Little Dear One were having an outing in the Good Old Summertime.

  “Notice San Pedro standing in for Coney Island,” Einar said.

  They went back to the tenement, and the Boy tried to muscle his way into the Little Dear One’s room, but she shut him out and prayed tearfully to the Holy Mother to help her be a Strong-Jawed Jane. I accessed my historical idiom file for a definition of this colorful phrase, without results.

  Fate was smiling on the Little Dear One, because the Boy proposed marriage. We were shown briefly how the insidious Uplifters were gaining more and more power, and then—

  “This is almost as disorienting as real time travel,” I said, as we found ourselves watching the Pharisees spying on Jesus.

  “Behold a man gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners,” read Juan Bautista. There was Jesus sitting in what appeared to be a cafe, chatting pleasantly with a fellow customer. But wait! Here was the Woman Taken in Adultery, and the Pharisees all ready to stone her, rocks in hand like extras from a Monty Python sketch. Unbelievable overacting from the Pharisees when Jesus zinged them with his ruling, and unbelievably strange dancing when the Adulteress made her grateful exit. Jesus just sat there and looked benign, apparently the only good actor in Galilee.