by Ed Kurtz
“That’s changing,” said the third man, lighting a cigar and bouncing on his heels. “We have a system in place here, and we intend to solidify it in such a way that American pictures aren’t being made by every Tom, Dick, and Harry—or Vladimir, if you prefer—with access to a motion picture camera.”
“Permit me to introduce our favorite distributor,” Rivers announced, stepping aside to let Grace and Jack see him fully for the first time. “Joe Sommer.”
“Why, Joe!” Grace exclaimed, rushing forward to take his hand. “I didn’t know you’d be here today.”
“Hullo, Gracie.”
“Joe here has a hell of a foothold in the hinterlands,” Rivers said to Jack. “He could play Birth of a Nation to a theater full of Negroes in Michigan and probably fill every seat.”
“I leave the high ideals to fellas like Jack and Joseph here,” said Joe, smiling down at Grace. “You make the pictures better, and I’ll make sure every townie and hick from here to the Catskills gives ‘em a gander—and a dime.”
“Now that we’re all acquainted,” said March with a booming clap of his hands, “I suggest we retire poolside for cocktails and negotiation.”
* * *
Over a crumpled copy of Spicy Detective, Frank chain-smoked in the driver’s seat and occasionally glanced up at the white crests of the Pacific barely visible over the slight hill before him. Gulls screamed over the water and a mild breeze picked up, floating pleasantly through the car. Movement to his right caught his attention, and as he tossed his spent end out of the window he glanced over at a well-dressed fivesome settling in a semicircle on the side porch, overlooking the pool. Fine suits and tuxedoes, big cigars and lifted glasses of cut crystal, toasting the day, their success, the brilliant future. Angel of the Abyss and beyond, into permanent memory, beyond even death.
He sighed and dropped the magazine on the seat. He had told a ludicrous pack of lies to Grace, a story concocted straight from the pulp pages he was reading and half a dozen regurgitated gangster shows from the movies. Mexico and heroin and fedora-topped badmen. Frank almost had to laugh. He didn’t have it in him.
Sliding down in the seat, he peered over the opposite car door at the merry group, hoping Parson didn’t recognize him, and angling to see if he recognized any of the others. Two of the other men were strangers to him, but not Joe Sommer. A sharp intake of breath startled him and he realized it was his own. The hell is that pig doing here?
It was rapidly becoming evident that his tall tales of Frank the Mule were soon to crack apart.
* * *
“As a veteran imbiber,” Joseph March said in lieu of a toast, “I happen to love the Volstead Act. We pickled purveyors of spirits and such have never had it better.”
With that he downed his glass of brandy in one go and, groaning with satisfaction, snapped his fingers at the colored servant lingering nearby, who trotted over to refill the director’s glass.
“The picture,” Rivers said, sipping his in a considerably more gentlemanly fashion.
“Of course,” said March. “The business at hand. Never give a producer a second to think you’re having a good time, boys.”
Rivers shook his head, but smiled.
“Now Lasky runs things different than Veritek, you understand,” March began. “Saul’s a grand old son, he truly is, but the independents are floundering. It’s the majors where you want to be—both of you.” He pointed first at Jack, then at Grace. “To an outfit like Saul’s, it’s about the business, like Ford and his automobiles. That’s fine. We think that’s about right, too. But as Jack here can tell us, it’s about the art of the thing, too. Why, you’ve got to have something to say, and the right way to say it. To film it. And Christ knows, here in the next year or two, to say it out loud, am I right?”
“And there’s a third thing,” said Joe Sommer.
“Yes,” March went on. “And Joe here brought this to our attention. We want to help change the way people see the pictures. What they’re all about. Some of them are all for a laugh, or the wonder of something big. That’s entertainment, you understand. Or you take Jack’s picture, Angel of the Abyss, and that’s a little something more, which is jake. It’s like looking at a complex painting instead of the Sunday funny papers. Both have their place, and both are fine.”
“Let me get to the point,” Joe Sommer said, edging forward on his chair. “Before the majors started incorporating out here, this business was spread out all over the country. New York mostly, but there were folks making pictures everyplace from Dubuque to Mobile, and a great many of them were doing it in a dangerous sort of way.”
“Dangerous?” Grace said. “In what way?”
“Let me put it this way,” Sommer said. “Another great reason the movies set up so well out here is the weakness of the labor unions. They’re disorganized here in Los Angeles, and the state simply hasn’t got their back. Other places, the Midwest in particular, that’s just not so. Out there, especially in the teens, there were—and still are—a lot of dangerous types churning out little pictures seeking to undermine the way we do business in this country. Red types, if you catch my meaning.”
“Like Jack’s favorite ar-teest in Russia,” Rivers jeered.
“There’s a socialist fire spreading in a lot of quarters of industry,” Sommer said gravely. “Rabble-rousers like Debs and Darrow are fanning the flames, and some of the pictures that got a little attention in the last decade and picking up steam in this one. One way to combat that is to control distribution.”
“That’s where the majors come in,” said Rivers.
“Right,” Sommer agreed. “They’re stringing their own theaters across the country, theaters that show their own productions. But as any good distributor knows, that doesn’t quite edge out the smaller outfits, some of which get cajoled into showing these socialist movies, garbage like A Martyr To His Cause and What Is To Be Done. Pictures that rile people up. Pictures that don’t do us here in sunny California any favors when we’re trying to build a goddamn empire here, pardon my French.”
“We want to make a picture that helps put the old kibosh on that nonsense, Ms. Baron,” said March. “A tragicomedy, if you like. A picture that takes the Sinclair Lewis type, the Clarence Darrow, and exposes them for the frauds they are. A capitalist picture.”
“An American picture,” Rivers said.
Grace finished her drink, sighed, and then let loose a raucous laugh.
“Gentlemen, you’re not talking to Elizabeth Stanton here. I’m an actress, always have been, and nothing besides. Politics are swell and all, but I’m only here to make pictures.”
“And pictures you shall make, my dear,” Joe Sommer said, touching her knee. “This one in particular, we hope. It’ll pay you plenty—”
“—get you out of that lousy bungalow for certain,” Jack muttered.
“—and boy will it be a sensation,” Sommer finished.
Grace held up her glass and March’s servant filled it from a decanter before slinking off again. “As we used to say back on the old homestead, let’s talk turkey, gents.”
“There’s just one thing,” Rivers announced.
“Spill it.”
Rivers looked to Jack, who sucked in a deep breath and sat up straight.
“It’s about Frank Faehnrich,” said Jack.
“Who?” Grace lied.
Alan Rivers arched an eyebrow at her.
“Why don’t you ask your driver to come out of that car and join us, Ms. Baron.”
“My driver? Why, I don’t—”
“Now Grace,” Jack said, leaning close. “You’re not in any sort of trouble. Neither of you are. But I know you made nice friends with Frank, and I also know he’s gotten himself into a terrible spot with those old pals of his…”
“We want to offer him an opportunity,” Joe Sommer said.
“He’ll help us, and in return we’ll help him right back,” said Rivers.
“But…he’s an electric
ian, and only an apprentice one at that. What help could he possibly be?”
“Electrician,” Sommer scoffed.
“Weren’t you there when that Red stooge plugged him?” Rivers said bluntly.
“Hey, what is this?” Grace set down her drink, splashing some on the table, and stood up from her chair. “I came here to talk about my career, about making a movie, not Frank Faehnrich.”
“We are talking about your next picture,” Joseph March said. “Please, sit down, Ms. Baron. Let me be more clear.”
“You had better. This is much too odd, Mr. March. I don’t like where this has gone in the least.”
Jack Parson eased her, forcefully, back down to her chair. She furrowed her brow and waited for an explanation.
“Ms. Baron,” Rivers started off, “do you know why your friend Frank was shot at that night?”
She shot a look at Joe Sommer, who said, “It’s all right, Gracie. These gentlemen and I want to help Frank. I promise we do.”
“Why can’t you just leave him alone? He’s reformed. He doesn’t want anything to do with those gangsters anymore.”
“Gangsters!” Rivers shouted.
Sommer said, “Is that what he told you?”
“I met them myself. I paid them off to let Frank alone.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Rivers lamented.
“To be fair,” Sommer said, “they’re gangsters of a kind, just not the underworld sort. Grace, Frank was a sort of spy, for the labor people. Now we don’t know whether or not he intended to sabotage your picture, but he helped set fire to a set last year after the crew tried to organize and hold the studio hostage for higher wages.”
“A couple of people died in that fire,” March told her. “A woman and a child, a young boy. There was a small house—a shack, really—near to where they were filming, and they got caught in the blaze. Burned to death.”
“Because of your pal Frank,” Sommer added.
“And that’s why…?” she asked, trailing off.
The sun tossed a broad swatch of light across her face as she recalled the gruesome scene from the street that night. The man Frank shot—Petey—had said something about being in the red. She had taken that at face value at the time, that Frank owed money just as he eventually said he did, but now she turned the phrase over in her mind. Grace wondered now if it wasn’t a sort of pun.
“His cronies ordered him out of town,” said Rivers. “He wouldn’t go, and he wouldn’t stick with them. Got a conscience at the last minute, I suppose. A conscience that was a liability to the men he’d been running around with.”
“You mean there were no drugs, no smuggling operation?”
“The closest that boy probably ever got to any drugs is quinine,” Sommer said. “He fed you a story, and a ridiculous one from the sound of it.”
“And it sounds like his old pals in the labor racket used it to squeeze some funds out of you, too,” Rivers added.
“This is crazy,” she muttered. “Why, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s the truth, Gracie,” Sommer told her. “Frank isn’t anything more than a union thug, the sort who wants to ruin everything we’ve worked for out here to make a picture business that the people want. To entertain a troubled country. To make a star out of a little country girl like Grace Baronsky.”
Lighting a cigarette with a trembling hand, she turned her head until the car was in her field of vision. Frank remained inside, behind the wheel, though curiously slumped in his seat.
“I don’t believe he meant to hurt anyone,” said Alan Rivers. “That was an accident, and the reason he got out of it. We want to take that newfound conscience of his to its logical end—we want to put Frank in the picture.”
“You’re kidding,” she said, snapping her head back.
“Not in the least,” said March with a grin. “I know he’s no actor, but the labor crooks know him, and when they see him make a turnaround, to come around to the right way of thinking right there on the silver screen…”
“You want to make an example out of him.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and envisioned herself standing up, walking calmly from there to the automobile in the drive, climbing inside, and telling Frank to get them both the hell out of there. Which, she instantly knew, would signal the end of her career in pictures before it ever got the chance to start. Her first picture still unfinished, she’d never make another. The boozy businessmen around her would undoubtedly turn the tables on Frank, turn him in for his part in the set fire. She could go with him, back to Idaho or farther still—she’d already changed her name once, why not again? Go back into the vaudeville circuit. He could be her manager. Grow a beard, perhaps. Never set foot in California again…
But he lied to her. Took advantage of her charity, her friendship. All the while a Red thug who sought to destroy the very thing she loved most, needed most. Her very livelihood, her dreams, her destiny.
Petey crumpled on the street, soaking the ground with blood…
The knife in Billy Francis’ gut, leaking blood…
Blood on the Odessa steps…
Blood, blood, blood…
Grace emitted a small sound as she stood up again, the cigarette falling from her fingers. She didn’t notice.
“What about the other men?” she said breathlessly. “The ones I paid off? They said they’d kill him if he didn’t leave town.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Rivers answered, picking up her smoke and tamping it out in the ashtray. “I know the Assistant D.A. personally. All Frank has to do is write down their names and they’ll never be able to touch him. They’ll be too busy pacing in their cells.”
“You’d do that for him?”
“If he agrees to our terms, absolutely.”
“Go get him, Gracie,” Sommer said, gently. “Everybody wins.”
She paused, stalling. Joe Sommer grinned up at her. Rivers checked his wristwatch.
“All right,” she said at length. “All right.”
With a deep breath she left the four men on the veranda and went round the house, to the front, where she descended the marble steps to the drive. Frank peered up at her from his slumped position behind the steering wheel. When she was near enough, he hissed, “What in God’s name is going on over there, Grace?”
“A meeting,” she said. “And they want to talk to you.”
“Christ,” he growled. “Come on, get in. We’ve got to go.”
“It’s not like that, Frank. They want to help you. They told me everything. I’m sore, I won’t lie to you, but it’s going to work in everyone’s favor, including yours.”
“Do you even know who Joe Sommer is?” he shot back. “That muckamuck—that goddamn fink.”
“He happens to be a friend of my aunt’s, if you must know…”
“He’s a strike-breaker, or used to be. Cracked skulls for some of the production outfits when the crews wouldn’t work. Got on swell with those boys, protecting the profits and all. Guess now he rides high with the tuxedo brigade.”
“God, Frank—none of that means a thing to me. I’m just trying to help you, and so are they, Joe included. They want to offer you a chance to dig yourself out of this grave you got yourself into.”
“Grave nothing. I believed in worker’s rights at one time. In fact, I still do, just not the way we were doing it. I care a lot about pictures, Grace, which is why I wanted to see them work the way every industry ought to work. And this one so new, it had a chance, but that chance is shot. It’s lost. I’m done with all that, but a guy like Joe Sommer wouldn’t ever let me forget it. A better company man never lived, and he’s got it out for the little man and baby, I’m as little as they come.”
“You’re not so small,” she said. “And besides, all they want to do is talk. I can’t say it isn’t a strange proposition, but it’s sure an interesting one.”
“I’ve hea
rd a lot of propositions from finks like Sommer. I don’t want to hear another one. I’ll be straight with you, Grace—get in or don’t, but I’m leaving and I mean right now.”
She stood still as a statue, her face without expression. Behind her, the men on the veranda watched in silence.
“They’re using you,” Frank said. “Or at least trying to. Can’t you see that? They couldn’t care less what happens to you. There’s always another girl with feet just as bloody as yours from the circuit stages to take your place.”
“That’s some cynical way to look at things,” she said.
“You should try it,” he replied. “Open your eyes a little. See what’s going on around you. You’re a commodity. I’m the enemy. Nobody has our best interests in mind but ourselves, and it’s about time you realized that. Now are you coming or shall I leave the car in front of your place?”
“You lied to me,” she said sharply.
“I thought I had to. To protect you.”
“From what?”
“From thinking the wrong thing about me.”
“I think the right thing now. And it’s still wrong.”
Frank narrowed his eyes and started the motor. The automobile shuddered, rumbled to life. Back at the house, Joe Sommer stood up quickly.
“It’s time, Grace,” Frank said.
She reached in through the window, retrieved her bag on the backseat, and turned back for the veranda. While she climbed back up the steps, the car rolled away, sputtering into the distance as Frank drove.
Joe came running toward her, panting, “What happened?”
“He rejected your offer,” she said matter-of-factly as she rejoined the group. “I, however, would like to do what I came here to do: talk about my next picture.”
25
L.A., 2013
