by Howard Fast
‘I want one,’ Max said. ‘What’ll it cost me?’
‘Won’t cost you a nickel. I’ll ship you a silvered one and a white one, and see which brings you the best response.’
Sitting up all night on the train out of Rochester, Max basked in the afterglow of his meeting with George East-man. Mr Eastman might not have known who Max was, but Max knew who Max was, and as he said to Sally the next day, ‘There I was, little Maxie Britsky, sitting there with one of the biggest men in America and a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee, and he could have tossed me out on my tush, but he didn’t. He listened to my idea.’
‘Of course he did!’ Sally exclaimed. ‘He could see that you were just about the brightest thing that ever walked into his office.’
‘And how could he see that?’
‘Well, I see it, and if he’s so smart, he could see it. Anyway, if your dream works out, think of all the film he’ll sell.’
‘That occurred to me,’ Max said.
‘Will you have enough money? If you need more, I still have –’
‘No, sir,’ Max said, holding up his hand, palm out. ‘I am going to make it. We open next week, and I still got eighty-five dollars. I had to pay Sam Snyder his first week’s wages and then I had to send him to Philadelphia to look at two other pictures we found out about. One is of a cowboy, one of them badmen types from out West –’
‘One of those, Max,’ Sally pleaded. ‘Try. You can speak correctly when you try.’
‘Sure, sure. Believe me, I’m trying. You know, a pistol-shooter, he pulls out his gun and shoots.’
‘Do you see what he’s shooting at?’
‘No, it’s only three minutes. I think he drinks a bottle of booze first. The other picture is a little girl who crawls around the room, and she pulls a tablecloth off a table loaded with junk, and something hits her, I think a piece of fruit, and then she begins to cry and then her mama comes and picks her up. Very cute. Sam says it’s supposed to be a real good thing and we can get it very cheap. We’re not paying for the films; I just sign notes to pay for them next month, God willing, otherwise I kill myself.’
‘You shouldn’t talk like that. I still have some money.’
‘Sure, and I got eighty-five dollars, except that fifty is for the sign painter, and I got to pay him tomorrow.’
Max could have had a sign for as little as five dollars, but he didn’t want to skimp in that area. There was no way he could have anything like the Bijou or any of the valid music halls. No matter how he dressed it, a store was still a store, perhaps a cut above the little synagogues that had established themselves in stores all over the East Side, but still a store. Fortunately, it had double doors opening into the street, inside of which Max built a tiny vestibule, a swinging door into the makeshift theatre, and a glassed-over small counter on the right, behind which he had arranged to station Freida. All his instincts told him that his venture would live or die depending on the honesty of the person who sold the tickets. He could trust Freida. Yet the store was still a store, which prodded Max to invest almost the last of his money in the sign. The sign was forty feet long, stretching the whole length of the storefront, and on it, in bold yellow letters against a crimson background, the legend: MAX BRITSKY’S ORPHEUM.
It was a cold, nasty day toward the end of November, in the year 1899, at twelve o’clock noon, that the sign was lifted into place there on West Broadway. It was an event that went unnoticed in the annals of history. Other things were remembered: the fierce battles of the Boers against the British in South Africa; the births of Charles Laughton and Noel Coward, whose lives would be shaped to a large degree by that sign over Max Britsky’s store; and also remembered although unknown to almost all of the folk alive then, the first magnetic recording of sound. But people in motion and action on a cold day are not concerned with history, and the workmen cursed the size and unwieldiness of the sign, and Mr Schmidt, watching glumly, told Max that his property was being ruined.
‘Orpheum,’ he muttered. ‘What’s an orpheum?’
‘You heard of Guttman’s Orpheum, you heard of Keith’s Orpheum, so that’s what an orpheum is.’
‘You open tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow, you bet.’
‘Tomorrow it snows.’
Schmidt was right. The following morning the snow began, nasty wet flakes that melted when they touched the sidewalk. It was too early in the season for a real snowfall, but when Max looked at the gray skies, he felt his heart sink.
‘You still want me there? You still going to open?’ Freida asked him.
‘You’re damn right I am.’
Sam Snyder had put together a program of six films, and imitating the style of legitimate theatres, Max had purchased an easel and had the program lettered onto a sheet of Bristol board: MONKEY SHINES, THE ACROBAT, LITTLE ONES, THE HORSE CAR, PUPPIES, and, finally, THE MAGICIAN. The Magician was the best thing Max had seen. It ran for almost five minutes, and it featured the internationally famous magician Harvey Eddelson. There was none of the camera tricks, which Sam Snyder was so enthusiastic about and which the film experimenters delighted in. The Camera simply fixed on Eddelson, head on, while he went through his assortment of astonishing tricks. All six films added up to a running time of nineteen minutes and thirty-three seconds. Snyder had spliced the films together so that the show would be uninterrupted. It was Sally’s suggestion, when she first saw the films, that some sort of title and perhaps a few descriptive words might introduce each of them. She also felt that the man who took the pictures in each case should be given some sort of credit or acknowledgment, as an artist is for a picture or an author for a book. But neither Max nor Snyder considered this to be of any great importance – and, indeed, Snyder admitted that in two instances, he did not know who the photographer was. But they agreed to the title cards, and for Monkey Shines, Sally wrote, ‘Are monkeys smarter than people? Who knows? Watch and see.’ For The Acrobat, she wrote, ‘Who is this man who flies like a bird? He is the acrobat. Watch and be thrilled.’ For Little Ones, she wrote, ‘Everyone loves a baby. Nothing is cuter than these little darlings.’ For The Horse Car, she wrote: ‘Will these soon be as obsolete as dinosaurs? Who knows?’ For Puppies: ‘Watch the cuddly darling’s. What a pity you can’t take one home.’ And for The Magician: ‘In all the world there is only one Eddelson, the master of illusion.’
Max was delighted, and Sally persuaded a friend, an art student, to do the lettering on all the title cards and legends for five dollars. Snyder then took the cards out to New Jersey and had them photographed at Edison’s studio. Sally, who had continued to take a dim view of the entire undertaking, came to life when she saw her own words on film.
But it was snowing.
‘You’re damn right I’m opening,’ Max said to the assembled Britsky family at breakfast in the kitchen of the flat on Henry Sreet. ‘I open if it’s another blizzard of eighty-eight.’
They hung on his words. Even Sarah had no caustic, undermining comment on the situation. For years she had screamed at Max, blamed him for every misfortune, and in all truth despised him. In some way beyond her comprehension, she held him responsible for her unmarried state, her hopeless future, her poverty – but all this without any kind of insight, and in her mind it expressed itself simply as irritation and anger. Yet today even that anger had cooled. Her son Max owned some kind of theatre, and today was its opening. She deflected her anger and cursed the weather. The other Britskys absorbed excitement and wanted to know whether they could see the moving picture show.
‘After school,’ Max told them, quieting their clamor. ‘Mama will bring all of you.’ He placed a dollar in front of his mother. ‘But you pay for them, Mama. Here’s the money. Freida will be at the ticket window, but anyway you pay her. A nickel for yourself and three cents for the kids, except Ruby. Ruby is old enough. He pays full price. The difference is twelve years old. I know Sheila, already she’s thirteen, but she don’t look thirteen.’
Giggling, Freida
said, ‘You’re cheating yourself, Max.’
‘I’m making a joke.’ He grinned.
‘But I know Sheila’s thirteen.’
‘Why should we pay?’ Sarah demanded. ‘I’m your mother. Your mother should pay?’
‘Because everyone pays,’ Max said decisively. ‘No freeloaders.’ Excepting, of course, the passes he had handed out at the local police precinct, entitling the captain and the lieutenants to enter free with their families as often as they desired.
He had arranged with Sally for her to have dinner with him and then to accompany him to the evening performance, which ensured a reasonable gap of time between his family’s appearance and Sally’s appearance. Max, shepherding Freida, got to the store at eleven, an hour before the opening. Sam Snyder was there waiting for him, his normal round, cheery face set and worried, shaking his head at the dismal weather. ‘This stinks,’ he said. ‘This really hits us.’
‘We’ll make it,’ Max replied with a confidence he hardly felt. ‘Take your place,’ he said to Freida.
‘It’s cold.’
‘So keep your coat on. I’ll tell you something, Sis. If we’re not wiped out today, a month from now I’ll buy you a fur coat.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘So help me – it’s a promise.’ He went into his coat pocket and came up with two rolls of pennies and a bag of nickels, dimes, and quarters. ‘Here’s the change, seven dollars’ worth.’ He did not add that this left him with exactly eighty-five cents as his total worldly wealth.
‘You really mean that about the fur coat?’ Snyder asked him. ‘You’d really buy her a fur coat, or are you kidding her?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Britsky, I just don’t know. I never worked for a –’ He caught himself.
‘For a Jew – that’s what you were going to say?’
‘Not exactly,’ Snyder muttered uneasily.
‘First of all, you call me Max, I call you Sam. Second, you going to work for a Jew, you face up to it. Either you figure I’m a human being like everyone else or screw the whole thing.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ Snyder said, his face reddening. He was a large, fat young man, slow-moving and good-natured and, as Max had instinctively felt and would put it later, ‘smart as hell.’ He had a round, pleasant face, wide-set baby blue eyes, and a thatch of sandy hair. ‘Look,’ he went on, ‘I think you got something, something big, otherwise I never would have left my job to go to work for you, and I respect you. Sure, there are lots of them that hate Jews, but I ain’t one of them, and let me tell you, I’m a Lutheran, and plenty of times when I was a kid, I was a “lousy Kraut” because my pop came over from old Germany and he spoke with an accent. So how do you feel about Lutherans?’
‘I don’t know. You’re the first one I ever had a conversation with.’
‘Same here.’
‘We’ll manage.’ Max grinned. ‘You married, Sam?’
‘I got two kids, and my wife can cook. How about having dinner with us?’
‘Someday, sure. And about that fur coat – I don’t make promises to kid people. She’ll get the fur coat. Stick with me, and I’ll make you some promises.’
‘I’ll give it a try,’ Snyder said, holding out a hand to catch the wet flakes of November snow. ‘It’s letting up.’
Max nodded. Snyder was blocking the card that read: GRAND OPENING. Max drew him aside. One or two people had paused in front of the store. It was a weekday. ‘Maybe you should have opened on a Saturday,’ Freida said. The Grand Opening card announced: ‘A new entertainment. MOVING PICTURES. For five cents, enjoy the ultimate in entertainment. A thrilling, marvelous display of science and artistry. An experience you will never forget.’
Freida had unwrapped the ticket roll. They were old, unused tickets that Max had purchased from Guttman, who had raised his prices and had no use for the old tickets. There were a thousand tickets on a roll. ‘It says, Bijou Palace, thirty-five cents,’ Freida told him worriedly.
‘Nobody reads it. If they do, they’re getting a bargain. Anyway, we got a better show than the Bijou.’
‘You should have someone to collect the tickets, Max. Inside, like in the Bijou.’
‘Forget it. Just tear the ticket in half when you sell it. Keep half of it for our records. You got the cigar box I told you to bring?’
‘Right here.’ She held it up.
‘Good, good.’
Snyder sighed and went inside to set up his projector. At eleven-forty, Freida sold the first tickets. They were four ladies of the street, their business slack in the early hours, strangers to Max and very excited about the notion of moving pictures. They were followed by a man and a woman – tourists, Max decided; and then Silverman, who had a grocery store across the street and who said to Max, ‘For a nickel, I can spend half an hour. My wife’s at the store. She’ll come when I go back.’
A carriage with four passengers pulled up by the curb. ‘What is it?’ a man in the carriage shouted to Max.
‘Moving pictures.’
‘What are moving pictures?’
‘Like the kinetoscope!’
‘Vincent, what’s the difference?’ a woman in the carriage demanded of the man. ‘Just get us out of this wretched carriage.’
They sent the carriage away and bought four tickets. By now, the wet flakes of snow had slowed almost to a halt, and a small crowd gathered outside of the Britsky Orpheum. At five minutes to twelve, Freida had sold a hundred and eleven tickets. Even Schmidt and his wife appeared, informing Max that as his landlords they should have complimentaries. Max took a dime from his pocket, bought two tickets from Freida, and handed them to Mr and Mrs Schmidt.
At noon, Max went inside. He poked his head into the projection booth. ‘Ready?’ he asked Sam Snyder.
‘Ready.’
‘Roll it,’ Max said exuberantly. Snyder flicked a switch, began to turn the handle, and at the other end of the store, on Mr Eastman’s silver screen, appeared the legend, MAX BRITSKY PRESENTS MOVING PICTURES.
At four o’clock, precisely, the Britsky family appeared. For years, Sarah had carefully hoarded pennies and an occasional nickel, hiding her fortune in a white ironstone milk pitcher, and in the course of time she had accumulated fifty-three dollars, four and a half dollars of which had gone for material for a new dress, heavy green velvet. Six dollars had gone for a new cloth coat, the first coat she had bought since her husband died, not secondhand but new. She wore all her finery now, including a hat with colored feathers, as she marched up to the ticket window of Max Britsky’s Orpheum with all her family behind her, Benny, Esther, Sheila, and Reuben. It was a very fine moment for Sarah. With a straight face, Freida asked, ‘How many, please?’ to which Sarah replied, ‘Two for grown people and three for children, and I shouldn’t have to wait on line,’ she added.
‘Mama, that’s good,’ Freida explained. ‘It’s good business. We been doing wonderful business.’
‘I’m still his mother.’
Inside, Max awaited them. ‘I saved five seats for you,’ he whispered.
‘In front?’
‘No, Mama. It’s better not in front. You see better not so close.’
Grudgingly, Sarah accepted the seats, certain that Max had given the front seats to more favored people. Then her attention and the attention of the other Britskys was hooked to the screen, and for the next twenty minutes they sat enthralled when Max suggested that they sit through the show a second time, they accepted eagerly.
Afterward, Sarah dissolved, cast off anger and frustration for the moment, and said to Max almost tenderly, ‘Darling, it was beautiful, so beautiful I couldn’t believe my own eyes.’
On Max’s part, he couldn’t believe his own ears. His mother was being both kind and complimentary. If it had happened before, he could not recall it.
Sally kept her own counsel. Admittedly, Max had done something no one else had done, at least here in the United States. He had put
together a program of moving pictures and established a theatre of sorts in which they could be shown. But until Max picked her up at seven o’clock on the day his theatre opened, she was not at all sure that people would pay money to look at his moving pictures. Aside from the incredible fact that the pictures moved, they held little of interest for Sally, and although Max argued that the bulk of the population of New York – or, indeed, any other of the country’s large cities – never went to a theatre or a music hall, Sally wondered whether they would pay money, even as little as a nickel, for what Max had to sell. But when Max came into her room that evening, he was euphoric.
‘By six o’clock,’ he informed Sally, ‘we took in fifty-two dollars and twenty-four cents. Do you know what that means – daytime on a weekday? It means before we close tonight, we’ll hit a hundred and fifty dollars, or close to it. You know, they love it. They go out and come back with their friends. I had to put Ruby in as an usher – that’s something I never thought about. I’m paying him five dollars a week; after school. And this is the first day. You know, I didn’t even have the brains to put an announcement in the newspaper, except Sammy Snyder knows a guy, he works for the Tribune, and Sammy says he’ll write a story about us. Sally, I can’t take you to dinner tonight. Anyway, how could I eat the way I’m so excited? I got to go back to the theatre. All right, it’s only a store – to me it’s a theatre. Sally, what does orpheum mean?’
Max was never quiet or contemplative, but Sally had never seen him in this state of excitement, pacing back and forth the length of her small room, refusing her invitation to sit for a moment.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean orpheum, orpheum, what does the word mean?’
‘It means a theatre, Max.’
‘Yeah, of course. Can you meet me there later?’
‘You’re sure you want to, tonight, Max?’
‘Absolutely. I know you seen the show, but I want you to see it with the place filled with people. It makes a difference.’
