by Howard Fast
‘My own dream,’ Max said later that evening, his stomach full of melted cheese, toasted bread, wine, and French pastry, ‘was that someday we would be married. But the kind of game you were playing with me –’ He shook his head.
‘You think it was a game?’
‘What else? One day you liked me, maybe you loved me, the next day it was no, no, Max, I’m sorry, I can’t possibly see you tomorrow; no, for the next few weeks I must be with myself, I have to take stock of myself –’
‘Oh, no!’ Sally exclaimed. ‘Did I sound like that?’
‘More or less. You’re always taking stock of yourself, like you were some kind of dry goods store.’
‘And that’s how you think of me, as a dry goods store?’
‘That’s not what I meant. You always take what I mean and twist it around.’
‘Now wait a moment,’ Sally said. ‘Did you ever ask me straight out to marry you?’
‘Maybe fifty times. You want me to ask you again? Hey, Sally, how about us getting married? I’m twenty-three years old, which means I’m sort of grown up. I draw four hundred dollars a week out of my company, and I have my own hansom cab standing by eight hours a day.’
‘That’s just the way you would ask someone to marry you,’ Sally said.
‘What’s the difference? You wouldn’t marry me when I didn’t have a pot to piss in –’
‘That’s why!’ she shouted. ‘You think that’s so tough and clever – a pot to piss in! Doesn’t anything matter to you? Don’t you have any standards of politeness or decency? Can’t you learn anything? I ask you here and try to make everything as nice and proper as possible, and then you come in here and use language that a stevedore wouldn’t use –’
‘Sally, I forgot myself.’
‘– and you spoil everything.’ She burst into tears, aware that she had blown it beyond repair, ready to run into another room and slam the door behind her; but there was no other room. This was all of it, this one single room that was suddenly chokingly small and intolerable.
Max got up and went over to her and put his arms around her. ‘Sally, Sally darling, don’t cry, please. You’re right. Please forgive me. I can understand why you don’t want to marry me.’
‘But I do,’ she sobbed.
‘You do what?’ He let go of her and turned her face up to him.
‘Don’t look at me. I look horrible when I cry.’
‘What did you say before?’
‘I said –’ She took a deep breath. ‘I said I do want to marry you.’
‘That’s what you said?’
‘Yes, Max, that’s what I said.’
Max walked into the precinct house, telling himself, I hate these places. Every time I set foot in one, it means trouble. Since I was a kid, I been paying them. It’s no goddamn police station, it’s a bank.
Sergeant Carney, sitting behind the desk, nodded at him with a long, doleful face.
‘What is it now?’ Max asked.
‘Your brother Benny.’
‘So that’s where he is. My mother’s only tearing out her hair and he’s here in jail, right? You got the kid locked up?’
‘That’s right, Mr Britsky.’
‘He’s thirteen years old,’ Max said indignantly.
‘You’d better take that up with Captain Clancy.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘Your brother? Full of piss and vinegar, the little bastard.’
‘You can say that again,’ Max agreed, and he went up the stairs to Clancy’s office. Clancy’s two hundred and forty pounds, a balanced mixture of fat and muscle beneath a beet-red face and thinning hair, sat behind a littered desk. He was finishing a sandwich and drinking beer from a tin lunchpail.
‘Ah, Max,’ he said, ‘me heart goes out to you. You break your ass for that family of yours, and what does the little bastard do but end up in the clink.’
‘What did he do?’ Max asked.
‘Not what he did, Max. He was enticed, the poor little bastard. The Slunsky twins broke into Cohen’s fur place over on Division Street, but we got them now. They’re a bad lot, the Slunskys.’
‘But Benny? Where does he come into it?’
‘They gave him a dollar and hired him to be their lookout, and when Officers Delaney and Coogan approached the place, there was this brother of yours hooten and yelling copper, so we collared him along with the Slunskys. Now what am I to do with the little bastard?’
‘Let me do it,’ Max said. ‘He’ll eat standing up for a week.’
‘But he was nabbed in the commission of a crime, Max.’
Max went into his pocket and came up with a roll of bills. ‘Three hundred and fifty tonight –’
Clancy’s pink face remained sad and unresponsive.
‘– and a hundred and fifty more tomorrow.’
Clancy smiled. ‘Sure, Max, take the little bastard home and teach him the law.’
They brought Benny out to where Max was waiting. Benny’s dirty face was streaked with tears, and when he saw Max’s expression, he would have gladly turned around and gone back to the holding pen where he had spent the past two hours. Outside the station house, he wailed to Max, ‘What are you going to do to me? You going to kill me?’
‘I’d like to, you miserable little bum.’
‘Max, I didn’t do nothing. They just give me a dollar and tell me to lay chickee.’
‘If it wasn’t your mother would know about it, I’d tan your ass so you wouldn’t sit down for a week. Meanwhile, you miserable little shithead, I put five hundred dollars into Clancy’s pocket, which is maybe five hundred times more than you’re worth, even retail, and you are going to pay it back to me, every cent. So from now on, every day after school, you go to work for me, and maybe when you work off five hundred dollars I’ll talk to you again.’
He couldn’t stay away from the Bijou. It was one thing to rent a store and fill it with folding chairs and put in a projection booth; it was another thing entirely to have an entire theatre for himself. The New York Times paid adequate tribute to this action with a story headlined: ‘First Moving Picture Theatre Planned by Max Britsky.’ It was the first time Max had seen his name in print, and although the newspaper story went on to say, ‘Old veterans of the theatrical business have little faith in the possibility of the theatre surviving on a program of moving pictures,’ Max’s elation was not dampened. He had been interviewed by reporters from both the Times and the Herald. No, he said, he had no intention of changing the name. The name had nostalgic importance for him since he had once worked as an entertainer in the Bijou. With Mr Bellamy, he hastened to add, who would now be managing the Bijou. Mr Bellamy stood in the background, watching, listening, trying to connect this Max Britsky with his old partner. As for the Bijou, it would be called Britsky’s Bijou. Max added that he was negotiating for another theatre, the old Garrett Theatre in Brooklyn. It required extensive restoration and repair, but that would be taken care of, and eventually it would be called Britsky’s Orpheum. Did they know that orpheum meant a theatre and that it came from a Greek word originally? And here, in Britsky’s Bijou, the first moving picture to be shown was a ‘new and brilliant’ work, called The Automobile Thief.
Two men, Frank Stanford and Jack Calvin, had opened a place near Plainfield, New Jersey, where moving pictures were being made. Stanford and Calvin were not making the pictures themselves; they ran a booking agency out of Philadelphia. Nor was it believed that the money for the moving pictures came from them, rather that they were fronting either for the Edison interests, the Eastman interests, or possibly the Bell Telephone Company. Sam Snyder, who had been dealing with them, was unable to pin down the source of their financial backing, but as he pointed out to Max, ‘It doesn’t matter. They’re doing the distributing, and we’re getting in on the ground floor.’ Max told Sam to go ahead and sign a rental contract for the film.
Max ran the film for himself and a handful of others in the Bijou a few days before the schedu
led opening of the theatre. The silver screen, enormous when compared to the screens in the storefront movie houses, was in itself an exciting visual treat. Max had invited Sally to join him and Ruby and Sam Snyder, Bert Bellamy, Freddy Feldman, and Isadore Lubel, the pianist, who now doubled as music director, not only playing piano himself, but constantly digging up additional pianists for the nickelodeons Max added to his chain. Since Sam Snyder had’ seen the film several times, he took care of the projection booth. Max put himself and his guests in the first row of the balcony, deciding that would be the best angle from which to view the film.
The film was fourteen minutes in length and would have to be boxed in with short fillers to suit Max’s plan. The film opened with a card frame that read: MAX BRITSKY PRESENTS, and then credits for three men involved in the making. There was no credit for acting, scenario, or any technical work and no identification of the roles of the makers. In the first scene, the camera was fixed on a street, and for about half a minute the camera simply photographed the traffic moving by. At first, this was only hansom cabs, carriages, drays, and carts. Then an automobile appeared. The car was recognisable as one of Ransom Eli Olds’ curved-dash Oldsmobiles, but instead of being open to the air, it carried a wagon top, and the stick steering bar had been replaced by a wheel. A man and a woman, both of them covered in long dusters, were sitting in the car. The car drew up alongside the curb, and the man got out and went through an exaggerated pantomime of politeness in helping the woman down out of the car. Now two ragged, dirty-faced kids appeared and began to examine the car, touching it here and there. It was plain that they had never seen an automobile before and were intrigued by it, but their curiosity angered the driver, who drove them away and then chased them down the street. The camera turned to follow them as the three, the driver and the two kids, ran away.
Then the camera swung back to the woman, who still stood in front of the car. She clasped her hands and swayed from side to side, which was obviously intended to indicate an emotional response of some sort, but it was never defined as a response to anything in particular except the fact that her escort was off chasing kids. After the camera had recorded her emotions at some length, it swung back to the driver, who was now returning. Then it swung full around to a policeman, approaching from the other direction. He stopped by the woman, and they carried on a conversation with a great deal of pointing and hand-waving. Then the driver joined the group, and the gesturing went on. Finally the policeman spread his arms and shook his head, as if to indicate that there was nothing more that he could do. Then the lady decided to faint, and the two men knelt over her to revive her. When she was finally revived, she and the driver went off in one direction, the policeman in another direction, leaving the automobile parked by the curb.
Now the camera was inside a room, two painted flats forming a corner. A man sat at a table, eating soup. The two kids stood by the table, talking and gesturing. At first the man paid no attention. Then he responded, rising, picking up a small valise, and following the kids. Then the camera was back at the parked car. It simply fixed on the car for about sixty seconds until the man and the boys appeared. Then the man opened his valise and took out a set of burglar tools.
Sam Snyder called out from the projection booth, ‘Max, the damn fools who made the picture either didn’t know you don’t steal a car with burglar tools or they did it for effect. Most of those Olds automobiles don’t even have an ignition key. You would just get into it and drive away if you know how to drive one.’
‘Hell, it don’t matter!’ Max shouted back.
The theft completed, all three, thief and the two kids, climbed into the car and drove off. At this point the driver appeared, waving his arms, yelling silently, and then running after the car. Then the lady appeared and fainted again. Fainting appeared to be her best point, and even Sally responded to the second faint by bursting into laughter. Then the policeman appeared, with more arm-waving and soundless shouting. Then the policeman ran off after the vanished car. Then the man revived the woman. Then they embraced, apparently to his relief. Then they waited in front of the camera, and then finally the car appeared, the policeman driving, the car thief beside him, hands shackled. Then a great arm-waving of joy and congratulations from the car owner.
After the film had been shown, all seven of the viewers gathered at the Café Coronet on Second Avenue. The Coronet was the regular after-theatre meeting place for Yiddish-speaking actors, writers, and various and sundry theatre people and intellectuals. Regarding himself as very much a man of the theatre, Max had taken to frequenting the place. He enjoyed the atmosphere, which, he had been told, was very much that of a European café he liked the high-pitched sound of discussion and argument, and he was pleased, having so little education of his own, at being present in a place where intellect was held in high esteem. From his earliest childhood, Yiddish had been a second language for him, and it was the ordinary means of communication between him and his mother; but he had always regarded it with contempt and distaste as less a language than a mark of oppression and misery. But at Café Coronet, Yiddish was the first language at most tables, and here suddenly Max nad the marvelous and worldly feeling of having a second language at his command.
Tonight, Eli, the owner, seated them at a round table large enough to contain them comfortably, congratulated Max on the imminent opening of the Bijou, and welcomed Sally, whom he had not seen for some months. In the discussion of the film they had just seen, Sally had been noticeably silent. Max watched her, waiting. After they had given their orders for food, Max said to her, ‘You didn’t like it. I can see that.’
‘No, it’s not that I didn’t like it –’
‘Why don’t you come right out with an opinion for once and say it stinks?’
‘It doesn’t stink, so why don’t you give her a chance to say what she thinks,’ Sam Snyder suggested.
‘Max, you’re too nervous about this,’ Freddy Feldman said. ‘What we say about the moving picture isn’t going to change the audience response.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I think,’ Sally said, ‘that you’ll get a good audience response no matter what I think or what anyone else thinks, and I think that’s what Freddy means. No matter what anyone says, it’s an advance over the tiny films you’ve been showing.’
‘And this Great train Robbery that they’re making will be even better,’ Snyder said.
‘Then if that’s the case,’ Max said to Sally, ‘what are you so sour about?’
‘I’m not sour. I’ve been thinking about it. That’s permitted, isn’t it?’
‘All right. What’s wrong with it?’
‘If you’re going to get angry at me again –’
‘Come on, Sally,’ Snyder said. ‘Max is nervous. That’s understandable. We got a lot of money invested in the Bijou.’
‘What I’m saying has nothing to do with how it will go at the Bijou, but my feeling is that what we saw tonight is not the product of any real intelligence or talent.’ And turning to Snyder, ‘I don’t mean the camera operator, Sam, or the other technicians. They seem to know what they’re doing. I mean the man who conceived it. He doesn’t appear to have the slightest notion of what he was doing. Was he trying to tell a story or present a drama? Had he ever seen a theatrical play or had he ever read a book? And who told the actors how to act? They behaved like demented people, waving their arms and making those incredible faces.’ Her voice died away. ‘Well, I didn’t mean to be so critical, but you asked me what I felt.’
‘Sally,’ Snyder said, ‘you asked me who conceived this moving picture, and I have to tell you that maybe nobody did. I’ve seen the way they work up there in Rochester and out at Edison’s place and down in Philadelphia too. They don’t even write anything down. Someone says, I got an idea, and mostly they don’t even use actors, so how can you expect them to act?’
‘You mean they don’t even try to make a story out of it?’ Feldman asked.
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br /> ‘Sure, I’ve heard talk about that, and there’s some fellow says he’s going to do Shakespeare’s plays on film, but then there are other guys who say that it’s absolutely out of the question, because how can you really tell a story without any words –’
‘Which brings up a point,’ Max interrupted. ‘We had no piano tonight.’
‘That’s absolutely right,’ Lubel said. ‘Absolutely.’
‘I should have never run it without the piano.’
‘Absolutely,’ Lubel said. ‘In those long spaces where you just sit and wait for something to happen – well, you come in there with a theme from the William Tell Overture or even with a few bars from Anitra’s Dance and you get rid of that nervousness when nothing happens, so you can’t really judge it without someone putting in a little piano music.’
‘The trouble is,’ Snyder said, ‘that nobody really knows what to do with the moving pictures.’
‘I can tell you what to do with them,’ Max said. ‘You show them and you sell tickets.’
‘But with The Great Train Robbery, I think they’re trying to tell a better story. The way they’re talking now, they say you got to look for things where it just moves and nobody says anything. That’s probably the reason why they made The Automobile Thief.’
Sally was right about the audience response. The Bijou had a triumphal opening, and no one objected to the construction of the film they saw. Indeed, the Herald, taking note of the opening – they had no such thing as a film critic – remarked that The Automobile Thief appeared to be a great advance in the making of moving pictures.
No matter how much money the nickelodeons brought in, Max was so committed to expanding his empire that he was always short of cash; and this time, with Fred Feldman’s guidance, he was able to negotiate a line of credit for fifty thousand dollars at no less an institution than the Chase Bank, into whose imposing offices at 177 Broadway Max walked, not with the air of a supplicant but with the easy confidence of a conqueror. As he told Sally afterward, ‘It was a big moment, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had a heart attack right there on the spot.’
