by Howard Fast
Finally, he entered himself, not to sit down, but to join Sally and Freedman and Snyder, all of them standing behind the last row of the orchestra. At stage left of the old stage – for the Palace had been a great legitimate theatre – a violinist stood by a grand piano, and as the audience finished seating itself, he began to play, accompanied by the pianist, none other than Isadore Lubel, first of Max’s piano players, doing a medley arranged by Lubel himself out of La Belle Helène, by Offenbach. While it was not quite in the mood to introduce The Waif, the fact that Offenbach was Jewish persuaded Max to allow Lubel to have his way. While Max’s musical acumen left something to be desired, his sense of style and hype was well developed. He had printed programs for the opening, and it pleased him to have there ‘Overture by Offenbach, arrangement by Lubel.’ More to the point, Lubel had found a fiddler who could adapt instantly to the changes of mood, time, and intensity that Lubel performed on the piano.
The film began and ran its course for the following eighty-six minutes. Max, Sally, Freedman, and Snyder stood and watched with the nervous intensity of loving parents. They listened for the nose-blowing and throat-clearing and whispered triumphantly, ‘Tears. Tears.’ When it finished, the audience broke into a storm of hand-clapping and shouts of ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ ‘Go on, Max,’ Snyder urged him. ‘Go on up there. They want someone to take a bow. This ain’t no nickelodeon audience. These are uptown swells, the same as an opening in a legitimate house.’
‘Come on,’ Max said to Sally, taking her arm. ‘You began it, you done it. Take some credit.’
She shrank back, pleading, ‘No, Max. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.’
‘It’s eating candy. Let them see I got a wife.’
‘No. Please!’
‘OK,’ Max agreed, thinking, I got nothing – nothing, and then he marched down the aisle, vaulted onto the stage, and spread his arms for an end to the cheers.
‘Thank you,’ Max said. ‘I thank you with all my heart. Tomorrow, The Waif opens in all ten of the Britsky theatres. Our second film masterpiece is already in production, and a third one is on the drawing board. Thank you for watching our great effort tonight.’
The party at Rector’s was no less a success. There was nothing quite like Rector’s in America or, as some held, in all the world; and Max’s entree there, into the gates of heaven, as New York measured such things, came out of a meeting with Charley Rector arranged by Boss Murphy. Max Britsky and Charley Rector fell into an instant communion. They harked back to similar beginnings. Charley Rector had driven a horsecar on the Seventh Avenue line, but life smiled on him when he opened a seafood restaurant in Chicago and discovered that by the simple expedient of cooking oysters lightly in real cream with a bit of delicate seasoning, one had a dish that kings could envy. His oyster stew brought him fame and fortune, and he took his money back to New York, where he created the most famous restaurant of the time, Rector’s, a long, yellow, two-story building facing Broadway between Forty-third and Forty-fourth streets. On the main floor, in the great spread of mirrors and chandeliers, one hundred tables were set, that the elegant, the famous and infamous, the talented, the rich, and the mighty might dine. Upstairs, on the second floor, those without fame or elegance might have the privilege of dining at Rector’s or, on special occasions, the whole of the second floor was given over to private parties, such as Max Britsky’s party on the opening night of The Waif. That was the case tonight, and Max paid seven thousand dollars for sixty tables of invited guests. Charley Rector’s son, George, his round, fat face wreathed in smiles over his huge belly, greeted the guests with the ultimate acknowledgment of belonging, a warm, slightly moist handshake. The accolade was not without significance in the social circle as well as the sporting crowd of New York City. To be known and greeted by the Rectors, father or son, was no small achievement, and for Max a significantly large achievement. Not only was he here, but two full tables that he had placed at the disposal of Sally’s family had brought them – Sally’s father and mother and aunts and uncles and cousins – to Rector’s, a place as far beyond their dreams or aspirations as Delmonico’s, more elite than Rector’s but less famous and enticing – had brought them here where Max could greet them in his cutaway coat and forgiving smile. He forgave them their early opinion of himself and the other Britskys.
The other Britskys basked in the glow of Max’s success: Sarah sitting as dowager queen in yards and yards of white satin and gold stitching, Ruby, Sheila, and Esther married already, Ruby’s wife, one-time Kathy Sullivan, greeting Max with a great embrace, a bit more than sisterly, whispering, ‘Put me in a movie, Max.’ Quid pro quo. It’s in the sound of a voice, the tone, intonation, lilt. Max was hearing it for the first time, but it would thread its way through his life.
He nodded and smiled. ‘We’ll talk about it.’ Kathy Sullivan Britsky was a lovely, auburn-haired young woman, but queen of the occasion was without doubt Feona Amour. Gone was Etta Goodman, gone forever, and even Max was astonished by the glowing beauty of his star, Feona. Pomp and circumstance do indeed change things, and Max wondered how she could have worked for him all those years without his ever realising how goodlooking she was.
Of course, hairdressers, professional makeup men, and dressmakers made a difference, yet there was no gainsaying the beauty of Etta Goodman. Max turned recent events on their head. Hadn’t he always known? Hadn’t he chosen her for that reason, for secret talent and beauty no one else could see?
And of course, everyone else was there at Rector’s – the cast, Max’s associates, the leading lights of Tammany Hall – as well as dozens of others whom Max did not know but who after tonight would recognise the name of Max Britsky and put it together with a river of champagne and dark mountains of caviar. As the lord designer of this ducal lavishness, Max, son of Abe Britsky, spread his arms. Let everyone eat, drink, and be happy, even Pasquel Massoni, who Max considered a total idiot, either as Pasquel or as Warren Heart, but who was quite magnificent in his tails, all six foot one of him, embracing Max with a bone-crushing grasp, ‘You, my friend, I salute you, maestro. You have enlarged my heart.’ Which, considering his given name, was not wholly untrue.
Only Sally appeared unable to share properly in the festivities, and she complained to Max of a headache. ‘This is our big night, Sally,’ he said to her. ‘We are celebrating the greatest night of our lives.’
Sally didn’t feel triumphant. Her head ached and her stomach churned, and whenever she looked at Max, she found herself asking herself who he was. Who she was also occurred to her, not as an answer but as a fuzzy question. She had been thirsty, and two glasses of champagne contributed to her fuzziness. Caviar did not sit well with her. She tried to be responsive and pleasant to people who told her that she looked just lovely. She did look lovely. She had gone to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and had found the painting that Freedman referred to, a painting of mother and child by Mary Cassatt, and the very real resemblance flattered her. She was at a point in life where she needed flattery desperately, and for this occasion she copied the painting, having a dress made of white silk with vertical stripes of pale blue and aquamarine blue. She looked lovely, and as Max felt, she had class; and while class was not an element that excited him sexually, it did elevate his ego. It made him feel secure in that great, glittering room full of the famous and the infamous and of course the rich. He wanted Sally to laugh, to smile, to be a hostess in terms of the society people present, to let them hear speech eloquent enough to make up for his own less than perfect English. Max always felt the need to be justified. Money justified him and power justified him, but neither acted upon his sensibilities as Sally did. She justified him far more than anything else, and now she was sick and miserable. It was simply a betrayal, and Max said petulantly, ‘Come on, this is no time to walk out on me. Have some more champagne. It’s imported. It’s the best that Charley Rector serves, and that makes it just about the best there is.’
‘I can’t drink. You know that,
Max. I think it’s the champagne that made me ill.’
‘Well, you can’t just sit there that way with people looking at you.’
‘Please, Max, I want to go home.’
‘It’s just started. This party’s going on all night.’
‘Max, I can’t. I’m so miserable.’
Finally Max gave in to the inevitable and found Gerry Freedman and said to him, ‘I hate to do this to you, Gerry, because you’re the big man tonight –’ He didn’t think so. Max was the big man this night, but there was Freedman, talking to the drama critic of Harper’s magazine, with three beautifully gowned women hanging on to his every word, and Max taking him away from that could have offended Freedman. Max didn’t want to offend Freedman. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, ‘but Sally’s sick.’
‘Sick? What is it?’
Max didn’t notice Freedman’s alarm. ‘Too much champagne, Iguess. Would you take her home, Gerry. Don’tworry about the party. It’ll go on, and you can get back here –’
‘No problem,’ Freedman said, trying to sound a little disappointed. ‘Of course I’ll take her home.’
Out of Rector’s, in a hansom cab headed uptown, Sally said, ‘I don’t know how to thank you, Gerry. I’ve taken you away from that marvelous party, and I feel so stupid and selfish –’
He stopped her short. ‘Absolutely not! I can’t think of anyplace in the world I’d rather be than right here next to you. And as for that party – well, it’s a big, damnfool potlatch, and they’re welcome to it. I was talking to a writer for Harper’s when Max found me, but the real critics, those in the daily press, they’re at their papers writing – that is, considering that they say anything at all about The Waif.’
‘Oh? But don’t you think it was good?’
‘I don’t know,’ Freedman confessed. ‘It was the best we could do, but we’re right on top of it. What do we compare it with? Ibsen? Shaw?’
‘No, this is something else.’
Peering at her in the dim light of the cab, Freedman said, ‘You look so beautiful. Do you feel all right?’
‘Much better. The headache’s gone.’
He reached over and touched her cheek with his fingertips. Then he put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him.
‘You don’t have to come inside,’ she said. ‘You can keep the cab and go back with it.’
He ignored her and paid off the driver, and she didn’t protest. Except for the light in the entranceway, the house was dark and silent, but there were lights burning in the rear rooms, where the children slept. Freedman walked with her as she peered into each room. ‘They’re like angels when they’re asleep.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
She put her finger to her lips as they passed the nurse’s room. Her bedroom was on the floor below. At the door to her bedroom, she said to Freedman, ‘Better go back now. You were very kind. Thank you.’
He put his arms around her and kissed her. She didn’t protest. Silently she pleaded with him to go on as he stood pressed to her, kissing her.
‘Let me close the door.’ He let go of her, and she closed the door and locked it, and then went to the bed and threw back the embroidered coverlet. She went into her dressing room, trembling as she shed her clothes. What was wrong with her? She was a married woman, the mother of two children, a proper matron, but never in her life had she felt such desire. She put on a robe; she was aching with desire, trembling with it. Freedman had turned off the lights. She walked slowly, carefully, in the dark, and then she felt the bed and threw herself onto it and into his arms, her shyness replaced by a tigerlike ferocity, climbing onto him, clenching his bony shoulders until her nails drove into his flesh.
Afterward, their passion spent, she became a little girl lying beside him, whispering baby talk, touching his long, skinny arms, touching his ribs. When he tried to speak, she put her hand over his mouth.
‘We don’t talk about it, Gerry. It is, that’s all. I don’t want to talk about it or hear you talk about it.’
‘Sure. But what time is it?’
She fumbled for the lamp, turned it on, closed her eyes against the bright light, and then opened them to look curiously at his long naked body, thinking of Max’s body and comparing the two, and wondering how she could be so objective and callous about it, and wondering also whether she loved Gerry Freedman – or was he like a doctor who came to a sick person with a miraculous medicine?’
‘How do you feel now?’ he asked her.
‘Better. I’m trying to understand something. Yes, you asked me the time. It’s one o’clock.’
‘What? I mean, understand what?’
Explosively, like a cry of outraged pain, ‘I hate him!’
‘Who?’
‘Max, Max, Max!’ She was no longer objective. She was full of self-pity now, and she began to whimper like a hurt child. ‘He took it all away, everything – my mind, my body, my virginity, my mind – all my mind.’
‘Sally, Sally,’ Freedman begged her, ‘come on. Pull yourself together. Max is no angel. You stopped loving him, but he isn’t the devil. It happens.’
‘I never loved him!’ She spat out the words.
‘Why did you marry him?’
‘Why? Don’t you understand why? I’m not strong. Everyone said I had to marry him – Mama, Papa, and Max.’
‘You don’t have to stay married to Max.’
‘I haven’t had, had –’
She couldn’t say it, so Freedman supplied it for her. ‘Intercourse,’ he said gently.
‘Yes, that, not for months and months. And I never will again. Never! Do you believe me?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
Her mood changed again, abruptly. ‘Don’t you know it’s one o’clock in the morning? You must get back to Rector’s.’ She had become calm, practical, realistic, as if the outburst of a moment ago had never occurred. ‘Now do be sensible, darling, and hurry back to Rector’s.’
‘The hell with it! I don’t want to go back there.’
‘But Max –’
‘The hell with Max.’
Sally got out of bed and put on her robe. ‘Now Gerry,’ she said, ‘let’s be sensible. We’re working partners, and I hope that will continue, and the last thing in the world I want is a falling-out between you and Max.’
‘I’ve been gone over an hour. What do I tell Max?’
‘Max will never notice, not in that crowd. So get dressed and hurry back, and I’ll see you tomorrow.’
The following day, the critic of the New York Times wrote:
One tends to regard all artistic creations – and The Waif is an artistic creation, whatever else it may be – in a comparative sense. We measure Elizabethan plays by Shakespeare, just as we measure our current drama by Shaw, Ibsen, and Chekov. We compare, we look back at the record, and we are highly aware of tradition. Then what is one to say of The Waif, that extraordinary moving picture that had its premier at the Palace Theatre last night? There is no question about it being extraordinary; its very singularity underwrites that judgment. It is the first extended treatment of a dramatic theme in the classical sense of the theatre that has been attempted in the new and fascinating medium of moving pictures.
That it opens up countless doors for others cannot be gainsaid. It has in one long and bold step moved film production from technical amusement into the field of drama. Its innovative use of dialogue frames as a substitute for heard speech appears to work, and when refined and learned as a technique may well lead to a whole era of filmed drama. The camera work also opens new horizons. The use of a moving camera on both a dolly and automobiles is both exciting and inventive. Apparently, an entire new art based on the use of the moving picture camera will now explode into being.
Having said all this, one must tip one’s cap to producer Max Britsky and applaud his courage and pioneering spirit. At the same time, since The Waif is given to us as a work of the dramatic art and set apart from the fragments that have adorned the nic
kelodeons, and even set apart from such bolder and larger attempts as Edwin S. Porter’s Great Train Robbery, it must be judged as a work of art. Yet this judgment must be tempered with the understanding that everyone concerned with this production was and is an innovator.
According to our information, the use of dialogue cards was the idea of Sally Britsky, the wife of the producer. I use the word idea rather than invention, since explanatory cards and expository cards have been used in moving pictures before this, but never in so innovative and dramatic a fashion. The story, or scenario, as it might be called, defining each scene as it does, was the creation of Mrs Britsky and Mr Gerald Freedman, the director. Now even when one specifies the mawkish-ness, the adolescent sentimentalism, and the naive characterization of both rich and poor in the moving picture, one cannot dismiss The Waif as a worthless drama. It is by no means that. It has vigor, earnestness, and compassion, and so well did it take hold of a not unsophisticated audience that there was hardly a dry eye around me in the theatre.
We must view The Waif as a step in the development of American drama, a most important step, and we must deal with what it accomplished and not with what it failed to accomplish. Most important, it provided an evening of emotional entertainment.
The cast was well chosen, and while Mr Freedman’s direction may have been overemphatic, we can accept the fact that acting without speech must develop as a new art. The leading role was played wonderfully well by Miss Feona Amour, a newcomer to the American theatre, whose acting was uninhibited and expressive. She is a delightful person to watch, very beautiful, and I am sure we will see her again. As Jennifer, she was simply adorable.
