Thirty Years. 1911

Chapter One

Everybody was happy but Johnny. Borden was happy be­cause he collected the money Peter owed him; Joe because, for the first time, he could make any picture he wanted without someone telling him what to do or what not to do. Peter was happy because the business had turned out even better than he had thought. He had paid all his debts, put eight thousand dollars in the bank, moved into a new apartment on Riverside Drive, and was getting a maid in to help Esther with the children. Esther was happy because Peter was happy.

But Johnny wasn't. He was content, in many ways satisfied, but still something was missing. The excitement, the feeling he had at first that big things were going to happen, were still deep within him, but covered by the commonplace layer of day-to-day activities.

If it were not for the Motion Picture Combine, Johnny might have been happy. But he had a carnival man's instinctive dislike and contempt for being forced into a pattern of routine not of his own choosing. And that was just what the combine was doing to the motion-picture industry.

The independent producers among whom Kessler and Bor­den had found themselves were dependent on the combine for the privilege of staying in business. The combine controlled the raw stock from which the film was made, the processes that made the film, the patents of the motion-picture camera, and even the patents covering subsidiary equipment without

which a picture could not be filmed, such as the mercury vapor lamps and light synchronizers.

By the virtue of these basic controls it was able to bend the independent producer to its will, since each independent operated under a cross-licensing agreement issued by the combine. Thus the combine was able to tell the producer what type of pictures he could make and how much he could sell them for. The rules were strict and all covered by the agreement. No feature was to be more than two reels in length. The exhibitor, in order to retain his motion-picture projector, must use a set quota of combine-produced film, over and above which he could use independently produced film if he desired. And the quota set was sufficiently great to limit the playing time available to the films made by the independents.

Johnny chafed under these restraints; inside him were the unformed visions of what motion pictures were to become. In vain he would rail against the combine for retarding the progress of the screen. Deep inside him he knew that he was shouting at the moon, because no independent producer, no matter how great his complaint, would dare to challenge the supremacy of the combine. The combine was king. It was the patronizing overlord of an infant industry that tolerated the independent producers as an indulgent father would eye the escapades of his children. The lines were carefully drawn and the independent had to toe the mark. If he did not, his license would be immediately withdrawn; his notes and debts were quickly bought up by the combine, and his sources of business were rapidly closed to him. If he obeyed the rules, the combine magnanimously allowed him to remain in business and collected from him a royalty on every foot of film he bought or sold.

Johnny had learned a great deal about motion pictures in the past three years and the conviction grew in him that something was missing from them. What it was he did not know; he only knew that the combine-enforced pattern of short features did not allow the producer to tell his story properly.

With interest he watched the development of the serial pictures that some producer had developed to get around the combine's regulations. But these were still shown at the rate of two reels a week, or one chapter, as they were called in order to conform with the combine's rules. These pictures were

followed avidly by the movie-goers from week to week, but for Johnny there was still something missing.

That was the intangible in the back of Johnny's mind, al­ways annoying him. It was like trying to remember a tune he had once heard. He could hear the melody, envision the music, but when he tried to bring it to his lips the melody would not come forth. It would linger at the back of his mind and tantalize him with its sound. So it was with motion pictures.

In his mind he could see the kind of motion picture that should be made. He knew its size, its shape, its form. He knew how long it should run, he even knew how the audience would react to it. But when he tried to bring it forth, he could not. It would dance in front of his eyes in a slow wraithlike form and then disappear into the bright realities of the day around him. Thus, with a constantly growing sense of excitement to come, the successes of the present day were as nothing to him.

Then one day the idea began to take shape. It was late in December of 1910 and he was standing in the lobby of Pappas' new theater in Rochester, talking to George, when a man and a woman had come out.

The man had stopped near them to light a cigar, and the woman spoke. "I wish they had the other episodes of that serial to show here tonight. Just for once I would like to see a whole picture instead of part of one."

Her voice cut into Johnny's mind and involuntarily he stopped talking to George and listened to what they were saying.

The man had laughed. "That's how they get you to come back every week," he said. "They only show you a part of the picture at a time. If they showed you the whole thing like a play, you wouldn't have anything to come back for next time."

"I don't know about that," the woman replied as the two walked away. "It seems to me that I would be more willing to come back every week if I knew I was going to see a whole show and get my money's worth."

Johnny couldn't hear the man's reply as they had already gone out of earshot, but his mind was tingling with the glim­mer of excitement that he came to recognize when he thought about what was going to come in motion pictures. He turned to George. "Did you hear that?"

George nodded his head.

"What do you think?" Johnny asked.

"Lots poopuls feel that way," George answered simply.

"How do you feel about it?" Johnny persisted.

George thought a few seconds before he answered. "I don't know," he replied at last. "Could be good, could be bad. Depends on picture. I got to see one, then I know."

On the train, all the way back to New York, the idea kept turning over and over in Johnny's mind. "A whole picture," the woman had said. What did it mean? He was puzzled, and his brows knit together as he thought about it. Was it a serial that could be shown all at once? Unconsciously he shook his head. That wasn't the answer. It would take half a day to run a picture that long. A serial was twenty reels long. Maybe the answer lay in cutting the serials down to smaller size, but what size? He had to know the answer.

It was late when he walked into the office, but the sense of excitement hadn't left him. He told Peter and Joe what he had heard and what he thought.

Joe seemed interested, but Peter was not. After listening to him Peter replied: "That's only one person talking. Most people are satisfied with the way things are. I wouldn't go out of my way to look for trouble."

But Johnny wasn't satisfied. He felt that the chance remark he had overheard held the key to the question in his mind, And the events of the ensuing days and weeks seemed to bear out his contention.

More now, so it seemed to Johnny, the exhibitors that he called on would ask him: "Haven't you got anything different? My customers are getting tired of the same old thing every lime.

And Johnny knew that they were right. He knew that it didn't make any difference to the exhibitor whose pictures he played; all the producers made the same sort of picture.

He decided to get a complete serial, condense it into one picture, and see if that was the answer. But another problem then presented itself. Magnum did not produce serials and he would have to obtain one from another company. Yet what company would give him a print of a serial and let him tamper with it? And if they would, he would have to tell them what he wanted to do and he didn't want any of them to know it.

He solved this problem by asking George to get him a print

of one of Borden's serials. George told Borden he liked it so much that he wanted to have a print of it for himself. Bill Borden felt so good about it that he insisted upon making George a gift of the print. If Borden had known what was to be done with his picture, he would have committed mayhem, but he didn't know and George turned the print over to Johnny.

Johnny took the print back to New York and he and Joe sat down to edit the ten chapters into one complete unit. They worked for five weeks on it before they felt they had a picture worth showing. They had a picture that ran six reels and took a little over an hour to show.

Until they had finished their work they had not told Peter about it. Now they called him in, told him the whole story, and asked him to view the finished product. He agreed to look at it and they set a showing for the next evening.

Johnny sent George a wire asking him to come down and see the picture. The next evening they all gathered in the little projection room at the Magnum Studios. Peter, Esther, George, Joe, and Johnny were the only people there. The regular projectionist had been sent home, and Johnny worked the projector.

They were quiet while the picture was on, but the minute it was over they all began to talk at once.

"It's too long," Peter said, "I don't like it. Nobody can sit so long and still enjoy a movie."

"Why not?" Johnny asked. "You sat through it without any trouble."

"It hurts your eyes looking at the screen so long," Peter replied. "It makes you uncomfortable."

"People sit in the movies that long now and it doesn't hurt then eyes," Johnny said heatedly. He was getting a little angry at Peter's continued stubbornness. "What's the difference if they look at one big picture or four little ones?"

Joe grinned. "Maybe you need glasses, Peter."

Peter exploded. His eyes had been bothering him, but he refused to wear glasses. "My eyes got nothing to do with it. The picture is too long!"

Johnny turned to George; his voice was challenging. "Well?"

George looked at him sympathetically for a moment before he answered. "I like it," he answered quietly, "but I would like to see it in a theater before I would say more."

Johnny smiled at him. "I would too, but we can't do it."

It remained for Esther to put her finger on the weakness of the picture. "It was interesting," she said, "but it wasn't complete. Something was missing. In a serial it is all right to have excitement in every chapter; when it's condensed into one picture it's too much. It's all excitement, and then it's too much to seem possible. After a while it seems like a joke."

When Johnny thought it over he realized that she was right. The answer was not in cutting serials down to another size but in developing a new-size picture. He had viewed the condensed version of the serial several times and he had come to the conclusion that while the running time of the picture was not too long, the picture lacked other elements of appeal that were necessary to round it out. A story would have to be developed that would fit the size of the picture.

They left the projection room in a group, still talking about the picture. Only Johnny was silent. He slouched along, his hands in his pockets, his face glum.

Peter slapped him on the shoulder. "Snap out of it. We're doing all right as it is, so why worry?"

Johnny didn't answer.

Peter took out his watch and looked at it. "Tell you what," he said, trying to cheer Johnny up. "It's early yet. Supposin' we all have dinner and then go to a show?"

Chapter Two

"NO!" Peter shouted. "Positively no! I ain't gonna do it!" He strode angrily past Joe and up to Johnny. He stood in front of him and waved an excited forefinger in Johnny's face. "I should

have to be crazy to do what you want! For almost two years now, we struggle and slave day and night to get on our feet and now that we're making a dollar you want to throw the whole damn thing away for another idea. I'm not crazy altogether yet. I won't do it!"

Johnny sat there quietly, looking up into Peter's face. Peter had been roaring ever since Johnny had come out with the idea of making a six-reel picture. Peter had listened quietly enough when Johnny proposed that they buy The Bandit, a play that was then running on Broadway, and make it into a picture. He had been quiet enough while Johnny told him he would hire the author of the play to write the screen version. He had been quiet enough while Johnny explained to him how they could capitalize on the play's already established market value. His interest in the idea was evident from the question he had asked Johnny: "How much would it cost?"

Johnny had anticipated the question. He had prepared a budget on the picture, and he figured it would cost around twenty-three thousand dollars. He gave Peter the budget.

Peter took one look at the budget and threw the whole thing back at Johnny. "Twenty-three thousand dollars for one pic­ture!" he yelled. "A man's got to be meshuggeh! Buy a play and hire a man to write it for twenty-five hundred dollars? For the same money I could make a whole picture!"

"You'll have to start somewhere," Johnny insisted, "and some day you'll have to do it."

"Maybe some day," Peter replied hotly, "but not now. We just got into the clear and now you want to put me in hock again. Where am I gonna get that kind of money? I'm not the United States mint yet."

"Nothing ventured nothing gained," Johnny quoted quietly.

"Neither do you lose your shirt," Peter replied quickly. "Be­sides, it ain't your money you want to put up."

Johnny grew angry at that. "You know damn well I wouldn't ask you to put money into anything I wouldn't."

"Your money!" Peter sneered. "It ain't enough to buy toilet paper for the studio for a week."

"It's enough to pay for ten per cent of the picture," Johnny yelled. His face was getting flushed.

"Take it easy," Joe said, stepping between them. "All this hollering ain't going to settle anything." He turned to Peter.

"I got enough for another ten per cent of the picture. That leaves only eighteen thousand for you to get."

Peter threw his hands in the air. " 'Only eighteen thousand,' he says. Like I can pick it up on the sidewalk." He turned and slammed the top of his desk down and then looked up at them.

"No!" he shouted. "Positively no! I ain't gonna do it!"

Johnny’s anger had evaporated. He could understand Peter's reluctance to endanger what he already had accomplished, but Johnny was convinced that what he proposed must be done. He spoke slowly and quietly.

"Back in Rochester you thought I was crazy about this," he pointed out, "but we didn't do so bad, did we?" He didn't wait for Peter to answer. "You got a nice apartment on Riverside Drive, eight thousand in the bank that's all clear, a paid-up mortgage, haven't you?"

Peter nodded his head. "And I ain't going to risk it on one of your crazy ideas. We were just lucky the last time. This time it's different. This time it's not only money we have to risk, but also we'd have to fight the combine. And you know how far we'd get doing that." He, too, had cooled off a little. He spoke more sympathetically now.

"I'm sorry, Johnny. Honest. Maybe your idea is good, for all I know, even if I don't think it is. But with things the way they are we can't take the chance. That's my final word on the sub­ject." He walked to the door. "Good night," he said, and shut the door behind him.

Johnny looked at Joe and shrugged his shoulders expressly. Joe grinned at him. "Don't look so disappointed, kid.d:\lter After all, it's his dough and he's got a right to his ideas." He got to his feet. "Come on out and have a beer and forget it." Johnny looked thoughtful. "No, thanks. I'm gonna sit here awhile and see if I can figger some way to make him see it. This is one business you can't afford to sit still in. If you do, you're cooked."

Joe looked down at him. He shook his head slowly. "All right, kid, have it your way. You're beating your nut against a stone wall, though." For a while after Joe left, Johnny sat where he was; then he got up and walked over to Peter's desk. He rolled up the top and picked up the budget he had given Peter and looked at it.

He stood there almost ten minutes looking at it. At last he put it back and rolled the top of the desk down. "All right, you old buzzard," he said to the desk as if it were Peter, "some day you'll do it."

Johnny opened his eyes slowly. The air in the room was warm. Spring had come early this year, with a more than ample hint of the summer to come. It was only mid-March, but already winter coats had been shed and men were going to work in their jackets and shirtsleeves.

Lazily he got out of bed and walked through the parlor of the apartment and opened the door. The Sunday papers were lying on the floor in front of it. He bent down and picked them up. Reading the headlines, he went back into the parlor and sat down in an easy chair.

He heard the snoring coming through the open door of Joe's room. With a grimace he got up and walked over to Joe's room and looked in. Joe was curled up in a corner of the bed, saw­ing wood. Quietly Johnny shut the door and went back to his chair.

He turned the pages until he came to the dramatic section. Motion pictures were not covered regularly on the amusement pages of the daily papers as yet, but the Sunday papers de­voted an occasional item to the new medium. This Sunday there were two items that made Johnny sit up suddenly in his chair.

The first was an item from Paris. "Mme Sarah Bernhardt to make four-reel motion picture based on the life of Queen Elizabeth."

The second was from Rome. "The famous novel Quo Vadis? will be made into an eight-reel film in Italy next year."

The items were brief. They were hidden in the corner of the page, but to Johnny they were banner headlines proving he had been right. He stared at the paper for a long time, won­dering if Peter would agree with him now. At last he gave it up and went into the kitchen and put a pot of water on the stove for coffee.

The smell of coffee brought Joe from his bed, sleepy and rubbing his eyes. "Morning," he grunted. "What's for breakfast?"

It was Johnny's turn to make Sunday breakfast. "Eggs," he answered.

"Oh." Joe turned back and began to stagger toward the bathroom.

"Wait a minute," Johnny called after him. He picked up the paper and showed the items to Joe.

Joe read them and handed the papers back to Johnny. "So what does it prove?" he asked.

"It proves that I was right," Johnny said, a note of triumph creeping into his voice. "Don't you see? Now Peter will have to listen to me."

Joe shook his head slowly. "You never give up, once you get something in your nut, do you?"

Johnny was indignant. "Why should I? It's a good idea and I was right in saying that bigger pictures were coming."

"Maybe they are," Joe admitted1, "but where are you going to make them? And how are you going to make them?

"Even if we get all the dough, you know our studio isn't big enough to do it in. It would take all the raw stock we use for six months' production to do a job like that. And you know the combine is dead set against anything over two reels, and if they get wise to us they'll take away our license and then where'll we be? Up the creek?"

"So we give up making small pictures for a time," Johnny answered. "We can save up enough film for the picture and make it before they find out what's going on."

Joe lit a cigarette and blew out the smoke. He eyed Johnny shrewdly. "Maybe you're right. Maybe we can get away with it, maybe we can't. If we can't, then Magnum's out of business. They're a little too big for us to take on. They'll squash us like you step on an ant. Let Borden or one of the others take them on. They got more dough to do it with, and even with that I don't see any of them falling over themselves to get into trouble."

"Well, I still think there is some way we can do it," Johnny insisted stubbornly.

"Still think you're right, huh?" Joe looked at him strangely.

Johnny nodded his head. "I am right."

Joe was silent for a moment, then he heaved a sigh. "Maybe you are, but look what you're riskin'. I'm not worried about

my neck or yours. We're alone. We don't have to worry if things go wrong, 'cause we kin get along. But Peter's another story. If we go wrong on this, he's broke. If he goes broke, then what's the guy gonna do? He's got a wife an' two nice kids to look after. He put everything he's got into this business, an' if it misses out, he's finished." He stopped and drew a deep breath. He looked right into Johnny's eyes. "Yuh willin' to risk that?"

Johnny didn't answer him for a long while. He had thought about it before. He knew of the risk, Joe didn't have to tell him about it. But there was something inside him that kept pushing him on. It kept saying over and over: "The golden fleece lies just ahead. All you need to grab it is the nerve." The vision of the picture in his mind was like Circe calling to him. He could no more stop following it than he could stop breathing.

His face was set and determined as he answered. "I got to do it, Joe, it's the only thing that counts. It's the only chance the business has to become really big, really important. Other­wise we're in the nickelodeon business all our lives; this way we're something that really counts. We're an art. Like the theater, like music, like books, only some day maybe we're bet­ter and bigger than all of them. We gotta do it."

"You mean you gotta do it," Joe said slowly. An odd sense of disappointment tugged at him. He ground his cigarette out in a tray. "You got dreams of what you want, an' you think that's what the business must have. If I didn't know yuh better an' like yuh so much, I would say you're selfish an' ambitious. But I know differen'. Yuh really mean what yuh say, but there's one thing yuh gotta know."

Johnny's face had gone white as Joe spoke. With difficulty he forced himself to ask: "What?"

"Peter's been awful good to us. Don't never fergit it." Joe turned and walked out of the room.

Johnny looked at his back and then turned to the water boiling on the stove. His hand was trembling as he turned down the gas.

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