LIX

The train stopped for forty minutes in Albuquerque. Mr. Davis and I passed them in the Fred Harvey showroom, which in those days was more museum than gift-shop. The Maya potteries, the Virgins with real hair and chiseled silver crowns, the finely carved iron-bound coffers, the leather-backed nail-studded chairs, the show cases of Toledo rapiers and daggers and damascened pistols and incredible spurs made the place a property man's El Dorado. There were photographs of the California missions on sale and I bought several of San Luis Rey, San Juan Capistrano and San Fernando—the latter only a few minutes from Universal City, said Mr. Davis.

I was impatient to see the originals, and from the pictures started picking shooting angles. Right then, I made up my mind to find a subject that would permit me to make use of these settings for my first coast production. Before I had been in California a week I had visited four missions, and though I doubt if the oldest of them dated back more than a one hundred and fifty years they gave the impression of much greater age. The photographs only vaguely suggested the simple beauty of San Juan Capistrano, and loss of its atmosphere. In Spain and in Italy I have since visited provincial convents of greater antiquity and significance, but few with more charm than Capistrano had then.Original footnote by Ingram: "Capistrano has since been 'restored'."

Universal City, with its acres of outdoor sets—towns and villages of all conceivable and inconceivable countries crowded together against a background of purple hills—was a striking contrast to the studios at Fort Lee. The plaster work on some of these streets had cracked and fallen away, and their shells of houses had been patined by rain and sun. Among them I found a Latin-American market place with barred windows and colonaded facades and a church at one end of it. I saw that only a few repairs would be needed to make it shootable, and the missions were waiting for me. We decided on a Latin-American version of La Tosca, with Universal's most talented dramatic star, Miss Cleo Madison, in the leading rôle. My detailed synopsis called for only three interior sets, one of them to be built behind a facade on the market place, the other two to be set up on one of the stages. I insisted on building them with plaster walls, beamed ceilings and solid, paneled doors. The plaster interior set was an innovation at Universal City, where interiors had hitherto been built of compoboard flats, painted or papered over, and sanded. The added cost of plaster met with production department opposition, but as there were only three settings I gained my point.

The picture went along smoothly after we got started and, seeing the number of scenes we made daily, the results were good. We got some beautiful shots in the mission; and a prison love scene, photographed in the damp cellars of San Fernando mission with the aid of a mirror, the light streaming through a small barred window onto an aluminum reflector in front of the camera, was pretty effective. When we came to the supper scene, the production department got another jolt. I had ordered a five course dinner from the Alexandria Hotel, and insisted on the headwaiter serving it. The department claimed the artists could not eat a five course dinner in the sequence and most of the food would be wasted. However, the grips and electricians gave me their moral and gastronomical support and consumed what food remained when we quit work at 4:30 a.m.

The picture, a Bluebird Feature, was finished on schedule, and cost much less than a production of the same size would have cost in the eastern studios. It was released as The Chalice of Sorrow.

* * * *

A week after The Chalice of Sorrow had been shipped east the New York office wired the coast to keep Miss Madison in the same line of stuff, and P.A. Powers wired me to keep up the good work. By the time it came to choosing her next subjeet she had read the script of Black Orchids I had prepared for Theda Bara.

Mr. Davis shared her opinion that the story would give her a chance to do her stuff a second time. So I cashed a Universal check for $500. for the motion picture rights to it.

In ten days we had started production, Miss Madison supported by a capable cast including Joe Martin, the orang-outang. From the story standpoint Black Orchids was trite enough, and, judged by the motion picture standards of those days, censorable: a father and son being lovers of the same lady. Some of the settings lent themselves to unusual treatment; for instance, each room in the crystal gazer's house was hung in blue or red velvet and lighted by diffused sunlight and mirrors with layers of cheese cloth over them. With the exception of one sequence, no artificial lights were used in photographing the picture.

We had learned a lot from The Chalice of Sorrow, particularly about the rapidity with which the sun moved from the mirrors. So instead of rehearsing and shooting, we rehearsed all day and shot what we had rehearsed the next day, which gave the production department a third jolt, seeing they had to make out a daily report. Ingram, number of scenes shot: 0., did not look well in black and white, but the next day, having two and a half hours good morning light until 11:30, I would account for a dozen scenes, and in the afternoon, shooting in a set facing the other way, perhaps a dozen more.

The outstanding roles in the picture were those of an exotic crystal gazer—Miss Madison—and her special henchman, anthropoid Mr. Martin, whose most effective work was in the scene where he twisted apart the iron bars of a dimly lit cellar until there was room for him to crawl through, and, after clambering over the guest chairs, changed the goblet of a would-be poisoner for that of his intended victim.

The picture went over in a big way and got excellent reviews. But this was more due to its treatment than anything else. Handled conventionally, it would have passed as just another hair raising melo. From New York the main office wired Mr. Davis to sign me on a year's contract at $300. a week.

The morning I signed the contract I met a blond young lady whose head made me think of the head of the Victory figure that leads Saint Gaudens' bronze General Sherman to the sea in front of the Plaza Hotel in New York. The slight heaviness of her features gave them a fine sculptural quality, and as I studied her face I noted that a life-mask of her would need practically no retouching to make a pretty swell fragment of sculpture. We talked for a while and I brought her over on a set they were building for my next picture. Her voice was low and attractive, and her eyes, though small, expressive. I liked her from the start. I told her I had a bungalow at the foot of Pinehurst Road and a Japanese cook, and asked her if she would have dinner with me that night. She hesitated before accepting and I said there was no need to be scared. She said she was not easily scared and, in any case, I looked very safe. I said I was not sure how to take that, but she had not known me long enough to insult me, so I guessed it was all right. She had a nice laugh, too. She was from the middle west, I judged, of German or Dutch origin.

The Jap served cocktails before dinner, so we became friendly and communicative very soon, and the dinner was so good that we had reached the expansive stage before dessert. I was thinking it would be pretty nice if she could dine with me every night, and said so, and she said it was a charming bungalow and I had a wonderful cook. Before she left I asked her if she was married, had ever been married, or ever intended getting married. She said no to the first two and, to the third, that she had never given it a thought. I said if she ever did give it a thought, and the idea appealed to her, to let me know. She said if she did she certainly would. I took her home in my sporty 'used' Stutz Bearcat, and we made a luncheon date for the following day.

When I drove the Stutz into the Hollywood Garage after I had left her, a hunchback with red hair shot in after me on a motorcycle. He parked it quickly between a big Pierce Arrow and a delivery van and crawled under the Stutz which had less clearance. I started to speak, but the foreman of the shop put his finger to his lips. We heard another motorcycle outside. A cop pulled up in front of the garage.

"Motorcycle pass here?" he yelled.

"Not two minutes ago," said the foreman. "Toward Beverly, like a bat out of hell."

The cop shot off and swung to the right past the Hollywood Hotel. From under the Stutz a face appeared.

"All clear, boys ?" it inquired.

"Okay, Bill, come on out," said the foreman.

"Whee-oo!" said the hunchback, emerging. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with long fingers and flicked it away.

"Thought you had all them cops fixed, Bill," said the foreman.

"New on the job, that guy," said the hunchback. "Came near nabbing me. Have to raise hell with the chief."

"Happy to have afforded you shelter," I said.

"Yeh?" said the hunchback.

"Beneath my Stutz," I said.

"Louey Heebe's, you mean," he said.

"Not now," I said. "Been mine since Tuesday week."

"Earl Cooperis 2½ dirt-track gears in it. Swell boat. That Mercedes radiator's a bird," he said.

"You know it," I said.

"Know it?" he said. "I was the one put the new gears in it."

"Mr. Rathbun—Mr. Ingram," said the foreman, introducing us.

"Ever worked in pictures, Mr. Rathbun?" I asked.

"No," said Mr. Rathbun.

"Like to?"

"Anything once," he said.

"Come out to Universal City in the morning, I've a part for you," I said.

"I'll be there. Boys, here's where J. Warren Kerrigan loses his job" he said, executing seven steps of a jig.

* * * *

My next picture. The Reward of the Faithless, was a Russian story, an original script of my own. Nick the Dimebender had turned up in Hollywood and I engaged him as Russian expert and cast him in a good part. But the best performance was given by 'Humpty' Bill Rathbun as the crippled brother of a seduced peasant girl.

I had not seen the blond young lady with the sculpturesque head for several days. I often thought of her when I came home after work and sat down to dinner alone. I wondered if she was out of town as I never could get her on the phone, so I sent Humpty Bill along with a note to her, and instructions to slip it under the door if she was not there.

When I came back that evening I found the table laid for two. I yelled for my Jap and he stuck his head out of the kitchen door.

"Very nice young lady telephone. I talky-talk. She say, bymby you go fetch her. I fix very nice dinner," he grinned.

That Jap was no liar. He started us off with cocktails of the Bronx variety that had a heady unfamiliar flavor, and followed them with iced grapefruit liqueured and cherried. The entrée, I will not attempt to describe, but I have had many a yen for it since. After that, he came along with kidneys on toast wrapped in crisp bacon, and an avocado salad. We finished with cantaloup filled with pistache ice-cream.

Over Turkish coffee and cigarettes I inquired if she had considered what I had said the first night she had dined with me.

"What was that?" she asked innocently.

"You've a poor memory," I said.

"Really," she said. "I haven't given it a thought."

Suppose you do?" I said.

"But why?" she asked.

"Oh, I've often wondered how it feels to be married," I said. "It can't be so bad about this time when you come home after a tough day's work. I don't like being alone in the evenings. Don't you ever get bored being alone?"

"Sometimes I do," she said.

"Listen," I said. "I'm stopping by for you in the morning and we'll go down and get a marriage license."

"My goodness, what on earth for?" she asked.

"It's not a bad thing to have in the house," I said. "And if you ever did decide you'd like to be married we'd only have to drive over to Santa Ana and see the judge."

"I never thought of that," she said.

In the morning we got the license. As far as I remember it did not lay around the house unused for very long.

* * * *

I was finished up a sequence on the closed stage near the Zoo when the office boy handed me a note from Mr. Davis' secretary saying H.O. had something to say to me.

What he had to say was that the production department complained I was shooting a lot of scenes that were not in the script, and as I had skipped several script scenes they could not keep track of what I was doing. I said even if they could they would not be any the wiser, and anyway I got many of my best ideas on the set.

"Mr. Laemmlae writes you're using too many hunchbacks, dwarfs, and grotesque types," said Mr. Davis. "People don't like to see them on the screen."

"That's funny," I said. "He congratulated me on the types I used in the two underworld pictures I made for Julius. I don't see why he's kicking now."

"I know nothing about that," he said. "But the censors report that deformed people have a bad effect on women in the family way, and a lot of them go to pictures."

"I never thought of that," I said.

"Keep it in mind," he said. And then I got a letter from P.A. Powers. In part it read:

"H.O. says you've put all the hunchbacks in California in stock, and the production department can't keep track of what you're doing because you don't follow the script. There appears to be only one copy of it, and the scene numbers you gave them and those you shoot don't coincide. Make an effort to cooperate with the boys. Remember you're not the only director out there. There are thirty nine other units on the lot."