At a long mahogany table with a polished top protected by a glass slab with beveled edges, sat William Fox. Mahogany chairs upholstered in leather lined the walls of his office. Private secretary Sol Wortzel showed me in. His hair was tousled and his heavy features lined. The lenses of his spectacles were moist and there was a whitish deposit at the corners of his eyes and mouth. He looked like a man who had been on his feet for twentyfour hours.
"Go home and get some sleep, Sol," said Mr. Fox.
"That's all right, Mr. Fox," Sol said.
"Do as I tell you," said Mr. Fox.
Mr. Fox was in his shirtsleeves. He wore suspenders instead of a belt, and his collar and tie lay on the table on one side of him. With his right hand he crushed the butt of a cigar against an ashtray and took mine in his left. His eyes were prominent, and though brown, very piercing. He was getting bald, but this was not noticeable because his black hair was plastered over his forehead with Bandoline. He smiled at me as if we were old friends.
"Sit down, Rex," he said in a hoarse voice, and handed me a sealed glass tube with a cigar in it. He took another himself. When we were lighted up he leaned across the table, staring at me.
"I've been in the show business longer than I like to admit," he said. "The theatre's through. But it's not wise to itself yet. If I can do what I believe, with God's help, I can do, I'm getting out of it."
His cigar had gone out. I held a match for him.
"The moving picture is the most powerful weapon man has yet found," he went on. "Newspapers, religion, aeroplanes haven't got the same possibilities. Control the motion picture industry and you will eventually control the sentiments of the human race."
He brought his open palm down on the table.
"There are two universal means of expression," he went on after a pause. "One has been perfected: the machine gun. The other, the motion picture, isn't even half-cocked yet."
He puffed a few times on his cigar and unbuttoned the two top buttons of his trousers. Then he said:
"There's a war on now, and it can be made the last war if the right men get control of the motion picture industry. Today it is in the hands of smalltimers. They don't realize what they have. Before they do, I'm going to take it away from them. And when I have, I will bring love and happiness and enlightenment to every American home, and to homes all over the world."
I had never heard anyone talk like this before, and from the way Mr. Fox talked I knew he was capable of carrying out his ideas. There was no bluff about him, rather a passionate earnestness, and the conviction of a visionary in the infallibility of his visions—which communicated itself to me.
"There are millions—billions of dollars to be made in this new industry," he said. "People are always willing to pay if they are given more than their money's worth. That is what I intend to give them. It's a gamble, but I'm staking everything I have in the world on my faith in what I am going to do."
He touched a bell. Sol Wurtzel came in. He had his coat on and carried his hat.
"Tell Reynolds not to go until I've seen him," said Mr. Fox.
When Sol had gone Mr. Fox got up and began to walk around the room. He puffed violently at his cigar.
"You know the 14th Street Academy of Music?" he said.
"Very well," I said
"Did you get your money's worth there?" he said.
"I sure did," I said.
"One of the best deals I ever made, the Academy," he said. "I've coined money there. A good share of its success is due to my stage director and producer, J. Gordon Edwards. But we'll soon be showing feature films instead of stage plays there, and I don't want J. Gordon to get left behind. I want to make a motion picture director out of him. He knows nothing about the picture business. I'm only learning it. D.W. Griffith and the Vitagraph are making the best pictures today. You're from the Vitagraph. I think you can help him, and me. How do you stand with Albert Smith?"
I handed him Vic's letter. He read it and handed it back.
"You're no more than a boy," he said. "How much are you making at the Vitagraph?"
I rapidly calculated my work checks for the past three weeks plus my salary of $25. per.
"Fortyfive dollars," I said.
"I'll give you $75., and if J. Gordon's first picture goes over I'll raise you to $100.—if Albert Smith don't hold you to that agreement. I don't think he will. The Vitagraph will be letting directors out soon."
"And my job?" I said.
"You and I are going to rewrite the scenario for J. Gordon's picture, and you're going to assist him. Sid Reynolds is on the floor below, he'll give you a copy of the play, Robert Mantell's old melodrama, Rose Michel. Ask him for the scenario they made, too. Read both tonight, and you and I will have breakfast here tomorrow morning and talk over the story. Eight-thirty."
He had sold himself to me. From then on I was with him. I had a feeling that his success would be mine too.
"We're going to do fine things together, Rex," he said, taking my hand.
When I got to the door he called me back.
"Don't forget," he said, "J. Gordon's a man who has forgotten all you know about the drama. But his motion picture knowledge is nil. That you've got. Your story showed me that. Your job will be to see that he makes a motion picture, not a stage play, out of Rose Michel...You can help him most by becoming his friend and gaining his confidence – not by telling him how they do things at the Vitagraph. You get me?"
"I do," I said. "I'll do my best, I like Mr. Edwards. "We'll get along all right."
"I know you will," he said. "Goodnight."
William Fox was already at work when I got there in the morning. I had not been to bed. It had taken me all night to read the play and the scenario of Rose Michel. The play was constructed with some regard for the limitations of the theatre. The scenario ambled along aimlessly without regard for any limitations—and for some five hundred scenes. I laid both scripts on Mr. Fox's table. He tapped the scenario.
"Anything we can use in it?"
"Nothing that isn't in the play."
"What's wrong with it?"
"Five hundred scenes without foregrounds or closeups. Gets nowhere. Shot as it is now, it would run about fifteen thousand feet cut and titled. Three thousand feet of subtitles alone in it."
"And the play?"
"Old-fashioned melodrama. Three good situations. Lot of sob stuff."
"That's what they want," said Mr. Fox. "That's what Griffith gives them....Will it make a picture?"
"Depends who plays the woman. Who's going to play the woman?"
"Greatest artist in Europe. $1000. a week, I'm paying her: Betty Nansen."
"And the heavy?"
"Comes near stealing every picture I put him in. Stuart Holmes."
Sol Wurtzel came in followed by a waiter from Rogers' restaurant around the corner on Sixth Avenue, on his tray a steaming pot of coffee, two cups and a dish of poached eggs on toast with strips of crisp bacon on the side.
I got up to go.
"Sit down," said Mr. Fox.
The waiter served us both. The coffee made me feel better. My eyes were tired and I had a headache. When we got through Mr. Fox handed me a glass tube with a cigar in it.
"When can you give me a detailed synopsis of the story as you see it?"
"In two or three days."
"Make it tomorrow morning."
"I haven't been to bed yet."
"Do your best. Miss Nansen goes on salary Monday. I want the picture to start next week sure."
"Will help a lot if I can see her. I like to visualize the players in the rôles when I'm writing."
Mr. Fox rang the bell.
"Sol," he said, "give Rex the vacant office on the third floor next to Edgar Lewis."
Then he turned to me.
"Start in now on your synopsis. If you get sleepy send over to Rogers for coffee. That'll keep your eyes open. Miss Nansen and Holmes will be here at noon. I'll send for you."
At eleven that night the little eastside stenographer had typed the last page. I dictated it to her in her railed-off corral outside the Fox Theatrical Agency office on the third floor. Over her desk hung a warning:
WATCH YOUR STEP. WATCH YOUR WATCH. WATCH THE AGENTS.
Her boy friend was a fighter. From her locket his tin ears peeped out at me. She and I had become pals right away.
Mr. Fox was coming out of the projection room with Herbert Brennon when I handed him the synopsis.
"Good boy," he said. "I'll read it right away. Run along and get some sleep now. Breakfast at eight-thirty."
Mr. Fox pushed back his chair. I stopped reading and looked up from the working scenario I had started four days before.
"How far are we now?" he asked.
"End of first reel."
"How does it hit you, J. Gordon?" he asked.
"Fine. Never liked that wedding episode in the old scenario. Fine job we'd have making Nansen look thirty, let alone eighteen. Rex starts off fine. Gets into the action right away. Woman of forty already."
I began reading again. Mr. Fox started walking up and down the room.
"Where are we now?" he asked after a while.
"End of second reel."
About the end of the third reel he stopped me again.
"Ever see the fluctuation chart of a rising stock market?" he asked.
"You mean that looks like the temperature charts they use in hospitals—a line that zig-zags down until the patient is normal?"
"Yes," said Mr. Fox. "But I said a rising market. The line zig-zags up in waves until the climax is reached. You can make a chart like that of any play that has run six months on Broadway. The crest of every wave is the end of a scene or an act. If the play is well constructed, each crest is higher, the dip after it less than the last—which means the audience is held, the suspense increasing, the drama building up as it goes along. The temperature chart works the other way: the descending line that shows the patient is recovering would show the play is dying on its feet."
"Quite right, quite right," said J. Gordon. "Very clearly expressed."
"What I'm getting at, is this," said Mr. Fox. "You've an upward curve at the end of the first reel, another at the end of the second, and now at the end of the third you let us down."
"But there's a punch at the end of the fourth reel," I said, "when—"
"Too late," interrupted Mr. Fox. "They'll be walking out on you before you get to it."
I said nothing. I had started in with a feeling that I was a kind of cinema paragon engaged for the purpose of keeping Mr. Fox and J. Gordon straight. But already I was beginning to doubt my infallibility, and was wishing Mr. Fox would let me read on to the end of the scenario and then criticize, instead of breaking in on me as I was getting to my points.
"A punch at the end of every reel," he said.
"I've kept as close as I could to the construction of the play," I said.
"That's all right," he said. "But there's a lot the play hasn't got that we're going to put in the picture. We want a punch right now."
"Well," I said with a shrug, "it's not for me to contradict you, but—"
"What do you mean it's not for you to contradict me?" said Mr. Fox with his cigar moving up and down in his mouth. "What do you think I'm paying you for—to yes me? What's on your mind?"
"We're not writing a serial," I said. "Betty Nansen isn't Pearl White. We can't have her jumping off fire-escapes or from one express train to another the minute the interest lags."
"Quite right. A good point. Very clearly put," said J. Gordon.
"No," said Mr. Fox. "You're both wrong. There's no question of fires or express trains here. This is drama, not adventure. Your situation is there only you don't see it."
"Where?" I asked.
"End of the fourth reel."
"Yes, but the third reel?" I asked.
"Drop it," said Mr. Fox. "Make the fourth reel the third.
"Can't drop it entirely," I said. "One thing's got to be planted."
"Plant it! Plant it!" he shouted. "But you don't need a thousand feet to do it!"
Like this we wrote and re-wrote. We acted out scenes with Mr. Fox playing Miss Nansen, J. Gordon, Stuart Holmes, and I the leading man. We moved the table and the chairs; the humidor became the villain's strong box, J. Gordon the weary traveller in the inn, and I the assassin in the night—armed with a paper knife.
Mr. Fox seemed to know each show that had played New York in the past thirty years; its cast, gross earnings and every situation in it. In unravelling a dramatic knot, his experience came to our aid over and over again. I learned first from him how many dramatic situations there actually are, and he knew how most of them had been solved by the best dramatic minds for over a generation.
He was doing the same thing with four other companies at the same time, and saw every foot of film that was photographed.
When J. Gordon started directing, Herbert Brennon, Edgar Lewis, Will Davis and Frank Powell were shooting, cutting or preparing scripts. A little later 'Bing' Thompson and Raoul Walsh joined The Fox Film Company.
In the projection room one night I was sitting next to Mr. Fox watching our rushes.
"Who's that assistant cameraman?" he asked. "Fire him, whoever he is—holding up the numberboard with a cigarette in his mouth. I'll teach him to smoke while he's working!"
They sent for the boy. Before he could open his mouth he got the bawling out of his life.
"Mr. Fox," he said, "I wasn't smoking. That's the chalk in my mouth for marking up the scenes."
"Well, stick it in your ear next time," said Mr. Fox, and raised his salary.
I had made ground plans of our sets, indicating entrances and principal camera set-ups. When the scenario was finished I made sketches of the sets in perspective. These were worked up in the technical director's draughting room. When the sets were built in the old Pathé studio at Fort Lee, which Mr. Fox had rented, and where Pearl White, Crane Wilbur and Paul Panzer were making The Perils of Pauline, I went with the chief property man to choose the furniture and props to dress the sets. I had already gone out with J. Gordon and the cameraman to pick our exterior locations and, as the last episodes took place in a prison, I brought them to the old fort where Mr. Ridgely had shot the lunatic asylum in Hard Cash. We made photographs of it from all angles for Mr. Fox, who had already decided to build a very ambitious set behind the studios. He was delighted when he saw them and said I had made a big saving in time and money, and no set would look as realistic as the old fort....My stock was going up.
I had a hand in the costumes too, and made sketches for those of the principals. Miss Nansen and Stuart Holmes had ideas of their own, and while Miss Nansen finally looked rather Danish, Stuart got a lot of character into his makeup. He had worked for a sculptor in Chicago and had imagination.
Certain incidental shots were needed, and I persuaded J. Gordon to let me take the cameraman and make them a couple of days before production started. We shot them from unusual angles and they turned out well. I told Mr. Fox he could save time and footage by engaging a cutter right away instead of waiting until the picture was finished, and by shooting and cutting the picture by sequences. The schedule was arranged accordingly, but at the last moment he had no cutter available.
"Do you know a good cutter I can get?" he asked.
"I'll call up Frank Lawrence, the head cutter at the Vitagraph. He'll be sure to know of some one."
Mr. Fox pushed the phone over to me.
"Don't say it's for the Fox Company," I told the operator. "Just say I want to talk to Frank Lawrence."
"Got just the man you need," Frank said. "We're cutting down here. Got to let him out."
"Send him up right away. Tell him to ask for me," I said. We engaged him at forty dollars. Everything was set.