Having decided to concentrate on the manufacture of feature films and serials to the gradual exclusion of shorter subjects, the Universal Company had announced two brands of special features shortly to be released by them: Bluebird and Red Feather. On the production of a Bluebird up to $15,000 would be spent. The budget of a Red Feather was limited to $8000.
The Great Problem—this being the title under which my picture was released—had not reached the $8000. mark, so it was within Red Feather budget limits. However, Mr. Laemmlae liked it so much that he told me in the projection room—to the annoyance of Julius—that he intended releasing it as a Bluebird. He said the first two Bluebirds would be Lois Webber's picture, Hop, the Devil's Brew, produced on the coast, and The Great Problem. Mr. Powers was there too, and liked the picture and said California was the place for me to go. Working facilities were much better there than in New York.
In the hall on the way out I ran into Julius.
"I hope you appreciate the beautiful things Mr. Laemmlae said about your picture," he said.
I said I certainly did as there was now nothing to prevent him paying me $800. + $500. for the direction and story.
"Are you crazy?" said Julius. "Don't you know I gave you your first chance?...Is that the way you thank me?"
"Don't you know my picture has put you ace high with Mr. Laemmlae?" I said.
"Listen," said Julius. "Cut out the bull. I give you eight hundred bucks for directing the picture like I said I would—is that a piker ?—and we forget about the story. How's that for a square deal?"
"What about the agreement we signed and all the handshaking?" I said,
"Hell," said Julius, "that was for another picture."
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Yellow and White," he said. "And don't forget the Sunday you walked out on me and we had to call sixty extras again Monday.
"Fifty," I corrected. "And the company's getting a Bluebird for less than $8000. instead of for $15,000. But let it go."
"That's the way to talk," said Julius. "And to show you I'm a sport I give you three hundred bucks for Yellow and White and you make it for two hundred bucks a week."
"No you won't, sport," I said. "The agreement is already signed for Yellow and White."
"I know it," said Julius. "I was just taking a rise out of you."
Before Yellow and White, which had fared so badly in association with James Marc Anthony Young, had been given a chance to fare better with Julius, Artist Thomas H. Benton went with its author to visit an art gallery that was exhibiting two full length portraits by Zuloaga, one of which Mrs. Winthrop had decided to sell Mrs. Thaw for $12,000.
"There's the way I want you to make that portrait for me," I said pointing to one of them. "Pretty swell, eh?"
Benton shrugged.
"Purely objective," he said, observing it without enthusiasm.
"You can't say it's not well painted," I said.
"That's the only thing it is," he said. "Every Spanish painter is a near-Velasquez."
"What about the near-Greccos?" I said meaningly.
"Grecco was an intellectual," said Benton.
"Whether he was or not, these Zuloagas look swell to me," I said. "Can you do some thing as good?"
"If that's the kind of crap you want you'll have it, by God," said Benton. "That is, if you've got the dough to buy the stretcher and canvas."
"We'll do it right now," I said.
Within a week a rather startling full length portrait of me hung at one end of my sitting room on East 19th Street. I was standing on a hill, enshrouded in Benton's cape, one elongated hand resting on the silver head of Benton's ebony walking stick. In the sombre distance a town of hispano-mauresque character overlooked a murky torrent that wound through a ravine, and ominous cloud effects added to the general gloom of the ensemble. As a likeness it was quite sinister, and it made me look much older than I was. Barton said if I was really as evil as the personage in Benton's cape on the Spanish hillside I might turn out to be interesting after all, but he was afraid Benton had painted his own badness into it instead of the badness in me, which he was afraid was not very bad. Benton admitted the head was excellent, but thought it was a shame to see the rest of it taking up so much good canvas. I reminded him that I had paid for it.
Much of my next two weeks was spent in Chinatown with Charlie Fang, the little Chinese actor, a policeman on the Chinatown squad I had known from Vitagraph days, Big Bill and a draughtsman from the technical department. We visited hop joints and gambling dens where solemn Chinese smoked opium, or played Fan-Tan and Twentyone with grave recklessness. We had a camera with us, and made some time exposures of the hop joint. We took measurements of the bunks, and arranged with my patrolman friend to rent the real pipes and layouts for the picture. We bought a dab of opium smeared on a playing card and I tried it out, cooking it over the little oil lamp as I held it in the bowl of the pipe with a skewer like yen-hawk, my neck resting on one of those cube-shaped sueybows covered with finely woven matting that serve the smoker for a pillow. There were a lot of bedbugs in the joint and some of the smokers speared them with yen-hawks as they crawled up the walls.
In the story there was a tong war, as there has been since in every Chinatown story. The On Leong tong, which is a merchants' association, and the Hip Sing tong which is a sort of labor union, were the tongs involved.
For the tong execution in the picture the patrolman loaned me the confiscated hatchet a hatchetman of the Hip Sings had actually used to execute an On Leong. As Warner Oland was working, I used Frank Smith—whose mask was quite as Mongolian as Warner's—for the Chinese heavy. The juvenile lead was William Garwood. Paul Panzer played in the picture too. Benton started right in on the portrait of Mersereau for the artist's studio set and got another $75. Once more the studio was full of underworld types: cripples, hop-heads and Chinamen. Mr. Laemmlae and Mr. Powers came out often and brought friends with them. They had never seen this kind of atmosphere in settings before, or sets of this kind filled with real underworld types instead of extras made up as Chinese or the hop-heads and thugs of Mott and Pell Streets and Chatham Square.
Before the picture was finished a rumor went around that Universal was giving up the Fort Lee studios, and future production would be concentrated at Universal City in California, of which H.O. Davis of San Diego Fair fame had taken charge. I asked P.A. Powers if the report was true. He told me a group that contemplated filming stage plays with stage directors was negotiating with Universal for the Fort Lee studios.
Their first picture would be Thais with Mary Garden. But as yet nothing had been signed. He promised to keep me posted.
The day I ran Yellow and White, rechristened Broken Fetters, at the New York office, P.A. sent for me. There was a man in his office with a scrubby moustache and large teeth. He had red hair, wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and wore pince-nez.
"I want you to meet Mr. H.O. Davis," said P.A. "They've been running wild at Universal City, so we've put Mr. Davis in charge of production. He's getting some organization and efficiency into the forty units that are producing there."
"I just saw your picture," said Mr. Davis. "There are a lot of things I like about it, and Mr. Powers tells me you made it on schedule and under the estimate. You could have made it for $5000. less with the organization we have at Universal City."
"Mr. Davis is going back to the coast in three weeks," said P.A. "How would you like to go out with him and make some pictures at Universal City? We've definitely decided to lease the Fort Lee Studios."
"You'll have more scope on the coast," Mr. Davis said. "You can't go on making Mersereau pietures all your life."
"How about salary?" I said.
"Oh, I think we can give you what you're getting now," said Mr. Davis.
"I figure I'm due for a raise," I said. "Julius told me—"
"If you mean Julius Stern," said Mr. Davis, "he's no longer with the U. On my advice Mr. Laemmlae, Mr. Powers and Mr. Corcoran have decided to close the Fort Lee studios."
"I'll think it over," I said, "I believe I can get more dough in New York."
"Come on," said Mr. Davis. "Make a good picture for me and I'll raise your salary a darned sight quicker than Julius. But I see no reason why I should raise it for work you've done for him."
"I'll think it over," I said.
"Think it over," he said, "I'll be here for three weeks."
On the way home I stopped in to see Ralph Barton. He was in an unhappy frame of mind as he was having trouble with a Russian lady who posed for him, among other things. It appeared that there were mice in the studio, and she used to catch them alive in traps and then crush them to death with her bare feet. Barton did not mind that so much, but she had killed the last one on an antique Chinese rug of pale saffron blue, and the cleaners said nothing could be done about it. Barton was figuring on giving the Russian lady the gate and asked me what I thought. I said he should have done it before she killed the mouse on the rug, and seeing there were no other rugs he might as well hang onto her.
We dined at Luchow's on Third Avenue, across the street from the Academy of Music, with a red-haired psychic poetess. Barton wanted her to see Benton's picture of me, so we went over to my place after dinner.
When the poetess came into my living room she said at once that there was a very bad influence in the place. After a good look at Benton's picture she said to me:
"If you stay on here you'll become like that."
"Better stick around," said Barton with his funny chuckle.
"Tell me," said the poetess, "when you write in the daytime why do you pull the curtains and work by candle light?"
"Who told you I did?" I a sked.
"Nobody. But you do, don't you?"
"Not always," I said.
"You've a morbid side to your nature that you must stamp out," she said. "That's what Benton's portrait has caught. People who know you don't realize that about you. There's more to that portrait than one would think at first glance. Take my advice and leave this place."
"Where shall I go?" I said.
"Anywhere...anywhere!" she cried. "Into the sunlight. Out of the shadows....Light... light....south, west... anywhere, but get away from here!"
"The Universal people want me to go to the coast," I said.
""Go!" she said, seizing me by the arm. "You must go!"
"Go West, young man," chuckled Barton. Just then Benton came along in his cape.
"Been up to your studio, Barton," he said. "You haven't a canvas I could borrow?"
"He has a Chinese rug with a squashed mouse on it he'll let you have," I said.
"Seriously," said Benton, "I've got to get hold of a small canvas to make a lay out for that heroic figure organization I'm starting next week.
"Have you met Miss Foster, the poetess?" said Barton.
"How do you do," said Benton. "Interesting color, your hair. Is it natural?"
Still burming canvases," I said. "What did you do with that seventyfive bucks you got for the picture you made of Mersereau?"
"Bought materials and a canvas measuring twentyfour feet by eighteen," said Benton. "And paid some debts too,” he added.
"If I'd known you were paying debts!" said Barton.
"Too late now, thank God," said Benton.
"The portrait is very interesting, Mr. Benton," said the poetess. "But there are a lot of things I don't like about it."
"I don't know what it is," said Barton. "Maybe the room is too small for the picture, but it seems to me there's something wrong."
"The head is excellent," said Benton. "But I still think it's a shame to waste so much canvas on the rest of it."
He walked over to it and then away from it, and closed one eye.
"I think I see what it needs," he said. "Wll1 you be here in the morning?"
"No," I said. "Got to go to the studio early. If you want to work on it I'll leave the key with the elevator boy. But don't touch the head."
"No, no," he said. "The head is fine."