XXIX

Lucinda had by now become sufficiently conversant with the ways of

directors to hear without much surprise--if with a little sinking of her

lonely heart--the news which Summerlad had to communicate on the tenth

day of his absence, when he telephoned that Jacques was threatening to

find a fortnight too little for the work that had taken the company away

from Los Angeles.

And the next day, when she paid the studio the perfunctory call of

routine--to learn, as usual, that Barry Nolan had as yet sent no word

concerning the date when he expected to begin directing for Linda Lee

Inc.--Lucinda saw, as she left her car in front of the administration

building, the owner of the premises lounging against one of the fluted

columns of the portico and mumbling an unlighted cigar, and got from him

a moody nod instead of the beaming salutation he had taught her to

expect.

Himself a monstrously homely man, short, stout and swart, Zinn had an

alert eye for feminine good looks, which had never before neglected to

give Lucinda to understand that it was on her and humid with

approbation.

By birth a Russian Jew, offspring of immigrants from Odessa, Isadore

Zinn had worked his way into the producing business, as the saying ran,

through its backdoor; that is to say, from the exhibitors' side.

Indefatigable industry and appetite for hardship coupled with quenchless

greed and a complete absence of scruples and moral sense, had promoted

him from the office of usher in a "nickelodeon" of the cinema's early

days successively to be the proprietor of the enterprise, organizer of

a chain of motion-picture theatres, and president of a league of

exhibitors, which last had eventually pooled its resources and gone into

the business of producing as well as that of showing pictures. The money

of this league had built what were today the Zinn Studios; just how this

property had come to pass into Zinn's sole possession was a matter of

secret history concerning which there were many rumours, all unsavory.

Zinn was reputed by his loving employees to set no more store by a

dollar than by an eye-tooth or an only child.

On leaving, half an hour later, Lucinda found the man in the same spot

and pose. Apparently he had not moved a muscle in that interval. She

paused to ask why, and was frankly told.

"I'm figuring on killing a director, Miss Lee, and wondering if maybe I

couldn't get away with it. I could all right, if you only could believe

all you hear. You ask any of them fellers in there"--Zinn jerked his

head toward the building behind him--"takes my good money and calls me

Mister Zinn--and they'll tell you I get away with murder every day or

worse." He sighed dismally. "If they was any truth in that, I'd be a

happy kike and a lot of directors' wives wouldn't have nothing on their

minds no more, only their hair. The way I am today, the first one I'd

take a load off her intellect would be Mrs. Jacques."

"I didn't know Mr. Jacques was married."

"Maybe he ain't right now, it's hard to tell. You take actors and

directors, they're all the same, you never know when they ain't married

or how long they been that way. The way it seems to me, they get married

off and on just to see what difference it will make if any. 'Most

everybody you know's got a loose wife or husband kicking around

somewhere this side the Cajon Pass. The only way you can keep track of

them is don't try."

"It must be frightfully embarrassing at times...."

"Ah, they don't mind! I had one little feller working for me, playing

leads in two-reel comedies, his director was his first wife's second

husband, and the little lady played opposite him was his second wife

once removed. They got along fine s'long's they was on the lot, but

outside the studio they wouldn't speak, only bark when they passed."

"But you haven't told me what Mr. Jacques has been doing...."

"Oh, him--! I got a wire from him just now, says he's going to have to

keep the Summerlad outfit up in that logging camp maybe another couple

weeks. Joe could of shot all the scenes he had to shoot up there in a

week if he'd of went at it the right way; so I give him two weeks, and

now he wants four. And I don't dare give him the razz for fear he'll

make it six weeks or quit."

"But if you aren't satisfied, surely you can find another director."

"Sure I can. And the first thing _he'll_ do is run all the rushes in the

projection-room and tell me they're rotten and got to be retook the way

he sees it. And then he'll rewrite the continuity and, just to show me

what a low piker Jacques was, he'll stick in a lot of new stuff that'll

cost maybe another hundred thousand dollars."

"I don't understand," Lucinda objected. "Why should Mr. Jacques

deliberately waste time on a production?"

"He's getting his two thousand a week, ain't he? And if he makes this

picture cost less than the last one Summerlad done, how's he going to

keep his tail up with the other dogs, next time the hooch hounds meets

down to Santa Monica? Not only that, if he should ever get a rep for

making pictures quick and cheap, the only jobs he'll be offered will

mean honest-to-God work."

"But, Mr. Zinn: if that's the usual director's attitude toward his job,

I should think you would do as we're doing with Mr. Nolan, pay each a

fixed sum for every production he makes."

Zinn drew down the corners of his mouth in sour pity for Lucinda's

innocence. "Twenty-five thousand a picture's what Nolan's going to drag

down, ain't it? When a director gets that class, he's doing you a favour

to make pictures for you, to start off with; and then he spreads himself

to spend more coin more ways than any other director ever thought of,

just to show you he's the big-money boy. A director don't think big

means anything without a dollar-mark parked in front of it; and the

producer's the poor sap that puts up the dollar-mark every time. They's

only one way a producer can beat a director, the way it is today, and

that's quit the fillum business cold."

"I presume that's what you'll do, if the directors persist in making it

impossible for you to make any money."

A twinkle kindled in the beady eyes, a rougishly confidential grin

formed on the fleshy features. "Now, listen, Miss Lee: I never told you

I wasn't making money, did I? It's the jack directors waste on me I'm

kicking about. Any time things get so bad you can't give one of them

megaphone nurses his head and still get your production cost back and

something over, I got it all framed so I can ease out and never be

missed."

And when Lucinda had obliged by voicing a polite doubt that such a thing

as this could ever come to pass, Zinn concluded with grim humour: "I got

everything all set to sell the studio to the county for an insane

asylum; then nobody in Hollywood won't never know the difference."

Running true to the form thus forecast, Jacques kept the Summerlad

company away so long that its return found the first Linda Lee

production in full swing, with Barry Nolan in command, Lucinda playing

the supple puppet of his whim from sun to sun, Fanny demurely walking

through the feminine part of second importance, and Lontaine functioning

at the peak of his capacity as executive genius of the organization and

showing the strain of it all in his prominent blue eyes.

Why it should be so hard on him nobody seemed to know and Lontaine was

too busy to explain; while Lucinda, in the prepossession of her anxiety

to give a good account of herself before the camera, carelessly accepted

that prodigious display of activity, that mien of unremitting

abstraction, as phenomena doubtless common to men of affairs, and never

paused to wonder why Lontaine need be so fretted and fretful when

everything was now in the hands of Nolan and his assistants, who did

pretty much as they pleased anyway, as a rule consulting Lontaine if at

all only after acting on their own initiative and leaving to his office

merely the routine of financial matters.

Nevertheless Lontaine was ever the first of the Linda Lee forces to show

up at the studio in the morning, the last to leave it at night, and

between whiles kept incessantly on the go: trotting from his desk to the

stage to give Nolan the benefit of advice which was invariably attended

to with much patience and disregarded with more promptitude as soon as

its source turned his back; to the laboratory to run a wise eye over

negative newly developed as it came dripping from the vats to be

stretched to dry upon huge revolving drums; to the studio of the

technical director, to badger that competent and long-suffering

gentleman about sets and their dressing; to Zinn's sanctum overlooking

the "lot," where that old-timer sat spying out on the comings and goings

of his employees and spinning his endless schemes of avarice, but ever

ready to lend an ear and give cunning counsel to a tenant who paid his

rent on the nail; to the projection-rooms to view the rushes; back to

the stage to flatter Lucinda, felicitate Nolan, and buttonhole

subordinate players for earnest conferences apart concerning their

performances--this last a habit which, since it afforded the actors a

chance to talk about themselves, earned Lontaine the loving gratitude of

all hands, barring the directorial staff whose job it was to undo all

that he did, were it well done or ill, for the sake of morale and to

preserve unimpaired the precious prestige of Barry Nolan.

At other times members of the cast loafing about the lot while they

waited to be called to work on the stage, would observe the president of

Linda Lee Inc., at the window of his tiny office in the administration

building, brooding portentously over documents of legal aspect, or with

fine flourishes of the fountain-pen affixing his hand to those cheques

which, issuing forth in a steady stream, kept the treasury always at low

ebb no matter how often or how generously Lucinda might replenish it.

Neither did the silver-and-blue car know overmuch rest. In view of the

man's ubiquity in the studio, it was surprising how often Lontaine was

to be seen speeding down Sunset Boulevard, bound for the business centre

of Los Angeles, to other studios for mysterious conferences with local

somebodies who had no known interest in the destinies of Linda Lee Inc.,

or to objectives whose nature remained a close secret between Lontaine,

his chauffeur, and his God.

To all these picturesque symptoms of hustle and bounce, so little in

character with the Briton of tradition, his wife played silent but

attentive audience; though oftentimes her pretty eyes would light up

with an unspoken comment too pungent to be wasted and, discreetly

questing a sympathetic confidant would find it without fail in Barry

Nolan, who learned to watch for that look whenever one of Lontaine's

antics made a more than everyday appeal to his sense of humour.

Irish both by descent and profession, Nolan had at least that sense

conspicuously developed. What others he possessed of which as much might

be asserted, was a question which came to occupy many of Lucinda's spare

moments. She was not at all disposed to be hypercritical, in the

beginning, she had yet to cultivate conceit in her abilities as an

actress, she knew that she knew little more than nothing about the

manufacture of motion-pictures; and Summerlad had so highly recommended

Nolan she inclined to suspect there must be something radically wrong

with her judgment. With all this, she couldn't pretend to account for

Nolan's high place in the hierarchy of the cinema, unless a sprightly

and affectionate disposition, a fetching grin, infectious verve,

impudence without end, and a distinctly indicated vein of genius at

crap-shooting, summed up the essential qualifications of a director who

pretended to earn a wage of twenty-five thousand dollars per production.

Certainly nothing that Nolan was contributing to this present picture,

in the way of action, business, sense of dramatic proportion and feeling

for pictorial values, appealed as in any way inspired--except

occasionally by a retentive memory.

True that common usage in methods of production, working together with

such special circumstances as Lucinda's inexperience and the absence of

any fixed plan of plot development other than in the omniscience of

Barry Nolan, made it anything but easy to judge the man fairly by the

record of his work from day to day.

In the continuity which Nolan concocted to supplant that prepared by

Zinn's staff writer--as in every proper continuity--each scene had been

placed in its right sequence, where anybody uninstructed in the way of a

director with a picture might reasonably look to see it appear in the

completed photoplay. But as soon as the typist had transcribed Nolan's

dictation, the new continuity was turned over to his assistants to be

dismembered and rebuilt with its scenes arranged as they were to be

photographed, by groups, without respect to chronological sequence.

Obviously it would be stupid (as Lucinda was quick to appreciate) to

take the scenes as laid out in the continuity; for example, to

photograph Scene 1 in a studio set, transport the company ten miles to

photograph Scene 2 on, say, an ocean beach, and jump back to the studio

to take Scene 3 on the same set as used for Scene 1. Consequently all

scenes indicated for each particular set were shot seriatim; after which

the set would be promptly demolished, to clear the stage for the

erection of another.

It resulted from this that only an intelligence comprehending the whole

plan and scope of both story and continuity could have kept track of the

scenes as photographed and rated each rightly at its proportional value.

Even in the ranks of studio veterans, minds of such force and grasp are

few and far to seek. The Linda Lee company hadn't been at work two days

before Lucinda began to feel in relation to the story like one lost in a

fog, helplessly dependent upon the guiding hand of Barry Nolan, and none

too well satisfied that he knew his way about as well as he pretended to

in that beclouded labyrinth.

Neither was confidence in his infallibility encouraged by a habit to

which he, like most directors, proved lamentably prone, of improvising

improvements on the story as he went along. All of a sudden, while

directing a scene, Nolan was wont to break out in a profuse inspiration,

and incontinently some well-remembered bit of business or episode from

an old stage success would be interjected into or substituted for

incidents really germane to the original plot. That this practice as

often as not produced results in conflict with the fundamental mechanics

of the story, if it missed throwing them out of kilter entirely, seemed

to be a consideration of minor consequence.

Thus Nolan laboured long and passionately to persuade Lucinda it would

benefit the story to engraft on it a scene wherein she would figure as a

lonely prisoner in a garret, menaced by hordes of hungry rats. This

regardless of the fact that there was no garret in the original story,

nor any room for one, and no reason why the young person portrayed by

Lucinda should be imprisoned in one, but solely because Nolan happened

to fancy a resemblance between her and an actress whom he had several

years before directed with great success in a garret scene with rats ad

lib.

That the rats didn't work their way into the picture eventually, whether

Lucinda wanted them or not, was mainly due to Nolan's misfortune in

failing to think of them before his star began to show symptoms of what

he called the swelled-head; that is to say before, having worked several

weeks under his direction, Lucinda began to suspect that Nolan wasn't

really sole custodian of the sacred mystery of motion-picture making,

and to assert herself modestly as one whose views ought to have some

weight with a director whose pay came out of her own pocket.

Nor is she to this day ready to believe that Nolan, left to himself,

would not ultimately have overborne all opposition and had his willful

way with the rat episode.

But it was neither because of this instance, nor because of other

arbitrary changes that Nolan made in the story, that Lucinda first

learned to mistrust his ability, but because of the appalling ignorance

which he betrayed concerning what she believed should be matters of

general knowledge, such as rudimentary principles of social usage.

Since the story they were concerned with had to do with people of

fashionable New York transacting the business of life in their homes and

public rendezvous, Lucinda thought it important that their manners

should conform to approved convention; but Nolan was so little learned

in such matters, and his impatience with them was so wholehearted, that

she presently abandoned all effort to correct him, and in a fatalistic

spirit endeavoured to comfort her misgivings with his customary

rejoinder to advice in any form: "Ah, what's it matter? Ninety per cent.

of your audiences are solid bone from the neck up, and the rest wouldn't

think they'd got their money's worth unless they found something to beef

about in a picture. Why worry about little things like that? Life's too

short, and we're wasting time!"

So Lucinda schooled herself to suffer in silence when she saw men of

alleged gentle breeding offer women their left arms to escort them from

the drawing to the dining rooms of Fifth avenue or when two bickered in

public as to which should escort to her home a woman married to a third,

and when Nolan posed a pair of lawless lovers in the foyer of a

restaurant and instructed them to register unutterable emotion by

holding hands, in the view of hundreds, and swelling their tormented

bosoms until (as Fanny described it) they resembled more than anything

else a brace of pouter pigeons shaking the shimmy.

She held her peace even when Nolan directed a father and his son, both

presumptive adepts in the social life of New York, to pause on meeting,

when each was decently turned out in morning-coat and top hat, strike

attitudes of awed admiration, solemnly wheel each other round by the

shoulders and, wagging dumbfoundered heads over the sight of so much

sartorial splendour, exclaim--in subtitles to be inserted in the

film--"Some boy!" "Some Dad!"

And when a woman in a scene with Lucinda parted from her, uttering an

injunction put in her mouth by Nolan, "Don't forget, dearie--tea at the

Ritz at one o'clock," Lucinda, conceiving this to be a slip of the

tongue, said nothing. But when later she viewed in the projection-room

that sequence of scenes roughly assembled, with what are termed "scratch

titles," in place, and read the words as quoted, and on making enquiry

learned that they had been copied verbatim from Mr. Nolan's continuity,

she ventured to remonstrate.

"But, Mr. Nolan, tea is a function for four o'clock or later all the

world over."

"That's so, Miss Lee? Well, what d'you know about that? Guess I must've

been thinking about luncheon."

"But your subtitle introducing the restaurant sequence later on says

'Tea at the Ritz.'"

"That's right. I remember now, I meant tea, not luncheon. It's that way

in the book."

"But in the restaurant scenes the tables are covered with cloths and the

waiters are serving all sorts of dishes, course meals."

"What's the matter with that?"

"Why, nothing is served for tea but tea itself and toast and perhaps

little pastries."

Nolan grinned sheepishly and scratched his head. "I guess we're a

terrible lot of roughnecks out here on the Coast, Miss Lee--not onto

fine points like that. But it's all right: we'll change the subtitles to

read luncheon instead of tea."

"But you've just shown me lunching at another restaurant. It isn't

reasonable to make me eat two luncheons in one day."

"That's easy. We'll make the subtitle read: 'Luncheon at the Ritz the

next day.'"

"I hate to keep on objecting, Mr. Nolan, but the situation depends on

these people meeting at tea the very day they lunched together."

"Well, if we can't fix it with a subtitle, we'll have to change the

situation, then. We can't go back and shoot those scenes all over again,

it'd cost too darn much; and anyway we haven't got time."

Having kept the Linda Lee organization awaiting his convenience for five

weeks after the date upon which he had agreed to begin directing for it,

Nolan was now with the utmost sang-froid trying to jam through in one

month an undertaking for which he would, going his normal gait, require

all of two; partly because he was being paid by the job instead of by

the week, in part because his services for the next picture had not been

bespoken and he was flirting with a bid from the East, an offer

contingent upon his being able to leave Los Angeles not later than a set

date, finally and not in the least part for another reason altogether, a

peculiarly private one.

He wasn't happy in his present circumstances, his vanity was deeply

wounded, and the wound was not likely to heal so long as he must

continue in the humiliating position to which he had been reduced by

Lucinda's insusceptibility to his charms of person. Nolan had all along

looked forward to this engagement with considerable animation, because

Lucinda was a type new to him and he counted on learning about women

from her, too. The trouble was, he hadn't in the least suspected that

she was to prove not only new but unique in his experience. He knew what

it was to be resisted, and didn't mind that so much, finding it at worst

flattering. Once or twice since becoming a director he had even met with

the appearance of indifference, and had had the fun of showing it up for

what it really was. But this was the first time in many years that any

woman with whom he had been brought into professional contact had proved

not so much indifferent to him as unconscious that he boasted any

attractions calling for even such negative emotion. Nolan needed some

time to appreciate that this unprecedented and outrageous thing could

really be, and when he did he was hurt to his soul's marrow. By nature

buoyant, he found himself growing morose; by reputation the

best-tempered of directors, he heard himself snapping at his

subordinates like the veriest martinet of them all. Worse yet, Lucinda

seemed not even to reckon him a genius at his calling. An unheard-of

state of affairs and one intolerable to a man of his kidney. He wanted

more than he had ever wanted anything to be quit of her for good and all

and at the earliest possible moment.

For the indignities which he felt had thus been put upon him in a

fashion wholly uncalled-for there was, of course, reparation proffered

in Fanny Lontaine's indisputable awareness of him. And even as Lucinda,

Fanny too was clearly "class." On the other hand, she had a husband,

undeniably an ass, puffed up out of all reason with self-importance, but

still and for all that a husband. Besides, having set his heart on a

star, Nolan conceived it to be inconsistent with his dignity to content

himself with a satellite. So he sulked and could not be comforted.

Necessarily the picture suffered through the languishing of his

interest; and Nolan, foreseeing the professional and public verdict, did

his best to forestall it by privately letting it be known he'd been a

dumb-bell to tackle the job of making an actress out of a rank amateur,

only for the jack involved he would never have tried it. And then the

story they'd asked him to do--! One of these society things, you know:

no punch, no speed, no drama, nothing but five reels of stalling,

clothes and close-ups, padding for a lot of lines; a regular illustrated

dialogue. What could you do with a story like that, anyway?

More openly, in the course of time, as he grew acutely self-conscious of

inability to cope with what he chose to deny, the dramatic possibilities

intrinsic in the story of a father who falls in love with the woman

loved by his own son, a woman whom he has sworn to expose as unworthy to

be his son's wife, Nolan spoke of the production in the studio as "this

piece of cheese."

His name ranked high on the roster of America's foremost photoplay

directors. Whenever one of the Los Angeles cinema houses booked a

picture of his making the bill-boards of the town heralded in

twenty-four sheet posters the coming of "A Barry Nolan Production";

frequently the lettering of this line over-shadowed that in which the

name of the star was displayed, invariably it dwarfed the name of the

story.

After witnessing several of these offerings, Lucinda began to wonder

why....