In Theda Bara's Tent (as Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Now came a big change in Louie’s life. The war caused coal shortages, so the studios in New York were cold. The resulting electricity shortages made it impossible to use the strong lights needed for shooting indoors. The flu epidemic shut down many theaters, so box-office receipts declined. Most New York film studios began moving to California to take advantage of the warmth and perpetual sunlight. Vitagraph moved from its Brooklyn studio to the Coast. Fed up with Anita Stewart’s absences and complaints, the Vitagraph executives gave her permission to sign with Louis B. Mayer of Boston even though her contract had not expired. Not only did they give Anita to Louie but they also gave him permission to film his first feature at their studio in Flatbush. I had been corresponding with Maggie so I knew that Louie had set up an office on West Forty-fifth Street and that he wanted to see me. So I went to his office one day. After hugging me as if nothing bad had happened between us, he accused me of liking Mr. Fox better than him. “What’s he ever done for you? Tell me that.”
              “I like newsreel work, Louie. It’s exciting. It has everything. It’s real, it’s fake, it’s important, it’s trivial.”
             “Come on, you little pisher,” he said. “I’ll buy you lunch.” I didn’t feel like a little pisher, and I didn’t like being called one. He saw my annoyance and made fun of me with a roll of his eyes that suggested I was pretending to be a big shot.
        He took me to his favorite place, Shanley’s Grill on Forty-third Street and Broadway. At a table in the corner were two film tycoons, Adolph Zukor of Paramount and Marcus Loew of Loew’s Theaters. Their children had married, Loew’s son to Zukor’s daughter, and the families lived near each other on estates by the ocean on Long Island. They were laughing with Sime Silverman, the editor and founder of Variety who wrote about them all the time. That table was for the In crowd, and Louie kept glancing over there to see whether they were paying any attention to him, which they were not. They had greeted him, of course, when we came in. They knew him as a fellow theater owner, from New England, and perhaps, they remembered the Anita Stewart lawsuit. But Louie was such small potatoes, and he was an out of towner, so after their initial, “How are you, good to see you,” they turned away and went back to having fun with each other. Louie liked to go to Shanley’s and believed it was important to be seen there by the other movie men, but I could see that it was painful for him.
           “I’m going to be the biggest picture man in the business,” Louie said to me, taking a brutal bite out of his pastrami sandwich. Russian dressing and cole slaw dropped out of the rye bread onto his plate. “I’m paying her eighty thousand dollars per picture plus a percentage for the first six pictures with an option for six more at one hundred thousand and a percentage. It’s a three-year contract with an option for another two years. Anita is one of the biggest stars in the firmament.” His eyes darted to the corner table, then back to me.
           I ate my corned beef and cabbage and didn’t say what I was thinking, which was that Louie’s new venture with Anita was flimsy and could leave me stranded. I was done with that. I didn’t like Mr. Fox better than Louie—no one could like Mr. Fox better than Louie—but I liked my new life, and I believed that I could depend upon Mr. Fox to pay my salary. His newsreel company in New York was flourishing, and his feature-film production company in California was making a fortune producing cowboy movies starring Tom Mix. Mr. Fox owned some theaters and bragged that one day he’d own a chain of them that reached across the country. I had seen for myself how he never stopped working.
    Sitting in Shanley’s with the movie millionaires in the corner ignoring us, I began to see Louie as limited. Louie thought being the biggest movie man in America was the height of ambition. He had no idea that I was working for a man who intended to be the biggest movie man on earth. When we finished eating, we collected our hats from the coat check and went outside into the hot August afternoon. Perhaps Louie imagined that the men in Shanley’s would greet him more warmly now that he was producing a movie. He was a member of the big boy’s club in his own mind, and I think he wanted me to see that. Instead, I saw the head of Loew’s Incorporated and the head of Paramount PIctures greet him indifferently and then ignore him.  As we walked to Times Square, Louie said, “I’m offering you the opportunity of a lifetime, Harry. What’s a newsreel? It don’t compare to a motion- picture movie.”
        “I appreciate what you’ve done for me, Louie.”
        “This is appreciation? This is what you call appreciation, telling me I’m a nobody?”
      “I never said that.”
      “You thought it.”
      “Who said? How do you know what I’m thinking?”
      “How do I know? How should I not know? I brought you up. I say come work for me, and you say no, I’m not going to work for you. You’re nothing but a two bit operator. I want someone bigger. That’s what you say to me after all I’ve done for you.”
         “I didn’t say that.”
             “You think those fellas in there have something on me? You think just because they got gold toilets now they’ll always be on top? Well, you listen to me, you little pisher.” Now he stopped and poked me in the chest as he said, “I’m going to be bigger than the both of them put together, and don’t you forget it. And when you come to me—after I’ve buried that William Fox of yours along with the rest of them—when you come crawling to me asking forgiveness, asking, ‘Please, Louie, give me a job. Please, Louie,’ then we’ll see who’s what. Then we’ll see. And don’t you forget it.” With that he turned and strode off in that choppy way of his. I stood, heart pounding, and watched him weave in and out of the crowd on the sidewalk, an anonymous fireplug of a man. I walked back to the Fox Studio raging against Louie’s injustice and was happy to lose myself in the work of that day.
         Louie’s film opened that winter at the Strand Theater on Broadway, the marquee ablaze with lights announcing “Virtuous Wives, Anita Stewart in a Louis B. Mayer Production.” I decided to put an end to our feud by going to the opening. I missed Maggie, and maybe Louie would be in a better mood now that he’d completed his project. It was not a gala opening because people were still afraid to go out. Anita and the other actors stayed away. Louie and his family weren’t there.
           A uniformed usher wearing a surgical mask escorted me to my seat and handed me an elaborate souvenir program. Those who dared venture out sat in the red velvet seats wearing gauze masks over their mouths. When I tried to lower my scarf, I got angry looks, so I wrapped it around my mouth again even though it was too hot. I opened the program and saw a portrait of Anita on every page. The words on the cover were And the Wise men shall secure unto their houses Virtuous Wives, sayeth the prophet. Sayeth?
The lights dimmed, and a man with no strut in his stride came from the wings and stood in front of the curtain, always an ominous sign at the theater. He said he was sure we would applaud managements decision to cancel the vaudeville part of the show. More than half the orchestra was out sick, and most of the girls who danced were ill.
Louie’s first movie was a story about people who are stupid, vain and vicious but reform themselves at the end because a little boy is nearly drowned. But even a worse story could not dim the appeal of Anita. When she was on the screen, you couldn’t take your eyes off of her. I would phone her and say hello. 
            Long Island was a long-distance call from Manhattan, and Mr. Fox would surely catch me if I used the office phone. He followed every penny that was spent at his studios, pored over the bills and called people into his office to defend themselves if he noticed an unauthorized expense. So I gathered a pocketful of change and called Anita from a public phone. “Wood Violet,” a voice on the other end said.
    “I’d like to speak to Anita Stewart, please.”
    “I know you would, honey. But so would everyone else.”
      “Tell her it’s Harry Sirkus.”
     “Aw right. You hold on, hear?”
          Footsteps on marble came from a distance. Sounded like her house was huge. “Harry? Is that you?’
          “Hello, Anita.” The operator interrupted me to tell me my time was running out.
    “Harry! Where are you? Why haven’t you called me before? Louie said you were in the city. Said you’re working for Fox. I kept thinking you’d call me. Ma said I should call you. I said, ‘How should I call him when I don’t even know where he’s staying.’ I said to Louie, ‘Where’s he staying?’ Louie says to me, ‘How should I know?’ What happened? Did you two have a fight or something? You know we’re moving, right?”
    “Call me back. I’m at a public phone. You got a pen?” I gave her the number, waited and when the phone rang, I picked it up. “Where to?”
    “To the ends of the friggin’ earth. California.”
    “Why?”
    “Because Louie rented a studio out there. I don’t have a choice. Do you think I would have signed a three-year contract if I thought he’d move to Timbuktu? He thinks it’s more healthful.”
    “What’s more healthful about it?”
    “He has this idea his daughter needs the sun.”
    “Why?”
    “She got the flu.”
    “Which one?”
    “The one that’s twelve. Gosh, you and Louie really did have a split. They thought she was going to die. Happened right before the picture opened. Did you see it?”
    “Edie’s okay, right?”
    “Yeah. She got cured. So what’d you think?”
    “You were good.”
     “It’s got legs. It’s boffo at the box office.”
     “I know. I’m surprised. I thought the story stunk.”
    “I know. Me too. But I looked good. I liked that dress in the scene where the kid drowns.”
    “Edie’s okay, right? She got over it, right?”
    “I think so. He’s out there now. He’s been out there for months. I have to go out to start shooting In Old Kentucky.  He got Lois Weber to direct. I’m all balled up. I don’t want to leave New York. Ma’s having a fit. She’s had the same mahjong group for twenty years. They play every Wednesday night. Now what’s she going to do? Rudy’s parents are giving him a hard time. Telling him there’s no one to know out there, and this is what comes from marrying a show girl.”
    “They stink too.”
    “You’re telling me. How do you like it over at Fox?”
    “I do.”
    “Can you imagine me in California? There ain’t any stores out there. I’m supposed to be so well dressed, and where the hell am I going to buy the clothes? I said this to Louie. He says, ‘You’ll take the train back now and then.’”
    “Tell Louie I’m sorry about Edie.”
    “You tell him.”
    “No, you tell him.”
    “Okay. You want him to call you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay, Harry. I probably won’t see you for a long time.”
    “Write to me.”
    “No. Then you’ll see how ignorant I am.”
    “Don’t be silly.”
    “I ain’t being silly. I never did good in English. Teacher said I wrote like I wasn’t born in America.”
    “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
    “You should of seen her. She looked like a man. And she wore this belt that had two big balls hanging off of it. Boy, did I hate her.”
    “Write to me anyway.”
    “Okay. But only postcards.”
    “That’s fine with me. Did Louie buy a studio?”
    “No. He’s renting from Colonel Selig. We’re shooting in a zoo.”