Читать книгу The Long Shadows - Andrew Boone's Erlich - Страница 10

It was the scent of orange blossoms and coal dust that I remember most the instant Mama, Papa, and I got off the train in City of the Angels. If it hadn’t been for the distraction of those intoxicating smells, I was so claustrophobic I would have trampled the swarm of travelers that encircled me as we crept down the platform. Once finally inside the terminal, I recall one wall of the baggage claim area of Union Depot as being covered with a colorful mosaic, the likes of which I’d never seen before. Its shiny turquoise, gold, and scarlet tiles chronicled settlers of all sizes and shapes exploring and building the new world that was to become California.

I wondered what that new world had in store for me and I for it. I was determined to make the most of this golden opportunity to make my way in the world and make my parents proud of me. I wasn’t afraid of hard work, but what terrified me was not fitting in yet again. Looking back on it now, my plan was very simple: I would do what I was told to make it in movies. I was lucky it would work out so well, but I almost got myself killed. My experience in Hollywood would get me to see that being a man required much more than being a good boy.

I had been anxious ever since Mama had shocked me with her positive attitude, approval, and out-and-out insistence that I move to Hollywood and begin working in movies. In later years Mama would tell me how she didn’t sleep a wink or even eat after the phone conversation when Papa first broached the idea. As soon as she hung up the telephone that morning, she had run to the schul to seek Rabbi Roth’s sage counsel. Through her fear, tears, and once even uncharacteristically raising her voice to the rabbi in disagreement, she finally accepted—painful as it was for a worried mother—that the move to Los Angeles was about what was best for me, and not what was comfortable for her and Papa.

I stared out the window during the cab ride from the train station to the small boarding house where we would stay. At that time, Hollywood, which had once been a full day’s wagon ride from the center of town, was still a youthful and pristine community; a sweet suburb more than the city it would become.

I was fascinated but also worried. To me, everything felt new, different, and threatening. In retrospect, I know it was there that I played a part in the golden age of silent films, or as they would later call it in the history books, the “Grand Parade.” But back then I was a nervous wreck. I hated the fact that there was nothing I could do to prepare for whatever awaited me in my new career. I just had to wait.

To take my mind off of things, Mama, Papa, and I spent the next few days sightseeing. To be honest, touring the town didn’t help a bit. I was overwhelmed. If I could have, I would have camped out on the doorstep of Century Studios. Though I tried, I could not stop worrying about what was going to happen on my first day of work. It’s funny that it takes getting old or sick to appreciate each new moment for all it has to offer.

“Don’t concern yourself, son,” Papa had reassured me. “Those men who make the flickers are professionals. They know you’re a novice. They’ll ease you into things. Nothing will happen in your new movie career until you’ve got a firm grip on the reins and you’re ready for it.”

As Papa always says, “mensch tracht unt Gott lacht (men talk and God laughs).”

XXXX

“Wake up, Jake. It’s time to go,” Papa said at six thirty in the morning exactly five days after we arrived.

Pulling the covers over my head intensified the chill and gooseflesh on my uncovered feet and legs that hung over the end of the boarding house bed. My custom-made divan would not arrive for another month. It took about that long for me to get accustomed to those cool California mornings.

“You don’t want to be late for your first day at the studio, do you?” Papa’s voice echoed his excitement for this new opportunity.

Not feeling that there was anything at all auspicious about that early hour, I turned away from him and rolled over. My anxiety had marched back in force, and that morning I was not in the least inclined to wrestle with any of my demons.

“I feel sick to my stomach,” I moaned. “Just let me sleep.”

Papa didn’t buy into my excuse. “Not on your life, mister! If you don’t get your tuchas out of bed in the next minute, I’m going to pour a pitcher of cold water on your head.”

He was determined. In part, Papa’s determination was driven by an intense work ethic. Flu, fever, diabetes, even broken bones didn’t keep him away from the store. He never missed a day of work until his coronary in 1948. But that morning, Papa wasn’t only driven by his work ethic; he knew how important that opportunity was for me. He wasn’t about to let me wreck it because of a bellyache—feigned or real.

I must have realized that, because at that moment my certainty that he meant business got the better of my anxiety. I sat up. “All right, all right; just give me a minute.”

“The clock is ticking. You’ve got thirty seconds left,” Papa threatened.

Did I mention he was always a stickler for punctuality? I stretched and shook my head from side to side, as if stretching and shaking were antidotes for the massive uneasiness that swooped down on me as I slept. I willed myself to get out of bed and hurriedly dressed.

In the apartment’s little kitchenette, my mother had prepared a big breakfast of fried eggs, kippered herring, toast, and coffee.

“Not this morning, Mama.” I rushed past her to the door, sure if I smelled the fish I would vomit.

When Papa emerged from the boarding house a few minutes later, he looked surprised to see me waiting for him on the sidewalk.

Soon Papa and I were walking down Sunset Boulevard, making our way toward Poverty Row, where Century and a swarm of other small movie studios were located. We both looked dapper in the black suits and neckties we had bought especially for that trip at Bellman’s Dry Goods back home.

“You can’t go wrong with black,” Sam Bellman had said. “It’s an investment, good for weddings, funerals, and Bar Mitzvahs.”

Now he could add that a black suit is just right for a young man’s first day making silent pictures. Papa’s suit came off the rack. Mine had to be custom-made. My father insisted we get dressed up, at least for my first day on the job. “First impressions, Jakey . . . we don’t want them to think were greenas, right off the boat.”

XXXX

A few minutes after we stepped out of the boarding house, I spied them trailing us like a pack of coyotes. Half of them were in the street and half on the sidewalk. Some were pointing at me. The old feelings rushed me. I frantically looked back then down at my dad. He didn’t seem to notice. Scanning the street, searching for a place to run to and hide until dark, I spotted an alley between a druggist and a five-and-dime. Just as I started to break away, Papa grabbed me. He yanked my arm, and with it my attention.

“Come on, Jakey! You’ve got to get used to this. Just ignore them. Somehow you’ve got to get ahold of yourself. You might as well start right now.”

He just stood there, holding on to my arm, with people staring at us.

“Just give me a minute, Papa.” I looked back at my pursuers once again, turned away, and tried to forget about them. This was an inauspicious beginning to my movie career. “I’m ready now,” I said after I’d composed myself as best I could.

Papa and I continued walking toward the studio. “Think about it, boychik. If you were normal size and you saw a man walking in the street that was twice as big as you, wouldn’t you stare too?” Papa asked.

I grumbled some inaudible answer and diverted my attention to the young palm trees that lined the broad boulevard. In those days, they barely came up to my knees. As we walked, we passed California stuccos in pale green. I particularly admired the Spanish style architecture of the bride’s-breast pink and salmon colored residences. But as we approached Poverty Row, things changed. In jarring contrast, every structure, whether it was a bungalow, fence, or wall, was painted dark industrial-gray.

Century Comedies, where even in my wildest dreams I could never have envisioned myself working, was situated on the southeast corner of Sunset and Gower, about a mile from where we were staying. The exact address was 6100 Sunset. On the west side of the street stood Christie Studios and there was an Italian restaurant called The Napoli on the north side of the intersection. The food was very good, but I would come to wish I had never eaten one meal there.

In the old days, the Century Studios property was a rambling farm complete with a huge barn and outbuildings. When Julius Stern and his brother Abe bought and turned it into a movie studio, they tore down just about everything but the barn and rebuilt a bunch of structures. When we finally reached the entrance to the main office, housed in a small bungalow, adrenaline began coursing through me.

Papa ambled through the door first. As I had to do in most doorways, I bent over to make my way inside. But in my excitement, I miscalculated and smacked my head hard. When I was no longer seeing stars, the first thing I remember was a sweet, smoky odor. Soon I would learn that that was the sharp smell of raw film.

The bungalow’s unpainted interior contained two desks piled high with papers, long black pieces of film, photos, and newspaper and magazine clippings. Unlike our home in El Paso, which was always impeccably neat, that place was unbelievably cluttered. It was such a mess that I thought if Mama were there she would have grabbed me by the arm and taken me home on the next train.

“What do you want?” asked the woman seated behind one of the desks.

Papa and I froze in our tracks. I would learn that that crotchety woman was Kitty, the secretary to the Stern Brothers. She was about Mama’s age and spoke with dramatic flair in a nasal New York accent. Kitty was a block of a woman, as tall as she was wide. She had a pointy nose and chin to match, which made me think of her as a witch who guarded a bridge in some German fairy tale. She wore a plain black dress that was so large I imagined that under it she stored her broom, her cauldron, and a squad of evil gnomes who did her nasty bidding.

“What do you want?” she asked again in a now impatient tone.

I wanted to leave and come back another time.

Papa shook his head as if tasting a shot of strong schnapps and tried to remember the purpose of our visit. The woman in the black dress put me off; I thought she was rude and I didn’t like her. First impressions can be deceiving. Mine certainly were about Kitty.

“Ahem,” he made a noise to clear his throat. “I’m Mr. Erlich and this is my son, Jacob. We have an appointment with Julius Stern. We were referred by Mr. Meyers and Mr. Ash.”

“Of course.” Kitty knew exactly who we were and why we were there. Her belligerence was just for show, a weird initiation rite for newcomers to Century Comedies. “Please have a seat. Mr. Stern will be here soon.”

As commanded, Papa sat down in one of two wooden, canvas-backed picnic chairs placed in front of one of the desks. Because of my dimensions and all the furniture I had broken in the past, I had gotten quite adept at assessing whether or not a chair could hold me. That time, because of my nervousness, the novelty of the surroundings, and Kitty’s intensity, I forgot to look before I sat. The chair collapsed. I tumbled backwards. I felt more embarrassed than hurt by that fall.

Kitty ran to my side and bent down. “You poor thing, are you okay?”

Papa stared at me in amazement. I felt mortified and unsure whether or not I could trust her. I knew that I was blushing in the shade of Purim carnival: candy-apple red.

“You shouldn’t worry. People fall out of chairs all the time here,” Kitty said with a disarming sarcasm and a coquette’s wink, extending a hand to help me to my feet. I refused it.

“I’m fine! I’m fine!” I protested to the woman who would become my ally, confidant, and friend.

Kitty would teach me the ins and outs of Century Comedies. You see, she had been working at the studio since it opened, and had become the Stern’s right-hand man. As such, she truly knew the ropes.

I rolled to my right and looked up at Papa and Kitty and was startled to see a strange little bit of a man who seemed to have materialized out of thin air. I felt awkward as a newborn giraffe when I clambered to my feet.

“Stern is my name; Julius Stern,” he said, introducing himself. He had a German accent and a voice that was so commanding I felt my heels click together of their own accord as he spoke. I would meet a lot of memorable, tough people during my time in Hollywood, but Julius Stern was among the most memorable and the toughest.

Stern was in his midforties, barrel-chested, and bald. He wore thick spectacles that magnified the small brown eyes set deep in his orange-shaped head. He and his brother were sticklers for the rules of fashion. No matter the time of year, Julius was always formally dressed with starched collar and necktie. Since it was summer, he wore a straw boater and white shoes.

“Let me show you around the place,” he said, opening the bungalow’s rear door.

“Mind your head,” I heard Kitty say with a chuckle.

Thinking she was a royal pain, I gritted my teeth and did my best to ignore her. Then Stern, Papa, and I stepped into the back lot and my future. We moved along on a raised wooden walkway painted white that snaked past several framed bungalows. In front of one of them I saw a stack of round silver cans.

“Those tins contain our bread and butter,” Stern said. “They each hold a finished movie.”

I was flooded with all of the new sights and sounds. We walked a bit farther to a large building. Coming out of it I saw spear-carrying gladiators, harem girls, and a backdrop of an alpine meadow strewn with edelweiss that two painters expertly carted by us.

“That’s our prop department,” Stern explained. “It’s huge. It has to be. We need a lot of backgrounds and props because we produce all kinds of serials. You name it: Westerns, jungle adventures, mysteries, even animal flickers. Speaking of animal pictures, here at Century we’ve even got our own zoo with our own bull handler.” Then we walked by the largest structure at the studio. “You know, this old barn was part of the original property. It’s so big I run several crews in there at the same time,” he said.

I was impressed by the immensity and scale of all that I saw. I had never been exposed to anything like it before. I wanted to stop the tour and start working as soon as I could. If I knew what was shortly to take place, I would have been more patient.

We moved to an area with two huge, windowless sound stages. On their respective doors, one had a large painted letter A and the other a large painted letter B. Stern opened door A and we entered.

The space was huge. Several movie crews were working at the same time. We stopped and observed one of them. A half-dozen musicians played for a romantic interlude, acted out by two young actors. I noticed Papa was looking away; he seemed embarrassed. I imagined myself playing the part of the dashing leading man, embracing the pretty ingénue. That’s how naive I was in those days. The scene was framed by blinding lights and captured on film by a hand-cranked Lytax camera and crew of ten.

Everyone we passed stopped to stare at me. I liked the fact that an instant later they returned to what they were doing, as if I wasn’t even there.

After we left the sound stage, we continued walking for another five minutes, during which Stern didn’t say a word. I wondered what he was thinking. Maybe he was having second thoughts about his talent scouts’ decision to hire me. We wound our way back to the building that contained the prop department. But this time we entered it and stopped in front of a rack with suits, coats, uniforms, and capes. Though the costumes gave off a very musty smell, just looking at them filled me with anticipation: I wondered which ones I would wear and when they would teach me to act. A short woman with a wrinkled, yellow tape measure draped around her shoulders sat in front of the rack. She looked like a cross between a gypsy queen and somebody’s grandmother. The woman gazed up at me with a look of astonishment that quickly transformed into panic.

“This is Mrs. Romanov, the mistress of the wardrobe. She will get you set with today’s costume. Then you’ll put on your makeup. I want you at Stage B to begin shooting in an hour,” Stern said.

“An hour? What, do you think I’m Moses at the Red Sea? I don’t do miracles. There’s nothing on the rack to fit him,” Mrs. Romanov protested.

“Get goldilocks—you know, that blonde—to help. Whatever it takes but make it happen,” Stern ordered.

“Stage what? Put on my makeup? I need . . . Papa, can’t we? I thought I would . . . ” I objected. I was overwhelmed but too nervous to be terrified.

Mrs. Romanov grabbed a small ladder resting on a wall behind the rack of costumes. Without so much as a by-your-leave, she opened it in front of me, climbed to the fifth rung, and began to measure my arms and shoulders. Before I could utter another word of dissent, Stern had spun around and disappeared into the crowd on the wooden walkway.

I wanted my father to rescue me, but he was as surprised as I was. He looked at me with a helpless grin that said: You’re on your own, Jakey.

I thought for sure that first day all I would do was take a tour of the studio, learn the lay of the land, and maybe get some pointers on how to act in movies. But there had been no real tour and not even a minute of orientation and certainly no pointers. Soon I would be shooting the first scene in my first film. I didn’t have the slightest idea who my character was, what the story was about, how to act on camera, or what in the hell I was doing there. I wasn’t ready. I was totally lost and what’s more, I didn’t even have my costume.

A few seconds passed as a mute Mrs. Romanov scrambled off the ladder and angrily shuffled through the clothing on the rack. I came to the awful realization that it was just my first day on the job and I was already causing big problems.

Then the old woman coughed, spit on the ground, roughly signaled for me to follow her, and guided us to another nearby building. Inside was the cubbyhole—more accurately, the closet—that would serve as my dressing room. It would have been small for an ordinary sized man; for me, it was miniscule.

A few minutes later, Blanche Payson, a six-foot-two, two-hundred-pound Amazon who had worked as a police woman in Los Angeles before her stint as an actress at Century, stood in my dressing room. She extended one arm to shake my hand. In the other hand she held a banged-up beige cosmetics case. I recall she had the strongest grip of any woman I’d ever met. As a matter of fact, it was stronger than those of most men I knew.

Blanche explained that Julius had tasked her with giving me a crash course on the basics of donning movie makeup. For the next fifteen awful minutes I was initiated to the mysteries of being vamped. As Papa looked on, Blanche roughly painted thick, white, lead-based greasepaint all over my face. That awful stuff came in paper-wrapped, six-inch-long solid cylinders. The first time she rubbed it on me, it actually hurt. Then Blanche used a toothpick to apply a dab of lip rouge to the inner corner of each of my eyes. After that, she used her pinky finger to carefully apply purple eye shadow. She finished by patting my entire face with white powder. I coughed after inhaling some of that heavily leaded dreadful dust.

By then, Mrs. Romanov had returned with my costume and hung it on a small rack that ran along the rear wall of the dressing room. My first costume consisted of worn dungaree coveralls and a scratchy canvas shirt done in a Scottish Plaid. I was to use my own shoes until the studio could special order some to fit me.

Blanche and Papa stepped out and I changed into the outfit Mrs. Romanov had just delivered. As I dressed, I gazed out of the single source of light in the cramped room. It was a tiny block of smoky glass in the rear wall. I imagined squeezing myself through it and high-tailing it to the Hollywood Hills.

“Hurry it up, princess!” Blanche yelled.

When I came out of the door I was embarrassed for them to see me in costume. The pants looked two sizes too short and the shirt was so small I could barely button it. Papa politely smiled. Blanche wasn’t so kind. She shook her head and snickered.

“Follow me!” she demanded as she lit out down the wooden path. “It’s time to lose your virginity.” Blanche started out at a brisk pace.

Papa didn’t look pleased. We both jogged to keep up. Soon we stood in front of Sound Stage B. Blanche threw the door open with authority and marched in. Papa followed and I brought up the rear, hoping to not be seen.

The massive space was dimly lit by twin skylights. When I had just about reached the dozen or so members of the film crew who were huddled together, I tripped on a cable and plunged into a small utility table that was holding a stack of blue plates that I later learned were used as props. I whacked my shin on the way down. A crescendo of shattering ceramics and my shriek of pain announced my clumsy crash landing on cold concrete. So much for staying invisible, I thought. In unison, the entire group turned and moved toward me. If I could, I would have shrunk into the floor.

“That’s quite an entrance. Can you do it again for the camera?” Fred Fishbach, the director of my first film, asked. Everyone but Papa and I laughed. “You must be Big Jake,” he said in a voice that was at once booming and friendly. “We won’t hold your clumsiness against you.”

I know he was trying to make me feel welcome, but I felt anything but that. Fred Fishbach was an experienced moviemaker who had worked for Mack Sennett at Keystone. He was tall and muscular and reminded me of what a Notre Dame fullback would look like in the flesh. He dressed conservatively in gray wool trousers, a white shirt, and dark cravat. If I close my eyes I can still see him in the white visor with green felt lining that he always wore on set to reduce the glare from those damned klieg lights.

There was something about Fishbach that got you to trust him. I liked him from the get go.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” I said timidly, holding out my hand to greet him.

“Well, what the kid lacks in grace he makes up in manners,” Fishbach said.

“I’m Jake’s father,” said Papa, holding out his hand as well.

“Well, I can see that when it comes to social graces the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. But how in the hell did such a little man produce this Paul Bunyan?”

“That’s a long story,” Papa said. I’d seen him handle similar questions he wanted to deflect in that manner before.

“Well, hopefully some day when we have more time you’ll tell me, but for now we have other fish to fry. Jake is up in the next scene.”

Papa and I walked back behind the camera. Despite the fact that the camera operator and lighting men and all their helpers—who I would later learn were called grips—focused like diamond cutters on their tasks, I was certain they were studying and judging my every move, just waiting for me to make a fool of myself again.

XXXX

I had been trying my best not to think about it. I really had. But standing there waiting for my first time in front of a movie camera, all I could think about was the fact that Papa and Mama were going home to El Paso the next day. Mama and Papa had already been in Los Angeles for almost a week and had to get back to my brothers—particularly my little brother—and the store.

Standing in that chilly soundstage with an aching shin, I came face to face with the reality that I would soon be alone with all those peculiar strangers working in this weird new business. I hadn’t even shot a frame of film and already a crowd had followed me in the street, I had smacked my head, I had fallen out of a chair, and my new coworkers saw me trip and break dishes. I wanted out . . . to quit . . . to go back on the train with my folks.

“Erlich, come over here.” It was Alf Goulding, the assistant director and one of the gag men. I hesitated suspiciously, having no idea who he was. “I won’t bite,” he said noticing my reticence. “I just want to help you.”

It turns out Goulding really did want to help me. He had previously worked as an actor and had compassion for what it was like to be the new guy on the set.

In those days in silent comedies, there were no real writers, just gag men like Goulding. Gag men would write their ideas for the funny parts in a particular scene that the actors would later bring to life in the movie.

I looked around in hopes that Goulding was calling somebody else.

“Erlich, on the double.” Goulding was a little shorter than Papa but very thin, with a head of busy blond hair and a ruddy complexion to match. He was a regular Beau Brummel; everything the man wore matched. “Kid, today you’ll be filming a stunt.” Goulding said. I had no idea what a stunt was and I was too embarrassed to ask. “Four men playing the roles of detectives will boost you up to the open lintel so you can eavesdrop on the conversation between some bank robbers taking place inside a hotel room,” he said.

Then he went on to tell me I was to squeeze myself through the tiny opening and fall to a mattress out of sight on the other side. Then the director would stop filming. A group of grips would hoist me up and I would do the same thing from the opposite direction, coming out of the opening over the door in the next room.

“The bits sure to get a laugh,” Goulding insisted.

When I heard his description of what I was supposed to do, I got nervous. Perspiration poured off of me. It was too late to run away. Soon, hoisted, squeezed, and contorted, I would be the center of attention.

“I might not even fit through that tiny opening,” I muttered to Papa.

“Okay boys, take your places for the scene in the hotel hallway,” the director ordered. I walked to the door with four large men. I thought I would throw up or crap in my pants. But as terrified as I was, my excitement soon took over.

“Hold the hammers,” Fishbach commanded. The carpenters, who had been building sets on the soundstage, stopped what they were doing. “Ready, action, camera!”

Wow, my first time in front of a movie camera, shooting the first scene in my very first picture! I want to remember this moment, I said to myself.

Before I knew it, four actors grabbed my legs and boosted me up. They all appeared to be schtarkers, but they had misjudged my tonnage. Apparently crushed by the load, they started to sway to the right, then to the left, then to collapse backward. To avoid falling, I did the only thing I could. For dear life, I grabbed the outside of the scenery flat painted to look just like a hotel room door. In my death-grip struggle to hold on, I began to swing my feet. When my right foot slammed into the canvas-thin scenery, I booted a hole in it the size of a steer’s head.

“What’s this?” I heard a banshee echoing across the room. “Have you forgotten? We have a budget! Do you think we’re full of money? Such a waste . . . a waste!” It was Stern, bellowing through a megaphone. “Erlich, I expect you to get it done in one take! Do you hear me? One take!”

Terribly embarrassed yet again, and more afraid of my new boss than any plunge, I dropped back to earth. When I slunk back to Papa, I saw he was standing next to Kitty, who must have come on to the set while I was doing my scene. She looked at me with a smile. After our earlier interaction I would have never expected her kindness.

She motioned for me to bend down. I did. She put her lips next to my ear and whispered softly. “If you wanna make it in pictures, kid, you need to toughen up. Sometimes Mr. Stern can be a real horse’s ass. You need to learn when to ignore what he says and when to take him seriously.”

Stern worked us actors like dogs. On second thought, he was probably kinder to his dogs. Because he and his brother Julius were such slave drivers, Century Comedies was prolific and made a lot of money. We’d crank out a movie in less than a week. We called them “five-day-wonders.” They made Century Studios rich and the rest of us poor schleps exhausted.

Each of our movies cost only about $3,000 to make, but the producers had taken in about $50,000 from investors to cover costs. Then Universal made $300,000 when they distributed our films. You can see there was a lot of money in the picture business. But contrary to what everybody and their cousin thinks, not for me. I started out earning forty dollars a week. Soon they raised me to seventy-five dollars a week. That was a good wage for a kid who was barely seventeen. But it didn’t make me rich and they made me earn every penny.

By the time we wrapped that first day and I’d scrubbed the greasepaint off my face and changed back to my own clothes, it was past eight o’clock. Let me tell you, getting that makeup off was a royal pain. In all my time in Hollywood, I never got used to the theatrical cold cream we had to use for that chore. It got so I would dread the sight of the big blue cans of that foul-smelling goo.

That night after work, I was a new kind of tired. I was sore. I mean I was bruised in places I didn’t know I had places. In retrospect, being so drained was a very good thing; a gift. When we got back to the apartment, I was so French-fried that I fell fast asleep before supper and before I could dre a kopf (worry) about my parents’ departure the next morning.