American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century (38 page)

Also, when I share what an individual is thinking or feeling, it is no casual narrative device but a reporter’s using the facts as he discovered them to describe a scene as accurately and completely as possible. For example, Burns’s thoughts when he first went to the scene of the
Los Angeles Times
bombing were found in his memoir about the case. Darrow’s feelings about Molly were revealed in the letters Cowan discovered and first published. And Griffith’s initial reluctance to give up playwriting for the more dubious business of making movies was recalled by his wife in her memoir.

Yet while there were, as I’ve stated, many books and articles that were used as sources for this book, readers interested in learning more about the era might want to consult the books I found myself relying on most frequently. Morrow Mayo’s
Los Angeles
(Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1933) is a witty and insightful history of the city. Steven J. Ross’s
Working-Class Hollywood
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1998) is a particularly insightful documentation of the political roots in American film. Professor Ross’s thesis that much of Griffith’s early work was shaped by political sentiments is at odds with Schickel’s analysis. Yet I found myself persuaded by Ross, and his view fueled and inspired this book. Those wanting more of a feel for Burns’s career should consult Gene Caesar’s
Incredible Detective
(Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968) and Alan Hynds’s
In Pursuit
(Thomas Nelson & Sons, Camden, New Jersey, 1968). An elucidating view of the period and its various labor disputes can be found in the archives of the Cleveland Public Library, the Chicago Historical Society, and the Los Angeles Times History Center at the Huntington Library. The website of the Iron Workers Union as well as the official
History of the Iron Workers Union
(Mosaic, Cleraly, Maryland, 2006) gives a subjective but still informative account of the events surrounding the McNamara case and trial. And I originally found great inspiration for the writing of this tale of intersecting lives and ideas in Louis Menand’s wonderfully erudite
The Metaphysical Club
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2001).

Finally, while I don’t feel it’s necessary in this sort of nonacademic history to give a full account of all the sources I consulted (for example, the many books on anarchism I delved into to write with some authority about Burns’s time in the Home Colony), let me share the major sources of information for each chapter of this book:

Prologue

William J. Burns,
The Masked War
(MW); Alan Hynd,
In Pursuit
(IP); Gene Caesar,
Incredible Detective
(ID);
New York Times; Asbury Press;
Richard Schickel,
D.W. Griffith: An American Life
(RS); Museum of Modern Art Archives, D.W. Griffith Collection (MOMA); Linda Arvidson,
When Movies Were Young
(WMWY); Tom Grunning,
D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film,
University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1991 (ANF); Geoffrey Cowan,
The People v. Clarence Darrow
(PvCD);
Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life
(SML); Irving Stone,
Clarence Darrow for the Defense
(CDFD).

Chapter One

MW; Iron Workers’
Official History
(IW); ID; Philip S. Foner,
History of the Labor Movement in the United States,
International Publishers, NY, 1964 (HLM).

Chapter Two

Morrow Mayo,
Los Angeles
(LA); Huntington Library archives; PvCD; Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolf,
Thinking Big: The Story of the Los Angeles Times,
GP Putnam, NY, 1977 (TB); IW.

Chapter Three

Steven J. Ross,
Working-Class Hollywood
(WCH); MOMA; RS; WHWY; ANF; Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library (AMPAS).

Chapter Four

LA; Huntington Library archives (HL); HLM; TB; LA Times archives.

Chapter Five

Indianapolis Public Library; PvCD; MW; IW; ID; IP.

Chapter Six

SML; CDFD; TB; MW; HL.

Chapter Seven

HL; PvCD; IW;
New York Times; LA Fire Dept Official History.

Chapter Eight

MW; TB; William J. Burns, “My Greatest Cases,”
True Detective,
October 1951; October 1952 (TD).

Chapter Nine

TB; MW; PvCD; ID; LA; HL.

Chapter Ten

New York Times;
RS; Mary Pickford,
Sunshine and Shadows
(S&S); WHWY; Kenneth S. Lynn, “The Torment of D.W. Griffith,”
American Scholar,
Spring 1990.

Chapter Eleven

CDFD; Chicago Historical Society; PvCD; HL; MW.

Chapter Twelve

MW; TD; ID; IP;
Los Angeles Times;
LA; PvCD.

Chapter Thirteen

RS; WHWY; LA; PvCD; Daniel J. Johnson, “The Socialist Municipal Campaign in Los Angeles,”
Labor History,
vol. 41, 2000 (LH); HL; MW.

Chapter Fourteen

WHWY; MW; ID; TD; IP.

Chapter Fifteen

SML; CDFD; PvCD; HL.

Chapter Sixteen

MW; TD; ID; IP; trial transcripts; Ortie McManigal,
The National Dynamite Plot,
The Neal Company, LA, 1913 (NDP).

Chapter Seventeen

RS; WHWY; MOMA; PvCD.

Chapter Eighteen

ID; MW; trial transcripts; TD.

Chapter Nineteen

“Home Colony, Its Philosophy and Beginnings,” www .Redlandsfortnightly.org; “A Nest of Vipers in This Country,” Tacoma Press; MW; trial testimony.

Chapter Twenty

MW; trial testimony; ID; NDP.

Chapter Twenty-one

ID;
New York Times;
MW; IP; NDP; trial testimony.

Chapter Twenty-two

MW; trial testimony; TD; RS; WHWY; Karl Brown,
Adventures with D.W. Griffith,
Da Capo Press, NY, 1974 (KB).

Chapter Twenty-three

MW; ID; IP; NDP; trial testimony; TD.

Chapter Twenty-four

MW; RS; ANF; MOMA; IP; NDP.

Chapter Twenty-five

MW; TD; ID; RS; WHWY.

Chapter Twenty-six

NDP; MW; CDFD; IW; TD; PvCD.

Chapter Twenty-seven

MW; NDP; trial testimony; IP; ID; IW.

Chapter Twenty-eight

MW; PvCD; Chicago Historical Society; IW;
Los Angeles Examiner;
LA.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Los Angeles Times;
IW; HLM; MW;
Los Angeles Examiner;
trial transcript.

Chapter Thirty

MW; LA; IW; Chicago Historical Society; PvCD; Eugene Debs, “The McNamara Case and the Labor Movement,”
International Socialist Review,
February 1912; HLM.

Chapter Thirty-one

CDFD; PvCD; SML; IW; HLM; Huntington Library.

Chapter Thirty-two

IW; WCH; MW; Sam Gompers,
Seventy Years of Life and Labor,
E.P. Dutton, NY, 1935; ANF; RS; MOMA; MW.

Chapter Thirty-three

New York Call; Los Angeles Citizen;
RS; WCH; S&S; WHWY; ANF; MOMA.

Chapter Thirty-four

CDED; PvCD; WCH; Huntington Library;
Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles Examiner.

Chapter Thirty-five

LA; Johnson, in
Labor History;
WCH; SML; PvCD; IW; MW; Justin Kaplan,
Lincoln Steffens,
Touchstone Books, NY, 1974 (LS).

Chapter Thirty-six

MW; ID; IP; TD; trial testimony; Dictaphone Company website; PvCD; RS; WHWY; KB.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Trial transcripts; CDFD; SML; PvCD;
Los Angeles Examiner;
LS.

Chapter Thirty-eight

ANF; WCH; RS; MOMA.

Chapter Thirty-nine

LS; LA; PvCD; Lincoln Steffens, various articles collected as “Explosion of the McNamara Case,” Stanford University; E.W. Scripps Papers; E.W. Scripps,
Damned Old Crank: A Self-Portrait,
Charles McCabe, ed., Harper & Brothers, NY, 1951; CDFD; MW; IW.

Chapter Forty

LA;
Los Angeles Examiner;
PvCD; MW; trial testimony;
Los Angeles Times;
Johnson in
Labor History;
TB; CDFC; SML.

Chapter Forty-one

Los Angeles Times;
trial transcript; LS; Steffens articles; PvCD; CDFD; HLM; RS; WHWY.

Chapter Forty-two

PvCD; Huntington Library; MW; TD; S&S; RS.

Chapter Forty-three

SML; CDFD; PvCD; Adela Rogers St. Johns,
Final Verdict,
Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1962 (FV); trial transcripts;
Los Angeles Examiner;
MW; TD; ID; IP.

Chapter Forty-four

PvCD; CDFD; FV; trial transcript;
Los Angeles Times;
Huntington Library.

Chapter Forty-five

WCH; RS; MOMA; KB; WHWY; S&S;
NY Dramatic Mirror.

Epilogue

MW; TD; LA; PvCD; CDFD; SML; ID; IP; trial transcripts.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

____________________

From my desk, I can look out through a wall of windows toward a helix-shaped pond. I was writing this book one winter’s day when I lifted my head up from my computer, gazed absently toward the frozen pond, and noticed something in the distance making its unhurried way across the ice. Anchored to my desk for months, I’d become accustomed to animal sightings; beyond two grassy rectangular fields fronting the wooden house, deep, dark woods stretched on and ominously on. A variety of creatures—foxes, turkeys, deer, even coyotes—would emerge, and I’d admire them with the fascinated scrutiny of someone who’d been raised in the Bronx. But this animal was something I hadn’t seen before. It was bigger, mangy, and walked leisurely but with a confident air of menace. Curious, I got up from my chair and headed out to the weathered deck that faced the pond. I looked, and in an instant I was certain: My visitor was a gray wolf. I watched him anxiously for a while. When at last he’d slunk back into the woods, I sighed with relief and returned to my desk.

I never saw the wolf again. Months passed, and soon the frogs were once again croaking and lily pads blanketed the pond. The seasons had changed, but I was still sitting at my desk struggling to write this book. As I worked, the image of the wolf making his slow way across the ice would often pop into my mind. In fact, I’d begun to feel there was a bond of sorts between the two of us. In my self-imposed isolation, in the midst of grappling with the challenges I faced daily while trying to tell the meandering story that would become
American Lightning
, I’d decided he wasn’t so much a frightening apparition as an appropriate visitor: one lone wolf calling on another.

But now that the book is done I realize I was being more than a bit indulgent. I was never really alone while writing this book. In fact, I was constantly buoyed by the wisdom and friendship of others; and without their help, I, like my solitary wolf, most probably would’ve slunk without a trace back into some deep and foreboding woods. So with gratitude, I want to acknowledge their aid.

From the first days when I began seriously thinking of writing about the bombing of the
Los Angeles Times,
my agent, Lynn Nesbit was a voice of encouragement. I’ve worked with Lynn on eight books, and over the years she’s become a friend, an advisor, and a model of how one should conduct one’s self in the often rough-and-tumble world of publishing. I count on her wisdom enormously. Also at Janklow-Nesbit, I was helped by the ever gracious Tina Simms, the tenacious Richard Morris, and my friend Cullen Stanley.

This is my first book with Crown and with Rick Horgan as my editor, and it’s been a pleasure. Not only is Rick insightful, but he’s also a gentleman: someone who actually does what he says he’ll do—and throws himself into the task with intelligence and energy. Julian Pavia, Rick’s assistant, was always helpful, smart, and, perhaps most astonishing, never once told me he was too busy to answer one of my anxious questions. And Tina Constable’s enthusiasm for the book, as well as the support of the entire Crown team, has been the sort of response of which an author dreams. They have made the process fun, and I am very grateful.

Bob Bookman, of CAA, has been a friend for many years, and his help in shepherding the manuscript through Hollywood has been invaluable. Alan Hergott, too, has been a wise Hollywood advisor, and, no less important, a valued friend. And at
Vanity Fair,
Graydon Carter’s early interest in the story and Dana Brown’s skilled editorial touch were much appreciated.

I was also helped by my researchers. Mark Wind was able to ferret out the most fascinating bits of information. And Andrea Scharf was indefatigable; I gave her the slimmest of leads and yet she would manage to track everything down.

And I owe a lot of people for their friendship and support as I toiled (with often grim self-absorption) on this book. My sister Marcy was, as ever, the best: funny, smart, and always there when I needed her. As also were Beth DeWoody, whose generosity of spirit, kindheartedness, and unique, vivacious involvement in the bustling world around her were invaluable gifts; Jane and Bob Katz, who rushed to the rescue when it was needed; Sarah and Bill Rauch, whose hospitality allowed me to escape and whose friendship was a rock I clinged to; Susan and David Rich, with whom I shared many meals, many laughs, and too many drinks; Lacey Bernier, who has a knack for putting things into perspective; Pat and Bob Lusthaus, who were always there to help; and Gary Cohen, a very smart man and a generous friend. My children, Tony, Anna, and Dani, are a blessing; their accomplishments fill me with pride and our time together is a heartfelt joy. And, not least, Ivana, who helped to keep things interesting, and wonderful.