The Dream Merchants (12 page)

He solved this problem by asking George to get him a print of one of Borden’s serials. George told Borden he liked it so much that he wanted to have a print of it for himself. Bill Borden felt so good about it that he insisted upon making George a gift of the print. If Borden had known what was to be done with his picture, he would have committed mayhem, but he didn’t know and George turned the print over to Johnny.

Johnny took the print back to New York and he and Joe sat down to edit the ten chapters into one complete unit. They worked for five weeks on it before they felt they had a picture worth showing. They had a picture that ran six reels and took a little over an hour to show.

Until they had finished their work they had not told Peter about it. Now they called him in, told him the whole story, and asked him to view the finished product. He agreed to look at it and they set a showing for the next evening.

Johnny sent George a wire asking him to come down and see the picture. The next evening they all gathered in the little projection room at the Magnum Studios. Peter, Esther, George, Joe, and Johnny were the only people there. The regular projectionist had been sent home, and Johnny worked the projector.

They were quiet while the picture was on, but the minute it was over they all began to talk at once.

“It’s too long,” Peter said. “I don’t like it. Nobody can sit so long and still enjoy a movie.”

“Why not?” Johnny asked. “You sat through it without any trouble.”

“It hurts your eyes looking at the screen so long,” Peter replied. “It makes you uncomfortable.”

“People sit in the movies that long now and it doesn’t hurt their eyes,” Johnny said heatedly. He was getting a little angry at Peter’s continued stubbornness. “What’s the difference if they look at one big picture or four little ones?”

Joe grinned. “Maybe you need glasses, Peter.”

Peter exploded. His eyes had been bothering him, but he refused to wear glasses. “My eyes got nothing to do with it. The picture is too long!”

Johnny turned to George; his voice was challenging. “Well?”

George looked at him sympathetically for a moment before he answered. “I like it,” he answered quietly, “but I would like to see it in a theater before I would say more.”

Johnny smiled at him. “I would too, but we can’t do it.”

It reminded for Esther to put her finger on the weakness of the picture. “It was interesting,” she said, “but it wasn’t complete. Something was missing. In a serial it is all right to have excitement in every chapter; when it’s condensed into one picture it’s too much. It’s all excitement, and then it’s too much to seem possible. After a while it seems like a joke.”

When Johnny thought it over he realized that she was right. The answer was not in cutting serials down to another size but in developing a new-size picture. He had viewed the condensed version of the serial several times and he had come to the conclusion that while the running time of the picture was not too long, the picture lacked other elements of appeal that were necessary to round it out. A story would have to be developed that would fit the size of the picture.

They left the projection room in a group, still talking about the picture. Only Johnny was silent. He slouched along, his hands in his pockets, his face glum.

Peter slapped him on the shoulder. “Snap out of it. We’re doing all right as it is, so why worry?”

Johnny didn’t answer.

Peter took out his watch and looked at it. “Tell you what,” he said, trying to cheer Johnny up. “It’s early yet. Supposin’ we all have dinner and then go to a show?”

2

“No!” Peter shouted. “Positively no! I ain’t gonna do it!” He strode angrily past Joe and up to Johnny. He stood in front of him and waved an excited forefinger in Johnny’s face. “I should have to be crazy to do what you want! For almost two years now, we struggle and slave day and night to get on our feet and now that we’re making a dollar you want to throw the whole damn thing away for another idea. I’m not crazy altogether yet. I won’t do it!”

Johnny sat there quietly, looking up into Peter’s face. Peter had been roaring ever since Johnny had come out with the idea of making a six-reel picture. Peter had listened quietly enough when Johnny proposed that they buy
The Bandit
, a play that was then running on Broadway, and make it into a picture. He had been quiet enough while Johnny told him he would hire the author of the play to write the screen version. He had been quiet enough while Johnny explained to him how they could capitalize on the play’s already established market value. His interest in the idea was evident from the question he had asked Johnny: “How much would it cost?”

Johnny had anticipated the question. He had prepared a budget on the picture, and he figured it would cost around twenty-three thousand dollars. He gave Peter the budget.

Peter took one look at the budget and threw the whole thing back at Johnny. “Twenty-three thousand dollars for one picture!” he yelled. “A man’s got to be
meshuggeh
! Buy a play and hire a man to write it for twenty-five hundred dollars? For the same money I could make a whole picture!”

“You’ll have to start somewhere,” Johnny insisted, “and some day you’ll have to do it.”

“Maybe some day,” Peter replied hotly, “but not now. We just got into the clear and now you want to put me in hock again. Where am I gonna get that kind of money? I’m not the United States mint yet.”

“Nothing ventured nothing gained,” Johnny quoted quietly.

“Neither do you lose your shirt,” Peter replied quickly. “Besides, it ain’t your money you want to put up.”

Johnny grew angry at that. “You know damn well I wouldn’t ask you to put money into anything I wouldn’t.”

“Your money!” Peter sneered. “It ain’t enough to buy toilet paper for the studio for a week.”

“It’s enough to pay for ten percent of the picture,” Johnny yelled. His face was getting flushed.

“Take it easy,” Joe said, stepping between them. “All this hollering ain’t going to settle anything.” He turned to Peter. “I got enough for another ten percent of the picture. That leaves only eighteen thousand for you to get.”

Peter threw his hands in the air. “‘Only eighteen thousand,’ he says. Like I can pick it up on the sidewalk.” He turned and slammed the top of his desk down and then looked up at them.

“No!” he shouted. “Positively no! I ain’t gonna do it!”

Johnny’s anger had evaporated. He could understand Peter’s reluctance to endanger what he already had accomplished, but Johnny was convinced that what he proposed must be done. He spoke slowly and quietly.

“Back in Rochester you thought I was crazy about this,” he pointed out, “but we didn’t do so bad, did we?” He didn’t wait for Peter to answer. “You got a nice apartment on Riverside Drive, eight thousand in the bank that’s all clear, a paid-up mortgage, haven’t you?”

Peter nodded his head. “And I ain’t going to risk it on one of your crazy ideas. We was just lucky the last time. This time it’s different. This time it’s not only money we have to risk, but also we’d have to fight the combine. And you know how far we’d get doing that.” He, too, had cooled off a little. He spoke more sympathetically now.

“I’m sorry, Johnny. Honest. Maybe your idea is good, for all I know, even if I don’t think it is. But with things the way they are we can’t take the chance. That’s my final word on the subject.” He walked to the door. “Good night,” he said, and shut the door behind him.

Johnny looked at Joe and shrugged his shoulders expressively. Joe grinned at him. “Don’t look so disappointed, kid. After all, it’s his dough and he’s got a right to his ideas.” He got to his feet. “Come on out and have a beer and forget it.”

Johnny looked thoughtful. “No, thanks. I’m gonna sit here awhile and see if I can figger some way to make him see it. This is one business you can’t afford to sit still in. If you do, you’re cooked.”

Joe looked down at him. He shook his head slowly. “All right, kid, have it your way. You’re beating your nut against a stone wall, though.”

For a while after Joe left, Johnny sat where he was; then he got up and walked over to Peter’s desk. He rolled up the top and picked up the budget he had given Peter and looked at it.

He stood there almost ten minutes looking at it. At last he put it back and rolled the top of the desk down. “All right, you old buzzard,” he said to the desk as if it were Peter, “some day you’ll do it.”

***

Johnny opened his eyes slowly. The air in the room was warm. Spring had come early this year, with a more than ample hint of the summer to come. It was only mid-March, but already winter coats had been shed and men were going to work in their jackets and shirtsleeves.

Lazily he got out of bed and walked through the parlor of the apartment and opened the door. The Sunday papers were lying on the floor in front of it. He bent down and picked them up. Reading the headlines, he went back into the parlor and sat down in an easy chair.

He heard the snoring coming through the open door of Joe’s room. With a grimace he got up and walked over to Joe’s room and looked in. Joe was curled up in a corner of the bed, sawing wood. Quietly Johnny shut the door and went back to his chair.

He turned the pages until he came to the dramatic section. Motion pictures were not covered regularly on the amusement pages of the daily papers as yet, but the Sunday papers devoted an occasional item to the new medium. This Sunday there were two items that made Johnny sit up suddenly in his chair.

The first was an item from Paris. “Mme. Sarah Bernhardt to make four-reel motion picture based on the life of Queen Elizabeth.”

The second was from Rome. “The famous novel
Quo Vadis?
will be made into an eight-reel film in Italy next year.”

The items were brief. They were hidden in the corner of the page, but to Johnny they were banner headlines proving he had been right. He stared at the paper for a long time, wondering if Peter would agree with him now. At last he gave it up and went into the kitchen and put a pot of water on the stove for coffee.

The smell of coffee brought Joe from his bed, sleepy and rubbing his eyes. “Morning,” he grunted. “What’s for breakfast?”

It was Johnny’s turn to make Sunday breakfast. “Eggs,” he answered.

“Oh.” Joe turned back and began to stagger toward the bathroom.

“Wait a minute,” Johnny called after him. He picked up the paper and showed the items to Joe.

Joe read them and handed the papers back to Johnny. “So what does it prove?” he asked.

“It proves that I was right,” Johnny said, a note of triumph creeping into his voice. “Don’t you see? Now Peter will have to listen to me.”

Joe shook his head slowly. “You never give up, once you get something in your nut, do you?”

Johnny was indignant. “Why should I? It’s a good idea and I was right in saying that bigger pictures were coming.”

“Maybe they are,” Joe admitted, “but where are you going to make them? And how are you going to make them?

“Even if we get all the dough, you know our studio isn’t big enough to do it in. It would take all the raw stock we use for six months’ production to do a job like that. And you know the combine is dead set against anything over two reels, and if they get wise to us they’ll take away our license and then where’ll we be? Up the creek?”

“So we give up making small pictures for a time,” Johnny answered. “We can save up enough film for the picture and make it before they find out what’s going on.”

Joe lit a cigarette and blew out the smoke. He eyed Johnny shrewdly. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we can get away with it, maybe we can’t. If we can’t, then Magnum’s out of business. They’re a little too big for us to take on. They’ll squash us like you step on an ant. Let Borden or one of the others take them on. They got more dough to do it with, and even with that I don’t see any of them falling over themselves to get into trouble.”

“Well, I still think there is some way we can do it,” Johnny insisted stubbornly.

“Still think you’re right, huh?” Joe looked at him strangely.

Johnny nodded his head. “I am right.”

Joe was silent for a moment, then he heaved a sigh. “Maybe you are, but look what you’re riskin’. I’m not worried about my neck or yours. We’re alone. We don’t have to worry if things go wrong, ’cause we kin get along. But Peter’s another story. If we go wrong on this, he’s broke. If he goes broke, then what’s the guy gonna do? He’s got a wife an’ two nice kids to look after. He put everything he’s got into this business, an’ if it misses out, he’s finished.” He stopped and drew a deep breath. He looked right into Johnny’s eyes. “Yuh willin’ to risk that?”

Johnny didn’t answer him for a long while. He had thought about it before. He knew of the risk, Joe didn’t have to tell him about it. But there was something inside him that kept pushing him on. It kept saying over and over: “The golden fleece lies just ahead. All you need to grab it is the nerve.” The vision of the picture in his mind was like Circe calling to him. He could no more stop following it than he could stop breathing.

His face was set and determined as he answered. “I got to do it, Joe, it’s the only thing that counts. It’s the only chance the business has to become really big, really important. Otherwise we’re in the nickelodeon business all our lives; this way we’re something that really counts. We’re an art. Like the theater, like music, like books, only some day maybe we’re better and bigger than all of them. We gotta do it.”

“You mean you gotta do it,” Joe said slowly. An odd sense of disappointment tugged at him. He ground his cigarette out in a tray. “You got dreams of what you want, an’ you think that’s what the business must have. If I didn’t know yuh better an’ like yuh so much, I would say you’re selfish an’ ambitious. But I know differen’. Yuh really mean what yuh say, but there’s one thing yuh gotta know.”

Johnny’s face had gone white as Joe spoke. With difficulty he forced himself to ask: “What?”

“Peter’s been awful good to us. Don’t never fergit it.” Joe turned and walked out of the room.

Johnny looked at his back and then turned to the water boiling on the stove. His hand was trembling as he turned down the gas.