The Dream Merchants (49 page)

“Go and talk to Johnny,” her mother had urged. “He won’t bite you.”

Hesitantly she had done as her mother had told her. At first she had felt strained and awkward. She wondered if he realized she had been deliberately avoiding him every time he came out. Then she grew gay and confident as she saw he didn’t have the faintest conception of what she had been doing.

Her mother had been right. There was really nothing to be afraid of. She had been running away from shadows.

Suddenly she felt the warm tears trembling on her eyelids. She put her hands wonderingly up to her eyes. They came away wet. She blinked her eyelids quickly. It was good not to be afraid and have to run away any more. She marveled at her mother’s understanding. How long would it be before she would know as much?

Maybe never, she thought. But it really didn’t matter now. For the first time in a long while she fell into a deep, contented, dreamless slumber.

***

Mark was tired as he climbed the stairs to his room. He wondered whether his parents were still awake. Pop wouldn’t like his staying out so late. But what the hell, you were young only once. He could feel the blood running through his veins as he thought of the night. Suddenly a chill of fear swept over him. What if the girl was sick? He had heard of lots of fellows who had picked up a clap from extra girls. As quickly as the fear had come to him it left him. Not this girl, she was too clean. He was the first, she had said.

He went into his room and undressed quickly in the dark. He put on his pajamas and went to his pocket and took out a little tube. Holding the tube in his hand, he groped his way to the bathroom in the dark. All the same, he wasn’t taking any chances.

***

Johnny looked down at Dulcie’s head lying on his shoulder. The perfume from her hair came up to his nostrils. He rubbed his cheek against its silky softness. “Dulcie, are you awake?” he asked in a lazy, contented voice.

She shifted within the circle of his arms like a cat. “Uh-hunh,” she murmured.

He smiled in the dark. “Marian Andrews was trying to warn me about you,” he said.

She sat upright, suddenly wide awake. She tried to read his face in the dark. “She did?” she asked, a sudden fright in her voice. “What did she say?”

He looked at her. “Nothing to get excited about,” he replied, pulling her head back on his shoulder. “She just said that many people were jealous of you and I shouldn’t believe any stories I might hear.”

Her breath rushed out of her and she felt limp and drawn. “That’s nice,” she said in a weak voice, “but I don’t know of anyone who would want to carry tales about me.”

He looked over her head in the dark. A wise and knowing smile was on his lips. She was too young to know how mean people in this town could be. It was a good thing for both of them that he knew. “You know how it is,” he said gently. “People like to talk.”

Her voice was sleepy again. “Unh-hunh,” she said. “People like to talk.”

***

The light in Marian Andrews’s room was still on when the sun began to rise over the horizon. She sat in front of her typewriter. A cigarette lay burning in a tray next to it. There was a soft smile on her face.

She was thinking about that young doctor she had met a few weeks ago when she had gone to have her finger lanced. It had become infected and she had gone to see Dr. Gannett. She was surprised that instead of Dr. Gannett this young man had lanced her finger.

She had asked where Dr. Gannett was. He was on vacation, getting a much needed rest, the young man told her. He was pinch-hitting for him until Dr. Gannett returned. He introduced himself.

“Haven’t you a practice?” she had asked. He shook his head. He was looking for a place to settle down. Why not here, she had asked. Again he had shaken his head. “I don’t like the people,” he had said. “Too many hypochondriacs, too few real ailments.” He had laughed. Maybe it was better that way.

She had seen him several times after that. For practically no reason at all, either. He had always been very polite and considerate. Never said anything to her that would let her know he knew she really didn’t have to see him.

Until that day she had laughingly said that he must think she was as bad a hypochondriac as the rest. Then he had looked at her, his gray eyes suddenly laughing. No, he had said, he didn’t think she was.

Then what was it, she asked, feeling more and more foolish. His gray eyes had darkened seriously. “We’re in love,” he had said.

“Why, that’s ridiculous,” she had answered.

“Is it?” he had asked, taking her hand. “You’re a very powerful woman, Marian,” he had said. “Maybe you think you can’t fall in love?”

“That’s not it,” she had insisted.

He had laughed again and let go of her hand. “All right, then,” he had said, “you tell me what it is. You won’t admit it because I’m one person your power can’t help.”

She had gone away wondering at what he had said.

She picked up the cigarette and puffed at it. Maybe he was right, maybe they were in love. But he was wrong about one thing. When they were married he would find out she could help him.

She smiled and looked down at the page in her typewriter. She began to type with a sure quick-fingered touch. She didn’t look down at the page as her fingers flew across the keys. Quickly the words began to appear on the sheet of paper.

MARIAN ANDREWS’S LETTER FROM THE STARS

5

Carroll Ragin’s face was wrinkled with worry as he walked wearily into Johnny’s office carrying a bundle of papers in his arms. He stopped in front of the desk and dropped the papers on it. His voice was tired and discouraged. “There they are, Johnny,” he said. “Another hundred and twenty of them in the morning mail.”

Johnny looked up at him. “More cancellations?” he asked.

Ragin nodded. “Look at them,” he told Johnny. “Some of our best accounts are in there.”

“Sit down, Carrie,” Johnny said. “You look beat.”

Ragin dropped into the chair opposite him. “I am beat,” he admitted. “I’ve been on the phone talking to every one of those guys this morning and all I get is the same answer from each. ‘Come out of the dark ages,’ they say. ‘When are you fellers going to make talking pictures? Sound is here to stay.’”

Johnny didn’t answer. He picked up a contract and looked at it. Written across the face of it in big red pencil were the words: “Rejected, Sept. 10, 1929.” Under it was the name of the exhibitor. Johnny recognized it as one of Magnum’s earliest customers.

“You talked to him too?” he asked Ragin, tapping the contract.

“Yeanh,” Ragin grunted. “He said the same as the others. He was very sorry but—” He paused, shaking his head unhappily.

Johnny thumbed his way through some of the other contracts. He recognized more names. He looked up at Ragin as he came to another familiar signature. “What did Morris say?” he asked.

Ragin closed his eyes wearily. “He was nicer than most of the others, but it added up to the same thing.”

“He was the first exhibitor to play
The Bandit
, back in ’12,” Johnny said bitterly.

Ragin opened his eyes and looked at Johnny. “I know,” he said, “I even reminded him of it, and he said: ‘What do you want me to do? The public wants talkies and every time I book a silent the house is empty like I got a plague sign on the door.’” He laughed angrily. “Everybody wants talking pictures except Peter.” He leaned forward, his voice grew vehement. “I tell you, Johnny, you gotta talk Peter into it or I won’t give two cents for our chances to stay in business through next year!”

Johnny looked at him sympathetically. He had a right to grow excited and vehement. He was Magnum’s domestic sales manager and until this year had an enviable record. Now, no matter how he tried or how hard he worked, he was helpless.

If only Peter had listened to him at that party two years ago. There was talk about sound then, but Peter had laughed at him. “It won’t work,” he had said. And then when Warner’s opened
The Jazz Singer
later the same year with Jolson singing and talking but one line of dialogue in the whole picture, Peter had declared: “A novelty. It won’t last.” But Peter had been wrong. The
Mammy
singer had turned the movie business inside out.

One picture after another came out with singing and talking. Several all-talking pictures had been made and still Peter had clung to his attitude. It was over a month ago that Fox had come out with banner headlines in the trade and even the daily newspapers that he had discontinued the making of silent pictures and henceforth his product would be all in sound. Borden had followed with the same announcement the very next day and the others soon after. It was then that it really began to hurt.

By the end of that week they had received over forty contract cancellations, the following week over one hundred, and now they were coming in at the rate of almost one hundred a day. Johnny calculated swiftly. At that rate, Ragin was right. It wouldn’t take long for the nine thousand contracts they had to evaporate.

“All right, Carrie,” he said at last. “I’ll talk to him again, but I don’t know what good it will do. You know Peter, and when he gets an idea in his head—” He left the sentence unfinished meaningfully.

Ragin stood up and looked down at Johnny. “I know him,” he said darkly, “and you can tell him if he don’t change his mind I’m goin’ out and look for another job, because there won’t be one here.”

“You really think that?” Johnny asked.

“Yeanh,” Ragin replied. “I’m not kidding myself even if Peter is.” He walked to the door and stopped there. “I’m goin’ back to my office and see what the second mail brought in. I’ll be there if you want me.”

Johnny nodded at him and he left. Johnny began to leaf through the papers on his desk again. At last he put them down. A feeling of dismay began to seep through him as the implications of what was happening crystallized in his mind.

It wasn’t a simple matter of getting Peter to change his mind any more; it had become more a matter of whether they could afford the change-over if Peter should change his mind. The time lag between the production of a picture and its appearance in the theater was almost six months and in some cases even longer. There were many reasons. After a picture had finished shooting, it had to be edited and titled, which took almost three months. Then advertising plans had to be drawn up and prints had to be made and shipped to the different exchanges throughout the country and the world. In addition to these problems there were the problems of the various censorship boards in the different cities and foreign countries. Each had its own regulations and ideas, which often forced the picture to be withdrawn and re-edited, and sometimes some scenes had to be retaken. It was a long and hazardous road with many strange and tortuous turnings that a picture traveled before it appeared in a local movie house.

So the industry began to keep a backlog of pictures on hand. Magnum was no exception. There were sixteen pictures in the cans, completed and awaiting release. There were five pictures in work at the studio.

Johnny’s lips tightened as he thought about them. Ordinarily it was a situation that every picture-maker wished he were in: to have enough pictures to guarantee releases over the next six months. There was only one thing the matter with them. They were all silent pictures.

He picked up a pencil and scratched some figures on a piece of paper. Four pictures at about one million dollars apiece. Six pictures at an average of five hundred thousand apiece. Eleven pictures at an average of about eighty thousand apiece. He stared down at the paper. The total came to seven million eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars, not counting anything else, such as shorts, Westerns, and serials. All tied up in silent pictures, which, according to the public’s opinion, were not worth paying admissions to see.

Eight million dollars’ worth of junk, he thought. If they switched over to sound pictures, that was what they would become. Every one of these pictures would have to be remade.

He picked up the phone. “Get me Fred Collins,” he told Jane. Idly his pencil scratched on the paper while he waited. Collins was the company treasurer and controller.

“Hello, Johnny,” Collins’s voice came on.

Johnny held the phone away from his ear. Collins was a big man with a big voice and in ordinary conversation you could hear him a half mile away without trying. Except when he was talking to Peter. Then in some strange way his voice became soft and meek. “Fred, what’s yesterday’s bank balance?” Johnny asked.

Collins’s voice boomed in Johnny’s ear. “Nine hundred thousand one forty-two dollars and thirty-six cents,” he answered promptly.

“That’s a bit low, isn’t it?” Johnny queried.

“Yes,” Collins answered, his voice making Johnny wince. “But we’re getting that million and a half from the Bank of Independence today.”

“That brings our loans to six million dollars, doesn’t it?” Johnny asked.

“Yep,” Collins answered. “That’s the maximum we can borrow under our agreement with the bank. We can’t get any more now until we reduce the borrowings to three million.”

“Okay, Fred.” Johnny thanked him and hung up the phone. His ears were still ringing with Collins’s voice despite his precaution of holding the phone away from his ear. Why did Peter have to hire a foghorn for a treasurer, Johnny thought. Then he smiled for a moment. Collins was all right, he did a good job. The smile disappeared from his face as his mind went back to the problem.

He picked up the phone again. “Ed Kelly,” he said into it.

A few seconds later Kelly’s quiet voice came on the phone. “Yes, Mr. Edge.”

“How many approved contracts have we got on the twenty-nine/thirty program as of yesterday, Ed?”

“Just a moment Mr. Edge,” Kelly replied. “I’ll check and see. Can I call back?”

“I’ll hold on,” Johnny told him. He heard the sound of the phone being put down. Kelly was the head of the contract department. It was his job to record and send out the billings according to the sales contracts. It was the custom of the industry to sell a whole year’s program in advance before many of the pictures were made, even before some of the pictures were decided upon. This was done by listing as many of the pictures on the contract as they knew about at the time the contracts were drawn and covering the balance of the program by classifications. These classifications bore such names as “Specials,” “Double A’s (AA),” “Single A’s (A),” “Exploitation Pictures,” “Idea Pictures,” “Westerns,” “Serials,” and “Shorts.” The rental paid by the exhibitor for each picture he played was very often determined by the manner in which the picture was classified. Statistical summaries based upon these contracts would be prepared under Kelly’s supervision, and they enabled Magnum to know approximately how much revenue would be forthcoming on each year’s program.