American Dreams (40 page)

The train ground to a stop. Frightened passengers and the motorman stuck their heads out of open windows. The ticket guard was frantically ringing an alarm gong. In the gap between the platform and the door of the second car, Fritzi saw something grisly and red.

Harry pulled her against his chest. 'Don't look. He didn't stand a
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chance. Some crazy man--'

'Trying to kill me. It wasn't chance, Harry. I know him.'

'Good God,' he said with a look of horror. He pulled her close again, enfolding her in his strong arms while she trembled with fright and shock. It didn't matter that he was married; she wanted his arms around her.

At police headquarters, Harry stayed with her while detectives questioned her. Fritzi identified the dead man for them. When she was told that he was all but unrecognizable, vomit rose in her throat.

Pulled out of bed, B.B. arrived wearing an overcoat over his pajama bottoms. He quickly corroborated Fritzi's story of threats and harassment from the patents detective. She was released a little before one in the morning, without being charged.

B.B. drove her to her flat on Twenty-second with Harry riding along.

'Poor defenseless gel,' B.B. kept saying. 'What quick thinking. You too, mister.'

Harry saw her up to her door, gravely shook her hand, urged her to telephone if he could do anything at all. She knew he couldn't. She was responsible for a man's death. Her parents had taught her reverence for human life, even in its most despicable forms. The effects of what she'd done would be with her for days, years - maybe forever.

But she thanked him, then hurried inside, hoping she'd feel safer, calmer, in her own bedroom.

She didn't. She lay awake, arms crossed protectively on her breast, eyes wide, seeing those few seconds in the station again and again. An inch one way or another and she'd have been under the train instead of Pearly. He Further Westward Ho

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would never threaten her any longer. She felt different about California now. She urgently wanted to flee there, start anew, put the terrible night behind her--

As if she ever could.

48 Further Westward Ho

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On her way to Chicago, Fritzi vowed to say nothing about her involvement with Earl Purvis, and the man's horrible end. Telling her parents would only confirm their fears about acting and the environment in which it was carried on. She really didn't want to speak about Purvis to anyone. He was gone, no longer a threat, but she would be a long time getting over the memory of him.

When she arrived, rather than hiring a taxi to deliver her to the Crown mansion, Fritzi checked in at the Sherman House. She felt sad about the decision but considered it prudent. She telephoned her mother the moment the bellhop deposited her luggage.

'Mama? I'm here overnight. I'm on my way to California to make more pictures.'

'Why didn't you telegraph, for heaven's sake?'

'I didn't know how I'd be received.'

'Oh, liebchen.1 It carried a sad unspoken admission that she had reason for concern.

'I want to see you.'

'I'll leave now, take a taxi,' lisa said.

'You mean I can't come to the house? I'd like to talk to Papa.'

'Not such a good idea. Of course, you're free to do as you please, but 1

wouldn't advise it. Your father, I am sorry to tell you, is still angry.'

'With me?'

'With you, with me - the world.'

'But I've actually had some success. He predicted I wouldn't.'

'All the more reason he's angry. You proved him wrong.'

After a moment of pained silence Fritzi said, 'Call the taxi, Mama. I'll reserve a table in the dining room.'

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A strolling string player serenaded the candlelit room with romantic favorites. 'A Girl in Central Park,' usually a sure bet to dampen Fritzi's eyes, didn't touch her; she was still exercised.

'Mama, what in heaven's name is the trouble with my father? What reason does he have to be angry?'

'Shall I make a list? Number one, he's a man. He's growing old, can do
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nothing about it, and resents it bitterly. He's driven wild by the prohibition crowd. He's also, you know, a German. They are champion grudge holders, surely you remember.'

'On Thursday, Mama, I had a birthday--'

'Oh, that's right. Congratulations. I sent a package to New York, did you get it?'

'Not yet. Never mind.'

'Child, I'm a little forgetful. How old are you now? Twenty-nine?'

'Thirty, Mama. Thirty years old. Do you know what that means? It means I'm an old maid. But it also means I'm old enough to have my father respect what I choose to do with my life.'

'Oh, Liebchen, he does.'

'That isn't true. You're just trying to make me feel good. But he will before I'm through.' Fritzi pounded the table so hard the silver danced.

'I promised you, he will.'

lisa fanned herself with a handkerchief and said in a bewildered way, 'I must find out what became of your present.'

Though the meal was sumptuous, and the meeting with her beloved mother comforting, Fritzi was emotionally devastated by the banishment which lisa thought necessary. She boarded the westbound train next morning in a mood of deep melancholy.

The steel-colored sky over the frozen Illinois prairie did nothing to relieve her gloom. Before the express reached the Mississippi at Alton, a blizzard struck. The engineer took the train across the river at three miles an hour, in howling wind that shook the trestles and terrified the passengers.

On the Iowa side they waited out the storm for six hours, then chugged west behind a snowplow engine.

What am I doing here? Fritzi wondered. Why can't I live a normal life?

What's wrong with me?

She pictured her silver-haired father's curled lip and scornful pointing finger.

LDu bist eine Schauspielerin.'

Further Westward Ho

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'You're an actress.'

It sounded like some debilitating chronic disease.

In western Iowa the snow disappeared, which wasn't entirely a benefit, since it might have prettied up the dismal scenery observed from the Pullman window -- jerry-built towns beside the railway, hog pens and privies and, farther on, small creatures she took to be prairie dogs sitting up on their hind legs.

Unexpected warmth out of the south brought a winter thaw. The Pullman car stoves overheated as the landscape changed. Flat grasslands rolled by, here and there relieved by stunted trees or parched watercourses with a vein of yellow-brown sludge in the center. Forlorn cattle with their ribs showing posed for the passing travelers. Fritzi's spirits sank lower.

And then came a late winter afternoon a hundred miles or more into eastern Colorado. The Union Pacific engineer stopped to take on water from a great roadside tank in a forlorn little place called Agate.

Passengers fled the hell-hot coaches. The January air, if not quite balmy, was surprisingly pleasant. The evening light was the color of melted butter, shading to dark amber in the east. The desolate upland shone like a sheet of gold. A tiny black shape moved along the northern skyline. An auto, Fritzi realized; perhaps a Model T, though it was so far away she couldn't be sure. It dropped from sight under the horizon, leaving a vast yellow cyclorama lit by a single evening star. Fritzi shivered at the beauty, and something else. The primitive land wasn't primitive any longer. She was reminded of the dizzying changes in her craft, and of the amazing century in which she lived.

'Look there,' said a frail gray-haired woman at her elbow. 'Are my eyes tricking me?'

Fritzi followed the pointing hand gloved in gray. Westward, running along the horizon like a saw blade, mountains thrust upward. A few peaks crested with snow gleamed in the fading daylight.

'No, I believe we've come to the Rockies. It's rather breathtaking, isn't it?'

Beyond the mountains lay a new life. What would she find on the exotic sunlit shores of California - 'America's Mediterranean,' as people called it?

She couldn't imagine.

California might be a lot better than she expected. Perhaps - dared she hope? - she might even meet an intelligent, steady, handsome, and desirable man.

You don't have to stay forever, remember. Perhaps you'll like it. Even if
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you don't, make the best of it. You're a trouper, aren't you? You said you'd go, you 'we come this far, you 'we got to stick with it. If you didn 't learn anything else in all the years since Mortmain's, surely you learned that much.

Long quiescent, Ellen Terry spoke.

I quite admire your spirit, my girl, if not your destination.

'Did you say something?' the frail woman asked.

With a smile and a toss of her blond curls Fritzi said, "I think we should get on board.' She took the woman's arm to help her up the steps in the golden evening at Agate, Colorado.

How can an ex-huckster, ex-bellboy, ex-tailor, ex-advertising man, ex-bookmaker, know anything about picture quality? Hands that would be more properly employed with a pushcart on the lower East Side are responsible for directing stage plays and making pictures of them.

- Moving Picture World, 1910

There is nothing more absurd. . . nothing which destroys the art and beauty of the scene more than showing us greatly enlarged faces of the leading actors. . . . Many beautiful scenes are marred by showing these enlarged figures, with the head touching the very

, upper part of the frame, and the feet missing.

- Moving Picture World, 1911

The moving pictures may present figures greater than life size without loss of illusion. . . . Every change of expression is more clearly
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pictured than if they were truly before one, and one isn't embarrassed drinking the effect in.

- Moving Picture World, 1912

49 Welcome to Los Angeles

C/^ lendale. All out for Glendale.'

VJ" 1 he Southern Pacific conductor sounded as tired as she felt. She stared out the window not with wonder but despair. Torrential rain hammered the glass, gushed off the red-tiled roof of the Spanish--Moorish depot. She'd changed to the S.P at Sacramento, ridden south through the sunbaked Central Valley, eager for her first views of the mountains surrounding Los Angeles. At Bakersfield clouds had closed in, bringing the deluge. Now she could barely see beyond the station sign.

'Conductor, what happened to the sunshine?'

'Rainy season. This way out.'

She slipped and almost fell descending the metal steps. The wind would have torn her hat off but for the long pins. At the end of the platform four buggies and a muddy Pope-Toledo awaited the arriving passengers. She watched a young couple gratefully rush to the auto. Others from day coaches went to the buggies. Across a street that resembled a lake, two pathetic palm trees shook and rattled. The dispiriting scene was circumscribed by impenetrable gray murk. Where were the orange groves? Where were the suntanned natives?

'Excuse me,' Fritzi said to a depot agent. 'Someone from Los Angeles was supposed to meet me. Has anyone asked for a Miss Crown?'

'Nope. No one here except those rigs.' Which were already rolling away through muddy waters. Fritzi huddled near the tan wall, to no avail; the wind assured her of a soaking. 'Taxi man's yonder, by the far door,' the agent said.

Fritzi picked up her valises and walked through the station. Each step squeezed water out of her shoes. Outside, a man leaned against a dented 254

California

Ford flivver, holding an umbrella and chewing a toothpick. When he spied a potential customer he chewed faster.

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She consulted a crumpled paper. 'I'm to go to the Hollywood Hotel, at the corner of I lolly wood Boulevard and Highland Avenue.'

'I know where it is, lady. Way over on the other side of the hills. Never get there through the canyons in this weather. Got to head downtown, then out to Hollywood.' The toothpick danced. 'Four dollars.'

'That sounds like robbery.'

'Then take another taxi.' The driver flicked his eyes at puddles on either side of his black auto.

Fritzi kicked one of her valises. 'The least you can do is load those for me.'

His day's profit made, the taxi driver grew friendly. 'Why, yes, ma'am, and we'll be off in a jiffy.'

According to publications she'd read for her journey, 'the exotic jewel of Southern California' had grown to around three hundred fifty thousand people and was considered a boom town, friendly to free enterprise and hostile to trade unions. As the taxi lurched and banged toward the city, Fritzi saw only a very few signs of the exotic: a torn and faded billboard for the 1st American aviation meet jan 10-201910, another for the pasadena tournament OF ROSES, a new year's parade she'd heard about. They passed through a neighborhood of cottages with oil derricks pumping away in side and back yards.

Frame and sandstone buildings three and four stories high clustered in the central business district. She saw a street sign for Broadway, but no spectacular theaters. Fences and blank walls were defaced by garish advertisements, lumber, dentist, stoves, tin & hardware, building lots redondo BEACH - exceptional, VALUE! A boxy black vehicle chugged by with a roof sign offering new chev. utility coupe $877. Los Angeles seemed little more than conventional office blocks and dry-goods emporiums, picture shows and barber shops like those found in cow towns on the prairie.

The usual urban clutter of wires crosshatched the sky above the streets.

Large red trolleys ran on tracks in the center, clanging their bells, splattering mud, and intimidating persons or vehicles in their right of way.

Fritzi saw the words pacific electric: on several cars.

The driver detoured to the intersection of Hill and Third Streets to point out a civic showpiece, a tramway called Angel's Flight that carried Welcome to Los Angeles

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people up and down a steep hillside. A block farther on, a steer with an
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