VI
“And how was yourtrip, Guy?” asked Ginger Horton, sniffing a bit, just to be on the safe side it seemed.
Guy shrugged.
“Oh, same old six-and-seven, Ginger,” he said.
“I beg your pardon,” interjected his Aunt Agnes smartly.
Esther beamed, truly in league at last with her long-dead favorite sister’s only son.
“It meansnot too good, Agnes,” she said emphatically. “It’s an expression used in dice-playing: You ‘come out’—isn’t that right, Guy?—on ‘six,’ yourpoint, then you throw, in this case, a ‘seven,’ which means:no good,youlose.” She looked to her Guy. “That’s it, isn’t it, dear?”
“Oh, it’s agamblingexpression,” said Agnes Edwards with a certain amused complacency, though she must have raised her cup rather too hurriedly, for Esther was content merely to beam at Guy.
“Then your trip wasn’t ...too good, is that it?” asked Ginger Horton seriously, setting her own cup down squarely, pressing the napkin briefly to her lips.
Esther started to answer, but in the end looked to Guy instead.
“Oh, it’s just a manner of speaking,” said Guy Grand easily. “What really gives the expression bite, of course, is thatsixis generally an easy point to make, you see, and, well ... but then the fact is really, that the ... uh, thenational economy, so to speak, isn’t in the best of shape just now. Not a buyer’s market at all really. A bit bearish as a matter of fact.” He gave a chuckle, looking at the Pekinese.
Ginger Horton seized the opportunity to bring the dog into it.
“Well, it’s all overourhead, isn’t it, Bitsy? Hmm? Isn’t it over your Bitsy-witsy head? Hmmm?”
“Bearish...” Esther began to explain.
“I think we all know whatthatmeans, Esther,” said Agnes shortly, raising one hand to her throat, herold eyes glittering no less than the great diamonds she clutched there.
*****
Evidently Grand liked playing the donkey-man. In any case, he had bought himself a large motion-picture house in Philadelphia. The house had been losing money badly for six months, so it was natural that the manager and his staff, who knew nothing of Grand’s background, should be apprehensive over the probable shake-up.
The manager was a shrewd and capable man of many years’ experience in cinema management, a man whose position represented for him the fruit of a life’s work. He decided that his best move, under the circumstances, would be to go to Grand and cheerfully recommend salary cuts for all.
During their first conference, however, it was Grand, in his right as new owner, who held the initiative throughout.
By way of preliminary, and while the manager sat alertly on the edge of a big leather chair, Grand paced the floor of the comfortable office, his hands clasped at his back, and a slight frown on his face. Finally he stopped in the center of the room and addressed the manager:
“TheChinesehave an expression, Mr. ...Mister Manager. I believe it occurs in the book of theI Ching: “Put your house in order,” they say, “thatis the first step.””
This brought a flush to the manager’s face and caused him to shift in his chair.
“My dad,” said Grand then, and with severe reverence, “pushed out here in ... 1920. There were few frontiers open for him at that time. There are fewer still ... open-for-us-today!”
He faced the manager and would have let him speak; in fact, by looking straight into his face, he invited him to do so, but the man could only nod in sage agreement.
“If there is one unexplored territory,” Grand continued, waxing expansive now, “one virgin wood alive today in this man’s land of ours—it is cinema management! My dad—“Dad Grand”—was a championship golfer. Thatmaybe why ... now this is only a guess ... but thatmaybe why he always favored the maxim: ‘If you want them to play your course—don’t put rocks on the green!’”
Grand paused for a minute, staring down at the manager’s sparkling shoes as he allowed his great brow to furrow and his lips to purse, frantically pensive. Then he shot a question:
“Do you know the story of the Majestic Theatre in Kansas City?”
The manager, a man with thirty years’ experience in the field, who knew the story of every theatre in the country, did not know this one.
“In August, 1939, the management of the K.C. Majestic changed hands,andpolicy. Weston seats were installed—four inches wider than standard—and ‘a.p.’s,’ admission prices, were cut in half ... and two people were to occupy each seat. The new manager, Jason Frank, who died of a brain hemorrhage later the same year, had advanced Wyler Publicity nine hundred dollars for the catch-phrase, ‘Half the Price, and a Chance for Vice,’ which received a wide private circulation.”
Grand broke off his narrative to give the manager a searching look before continuing:
“...butit didn’t work, sir! Itdid notwork ... and I’ll tell you why: it was acrackpotscheme. A crackpot scheme, and rocks on the green! It cost Frank his licence, his health, and in this case perhaps his very life.”
Grand paused for effect and crossed to the desk where he took up a sheaf of onionskin papers and threshed them about before the manager. Each sheet was black with figures.
“According to my figures,” he said tersely, “this house will fold in nine months’ time unless there is, at minimum, an eight percent climb in ‘p.a.’s’—paid admissions.” Here he frowned darkly, let it pass, forced a smile, and then flapped his arms a time or two, as he resumed speaking, in a much lighter tone now:
“Of course there are a number of ... ofpossibilitiesfor us here ... I have certain plans ... oh granted they’re tentative, under wrap, irons in the fire, if you like—but Icantell youthis: I am retaining you and your staff. We are not ploughing the green under. Do you follow? Right. Now I have arranged for this increase in your salaries: ten percent. I won’t say it is asubstantialincrease; I say simply:ten percent... which means, of course, that all ...all these figures”—he waved the sheaf of papers in a gesture of hopelessness and then dropped them into the wastebasket—“will have to berevised! More time lost before we know where we stand! Yet that can’t be helped. Itisa move—andIsay it is a move ... in the right direction!”
He spoke to the manager for an hour, thinking aloud, getting the feel of things, keeping his hand in, and so on. Then he dismissed him for three months’ paid vacation.
Grand’s theatre was one of the city’s largest andhad first-run rights on the most publicized films. In the manager’s absence, things proceeded normally for a while; until one night when the house was packed for the opening of the smart new musical,Main Street, U.S.A.
First there was an annoying half-hour delay while extra camp-stool seats were sold and set up in the aisles; then, when the house lights finally dimmed into blackness, and the audience settled back to enjoy the musical, Grand gave them something they weren’t expecting: a cheap foreign film.
The moment the film began, people started leaving. In the darkness, however, with seats two-abreast choking the aisles, most of them were forced back. So the film rolled on; and while the minutes gathered into quarter-hours, and each quarter-hour cut cripplingly deep into the evening, Grand, locked in the projection room high above, stumbled from wall to wall, choking with laughter.
After forty-five minutes, the film was taken off and it was announced over the public-address system, and at a volume strength never before used anywhere, that a mistake had been made, that this wasnotthe new musical.
Shouts of “And how!” came from the crowd, and “I’ll say it’s not!” and “You’re telling me! God!”
Then after another delay for rewinding, the cheapforeign film was put on again, upside down.
By ten thirty the house was seething towards angry panic, and Grand gave the order to refund the money of everyone who wished to pass by the box office. At eleven o’clock there was a line outside the theatre two blocks long.
From his office above, Grand kept delaying the cashier’s work by phoning every few minutes to ask: “How’s it going?” or “What’s up?”
The next day there was a notice on the central bulletin board:
“Rocks on the green! All hands alert!”
It also announced another fat pay-hike.
Into certain films such asMrs. Miniver, Grand made eccentric inserts.
In one scene inMrs. Miniver, Walter Pidgeon was sitting at evening in his fire-lit study and writing in his journal. He had just that afternoon made the acquaintance of Mrs. Miniver and was no doubt thinking about her now as he paused reflectively and looked towards the open fire. In the original version of this film, he took a small penknife from the desk drawer and meditatively sharpened the pencil he had been writing with. During this scene the camera remained on hisface, which was filled with quiet reflection and modest hopefulness, so that the intended emphasis of the scene was quite clear: his genteeland wistfully ambitious thoughts about Mrs. Miniver.
The insert Grand made into this film, was, like those he made into others, professionally done, and as such, was technically indiscernable. It was introduced just at the moment where Pidgeon opened the knife, and it was a three-second close shot of the fire-glint blade.
This simple insert misplaced the emphasis of the scene; the fire-glint blade seemed to portend dire evil, and occurring as it did early in the story, simply “spoiled” the film.
Grand would hang around the lobby after the show to overhear the remarks of those leaving, and often he would join in himself:
“What was that part about theknife?” he would demand querulously, stalking up and down the lobby, striking his fist into his open hand, “... hehadthat knife ... I thought he was going to try andkillher! Christ, I don’tgetit!”
In some cases, Grand’s theatre had to have two copies of the film on hand, because his alterations were so flagrant that he did not deem it wise to project the altered copy twice in succession. This was the case with a popular film calledThe Best Years of Our Lives. This film was mainly concerned, in its attempt at an odd kind of realism, with a young veteran of war, who was an amputee and had metal hooksinstead of hands. It was a story told quite seriously and one which depended for much of its drama upon a straight-faced identification with the amputee’s situation and attitude. Grand’s insert occurred in the middle of the film’s big scene. This original scene was a seven-second pan of the two principal characters, the amputee and his pretty home-town fiancée while they were sitting on the family porch swing one summer evening. The hero was courting her, in his quiet way—and this consisted of a brave smile, more or less in apology, it would seem, for having the metal hooks instead of hands—while the young girl’s eyes shone with tolerance and understanding ... a scene which was interrupted by Grand’s insert: a cut to below the girl’s waist where the hooks were seen to hover for an instant and then disappear, grappling urgently beneath her skirt. The duration of this cut was less than one-half second, but was unmistakably seen by anyone not on the brink of sleep.
It brought some of the audience bolt upright. Others the scene affected in a sort of double-take way, reacting to it as they did only minutes later. The rest, that is to say about one-third of the audience, failed to notice it at all; and the film rolled on. No one could believe his eyes; those who were positive they had seen something funny in the realism there, sat through the film again to make certain—though, of course, the altered version was never run twice in succession—butallwho had seen were so obsessed by what they had seen, or what they imagined they had seen, that they could no longer follow the story line, though it was, from that point on, quite as it was intended, without incongruity or surprise.
Grand had a good deal of trouble about his alterations of certain films and was eventually sued by several of the big studios. You can bet it cost him a pretty to keep clear in the end.