California Gold (91 page)

The second visitor, Max Margolis, was a dry-goods magnate with seventeen stores from Ventura to San Diego, and a power in the Los Angeles Good Government Group. The third man, Randall Noone, edited the
Modesto Annunciator.

After Mack served whiskey and they took care of pleasantries—what fine orange groves; what a magnificent house; what an interesting train ride out to Riverside—Stimson spoke for the visitors.

“You know that Republicans have organized a League of Lincoln-Roosevelt Clubs throughout California, Mr. Chance.”

“I do,” Mack said.

“We have done so for one purpose. A year from this very month, we must return our state to the people. We must do it by instituting reforms, and by once and for all defeating every candidate promoted by the SP.”

“Most important, we must elect a governor,” Noone said.

Stimson walked back and forth in front of the vast hearth, clearly confident of his own persuasive powers. “Hiram Johnson has agreed to run. He did a superb job standing in for Francis Heney while Heney recuperated from his bullet wound. Johnson will likely be the prosecutor given the credit when Boss Ruef finally goes to San Quentin.”

Margolis said, “And it’s a damn rotten shame that he hasn’t.”

A shaft of sun from a high window lit Mack’s white hair as he leaned against the tan wall. “There are a lot of good lawyers in California.”

“You have a right to be sardonic,” Stimson said. “The delays and maneuverings are scandalous. But it’s due process, and when it has run its course, Ruef will fall. Ruef will go to prison, I guarantee it. Back to the point, if we may. Hiram Johnson. He’s an ideal candidate. He’s state vice president of our league. A tough, experienced man.”

Randall Noone said, “You can measure the depth of Hiram’s commitment by understanding the personal cost of his decision. You know his father, Grove, has a big law practice in Sacramento, and he’s pro-railroad. Grove is furious with his son. But Hiram is still willing to go ahead.”

“So are we all,” Stimson said. “Last year, for six months, we pleaded and argued and lobbied in Sacramento, and the legislature finally, reluctantly enacted the direct primary system into law. Primaries will take the nomination process out of the hands of the corrupt state conventions, which the SP usually dominates. That’s step one. Step two is this: Win the 1910 elections. That requires candidates, and good men standing behind them. We’re here to recruit you as one of the latter, Mr. Chance. We need you in the Lincoln-Roosevelt league. We particularly need your influence up in San Francisco. And—I’ll be frank—we need your money.”

“But I’m living in Southern California. I have no plans to go back.”

Stimson squared off in front of Mack like a debater. “Enrique Potter said I’d have a hard time selling you. But please consider carefully before you refuse. A decade ago, the citizens of California won significant victories over the SP—the Los Angeles harbor decision, the defeat of Huntington’s scheme to cancel the debt. But the Octopus is still huge—and powerful.”

“Damned arrogant too,” Margolis said. “They slung most of the mud at the Good Government Group. Sneered and called us the Goo-Goos—”

“It’s intolerable,” Stimson said. “And we won’t tolerate it. Not any longer.”

“Mr. Stimson—gentlemen—I admire your zeal. And I don’t disagree. I believe every word. But you must also believe me. I’ve fought enough battles. I’m tired of fighting.”

Dismayed, the three proper Republicans exchanged looks. Noone, the editor, said, “Your friend Rudolph Spreckels is one of us. Jim Phelan too.”

“I admire them for it. It doesn’t change anything.”

With sharply reduced enthusiasm, Stimson said, “Do I understand that you’re saying no?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Have a pleasant trip back to Los Angeles, gentlemen.”

M
ARGARET EMERSON ARRIVED ON
the sleeper from San Francisco. Stepping down into sunshine and billowing steam, she was the very picture of Parisian style. Her travel suit was dark-brown wool, and a beige blouse with a jabot and a tight high collar enhanced the long graceful line of her neck. Brown gloves, brown silk parasol, brown straw hat with brown plumes—everything matched.

She threw herself into Mack’s arms for a long hug. “It’s so wonderful to see you.”

“I thought you’d never take me up on my invitation. I’m glad you did.”

“How are you?”

“About the same. This way.”

They passed from under the eaves of the platform and she watched sunlight strike him. Physically he looked much improved, but those eyes were still dead. Margaret’s bubbling excitement turned to pain.

He stowed her suitcases in the rear of his newest automobile, a four-wheeled yacht of a car, a Packard landau, brilliant yellow, with black fenders and trim and Packard’s stylish hex-shaped hubcaps. “I thought we’d spend the day sightseeing, then drive to Redondo Beach for the night. I reserved two suites,” he added in an offhand way. She got the point.

Mack sped the open Packard away from the SP depot. Minutes later, he was weaving through downtown traffic. He shot around one of the big red cars of the Pacific Electric interurban system, and the motorman clanged his bell defensively. Margaret hung on to her hat and her seat cushion, gasping.

“You’re a demon. What’s the speed limit?”

“Six miles an hour downtown, thirty everywhere else. I can’t stand to go that slowly.”

The Packard threaded through openings Margaret thought impossible. Mack was a fine driver, and never endangered pedestrians. Still, he hunched at the big wheel as if he had some unseen presence on his shoulder.

“This is my first visit to Los Angeles,” she said. “It’s huge. I pictured adobes, and cows wandering the streets.”

“I saw it that way in the eighties. There are three hundred and fifty thousand people, maybe more. We get a dozen or so off the trains every day.” He motored past the
Times
, now headquartered in a massive dark-red building crowned by brick turrets and battlements. “The unofficial capital of Otistown. The general’s commission in the Philippines went to his head. Notice the sentry box at the front door? He calls this place the Fortress. His home’s the Bivouac. Inside, they keep fifty or sixty high-power rifles.”

“Whatever for?”

“For the day the mad anarchist trade-union dogs rise up and attack,” Mack said with a wink.

He drove through streets of small neat homes with derricks pumping noisily in backyards. He showed her the well he’d dug for Doheny, “one of the richest men in the state now.” Next he pointed out some of his own wells. In the late forenoon, he took her by Echo Park Lake. Sunshine painted rainbows on the heavy oil slick. “Someday all that seepage will catch fire.”

He showed her Angel’s Flight, the cable railway that ascended Bunker Hill. When he offered to take her to the Alligator Farm on the east side, she declined.

“All right, but you can’t experience Southern California fully unless you see something bizarre. Tell you what. Before you leave, we’ll go to Pasadena and I’ll show you the headquarters of a cult. I’ve told you about my old partner, haven’t I?”

They ate pork loin, vegetables, potatoes, and gravy at Brown’s Union Square Cafeteria, a new kind of restaurant without table service. They pushed their trays along a shelf in front of neatly cased displays of food, selecting only what they wanted, and paid the cashier at the end of the line.

“Another new California idea,” he said. It was hard to make himself heard. The Michigan Society was holding a meeting at several nearby tables. The Grand Wolverine, as his satin sash proclaimed him, extolled the state from which he and all his listeners had fled. At every mention of Michigan, the audience stamped, clapped, and clanged silverware against water glasses.

“I guess they love snow now that they don’t have to shovel it,” Mack said.

They drove out to Washington and Grand. “Biograph is filming there. They’ve sent a whole crew from New York for the winter, to take advantage of our sunshine. The picture they’re doing is called
In Old California.
They want to shoot at the San Gabriel mission, and on some property I own in the Hollywood hills.”

Mack didn’t mention that most of Riverside considered him crazy for putting money in moving pictures, or having anything to do with them. “Still a novelty, and a trashy one,” Clive Henley said. “It’s a business run by a lot of ghetto Jews from New York. Glove merchants. Rag pickers. Dirty little sheenies, the lot of them.”

“Your bigotry and snobbery are showing, Clive,” Mack said in reply. “Also the moss on your back.”

Clive sniffed. “If you want to chum around with Jews and low-life actresses, don’t come to me complaining you’ve caught some disease.”

Clive was trying to be humorous, but he came through as merely crude. Mack didn’t like him very much anymore. Nor did he like the constant attacks by the solid men of Riverside, the badgering he took because he held strong opinions and refused to run with the herd. He’d resigned from the polo club because of it.

They found the Biograph Company working on a wooden-walled stage on a lot next to a lumberyard. There seemed to be a great deal of commotion. Actors and actresses rushed back and forth from four wooden huts to the stage, costumed as señoritas, friars, Spanish dons. Mack handed Margaret a business card.

“That’s the man I have to see. Mike Sinnott.”

“This says Mack Sennett.”

“They all have professional names. Sinnott’s an assistant to the director. Also a bit player and scenario writer. So he said on the telephone, anyway.”

They stepped onto the stage, suddenly immersed in the noise of many conversations and the rapping hammers of carpenters finishing a row of flats. The flats represented an
hacienda
interior. The roof of the stage was open to the sun, but hung with long linen battens to diffuse the light.

“Sinnott?” Mack said to a girl rushing by with an armload of monk’s habits. She pointed to a burly bare-headed man with long, simian arms and rough features. He was talking to a little man with a cap and a tall, beak-nosed fellow of thirty-five or so. Striking rather than handsome, the tall man drew the eye because he wore a suit, cravat, and straw hat. Everyone else was in old clothes or costumed for the picture.

The gent in the straw hat leaned an elbow on the great box of the camera, puffing a cigarette and gesturing like some languid dandy. Those around him hung on his words. “Must be the director,” Mack said.

The conference ended and Sinnott broke away. Mack introduced himself and pulled a document from his coat. “My lawyer, Mr. Potter, made one or two small changes in the location contract. I initialed them and signed it. I’ll expect the hundred-dollar fee by the end of the week.”

“Right you are, Mr. Chance. Would you and the lady like to meet our principals?”

He introduced them to a handsome young actor named Jack Pickford, and his sister Mary, an ingenue of striking beauty, who was perhaps fifteen or sixteen. Then he presented them to the little man in the cap, the cameraman, Bitzer, and the director, Mr. Griffith. “Welcome to the Biograph lot, Mr. Chance, Miss Emerson.” Mack heard the South in Griffith’s voice.

“We’re all set with that fine location in Hollywood,” Sinnott advised his boss. “Mr. Chance and I struck a deal in ten minutes.”

“Two Macks certainly ought to get along, don’t you think? Where are you from, sir?”

“At the moment, Riverside. You?”

“I was born on a plantation in Oldham County, Kentucky, about twenty miles from Louisville. I’m proud to say the blood of the old Confederacy flows in my veins. My father fought for the white race in the First Kentucky Cavalry. He rode for Bedford Forrest and Joe Wheeler. What about you, Miss Emerson?”

“Northern California.”

The director fondled Margaret’s chin in a familiar way. It annoyed Mack, and made Miss Pickford pout like a jealous lover. “What a smile you have,” Griffith said. “If you’d like to go waltzing some evening, leave a message at the Alexandria Hotel down on Spring Street.”

It was lighthearted, superficially a joking invitation. But Griffith’s eye feasted on Margaret. Mary Pickford said sweetly, “Will Mrs. Griffith let you out, D.W.?”

Griffith shot her a look. “I love you too, Mary,” he said, turning his back on the little girl with curls. Jack Pickford pulled at his sweaty monk’s habit and snickered.

All charm again, Griffith shook Mack’s hand and smiled at Margaret. “Guard her, Mr. Chance. If you don’t, someone will steal her.”

He kissed her hand, about-faced smartly, and clapped three times. “All right, ladies and gentlemen. Jack, Mary, Wally— rehearsal, please.”

They watched for an hour. Margaret was fascinated by the actors, the orderly disorder, the hand-cranked camera, and Griffith’s absolute command of every detail. The director deliberated before each shot. He argued with Bitzer but seldom gave in. A general in charge of a raffish army, when he worked he was blunt, even biting if something went wrong, quite different from the courtly Southerner who’d tipped his hat and flattered Margaret.

“What an attractive man,” she said as they left the stage.

“I didn’t like his crack about defending the white race.”

“No. But did you notice that lovely Pickford girl? She’s mad for him.”

“She and three or four others I saw mooning over him. Marriage doesn’t seem to keep his eye from roving.”

“You sound like a grumpy old prude. Marriage doesn’t interfere with my customers at the Maison either. They come in spite of it.”

“Or because of it.”

She laughed, but he didn’t.

The January afternoon grew cool, the shadows long and sharp, the light a deepening gold, and melancholy. On the way out to the ocean, he pulled to the roadside near a large colorful billboard. While he raised the folding top and latched it to the wind screen, Margaret studied the board. Painted aircraft filled a painted sky—fanciful dirigibles, balloons with gondolas, monoplanes and biplanes with translucent ribbed wings.

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