Max (28 page)

In those five weeks, Max had accomplished a great deal. The leases on the nickelodeons and the equity in the converted lecture halls had been sold; the purchase of the ice house had gone through, and a crew of carpenters and electricians had been working there under Sam Snyder's direction. The ten legitimate theatres had been closed down, and were being cleaned and refurbished. When they reopened, Max's intention was to charge fifty cents in the orchestra and thirty cents in the balcony, which would result in a cash flow, according to his rough calculations, of at least double the amount the whole chain took in at the time of closing. He had been spending money with a kind of royal abandon, convinced that this throw of the dice must work. And at the end of the five weeks, they gathered at Max's home to hear the results of the efforts of Sally and Gerald Freedman.

Sally slipped into the background. Somewhere, just below her threshold of conscious awareness, she understood that the projection of a woman as a major factor in their scheme might create opposition and resistance; when they were gathered in the living room, she explained that Freedman would outline the camera work, and at the appropriate moments, she would hold up one or another of the stack of dialogue cards that rested in her lap. She had arranged it this way in spite of Freedman's opposition and in spite of the fact that she had done most of the creative work.

‘You're going to photograph those cards?' Fred Feldman asked.

‘That's our plan, yes.' She turned to Snyder. ‘No problem about that, is there, Sam?'

‘None at all. But how long do you figure to hold on each card?'

Sally glanced at Freedman, who explained, ‘We try to limit a dialogue card to twelve words, except for prepositions and conjunctions and pronouns. Most are less than twelve words –'

Sally read the look on Max's face and said quickly, ‘Words like “and,” “but,” “I,” “you,” “she,” “he” – we don't count those because we feel they will respond to quick recognition. But even so, we tried to make the dialogue lines very short. It's not always possible.”

‘I don't know,' Max said. ‘People don't go around talking in two or three words.'

‘But this isn't real,' Freedman said. ‘I think it works. Now in answer to Sam's question, we worked out the dialogue in two ways. First we would read a card the way you read a book, to yourself. We found we could read the twelve words comfortably in six seconds. Then we mouthed them, because that's the way people read who have learned to read as adults – I mean people of limited education who still struggle with the language – and that takes twice as long, about twelve seconds.'

‘And I think,' Sally added, ‘that many people will read aloud. I mean, if someone brings his mother or father and they're immigrants and can't read English, wouldn't you think he'd read aloud?'

‘Hopefully in a whisper,' Freedman said.

‘Of course, if we must have more than twelve words, we can increase the card time.'

‘We'll worry about that later,' Max said. ‘Let's get going.'

‘Sure, here goes,' Freedman agreed. ‘Our title first. We call this
Jennifer, Child of the Street.
'

‘Jennifer? What the hell kind of a name is Jennifer?'

‘Well, we shorten it. I mean, in the picture it's Jenny.'

‘So why shouldn't it be Jenny in the title?'

‘Come on, Max,' Bert said. ‘Let him get on with it.'

‘No reason why it can't be Jenny in the title,' Freedman said. ‘We call her Jenny, in any case. She lives with her mother and father in a cold-water flat downtown. The father's name is Joe Kent, and he's a drunkard and a brute. Sometimes he works as a stevedore down on the docks, but mostly he doesn't work, and the family ekes out its poor existence from the sewing the mother does and from the pencils Jenny sells on the street. The mother, whose name is Alice, is crippled. Of course, this is just background to the story itself –'

‘But if it's background,' Fred Feldman broke in, ‘how do you tell it? You don't print it all out on cards, do you?'

‘Oh, no. No. We show it in the action. The action is more important than anything else. I'm simply placing Jenny.'

Sally held up the first card. ‘All his money spent on Booze, Joe Kent comes home.'

‘We've established the apartment at this point,' Freedman said. ‘It's our first set. Alice, the mother, sits at her sewing table. Then the card. You see, while most cards are dialogue, we must have a few that are simply exposition. Alice looks up with a smile at first. Then, seeing Joe reeling drunk, her smile fades. She spreads her arms to show hopeless disapproval. He waves an arm and curses her. Then Jenny runs into the room.'

Sally held up the second card: ‘Don't say such things to Mother. You're drunk.'

‘He turns on Jenny and strikes her. The mother rises with a superhuman effort, then falls to the floor. Jenny gets up from her knees and runs to her mother, then kneeling with her arms around her mother. She confronts her father as he approaches.'

Sally held up a card: ‘Don't touch her.'

‘Would you know Jenny is speaking?' Bert asked.

‘Oh, no doubt of that. We would put the camera directly on Jenny. She speaks the words, then the card. Then we go back to Joe Kent with the camera as he stalks around the room in his fury, knocking furniture around, turning back in anger on his wife and daughter. Then we put the camera on them to show their frightened, hopeless response. Then back on Joe Kent, who turns to them, curses them once more, goes to the cupboard, finds a bottle of hooch, and drains it. Then he flings the bottle against the wall, turns to curse his wife and daughter once again, and exits, slamming the door behind him. Now we move the camera around to another angle to include Alice and Jenny. Alice speaks to her.'

Sally held up a card: ‘He wasn't always this way. He was kind before he became a drunkard.'

Freedman looked up from his manuscript. ‘I must say that once Sally and I got into this, we realised that we could do things we never thought about – I mean moving the camera from place to place. In the next scene, Jenny leaves her home to go to her work of selling pencils. This she must do so that her family may survive. I would like to show her going down the stairs in the cold-water tenement. Could we do that, Sam?'

‘I think we could work it out,' Snyder said. ‘It's just a question of getting enough light in the place.'

‘And follow her out into the street?'

‘Why not?'

He turned back to the manuscript. ‘I have a lot of details in here,' Freedman said, ‘but the main thing is that this poor, sick child goes out on the street to sell her pencils –'

‘Child? What's a child?' Max demanded. ‘How old is she?'

‘Eighteen,' Sally said.

‘What kind of sickness?' Feldman wanted to know.

‘We don't specify. It's not necessary. It could be simple malnutrition, hunger, not enough to eat. Anyway, she's out there on the street, pleading with people to buy her pencils, and they don't. They pass her by, and then suddenly she collapses in a faint.'

‘You see,' Sally put in, ‘it can be done. We've moved the story to this point with only three dialogue cards and one card of exposition. Dou you like it so far, Max?'

‘Yeah, I like it so far, but you got to know where it's going. I get the picture all right – the drunken old bum and the mother and this poor kid – but I want to know where it's going.'

Freedman nodded. ‘Yes, of course. We have the scene where she faints, and a crowd gathers. But you know the way a crowd is in New York. They look, but they don't do anything. Now here,' he said, tapping the manuscript, ‘we put in directions about how we think the cameras should be placed, and we keep doing that, but I don't think you want all that because that way we can lose the story. Wouldn't you agree with me, Sally?'

‘Absolutely. I think you should just tell the story, and then whenever the proper place comes, I'll hold up the proper dialogue card.'

‘That makes sense,' Max agreed. ‘I think we're beginning to see how the dialogue cards work, so let's have the story.'

‘Fine. Now at the same moment, more or less, that Jenny falls down in her faint, a chauffeur-driven limousine automobile comes along, one of those big new cars, and this one belongs to our leading man, whose name is Manfred Van Dyme. He is about twenty-six years old, and he's the only son of a very rich old New York family that goes way back to the Dutch. He's like one of those people Richard Harding Davis writes about, so rich that he doesn't have to work for a living, but all the same a very decent person.'

‘Not if he's anything like the bankers I deal with,' Max said.

‘Well, no. He's not in business. He's a gentleman of leisure, and he drifts around in his automobile when he isn't strolling on the avenue. The point is that his car reaches a point opposite Jenny just as she faints.'

Sally held up a card: ‘Pull over, Johnson.'

‘Johnson's the chauffeur's name. The car pulls over, and Manfred leaps out, pushes through the crowd, and bends over Jenny.'

‘Why didn't somebody call an ambulance?' Jake Stein wanted to know.

‘Jake, it's a story!' Max snapped.

‘Well, Manfred sees this beautiful young woman lying there in a faint, and he's touched. He's deeply touched, and he also gazes with anger at those people standing around who haven't enough compassion to do something to help this poor, beautiful young woman. So he picks her up in his arms and carries her to his car. Johnson holds the door open for him, and Manfred places her on a seat and climbs in. Now at this point, Sally and I felt that we could do something that appears to be practical but which we've never seen done. I guess Sam is the one to tell us whether it's possible.'

‘Name it, Gerry. I'll do my best.'

‘Well, it's like this, Sam. He picks her up, say, on Fourteenth Street. Now we feel the Van Dyme mansion should be on Fifth Avenue, one of those graystone houses in the Fifties or in the Sixties. Now he's going to drive her home with him –'

‘Home?' Max demanded. ‘Wait a minute. Maybe I don't know exactly how the classy uptown bluebloods live, but sure as hell there ain't nobody going to pick up a broad on the street and take her home and present her to Mama and Papa. Not to the papas I've dealt with.'

‘No, Max,' Sally said. ‘You're getting ahead of us. Manfred's mother and father are away touring Europe. It's the thing with such people. I'm always reading how they're touring the Continent. And you must understand that Manfred's a most unusual man.'

‘OK, he's got to be Santa Claus in plain clothes – but why not? I guess every poor kid dreams of something like that.'

‘Back to your question, Gerry,' Snyder reminded him.

‘Yes. Well, what we were wondering is whether you could mount a camera on a dray, or on one of those automobile trucks, and then keep photographing Manfred's car as he drives from Fourteenth Street to upper Fifth Avenue. We might need police cooperation, but Max tells me that's no problem. Could we do it?'

‘Hey, why nobody ever thought of that, I don't know. Well, sort of. They put a camera on a train and moved along with galloping horses. But this, it's different, isn't it? If we put the camera in front of Manfred's car, then the car would be going right at the audience –'

‘If you set up two or three cameras along the way – or even one camera if you moved it,' Sally broke in exictedly, ‘then you'd see the car from one position and then from another.'

‘Wait a minute!' Max exclaimed. ‘Why don't you put the camera right in the car with Manfred, next to the chauffeur?'

‘Too close.'

‘No room.'

‘But you know,' Sam Snyder cried, his excitement mounting, ‘if we could do what Max wants – I mean, even if we have to build some special kind of automobile with a platform or something – it would be spectacular.'

They were all caught up in the excitement now, seeing an endless procession of pictures and possibilities between Fourteenth Streeth and Fifth Avenue. Suddenly, Manfred Van Dyme and Jenny Kent were no longer ridiculous paper figures but realities, pillars of hope for their future. Reinforced with new confidence and authority, Gerald Freedman went on with the story, Sally exhibiting her dialogue cards proudly. ‘In his magnificent limousine, Manfred carries Jenny to his Fifth Avenue mansion, carries her inside in his arms, and lays her gently in a big fourposter bed. She is very weak. Her eyelids flutter. The servants in the house are aghast. Who is this creature that Manfred brings into this house? Manfred cares nothing for their snide whispering. He summons a doctor, for already he is in love with Jenny. The doctor arrives, examines Jenny, and then informs Manfred that her possibilities for survival are narrow indeed. She appears to be dying.'

The dialogue card Sally exhibited read: ‘Dying! Can this kind of beauty die? Never! You must save her!'

‘It is Manfred who makes this speech, and when the doctor spreads his arms and shakes his head in despair, Manfred speaks again, the longest dialogue card in the film: “No, she will not die! She must not die! Until now, my life has been empty and meaningless. We will spare no cost, no effort, to save her!”'

‘You're not letting her die?' Max demanded.

‘No. Oh, no. Let me go on.

‘Manfred takes up a vigil by Jenny's bedside. She regains her health. Manfred takes her shopping in the best stores, buys her beautiful clothes, a fur coat. Manfred's mother and father are still in Europe. Jenny's father tracks her down, appears at the Fifth Avenue mansion, accuses Manfred of kidnapping his daughter. Jenny weeps, begs her father to go away. But since she is under age, she must go with him. The father returns with a policeman, and he, the policeman, enforces the father's right to Jenny. Manfred watches them depart.'