Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

It was true enough that the facile infatuation which California inspires in the uninitiate already held her senses in fee; she felt as one might who had miraculously found the way to cross the far horizon and go down into the magic realms of true romance.

But she fell asleep that night to dream of coursing a will-o'-the-wisp through a land whose painted illusion failed and faded as she fled, till in the end there was no more beauty, nor happiness nor hope, but only the bare grin of the desert savage and implacable.

She started awake with her husband's name trembling on her lips.

XXI

The room the Lontaines occupied in the Alexandria adjoined Lucinda's, and while she was lazing over breakfast and trying to find her way about in newspapers whose screaming local patriotism made one feel vaguely ashamed of having been born elsewhere, Fanny tapped on the communicating door and drifted in, en négligé, with a cigarette and an airy nonchalance oddly at war with a problematic shadow that lurked in her eyes.

"My amiable first husband," she announced, "has charged me to arrange for an audience at your convenience."

"As soon as you like," Lucinda laughed – "I mean, give me time to crawl into some clothes."

"Sure you don't mind? – and the day so immature!"

"Not a bit. In fact, I've been thinking, if we're really going through with this lunatic adventure, the less time we lose the better."

"If!" Fanny caught the word up quickly. "Does that mean you want to reconsider?"

"No, dear; merely that I've been wondering, ever since I woke up, whether the night might not have brought your husband perhaps wiser counsel."

"So much depends upon what you mean by 'wiser.' But if it's a change of heart, I'm in a position to assure you nothing like that has happened to Harry."

"I only meant – between ourselves – I can't think it quite wise of him to risk much on my chances of making good as a movie star."

Fanny achieved a ladylike snort of derision. "Never worry about what Harry risks! Besides, I won't for an instant admit there's any chance of failure, so far as you're concerned, Cindy. But I will admit I'm counting on your common-sense to hold Harry down to earth."

"How do you mean, dear?"

"Oh, it isn't that I question his grasp of business conditions and fundamentals. But he's got such an active mind, he finds it hard to let well enough alone, he's everlastingly embroidering everything he takes an interest in with the most amazing arabesques. Let him run wild, and by nightfall he'll have the motion-picture industry of the United States pooled under one Napoleonic directing head, whose identity I leave you to surmise – and all on the basis of his undertaking to shape the film destinies of Linda Lee. And he'll draw diagrams and produce figures to prove what he predicts can't fail to come true, he'll even name the date of the coming millenium in the Lontaine fortunes. So somebody's got to keep a check on the accelerator, and I'm incompetent, I don't know the first thing about business, and I'm looking to you."

"Afraid you're leaning on a broken reed, my dear."

"Don't believe it. You're so wonderfully level-headed about things, Cindy, I have implicit confidence in you. Now this morning Harry has waked up with his poor dear bean more than usually addled with gorgeous schemes, and says he wants to consult you. What he really wants is your unconditional approval of everything he has to propose. It's only fair to warn you, any other attitude will prove inacceptable in the extreme. That's what Harry calls 'talking business.' So do be wise as well as kind."

"I'll try," Lucinda promised.

Considered in the light of this semi-serious warning, all that Lontaine had to lay before her seemed almost disappointingly conservative. But perhaps he was more subtile than Fanny knew. Uncommonly grave and intent when he presented himself for the conference, in business-like fashion he went at once to the heart of things.

"I've been thinking it over all night," he assured Lucinda seriously, as she and Fanny settled to give him attention, "and it seems to me I ought to let you know more specifically what you're letting yourself in for, before I ask you to hold yourself pledged."

"That sounds suspiciously like preparation for letting me down easily."

"Please don't think that." There was a convincing glint of alarm in Lontaine's look. "Never more enthusiastic, more sure of anything than I am of your eventual success. But it's going to mean hard work for both of us, slavery for many months, and hindrances may crop up we ought to be prepared against."

"I shan't mind hard work," Lucinda replied. "In fact, I can't think of anything that I'd find more agreeable than consciousness of at least trying to do something worth while with my life. As for disappointments, I don't expect much, so I can't be very hard hit if everything doesn't turn out as happily as one might wish."

"If that spirit won't win for us, nothing will," Lontaine declared. "Now for a tentative programme… Our first step, naturally, will be to incorporate. And since it seems to be the fashion on this side, and our corporate name will serve as a trade-mark, I venture to suggest 'Linda Lee Inc.'"

"One name is as good as another, don't you think?"

"Good. Call that settled. Then as to finances. Going on my own judgment and observation, I'm all for a small capitalization, just enough to give us working capital with a fair margin to insure against loss of time."

"I don't think I understand."

"Well, it's like this: My study of American studio conditions has satisfied me that production costs this side are normally excessive. Of course, allowance must be made for exaggeration; it seems to be a custom of the trade for the producer to multiply several times his actual outlay on a picture and broadside the result as if dollars made pictures and not brains. But I happen to know the average cost of a well-made picture today is between eighty and a hundred and twenty thousand – too much by half."

"Mr. Culp's secretary told me Alma Daley's pictures cost between a hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand each."

"If so, Ben Culp is throwing money away through ignorance or bad management or indifference. The returns are so tremendous from a really good picture, or almost any picture with a popular star, nowadays, the cinema financier can count on getting his money back and as much more in the first year of a picture's life and still have a going property, one that will bring in clear profits for a couple of years to come. So he isn't much inclined to worry about costs. Then again, in the big organizations, production costs are inflated by heavy overhead charges."

"I haven't the faintest idea what that means."

"Overhead means a proportionate charge against each production of the cost of maintaining the entire organization, including all expenses, many of which have nothing to do with the actual making of pictures. In a small organization, such as ours will be, overhead will be cut to the bone. We can make as good pictures as anybody at an average cost of not more than fifty thousand dollars; with care and ingenuity, once we get going, we'll be able to pare that down considerably. But say a picture does cost fifty thousand, its gross earnings, the first year, should be two-hundred and fifty thousand. Of that the producer gets sixty-five per cent., in round figures a hundred and sixty-five thousand. We ought to turn out not less than four pictures a year, which will mean at least four-hundred and fifty thousand clear profit to be split up between the star, the executive, and the capitalists."

"It sounds like a fairy tale."

"It is a fairy tale – come true in real life. Nothing else could account for the present-day tribe of motion-picture millionaires. Some of them have a certain shrewdness, almost all have business cunning of a low order, I daresay a dogged Diogenes could run to earth one or two who are honest, but precious few of them are men of either education, taste, artistic instinct or appreciation."

"But how could such men – ?"

"They had imagination enough to see cheap amusement for the masses in what most intelligent people, a dozen years ago, considered merely a mechanical curiosity. So they invested their small savings, these fur-cutters and petty tradesmen and barnstorming actors, in the venture that high finance scorned; and the boom, when it came, found them securely in the saddle. That's why the public gets so much perfunctory and stupid stuff thrown at it today."

"But our pictures aren't going to be in that class – are they?"

"Rather not! We're going to go at this thing in an intelligent way. We'll pick a good staff, select our stories with care, get the best men to write our scenarios, and gather round us a group of actors, like those who have made the Continental cinema what it is today, more interested in their work than in themselves, willing to take their chances of scoring in fine ensemble acting instead of insistent that every story shall be distorted, every scene directed, every picture cut to throw a so-called star into prominence. Even in America such sincere actors exist, and we'll find and bring them together and prove that cinema production can be an art as well as a money-grubbing scheme."

"Bravo! bravo!" Fanny interpolated. "Hark to the dear man! Now if only he'll perform one-half as bravely as he promises – !"

Lontaine flushed a little but paid no other heed. "To get back to the question of capitalization… Arbitrarily setting fifty thousand as a fair production cost, we'll want at least a hundred and fifty thousand to begin with."

"But surely we won't need a hundred thousand margin for safety?"

"Not for safety – for economy. When we finish our first picture it will be a matter of six months at least before it can be exhibited, before, that is, it will begin to repay its cost. Meantime, we can't afford either to disband our company or hold it together in idleness. We ought to start our second picture the day after we finish the first. Thus we will waste no gestures. And allowing three months to each, we should have our second and third ready by the time the first is released. Do you follow me, Mrs. Druce?"

"I think you're quite right. You said yesterday you had some people ready to furnish the necessary capital?"

"In half an hour I can find half a dozen who'd jump at the chance," Lontaine replied without a quiver. "They don't know you, of course, Mrs. Druce, I mean they don't know Linda Lee and what she's capable of, and naturally they would be inclined to boggle at such a proposition coming from anybody but me. But they do know me, they have faith in my ideals and my practical knowledge of the business, and nothing would please them better than to see their money at work in my hands. The question is: Do we want to take them in? Is it necessary? Is it good business?"

Lucinda shook her head. "I'm sure I don't know," she said, smiling. "Please be patient with my stupidity in money matters."

"I mean to say: With profits of approximately half a million a year in sight, do we want to see the third share that would ordinarily go to capital diverted to the pockets of people who have no interest in our business except as a source of revenue?"

"Can we avoid that?"

"Simply enough, if you care to take the risk. I'll be frank with you and confess I'm not financially in a position to invest in the business myself. But if you should decide to back yourself, use your own money to finance Linda Lee Inc. you would ultimately receive two-thirds of the profits instead of the one you'd be entitled to as the star. And no outsider would have anything to say about the way we conduct our own business."

"I don't think I care about that," Lucinda observed thoughtfully. "But it does appeal to me, the idea that if I use my own money nobody but myself can suffer if we're making a mistake."