Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

Lynn had such an air with her, that is, if Lucinda were not self-deceived, if she didn't imagine it all, if it were anything but an hallucination conjured up by a mind morbidly conscious of Bel's shadow in the offing, the shadow of that relationship which, while unresolved, must ever rest between the lover and the wife.

XXXIV

But these peculiar tribulations rankled neither severally nor even in their sum more distressfully than did the trouble at the studio, where daily the tension of ill-feeling between actress and director grew more taut, as Lucinda's earlier misgivings ripened into articulate dissatisfaction with Nolan's methods and their fruits, and as that sensitive artistic soul reacted deplorably, in terms of begrudged civility at best, and at other times of stubborn Celtic oppugnancy.

Dilatory tactics in directing had become too fast a habit with Nolan to be broken at will, and had forced him to forego his chance at that attractive job in the East. For which, of course, he would never forgive Lucinda. And he was otherwise so fed up with the feeling that he was unappreciated, that he had taken to fuming nastily over every set-back which put off the final "take" by so much as an hour, and indeed was more than once only restrained from "walking off the lot and leaving the picture flat" by the consideration that he had as yet been able to wheedle out of Lontaine a mere niggardly half of his contract fee in advance.

Aware of what was in the air, the supporting players held their collective breath against that explosion which all felt was due at any moment to hoist them into the same element and leave them there, belike, in indefinite suspense. Individually they went with a nice if naïve diplomacy in all their dealings with Miss Lee and Mr. Nolan individually; for who could foresay whose hands would hold the symbols of power when the dust had settled? But the sympathies of the producing staffs, to a man, Lucinda was sensible, were with Nolan; and though this nettled her at times, she consoled herself with the reflection that it was after all only natural, since the best directors, that is to say those with the most artful and resourceful press-agents, hand-pick their lieutenants as a general custom and carry them along as they lightly flit from berth to berth. And she derived a little comfort from the belief that the cameraman was on her side.

Cameramen, being highly trained specialists in an exacting art, are more often than not men of independent minds, iconoclastic in their attitude toward the directors with whom they work. Iturbide was of this tribe. He knew his trade, not Nolan or any other could instruct him in it. If he reckoned the light not right for any take, that scene would wait though Nolan raved and the heavens quaked. In the choice of the right angle for any shot his judgment was final, even Nolan learned in time not to dispute it. And he accomplished his will with a singular economy of words and emotion, the more remarkable in view of the mercurial temper with which tradition accredits the race from whom he sprang. He was Mexican, a tall and rangey body, with eyes as beautiful as a woman's, and much to the silken courtesy of the Spanish whose blood he shared. "No, Mr. Nolan," he would announce in a strongly accented and resonant voice, shaking his head sorrowfully after setting up his camera and assaying the light by peering through a strip of negative film exposed behind the lens – "no, I no take – light no good. Tomorrow we take, maybe light better then." And while Nolan, who as like as not had voluptuously kept a regiment of extra people waiting all day to work in this the last hour of the afternoon – while Nolan spluttered and swore and offered to go down on his knees if prayers would move Iturbide to change his mind, the cameraman would be placidly superintending the demounting of his camera, and pocketing the darling lens whose care he never would trust to hands other than his own. And that scene would not be taken until the next day – not then, if the light were not exactly to Iturbide's liking. Which was one among a number of reasons why his photography was credited with having saved many a picture otherwise without virtue.

Scrupulous always to avoid giving unprovoked offense, in the series of skirmishes which made the final two weeks of Nolan's engagement memorable, Iturbide played the part of benevolent neutral; but if Lucinda were not mistaken in her reading of his eyes, the best of his benevolence was reserved for her.

Historically – and setting aside minor clashes of opinion as mere affairs of outposts – the private war progressed to its conclusion in three stages, which for convenience may be named the Battle of the Supper Club Set, the Affair of the Comedy Feet, and the Last Stand in the Living-Room Doorway.

In the novel from which the picture in production took its name and little else, most of the plot development was worked out in a fashionable supper club, where Lucinda in the character of a professional dancer, figured nightly as what for some reason New York that stays up nights knows by the name of "hostess." The rooms of the club as described bore close resemblance to the premises for years tenanted by the Club de Vingt in East Fifty-eighth street, to whose general plan, however, fanciful embellishments had been added in an effort to make it a frame worthy of the dancer's charms.

Over the lay-out, or scheme, for this set, Lucinda had spent many hours and much thought – before Nolan found time to give the production any attention whatever – in consultation with Harry Lontaine and Mr. Coakley, the talented young man who served the Zinn Studios in the capacity of general technical director: an office which as organized by the motion-picture trade, comprehends those – among others – of architect, landscape-gardener, scene, house, sign and artist-painter, interior decorator, and amateur of the art of every era, from the Eolithic to that of East Aurora. And in the end Lucinda had turned to her work before the camera well-satisfied that Mr. Coakley knew what to do and how to do it, and would assemble an excellently suitable room if left to exercise his own good taste and ingenuity.

The most pretentious bit of building required by the production, the supper club was the last to be erected, and wasn't ready till the beginning of the fourth week of Nolan's reign; as Lucinda learned it was, one evening, when the assistant-director circulated a call for the entire company to work on it the next day.

Accordingly, Lucinda and Fanny strolled over to the main stage, where, behind a flimsy fence of sides – frames of wood and paint-smeared canvas held up by struts – the precincts of the supper-club basked in the cynical glare of Cooper-Hewitts overhead.

Inside the barricade, Lucinda halted with a cry of shocked remonstrance.

In the middle of the floor, upon which she was to give the solo dance which she had been weeks rehearsing under a veteran professional, Nolan stood vivaciously lining out tomorrow's proposed campaign for the benefit of a group composed of his first assistant, Mr. Wells, Iturbide and the second cameraman, and Mr. Coakley.

There was nothing else to break the full force of the blow which fate had prepared for Lucinda's expectations.

Of the gay, exquisite scheme upon which she and Coakley had agreed, guided by the novel, there wasn't a sign. The main masses of woodwork were here all a dull, blank black. The panels, which were to have framed baskets of fruit and garlands of flowers, in low poly-chrome relief-work, had yielded place to paintings in the style of French posters, of women in antic postures and clothed only enough to accent their nakedness. The little tables that lined the walls were dressed with cloths checquered staringly in red and white. The imbecile geometry of the Cubists had patterned all the draperies and upholstery materials in weird juxtapositions of colour apparently intended to give away the grisly cosmic secret that there was something rotten in the solar spectrum. And at the far end of the room there was… Lucinda looked twice to make sure her eyes did not deceive her. But, no; there it was: a bar, a veritable zinc of the common Parisian cabaret.

And while she gaped aghast, hysterically torn by a desire to scream with lunatic laughter and an impulse to weep and dance with rage, Nolan spied her and, deserting his audience, tripped briskly over, beaming happily.

"Well, Miss Lee! how about it, eh? A little slice off the top of the real Bohemia, I'll tell the world. And wait till you see how she screens. O bay-bee! but this glad young set's gonna photograph like a million dollars."

Lucinda choked down the anger with which her lips were tremulous. For an instant she stared hopelessly at Nolan, comprehending that this vile parody of the design she had approved was due wholly to his arbitrary action in contradicting the plans without reference to her wishes. And she could have cried with disappointment and vexation. As a matter of simple fact, her eyes did fill in that bitter moment when she was made poignantly aware of how high her hopes had been and how heartlessly frustrated, and how helpless she was to express a tithe of her indignation without jeopardizing the good of the picture.

If she spoke her mind it were inconceivable that Nolan should consent to continue as director. And grave and well-grounded as was her dissatisfaction with him, Lucinda was not yet ready to believe it would benefit the picture to have it finished by another intelligence than that under whose guidance it had been so ill-begun.

And it is by this that the potential artistic stature of Linda Lee is to be reckoned, that in this the young beginning of her career she had already learned, what many who walk with the great ones of the screen have never learned and are incapable of learning, to think of her work before herself, to esteem her rôle as something less than the story which gave it excuse for being, to hold the welfare of the picture as a picture more important than her own.

While still she faltered, fearing to speak her mind, Coakley came up with the others. To him she turned reproachfully.

"Oh, Mr. Coakley! why did you do this?"

Before Coakley could reply Nolan cut in irritably: "Do what? What's the matter now?"

"I'm asking Mr. Coakley why he didn't carry out the design we agreed on for the supper club."

Coakley grinned and scratched an ear. "Mr. Nolan's ideas, Miss Lee," he drawled uncomfortably.

"Mr. Nolan ordered this change?"

Nolan brusquely interposed: "Of course, I did. What's wrong with the set?"

"And you didn't consult me, Mr. Coakley?"

"I supposed you knew, Miss Lee."

"Say, listen here!" Nolan snapped – "what's the grand idea? I said I was responsible for this set, didn't I? I gave Coakley's lay-out the once-over, saw it wouldn't do, and told him what I wanted. And why wouldn't I? Look't what we got. Not much like that glorified tea-room you were satisfied with, is it?"

"No, Mr. Nolan – not much. I grant you that."

"Well, then, what's the big objection?"

"Simply that the set is out of harmony with the rest of the picture – "

"Out of harmony! Why, it's going to make the picture! You ask Harry Iturbide here. He'll tell you, when that set's flashed on the screen it's going to knock your eye out."

"I'm sure he will," Lucinda agreed, smiling at the cameraman.

"Well, Harry?" Nolan insisted – "what about it? Who's got the rights of this argument?"

"Miss Lee," the cameraman said, sententious.

"Miss Lee has! Say: how do you make that out?"

"You don't want to make your background too prominent, Mr. Nolan," Iturbide explained patiently. "This set is going to stick out in front of the actors. You won't be able to see what they're doing against a checker-board like that."

"Ah, you give me a pain!" Nolan retorted crushingly. "That background's all right – going to photograph like a million dollars, I tell you."

"But, Mr. Nolan," Lucinda resumed with more confidence: "don't you see that the set is completely out of key with the atmosphere of the story? It isn't in the least like the supper club the author described."

"Bet your sweet life it isn't! Look here: I read that story, and I know all about it, and I can show you where the author was all wrong with his idea of the kind of a joint Nelly was running – "

"It wasn't what you call a 'joint,' to begin with, Mr. Nolan."

"That's just the very point I'm trying to make. If it isn't a joint you're dancing in, where's Richards get off with his kicking about you not being good enough to marry his son? It's got to be a joint, or there won't be any sense in the way he fusses when he finds out you and Dick are stepping out together. If that place in the book wasn't a joint, I'm a kike!" Nolan paused in triumph to let his argument sink in. "Now" – he brandished a hand at the set – "this is a joint, and a regular one, if you want to know. Some class to this. I doped it all out myself. Take those tablecloths, now: that's the identical kind they were using in Montmartre last time I was in New York. And those panels on the walls – I got the idea for them from Reisenweber's Paradise Room, only these are sportier. And that black woodwork and all… Why, we've taken the best points of all the classiest joints in New York and lumped them into one set, and improved on them at that. Now when this poor fish of a Richards sees his son dancing with you in a joint like this, he'll have some excuse for claiming you ain't all you might be."

"The trouble is," Lucinda replied gravely – "I mean, from your viewpoint the trouble will be —Richards will never see Dick dancing with me in this set."

"What's the reason he won't?"

Lucinda smiled slightly, shook her head slightly, slightly shrugged. In the course of Nolan's harangue it had been revealed to her that no greater calamity could possibly be visited upon the picture than to permit its essential colour of good taste to be vitiated by the introduction of this purely atrocious set. It would be like asking the public to believe that people accustomed to sup and dance in the Crystal Room at the Ritz had transferred their favour to the roughest cabaret in the purlieus of Longacre Square.

"What's the reason he won't?" Nolan repeated, raising his voice angrily.

"Because I won't work on this set, Mr. Nolan – until it is restored to the design I approved."