But in this bewildering land of make-believe I found realities. I lingered and looked at some plays being staged in opposite parts of the studios. I marvelled at the patience and the effort that each small scene demanded. Patience and good temper on the part of the director, the camera men, the electricians, the carpenters—endless, endless patience, amazing good humor. I watched one small and—as it seemed to me—insignificant scene being repeated three or four times, and each time seemed to me exactly like the last, and each time, when it was over, the director said to the actress: “That’s good, dear, that’s very good!” But he explained to me that whereas the first “shot” was 45 feet long, the last one was reduced to 25 feet and the important thing was condensation. I realized the necessity of co-operation between the workers, beginning with the author’s effort, and the “continuity writers,” right through the details to the end. What immense individual effort, and thought and work each film scene necessitates! Here too, as everywhere, are the heartbreaks, the dreams and ambitions, the triumphs, the disappointments, the never ending dramas and tragedies of human endeavor.
THE “RUSSIAN CASTLE” IN THE “LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE”
(Photograph by Goldwyn Pictures Corporation)
It is a new world to me, and I have to admit a great admiration and a great respect for it.
I dined, a small party, at the house of Gouverneur Morris. We had a Chinese dinner, especially prepared by his Chinese cook. All through dinner the conversation was of Charlie Chaplin, his looks, his individuality, incidents in their friendship, and what I had missed. Never a word of criticism did I hear, everyone talked of him with appreciation and affection, almost with pride. He had talked of me, they said. He had distributed “Mayfair to Moscow” among his friends, and most people thought we knew one another intimately. Finally I found myself too calling him “Charlie.” From all accounts he is cultured, thoughtful and attractive, and I wonder to myself whether I am never to know but the mirror’d reflection. I feel like one who does not personally know the great, but know someone who does and writes home about it! After dinner we left the men, and went on a voyage of exploration round the house, which is bungalow in type, and very attractive and then in the bathroom we paused to powder our noses. In the bathroom we remained, three of us, perched on the baths’ edge, forgot the men, and drifted into conversation which was all absorbing.
One girl was a film actress with bobbed straight glossy henna hair. Her face was much made up, her mouth might have been of any other design than the painted one. She was decorative and futuristic and I liked looking at her. She intrigued me. The other girl was a vivacious and restless continuity-writer. Both were very young. They talked unreservedly about their love affairs, and I listened enraptured, as to a story of de Maupassant. In the end we were agreed that marriage would spoil everything and then the men, impatient of our absence, came and banged upon the bathroom door.
October, 1921. Los Angeles.
Upton Sinclair fetched me for dinner. I was surprised when I saw the author of “The Jungle,” whom I expected to be aggressive and strong-faced. Instead I found a gentle creature, rather vague, and rather shy and with a rather weak chin. We decided that our sort of background was not the Ambassador Hotel, and I asked him to take me anywhere else. We motored into the heart of the town, and went to a cafeteria. This was new to me. Never before had I been to a cafeteria. I had never even heard what they were like. I followed him and did what he did, and tried to look as if I knew what to do; he first took a metal tray from a column of trays, and passed along a row or buffet of hot dishes, selecting what he liked, and the serving woman behind the buffet placed a ration of his selection on his tray. Carrying our own trayfuls we retired to a little table. We talked until everyone else had left, until men on step ladders re-arranged the flowers on their columns, until finally the cafeteria closed and we were expelled. Most of that time we talked about “The Jungle.” I asked him a hundred questions. How did he know about the lives of the foreign immigrants? How did he get into their souls? Had he imagined it, or did he know it? How had he learnt so much about the details of work at the packing houses?
I learnt all I wanted to know. He had imagined nothing. The Russian family was a real family. The wedding feast was real—he was present. He had lived in Packingtown. Every story was a real story, a proven story. Everything was true ... and that was fifteen years ago, and conditions, he said, were much the same today. They had not much improved. He is a most sincere Socialist. Unrelenting, uncompromising, he is at war with all the powers that be. Don Quixote tilting at a windmill isn’t in it. Sinclair tilts at industrial kings in armor, at the octopus tendons of the newspaper kingdom—at all the mailed fists in the world in general and the United States in particular. He is in quest of truth and light. He wishes to undress the veiled spectres, and show us the naked truth beneath, the truth with all its maladies and sores, its hideousness, its terrible deformities, so ably hidden. This mild-faced man will stop at nothing. He has great courage and never fears destruction. He is unwavering in his determination. He goes crashing in where angels fear to tread.