you can’t completely cover two thousand years, but you can, as we did, show the cracking up of a great civilization, and how painful the process can be. The criticism we drew for almost ignoring Christ and Christianity was unjust, we think, and unfair. Very few knew then, or know now, that we had included, as a kind of trial balloon, some footage of Christ Himself, and His times. This footage we had to cut. The Board of Review, as you know, is both Catholic and Protestant. They—the Board—went right up in arms. We didn’t protest very hard when they claimed our “treatment” was irreverent, indecent, and biased and inaccurate “by any Christian standard.” “Why,” they wailed, “it doesn’t even look like Him,” and they were right; it didn’t. Not any picture
Johnson, when he saw the Roman epic, mentally clicked high his heels. His men went right to work, and we handled the job as we had the first. One day Kessler got me in a corner, dead earnest.
“Ed,” he said, “I’m going to find out where you got that footage if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
I told him that some day he would.
“And I don’t mean some day, either; I mean right now. That bushwa about Europe might go once, but not twice. I know better, and so does everyone else. Now, what about it?”
I told him I’d have to consult Mike and I did. We were up against it. We called a conference.
“Kessler tells me he has troubles. I guess you all know what they are.” They all knew.
Johnson spoke up. “He’s right, too. We know better. Where did you get it?”
I turned to Mike. “Want to do the talking?”
A shake of his head. “You’re doing all right.”
“All right.” Kessler hunched a little forward and Marrs lit another cigarette. “We weren’t lying and we weren’t exaggerating when we said the actual photography was ours. Every frame of film was taken right here in this country, within the last few months. Just how—I won’t mention why or where—we can’t tell you just now.” Kessler snorted in disgust. “Let me finish.
“We all know that we’re cashing in, hand over fist. And we’re going to cash in some more. We have, on our personal schedule, five more pictures. Three of that five we want you to handle as you did the others. The last two of the five will show you both the reason for all the childish secrecy, as Kessler calls it, and another motive that we have so far kept hidden. The last two pictures will show you both our motives and our methods; one is as important as the other. Now— is that enough? Can we go ahead on that basis?”
It wasn’t enough for Kessler. “That doesn’t mean a thing to me. What are we, a bunch of hacks?”
Johnson was thinking about his bank balance. “Five more. Two years, maybe four.”
Marrs was skeptical. “Who do you think you’re going to kid that long? Where’s your studio? Where’s your talent? Where do you shoot your exteriors? Where do you get costumes and your extras? In one single shot you’ve got forty thousand extras, if you’ve got one! Maybe you can shut
Johnson told him to pipe down for a while and let him think. Mike and I didn’t like this one bit. But what could we do—tell the truth and end up in a strait-jacket?
“Can we do it this way?” he finally asked. “Marrs: these boys have an in with the Soviet Government. They work in some place in Siberia, maybe. Nobody gets within miles of there. No one ever knows what the Russians are doing—”
“Nope!” Marrs was definite. “Any hint that these came from Russia and we’d all be a bunch of Reds. Cut the gross in half.”
Johnson began to pick up speed. “All right, not from Russia. From one of these little republics fringed around Siberia or Armenia or one of those places. They’re not Russian-made films at all. In fact, they’ve been made by some of these Germans and Austrians the Russians took over and moved after the War. The war fever had died down enough for people to realize that the Germans knew their stuff occasionally. The old sympathy racket for these refugees struggling with faulty equipment, lousy climate, making-superspectacles and smuggling them out under the nose of the Gestapo or whatever they call it—That’s it!”
Doubtfully, from Marrs: “And the Russians tell the world we’re nuts, that they haven’t got any loose Germans?”
That, Johnson overrode. “Who reads the back pages? Who pays any attention to what the Russians say? Who cares? They might even think we’re telling the truth and start looking around their own backyard for something that isn’t there! All right with you?” to Mike and myself.
I looked at Mike and he looked at me.
“O.K. with us.”
“O.K. with the rest of you? Kessler? Bernstein?”
They weren’t too agreeable, and certainly not happy, but they agreed to play games until we gave the word.
We were warm in our thanks. “You won’t regret it.”
Kessler doubted that very much, but Johnson eased them all out, back to work. Another hurdle leaped, or sidestepped.
“Rome” was released on schedule and drew the same friendly reviews. “Friendly” is the wrong word for reviews that stretched ticket line-ups blocks long. Marrs did a good job on the publicity. Even that chain of newspapers that afterward turned on us so viciously fell for Marrs’ word wizardry and ran full-page editorials urging the reader to see “Rome.”
With our third picture, “Flame Over France,” we corrected a few misconceptions about the French Revolution, and began stepping on a few tender toes. Luckily, however, and not altogether by design, there happened to be in power in Paris a liberal government. They backed us to the hilt with the confirmation we needed. At our request they released a lot of documents that had hitherto conveniently been lost in the cavernous recesses of the Bibliotheque Nationale. I’ve forgotten the name of whoever happened to be the perennial pretender to the French throne. At, I’m sure, the subtle prodding of one of Marrs’ ubiquitous publicity men, the pretender sued us for our whole net, alleging the defamation of the good name of the Bourbons. A lawyer Johnson dug up for us sucked the poor chump into a courtroom and cut him to bits. Not even six cents damages did he get. Samuels, the lawyer, and Marrs drew a good-sized bonus, and the pretender moved to Honduras.
Somewhere around this point, I believe, did the tone of the press begin to change. Up until then we’d been regarded as crosses between Shakespeare and Barnum. Since long obscure facts had been dredged into the light, a few well-known pessimists began to wonder
I’m going to stop right here and say something about our personal life while all this was going on. Mike I’ve kept in the background pretty well, mostly because he wants it that way. He lets me do all the talking and stick my neck out while he sits in the most comfortable chair in sight. I yell and I argue and he just sits there; hardly ever a word coming out of that dark-brown pan, certainly never an indication showing that behind those polite eyebrows there’s a brain—and a sense of humor and wit—faster and as deadly as a bear trap. Oh, I know we’ve played around, sometimes with a loud bang, but we’ve been, ordinarily, too busy and too preoccupied with what we were doing to waste any time. Ruth, while she was with us, was a good dancing and drinking partner. She was young, she was almost what you’d call beautiful, and she seemed to like being with us. For a while I had a few ideas about her that might have developed into something serious. We both—I should say, all three of us—found out in time that we looked at a lot of things too differently. So we weren’t too disappointed when she signed with Metro. Her contract meant what she thought was all the fame and money and happiness in the world, plus the personal attention she was doubtless entitled to have. They put her in Class B’s and serials and she, financially, is better off than she ever expected to be. Emotionally, I don’t know. We heard from her sometime ago, and I think she’s about due for another divorce. Maybe it’s just as well.
