Flickers

PREFACE

While there are historic sites dedicated to Thomas A. Edison in New Jersey, and his genius is recognized in history books, the world has a low recognition that his works lighted the world in the 20th Century – he gave us the common light bulb, he gave us sound–the phonograph, and he and others gave us pictures that move – the movie. His other inventions fill his workshops in West Orange, NJ., a national historic site.

When movies were first shown in closed boxes then on white sheets, they were known by customers as the flickers. For thirty years the flickers were silent, though there were efforts to match picture with sound, Most efforts were mechanical, coordinating film with an audio disk. Real sound on film was a German invention, a dual strip of film that worked in unison, developed by the William Fox company.

The first commercial use of sound-on-film was Fox MovieTone’s newsreel coverage of Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight to Paris in 1927. Newsreels were part of the movie experience since the early days, when Edison and others photographed public events, such as the inauguration of William McKinley. Dramatic movies date from 1903's Great Train Robbery, and hundreds of two-reelers that led to The Birth of A Nation in 1915.

Simultaneously, public events were covered by anonymous cameramen and shown weekly in theaters.

Dozens of these cameramen made technical advances in camera work, advances in methods of photographing events and people, and those advances from the distant past extend to the present coverage of television and internet news. Most of those old newsreels have been lost because nitrate film disintegrated or was lost. So, too, lost with the work are the names of the men who covered the news on film.

This novel is a tribute to those cameramen. It is a work of fiction based on research and while it features real figures who built the world of film, it treats them realistically based on research. Some were flawed men but they helped build an industry. It’s a novel of memories, and like our memories, it skips from now to yesterday and back. And like memories, the hard are more memorable than the sunny.

The Flickers recreates the industry’s growth, and the sound and pictures we take for granted today.

Fade In:

Chapter 1

Hollywood --July 1945

I was halfway through the quart of Olympia before I heard the door bell. I decided my sister-in-law, Ada. could answer it, as she was in the kitchen. The caller could not be for me. Probably a brush salesman, or one of those religious pests that Los Angeles was famed for.

The afternoon sun felt good on my head and shoulders, but it was the Olympia that made me warm. I had been working on the quart for the last hour, a late breakfast. Ada, the sister-in-law, didn’t mind me getting out of bed at one p.m. as much as my beer breakfast. But she’s a good egg, and didn’t complain. I guess it was an insult to her cooking, but eggs and bacon didn’t interest me.

Ada brought the telegram outside and dropped it without word on the table in the sun. Christ, I thought, here we go. The damn army. Maybe they decided they made a mistake in letting me leave New Mexico two days before---after what I had filmed as part of the OSS-Signal Corps crew. But I had signed forms promising not to say a word about the test with anyone, civilian or military.

It may have been the beer, but it pissed me off that they were going to screw up my furlough. I had earned it with this last assignment, and the one before that in China. I didn’t think I’d come back alive from either one.

I took a sip of the Olympia and opened the telegram. It was short and sweet.

Need to talk to you. Am in St. Joe’s. Come by. Signed, Winfield Sheehan.

Bad news? Ada asked on her way to her war-time vegetable garden.

You could call it that, I mumbled. For the next few hours, as I finished the beer, showered and dressed and had dinner with my brother, Ben, and Ada, and tried to be pleasant to their questions about my war camera work, I mentally debated asking Ben for the use of his car to visit the hospital, and finally asked.

Ben need the car every day to get to the North American plant where he was building P-51s, so I asked if he could spare the gasoline, what with the rationing. Go ahead, I have more than enough for the week. And rationing is almost over.

You would not knew there was a war on by driving out to St. Joe’s, as the wide LA boulevards were filled with cars of every vintage at 7:30 p.m. this July 1945 night. It was almost sunset, my favorite time of day—for the light that sheds a yellow glow over the gasoline stations, tire shops and hamburger stands that line the roads in my least favorite city. DeMille and those other early bastards knew what they were doing when they set up shop here in 1912.

It was after 8 before I got to the hospital and found a parking space. Everyone, it seems, in Los Angeles has a car but no place to park it.

The woman at the reception desk fiddled with cards after I asked for Sheehan, till she found what wing and room he was in. I found it easily and decided old Win was in the rich bastard section of this beloved hospital. No ward for him, with eight or ten beds pushed together so the occupants could cough and hack all night, keeping each other awake. And no double room, with some other poor victim of the cancer. No, Sheehan, had a large room and bathroom all to himself, as befits one of the Hollywood rajahs.

The nurse at the desk made me sign in before I could enter the room, and then she went ahead to make sure the rajah was entertaining visitors. She opened the door and nodded.

Sheehan was sitting on his hospital bed in pair of gruesome purple pajamas and ivory silk robe. He had a trade paper on his lap, the Reporter, I think.

Hey Pal, he called, waving me to a chair near the foot of the bed. No stand up hand shake or punch in the arm for old time sake. I took the chair.

I hadn’t seen Sheehan for years, except occasional grainy newspaper photos. He looked the same, beefy healthy, with the cheery face that looked out on the world with the wolfish grin.

Sheehan dropped the paper on the bed, stood and moved to a chair by the desk and telephone. I had never seen a hospital room that looked like an office—but this was Hollywood. He fell into the chair with a wheeze and stared at me with the quizzical look that hadn’t changed over the years since we first met in 1910.

What’s the trouble? I asked, wondering what our meeting was all about. With Sheehan you could expect trouble, either his, yours or more likely, both.

They want to do some exploratory surgery in a day or so, Carl. My liver. Too much of that Prohibition gin," he laughed. I did not join in, as I knew for a fact that during Prohibition Sheehan drank nothing but the best quality booze. He could afford it, and then some.

I nodded, unsure what to say.

Thanks for coming by, Sheehan continued, as if I was dropping off his laundry, but that was his standard attitude. He stared at me silently for a few moments. How long have we known each other, Carl?

I cleared my throat a few moments before saying, We met in, oh, 1910, when you were dayside for the Evening World at the police shack, and I was the slip boy.

Sheehan nodded and smiled his cold smile. Some days, uh? It was my turn to remain silent. Those days were not ones I wanted to renew.

How’d you find me? I asked instead. Sheehan laughed.

The studio did, and they put in calls to Washington. I knew you were back from China. But no one, none of the other cameramen knew your whereabouts…

Yeah, that’s the army for you.

Really, they tell me you’re in the OSS.

I was not surprised that Sheehan had learned as much about my posting, that’s Hollywood. Same thing, I replied.

Tell me about China, he continued.

Big, dirty, lousy food and lots of corpses.

They say we may have to invade to drive the Japs out.

I hope not, we could be there for years then…

I saw no purpose in a seminar about my recent months in CBI.

I saw and filmed too much. The war was going against the Japanese, but there were no shortages of starving children or bombed villages, or the worst, the execution of Nationalist soldiers who deserted the front. Not one or two—but what was it—two hundred and five?

China, Burma, India, the war theater everyone forgot, and few cared about unless they had a relative in steaming India, Burma or miserable China.

We saw some good newsreel footage you sent back, Sheehan said. You haven’t lost your touch. A typical Sheehan compliment, I thought.

With some luck, the war will end soon, I replied. I wanted to tell this old reporter how I saw the morning sky split the week before at an isolated spot in the New Mexican desert. I could still feel the heat from the blast.

Where are you living now? I mean after the army?

I have the old house in Silver Lake. My brother and sister-in-law rent it. I stay with them when I’m in LA. Otherwise it’s Washington and the truck.

You don’t really live in your truck. Sheehan laughed.

I laughed in reply. Of course newsreel cameramen lived some of the time in their trucks, going to assignments, waiting for some event, parked in front of courthouses, sports stadiums. The rajah thought everyone in the film business lived in Taj Mahals and dined on gold plates.

What are you going to do after the war?

Trick question, I decided. Go back to what I had been doing, for Fox newsreels. They have to take me back. I didn’t say that would not be a problem because too many cameramen had been killed in the war.

I still think you are missing the boat by not doing features.

I mulled that before replying. He knew what had happened in ’28, how could he not remember?

I’ll wait for a call from Warners, I said.

I’m waiting for a call from L.B, Sheehan mumbled. You hear I have a movie in post production. Should come out next month or two, once we get the distribution settled.

Again silence. Was he goading me, or was his memory and mind going—along with his liver.

What’s it called? I asked.

Captain Eddie, he said. Rickenbacher, he added, as if I would not recognize the race car driver, World War flying ace I photographed a dozen times over the years. I would not let this one go by.

Yeah, I shot him when he owned one pair of pants. Must have been 1914, for the World, after you left.

Sheehan’s eyes narrowed, always a bad sign. The movie is about his war time experiences.

Great I’ll look for it. I hadn’t sat through a feature movie in more than 16 years. And I didn’t plan to change that.

Sheehan stood and stretched and the robe belt came loose and fell to the floor. He didn’t stoop to pick it up.

Carl, I asked you to come for a reason. I want you to give a message to Fox.

Now I had reason to remain silent. My first reaction was to laugh. Me, carry a message to William Fox?

Why don’t you pick up the telephone there and call him yourself?

This is not a matter that can be handled on the telephone, Carl, Sheehan said in his best executive voice, rough and gruff that he had sharpened on Park Row and Spring Street. It was the voice he used to terrify toadies and enemies. It didn’t work on me, as we were both a long way from 1910 or 1925, for that matter. Sheehan was washed up and had been since 1935 when Zanuck ran him out of the top production job at Fox. I didn’t know what he had been doing since, but nothing in Hollywood is older than a former boss.

Why can’t it be handled that way?

Because I want you to tell Fox I’m sorry for 1930. Sheehan climbed into the bed.

Why I asked, truly puzzled. What I meant was: Why now?

Carl, the doctors tell me this is going to be what they call a routine procedure, but I’m not sure. I’ve had this problem since 1928. If anything happens…well, I want Mr. Fox to know that my health and the events then worked against our interests.

Sheehan began to sound like he was dictating a letter to his secretary.

You voted against him, I said. "I wasn’t