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“Right around the corner. It’s a two-reeler called In Old California. But you won’t find work. There’s fourteen players lined up ahead of you. I’m number twelve.”
“Thanks for the warning — come along,” Bell said to Clyde.
Clyde had recovered from his scare on the train. “Who the heck cares about old California? Griffith could use a snappier title. Like The Girls of Old California.”
“Stick close,” said Bell.
He traced the Griffith movie by the growl of a dynamo powering the lights. It was a big outside operation in a vacant lot with a distant view of majestic mountains. Bell counted more than fifty people engaged — horse wranglers, mechanicians, actors, and scene shifters, and a camera operator he recognized as a valuable man named Bitzer who had worked for Marion and was known as the best in the business.
Griffith, a lanky man of thirty-five or so, was directing from a chair, his face shaded by an enormous, floppy straw hat. He had a soft Kentucky accent and a revolver tucked in his waistband.
“Now, young lady,” he told an actress dressed in an old-fashioned Spanish señorita gown and shawl, “you will try again to walk from where you are currently standing to that tree.”
“Yes, Mr. Griffith.”
Griffith raised a two-foot megaphone to his lips. “Lights!”
The Cooper-Hewitts flared, doubling the effect of the brilliant sun.
“Camera!”
Bitzer focused and started cranking.
“Speed!”
Bitzer cranked to a speed that sent the film past the camera lens at a rate of a thousand feet in twelve and a half minutes.
“Action!”
The señorita pointed at the tree.
“Stop!”
The camera operator stopped cranking. Griffith slumped a little lower under his hat and drawled, politely but firmly, “Billy’s camera will present you as a close-up figure. In return for that honor Ah would appreciate a certain restraint of expression.”
“I have to point out to the audience where I’m heading next.”
“The least patient among them will soon see where you are headed next. Don’t point. And stop looking at the camera.”
“Yes, Mr. Griffith.”
“Speed!”
* * *
The señorita having reached the tree at last and lunch finally announced, Griffith retreated under the shade of an umbrella and removed his floppy hat, revealing jet-black hair, an incipient widow’s peak, a strong hawk nose, and the deeply set, soulful eyes of a matinee idol. A smile warmed them when Bell was introduced.
“May I congratulate you, sir, on your marriage to a wonderful lady and a fine director.”
“Thank you, Mr. Griffith. We had the pleasure of seeing Is This Seat Taken? shown by a Humanova troupe at our wedding feast on Mauretania.”
Griffith rolled his eyes. “With the director putting words in my actors’ mouths?”
“I’m afraid so. That’s what we’ve come to talk to you about. This is Mr. Clyde Lynds. He has invented a wonderful machine to make and show talking pictures.”
“That’s been tried before.”
“But mine works,” said Clyde.
