In Theda Bara's Tent (as Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Foxs newsreel factory was a five-story brick building on the corner of Tenth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street, the roughest area in New York City, known as Hell’s Kitchen. The neighborhood was blighted by the elevated railway that blocked sunlight and canopied Ninth Avenue with noise.
When I was a child, if anyone complained about conditions on the Lower East Side, the typical comeback was, “Give thanks. Could be Hells Kitchen.” Our tenements were crowded and falling apart, but on the sidewalk, at the pushcarts or applauding the skill of a juggler, we mingled with our neighbors. They fasted during Lent; we fasted on Yom Kippur. They celebrated Easter—the Greeks one way, the Italians another. We celebrated Passover—the Polish one way, the Germans another.

In Hells Kitchen, people avoided the streets. The sidewalks were owned by the gangs. Each clump of thugs hung around on their own corner harassing everyone who passed by, especially women even if they were pushing a baby carriage. On every block there was a bar, a fanny on every stool even in the morning, and each ethnic gang claimed a particular bar. The Irish Catholics hated the Irish Protestants. Their gangs were always beating up somebody, often men unlucky enough to work at the nearby railway yard.
 My plan was simply to present myself to William Fox and remind him of his offer. I would suggest that he place me in the publicity department or in the news department writing titles. The studios were in flux, some of them merging with others, some just dropping dead. It was far from prestigious to be associated with motion pictures. Those associated with the legitimate stage were considered vastly superior to movie people. Most Broadway stage actors believed it would ruin their careers if they appeared in motion pictures, and they spurned the film scouts who tried to recruit them. So it wasn’t that scary to present Mr. Fox, though he was one of the most powerful and innovative men in the business. My attitude was that he should be grateful that a young man with his future before him believed the movie business was worthwhile. I was sure that even though Mr. Fox had invested every penny, taken every risk and scrimped and saved for years, he must have moments of doubt and would find it reassuring that someone young wanted to throw in with him. His voice was staticky coming through the secretarys intercom. Who? She repeated my name. “What’s he selling?”
    “Says he knows you, sir.”
    “He’s a liar.”
    She looked up at me with a blank expression, as if to say, you heard for yourself. She seemed stubborn, as hard to move as a breakfront.
    “I’m not a liar,” I said. “He is. He promised me a job.”
    She pushed a button on the intercom and spoke into it. “Says you promised him a job, sir.”
    “Get ridda him.”
     She pointed her face up at me, then down at her typewriter. To the sound of her renewed clackety-clack, I strode across the office and yanked open the door to his office, but it wasn’t his office. It was brooms and mops, and there I was in a ridiculous position. The secretary paused, looked up at me with an infuriating lack of interest, then continued typing.
    I strode to another door, yanked it open, and there was Mr. Fox in a cloud of cigar smoke working by the light of a gooseneck lamp, all shades drawn. The office was large, furnished like an English gentlemans club: dark paneling, leather chairs, Oriental carpet. If you objected to the smell of cigars, you were in trouble here. None of the windows were open, no cross-ventilation at all. Mr. Fox, sitting on a swivel chair at a desk as massive as a ship, looked up. He was dressed in a suit, vest and tie, with his side hair brushed over his bald dome and his hooded eyes looking at me with a direct, strong beam. “Oh,” he said, “the kid who don’t take no for an answer.”
    “You promised me a job.”
    “Get outta here.”
“No. You said.”
“So I said. So what?”
“So I need a job, that’s so what. I’m not ashamed of needing a job.”
“Shut the door, for Chrissakes. You want the whole office to know your business?” I had to turn my back to him on my way to close the door, and I felt very childish walking across the carpet. When I turned back, he was watching me from under those hooded eyes, the eyelids closed over more than half of the eyeball, and I had to walk toward him feeling self-conscious. He gestured at the chair facing his desk and said, “Siddown.” The minute my bottom touched down, he swiveled away and said, facing the wall, “State your case.”
“I can write titles, I can write publicity, I can book vaudeville. I’ve been in the motion-picture business my whole life.”
“This is a newsreel factory, kid. This ain’t motion pictures. You want motion pictures, go to the Coast. New York’s finished. It ain’t here anymore.”
“How come you have all the shades pulled down?”
“I don’t want to know what time it is, that’s why. I don’t know if it’s day or night. I never carry a watch. My workday ends when my work is finished. He put a cigar in his mouth, lit it and placed the match carefully in an ashtray full of cigar stumps. Then he faced me. Do you know what makes a successful newsreel?
It’s probably the same thing that makes a successful newspaper. Being the first to arrive. I’d say it’s about getting the scoops. Is that the right answer?”
“You tell me.”
“Okay. I’ll stick with that. You have to get the scoops and get the footage to the theaters before the other newsreel companies do. I don’t know how you do that, but I’m willing to learn. I think it would be fun and interesting to do that. I want you to hire me. I want to work here.”
He pressed a button on his intercom. Faye. Take this pest up to news. Tell Fred he’s got a new grunt. Same salary as the others.” He waved his cigar in a dismissive way and said to me, Get outta here. Prove yourself. Then he was done with me, as if I had evaporated.

His secretary, Faye, led me along some corridors and into an open warehouse space where models stood on stage sets. Some were dressed in golf clothes and holding golf clubs while a cameraman looked through the lens at them. I had to be careful not to trip on coils of cable. At the freight elevator, Faye planted herself in front of me and turned into an anonymous tour guide. On the first floor we film fashion shows. The stages are fully equipped, even including a small swimming pool for underwater shots. She heaved back a brass gate that opened and closed like an accordion and stepped into the freight elevator. Today you see a Burberry shoot, the latest in golf wear. She waited for me to dare to step across the gap between the elevator and the floor, a pit seemingly to the center of the earth.
It took some nerve to get into that freight elevator because it had no roof, and the cables trembled and groaned. The second floor, Faye said, is devoted to short subjects that deal with music, travel, adventure, transportation and rural American life. We produce about twenty-six shorts a year and sell them to theaters along with feature films and newsreels. She had played this role so many times, the lines came out automatically, but all the while, something in her was shrinking because being a tour guide focused too much attention on her. The news department, she said twisting slightly so my eyes will leave her alone, is on third. On the fourth floor is the art department. The library is on the fifth, where we store all the newsreels Mr. Fox has ever produced as well as outtakes and dope sheets that record the film footage, subject, names of the people and location. The elevator stopped before it was flush with the third floor. The gate, if it had opened, would face a dirty wall. I knew it! I knew this thing wasn’t safe! We were trapped. I was going to die. Faye varied the pressure on the lever, and we arrived, at last, lined up with the third floor. She tried to push the gate back, but it stuck. Oh, no! Then the gate opened, and we stepped out into the madhouse that was the Fox news department, men running around in a frantic effort to meet deadline. Fox releases two issues a week, Faye said, on Wednesday and Saturday, to an audience of about thirty million. William Fox was the first to affiliate with a wire service. United Press makes its reporters and photographers around the world available exclusively to Fox. He has cameramen and representatives in Tokyo, Shanghai, Peking, Hong Kong, Manila, Honolulu, New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, Borneo, Sumatra, Tibet, Russia, Alaska, Sweden, Dublin, Liverpool, London, Paris, Madrid, Rome and Manchuria.

Wow! Thats a mouthful!
She did not acknowledge my attempt at familiarity, and I regretted interrupting her because it was an effort for her to resume her memorized lines. Fox is served by more than a thousand cameramen with about sixty thousand feet of film pouring into Foxs laboratories each week from around the world. The news department is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Her manner forbade complimenting her as she stepped back into the elevator. You want the third office on the right, she said through the gate. And so began my career at Fox News.