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

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I was hired as an assistant contact man, which meant I did the legwork for all kinds of shoots and secured various permissions or permits so that the filming process could proceed efficiently. It was up to me and the other contact men at the studio to make sure cameramen, who lugged tons of equipment, could set up as quickly as possible when they arrived on the scene.
One of my first assignments was to figure out how to pirate the Astor Stakes at Belmont Park Racetrack. Hearst News had paid fifty thousand dollars for the exclusive rights to film the race, and those rights were sold to only one newsreel company.
The most obvious solution was handheld cameras. We would buy twenty of them for cameramen who would pose as fans and shoot from the grandstand while mingling with the crowd. A few weeks before the race, I went out to Belmont Park and rented the roof of an old factory beside the track where we could post cameramen with telescopic lenses. At the other end of the track was another old factory with a wooden water tank on the edge of the roof. I rented the roof and got permission from the owner to drain the water out of the tank, bored a hole through it and put a cameraman inside.
I took a few carpenters to the track with me. They earned about six dollars a day, and they built platforms at both ends of the track, which we camouflaged with trees. Another contact man leased two airplanes and equipped them with cameras for aerial coverage. The cameramen stationed in the buildings and on the platforms would go to the track a few days before the event and camp out there. We made sure they had enough decks of cards and whiskey to keep them amused at night. The cameramen were as eager to get a scoop as Mr. Fox was, and they loved playing the pirate game.
The track hired freelance security guards for the big races. I thought it was a good idea to have some of them on our payroll as well so they could ignore our cameramen. Hells Kitchen was full of muscular men who might qualify as Belmont Park racetrack security guards.

I was not afraid to prowl for candidates because Fox Studio seldom had trouble with neighbors. Our two doormen, Vinnie and Pasko, would just as soon kill you as talk to you, a reputation cultivated when they worked as goons for Big Tim Sullivan. They alternated patrolling the sidewalk to clear away troublemakers, a ritual more than a necessity not only because of their reputations but also because our neighbors were proud of us. They loved movies. Mr. Fox made sure that at least twice a year, a movie star strolled the sidewalks. Tom Mix was there with his horse when the building opened, and a dog rumored to be Rin Tin Tin arrived to delight crowds of ill-kempt children. Theda Bara came by in her white limousine with her Arabian entourage.

So it was with confidence that I entered Paddys Saloon at Fifty-fifth and Ninth under the elevated tracks. There was no legal drinking age. I could go into any bar and be served. Paddy’s was a long, narrow space with a warped wooden floor littered with peanut shells.  Everywhere, on all the walls and above you on the ceiling facing down, were framed portraits of prizefighters. There were Irish flags tacked to the wall behind the bar and an American flag draped around a portrait of President Wilson. The men sitting at the bar did not take their eyes off me as I made my way across the floor. Their faces were either belligerent or vacant, with an abundance of big stubbly jaws and pug noses. Their coloring was on a descending scale of rosé wine to peeled potatoes.
I expected to be harassed. My plan was to wait it out, then ask the bartender in a low voice if Jack Dempsey had stopped by yet. Dropping his name would get everyones attention because Dempsey was a very popular fighter. His boxing style consisted of constantly bobbing and weaving before attacking furiously. He knocked out most of his opponents in the first round. Fox was planning to do an on-camera interview with him because he was going to attempt the heavyweight championship. The first title would say “Rage in Motion.” I was pretending we were doing the shoot that day.
All eyes at the bar bored into me. Against the wall was the usual arrangement of liquor bottles: artistic labels, amber, caramel, silver, in shapes, squat, rectangular, round, long necks, lit from above—a beautiful display of temptation. A train thundered by overhead, and all the bottles rattled. It was a long train, and waiting to see if the bottles might be jiggled onto the floor was a moment of live animation in Technicolor. I liked the sight so much I forgot caution and sat down on a stool. Taken, said the thug on the next stool and with one swat knocked me off. I fell to the floor, bumping my thigh hard on the footrest. For him, it was a moment of live slapstick comedy. I flew at him shouting, You idiot! How dare you hit me!
Not a good idea. He pinned my arms behind my back and whispered, Say uncle. Of course I didn’t until I was almost maimed, but at last I gave in, and he let me go while guffawing his stupid head off. Here was the perfect security guard. If any of the real guards tried to stop my cameramen, this hooligan would know a million undetectable tortures to inflict. I stood at the bar and ordered a beer from the bartender, who hesitated, waiting for permission. I slapped some coins down on the bar. Gimme a beer, will ya? I come in here from the Fox Studio looking for Jack Dempsey, and this is the welcome I get.
I wouldnt sit down on that stool if I was you, buddy, said the thug next to me. Kikes aint welcome in this place. You got kike written all over you. Whad ya think, boys? Hes a kike, aint he?
The moron on the next stool said, He got kike eyes.

Some of the men on the stools could see my reflection in the mirror behind the bar, but others had to lean forward. This heres a private club, said one of the men leaning.  Our eyes met for a second, and then he sat back. A zap of confusion.
Yeah, said another. This heres a private club. You gotta have a membership card. Ha ha ha ha.
The one who said it was a private club leaned forward again. Our eyes locked. Could it be? Freckles?
He ran to me, threw his arms around me, lifted me off my feet and danced me around the room. Harry! Its Harry! Look how he grew up! Look how he grew up! He set me on the floor, picked me up, set me on the floor, hugged me hard, let me go and gave me a squeaky kiss on the cheek. I still got your present, Harry, he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, sniffling hard, then hawking a gob on the sawdust floor. He fished in his pocket. Look. He held the broken swans beak on his palm and stood beaming down at me with his pale blue eyes. “Did Uncle Sonny ever come back, Harry?”
I couldn’t speak. I just stood there.

His face was the same, covered with freckles, slivers for lips, white eyelashes, but his body had ballooned, and he was now about six foot three with massive broad shoulders. Look at me not procuring you a drink. Paddy! Did you see? Did you see, its my best friend Harry? Did you see how he come looking for me? I knew he wouldnt forget me. I knew it. I says to myself, if theres one person in the whole wide world I can count on, its Harry. He couldn’t keep his hands off me, like a child with a puppy. The bartender slid a mug of beer down to me. Move over, you apes, Freckles said to the other men. Let Harry sit down.
This heres my stool, Freckles, whined the man on the stool next to Freckles.
Yeah? said Freckles, standing behind the man. Says who? The man skulked to the other end of the bar, and Freckles patted the leather on the stool next to him. I sat down, amazed by what life gave me. Why Freckles? And why did seeing him make me want to weep? Freckles wasn’t the least bit ashamed of being overwhelmed. You got a mustache, Harry, Freckles said and wiped foam off my upper lip with his finger.
By the time I left the bar, five men had promised to help me at Belmont. I was overcome while walking back to the studio and had to duck into a doorway and turn my back so I could cry without being seen. I had no idea until then how much strength I’d been using to hold myself together and how futile had been my resolve to put my past life out of my mind.
The next day, Freckles and five of his friends went with me out to the track, where they were hired as security guards. Then I gathered them around me in the studio and showed them a handheld Sept camera. This, boys, is one of the great inventions of our day. Look how small it is. It uses what we call 35-millimeter film. Why do we call it 35 millimeter? I showed them a piece of film. Because thats how wide this film is. I passed around an inch or two of film, and they regarded it intensely. Its a springmotordriven camera that makes single exposures, rapid sequences and short movies. I handed it to Freckles. Pass it around. He held it gently and passed it to the next thug, who held it the same way. When this greatest of Gods miracles was carefully handed back to me, I held it to my eye in imitation of our cameramen so they could see what to ignore at the track. Just turn a blind eye, I said.
I understand that expression, Harry, said Freckles. 
On the day of the race, about twenty cameramen with cameras under their coats entered the stands as ticket-holding spectators and mingled with the crowd. We smuggled other cameramen onto the track in a horse trailer. The cameramen on the neighboring roofs and on the camouflaged platforms readied their equipment, and the hired airplanes whirred their propellers in a farmers field nearby, waiting for the okay to take off.

At the starting gate, horses fidgeted, bolted forward and went back, as the jockeys tried to keep steady at the gate. Then clang! Theyre off! They burst out, and so did the smoke pots set all around the track by the Hearst News people who had anticipated our shenanigans. Gray clouds obscured the view of the Fox cameramen in the stands. Just as our airplanes flew overhead, so did a Hearst plane, which laid a screen of smoke over the entire track. At the same time, mirrors angled to catch the sun’s glare were aimed directly into the lenses of the Fox cameras on the rooftop. Hearst sent cops to get my cameraman out of the water tank, which was fine with me because it set up such a commotion that none of them noticed the Fox cameraman stationed in a window below. Some of the masquerading cameramen in the stands were arrested and their film confiscated. However, in the end, five thousand feet of film covering the race from beginning to end got back to our studio. Fox’s newsreel of the race was exhibited in the United States and Europe a full week before Hearsts. I loved my job, an early heaven.