American Dreams by John Jakes Read Free Book Online Page A

Crown owned the entire block Paul's Pictures29
    from Twentieth to Nineteenth; the half lot nearer Nineteenth was given over to a well-kept garden with a reflecting pool, empty now; neat beds for rose bushes; a marble statue of an angel symbolizing peace, all screened from the traffic by high shrubbery. Ten minutes after Fritzi reached her room, lisa rushed in with a letter.
    'Liebchen, your prayers are answered! See what came in the afternoon mail delivery? Pauli posted it in Gibraltar six weeks ago. He even sent a snapshot.'
    lisa gave her the Kodak print. A smile spread on Fritzi's face as she gazed at her sturdy cousin, photographed with his motion picture camera and tripod on a hotel veranda. Paul had his usual cigar clenched in his teeth. One arm was hooked around his tripod; with his other hand he Page 38

    lifted his Panama hat to greet the lens.
    Paul's vest was unbuttoned. His cravat hung askew. The knees of his white suit showed smudges. He was his old self, forever careless about his appearance though he was never careless about his work. Paul occasionally sent photos to his loved ones because of a lifelong habit of gathering, and distributing, souvenirs and keepsakes.
    Quickly Fritzi read through the letter. Paul had visited North Africa, photographing nomads and exotic locales in Morocco and the Sahara, then Gibraltar to film the new British warship HMS Dreadnought steaming into the Mediterranean.
    She is the first of her kind - 17,000 tons, faster than anything afloat. Her big guns can throw a shell for miles. My friend Michael says she has already touched off a naval arms race. Alas, the blasted British would not permit me to photograph her. N. African pictures will be edited and in theaters by December. Am planning another trip to the States next year, will surely see you. Till then much love to all.
    'We must find out who shows the American Luxograph pictures,' lisa said with great excitement, i know you'll want to see them. We'll go together, have another outing.'
    In one of those awful nickel theaters? Ye gods. But Fritzi couldn't deny the stout, graying woman she loved dearly. She sighed a small inner sigh and said, 'That would be lovely.'
    The General made some inquiries at lisa's request. A foreman at the 30
    Dreamers
    brewery happened to know an enterprising German Jew from Oshkosh who had jumped into the picture business that year. Carl Laemmle was his name. He distributed films and operated a nickel theater on North Milwaukee Avenue. Laemmle said a good downtown theater showing American Luxograph 'actualities' was the Bijou Dream on State near Van Buren, the very place Fritzi had noticed on her bicycle ride.
    Fritzi and her mother bought their tickets at ten past two on a dismal afternoon. Looking around, she had to admit the Bijou Dream was better than the few other theaters she'd visited in occasional pursuit of her cousin's films. The windows of the converted store were hung with green velvet drapes. The projector was shielded in a curtained booth at the rear of the long, rectangular room. Fritzi didn't recognize the operator tinkering with the machine; the young man from the play group wasn't on Page 39

    duty. Thank heaven for that. She'd never bothered to hide her feelings about the moving pictures.
    Instead of wooden benches there were chairs, a hundred or more, not an assortment from drugstores, ice cream parlors, and secondhand shops, but all alike. The Bijou Dream employed a piano player whose upright sat next to the canvas screen, and a lecturer, a gentleman in a midnight blue tuxedo who introduced and explained each batch of footage from a podium on the opposite side. Pictures shown in five-cent theaters typically carried no explanatory legends. Many didn't even have an opening title.
    About twenty people attended the two - fifteen show. Fritzi and her mother were by far the best dressed. Some of the spectators reeked of garlic, wine, or a lack of bathing facilities. It wasn't snobbish,