Dragonflies Chapter Four
The evening was mild and muggy, the ear heavy with the chirrup of crickets.
The evening was mild and muggy, the air heavy with the chirrup of crickets.
Hildy slipped her arm through Callie's as they walked the few blocks to Cole's. Downtown was beginning to feel like a proper city, Callie thought, with tarmac roads and real sidewalks and buildings several stories high going up all around. Callie loved the feeling of being part of a brand-new city just starting out. The founders of New York were all long in their graves, but there was still a chance to make one's name is synonymous with Los Angeles.
'Lillian seemed to be having fun,' commented Hildy as they turned onto East 6th Street.
A car roared by, careening wildly in accordance with the amount the driver had presumably drunk that evening. It was a Model J, which was said to be capable of the almost unimaginable speed of 75 mph. A woman in the back seat was screaming, 'no faster, no faster,' as the male driver whooped and the car thundered out of sight.
'Do you think she'll finally do the jingle jangle tonight?'
Callie snorted with laughter. Hildy prided herself on always being up-to-date with the very latest slang, though Callie was convinced she made half of it up. Lillian, for all her wild talk, was saving herself for marriage, which Callie found hopelessly old fashioned. She and Hildy had both warned Lillian not to set her hopes too high.
'I hope not,' she said, wrinkling her nose. 'He looked awfully pleased with himself. That sort never gave any thought to the women's experience, do they?'
'Did you read that article in Time magazine?' Hildy asked. 'Apparently, there is a doctor in New York who advises that it is terribly unhealthy for men to be overly free with their – essence. To remain really firing on all sixes, a man must endeavour to keep himself all bottled up, as it were.'
Callie made a face. 'You have to feel sorry for the male sex, don't you? Since the pessary became available, we women have little to worry about anymore, but men have all that — equipment. It must be such a fuss. Hold on — that newsstand is open. I just want to see if you have any early copies of the magazines.'
The magazines that ran the hottest stories — Cosmopolitan, the Saturday Evening Post and Colliers — came out on the first of the month. Though it didn't stop writers from trying, it was almost impossible to sell an original story unless one already had a string of credits to their name, because the truth was that nobody knew whether or not a new story would appeal to the masses until it did — or didn't. Thousands and even millions of dollars were poured every year into nothing but a good feeling about this one. It was the reason that men like Buddy Armstrong kept tubs of anti-acid tablets in their desks, and the entire city was ignoring the Volstead Act with a fervour that bordered on hysterical.
Basing a picture on a book or a play that had already received acclaim went some way towards soothing nerves, but those sales took place in New York. By the time Callie could get her hands on any exciting new work, the rights had long been snapped up by some enterprising East Coast story editor. However, if Callie could read the magazines now, at three minutes past midnight, there might just be the tiniest chance she could find a story whose rights were still available. Then she would have to persuade the author to take a chance on a lowly film writer like herself, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it. Callie grimaced as she parted with almost a whole dollar for five magazines.
Cole's was heaving as usual.
Callie and Hildy managed to squeeze into a booth at the back and ordered their sandwiches from Martha, a former Biograph girl who had been just on the point of stardom when she gave it all up for marriage. There was no sign yet of the prestigious crowd, though Hildy reminded Callie that it was still early.
Hildy knew everyone in Hollywood because she had lived in the area since long before there even was a picture business. When she was born, in a small cottage on Glendale Boulevard, there was hardly a Los Angeles to speak of at all. Then when she was thirteen, Mack Sennett came to Edendale and built his Keystone Studios next door to her family's cottage. Ever enterprising, Hildy and her little brother Fred set up a lemonade stand on the front lawn and did a roaring trade to thirsty actors and crew.
Mabel Normand always bought everything they had left for her crew at the end of the day shooting. Hildy hero worshipped the unflappable and unfailingly kind star, and Mabel in turn adopted Hildy as a sort of niece, lavishing her with outfits, bringing her to her first Hollywood party at sixteen ('well I didn't know the orgy would start quite so early,' she'd muttered as she spirited Hildy out of the mansion and into her lilac limousine), and putting in the word at Universal that got Hildy her first job there. Ever since Mabel's Mickey had broken all sorts of box office records the previous year, rumours had been rife in the movie colony that she had succumbed to cocaine addition, which Hildy furiously denied.
It was to fifteen-year-old Hildy that Mabel worried Sennett was giving up much too soon on the awkward little Englishman he had spotted in a vaudeville troupe in Montana. Hildy, who had watched Chaplin's excruciating first day shooting, tended to agree with Sennett, but Mabel insisted he had promise.
'Why don't you help him?' Hildy suggested. 'Take him under your wing.'
Mabel took Hildy’s advice and the Little Tramp was born.
While she waited for Hildy to return from hobknobbing everyone in the entire place, Callie sipped the malt milkshake Martha had brought. It was turning out to be a dud of an evening, she thought in frustration. It had been pleasant enough at Lillian’s, but Callie couldn’t really concentrate on chit chat when the thought of her remaining funds kept on dancing through her mind. It was past midnight and Callie was tired: even if Irving Thalberg and Anita Loos burst through the door this very minute, Callie was far from sure she could find it in herself to woo them.
Deciding that she would tell Hildy she was leaving just as soon as she returned, Callie idly flicked through the top magazine on the pile. A title caught her eye, and she sat up straighter.
By the time Hildy slid into the booth opposite her, Callie knew that her life was about to change.