Chapter Three
Dembow hurriedly walked out of the Capitol Theatre and into a near-blizzard. He cinched his coat tight and held on to his top hat against the cold, cutting wind as he sought out a cab. His destination was the newspaper offices over on 31st and Eighth Avenue. It took about ten minutes of freezing, but he finally managed to secure a taxicab. Unfortunately, his cab only got as far on Broadway at 41st Street before traffic came to an absolute standstill. Nothing seemed to be able to move and even the bright lights of Broadway seemed to fade to dim in the storm’s fury. The cabbie leaned on the klaxon as if it were a definitive statement of his frustration. It resolved nothing.
Dembow grew more frantic by the second. He was losing time. He then did something he never would have done otherwise: he paid the driver, and got out of the cab. He would walk. There was no choice if he wanted to get his column into Walter Brisby before the paper’s morning edition went to press. He was in such a determined hurry that he had walked an entire block before realizing he had left his silk top hat behind in the back seat of the cab, never to be seen again.
Despite that loss, he walked on, trudging through the ankle-deep snow. It got worse with every step. The icy wind slashed at his face. turning his cheeks and nose red. He could barely make out the street signs through the snow. For a moment he feared he was lost, but he recovered his bearings on recognizing Eighth Avenue. He couldn’t quite feel his toes and his ears burned from the cold, but he trundled on with tears and his eyes and the footing on the sidewalk becoming increasingly precarious.
Ten minutes later he walked into the lobby of the four-story Courier building, called“The Haunt” for its high gothic arches and Notre Dame-style gargoyles. He was out of breath and chilled to the bone. His back ached miserably and his over-burdened knees throbbed in agony. Millicent had been telling him for years that he was getting too fat, but he’d ignored her constant carping about his weight along with almost everything else she told him. He could barely feel his fingers and his cheeks were red and burned. To his exasperation, he discovered that the building’s ancient elevator was out of service again—wasn’t it always?— and with a put-upon sigh, he climbed the narrow stairs one-by-one, breathing hard with every step that he took.
The newsroom on the fourth floor was dark at this hour of the night. Empty. Good. He did not wish to be disturbed with such an important review to write.
Shaking off the snow and shedding his soggy overcoat, a visibly winded Dembow sat down at his big wooden desk by the large window with its view of snow-covered Penn Station across the street. He snapped on the desk light and took off his shoes to rub his nearly-numb toes. His ears ached and his nose was doing a fair impression of Niagara Falls. When he had warmed up, he reached into the top drawer of his desk and brought out a clean sheet of writing paper. He then fished about in his collection of pens in the fancy ceramic container that Millicent had given him for an anniversary present when she had still cared about doing little things like that and inspected the brass nib of a favorite pen before reaching into another drawer for a bottle of Carter’s dark blue India ink. Most of the younger staffers at The Courier had Crane typewriters on their desks and were well-versed in churning out reams of copy with fingers flying in a staccato rhythm. Dembow, on the other hand, still wrote out everything painstakingly in longhand. He’d tried to master the typewriter several times, but he’d become frustrated with his lack of dexterity. Writing things out in pen was still good enough for him, thank you very much, and he didn’t see any need to change his ways after twenty-five years as a drama critic.
It took him about an hour to compose the exact review that he felt Passion deserved. He chewed unconsciously on the end of his pen between scribbling down words, always careful to pick the perfect one, and scratched his chin thoughtfully between the beginning and end of sentences. Words flowed with an enthusiasm that had been sorely lacking in his reviews of late. He hadn’t been affected so profoundly by a picture in a long time and he was bound and determined to write a better review than a critic like Mizner could or ever would write.
Pola Negri’s stirring performance had been a revelation. Dembow knew he would never forget it. Such magnetism, so raw earthy, and such talent! Everything that she did, even the most minute detail, commanded the viewer’s attention. She had a vivacity and fire that made her irresistible in a way that would make a blue-nose blush like a chastised schoolboy. In one scene she joyfully jumped on the King’s lap and kissed him, then smiled with coy ardor as she allowed him to slip her lover’s petition for assistance into her bodice. Then later a scene where King Philip kissed her feet and tenderly clipped her toenails while she looked on with delight in her eyes. How had that kind of suggestive behavior ever gotten past the censors? Her acting displayed eroticism and sexuality—words too strong and impolite, he supposed, to describe a lady of breeding. Then it occurred to him that Miss Negri might be the kind of artist to accept such words as compliments.
Artistically, she was a triumph of intensity. Her animated face was an open book, her large eyes conveyed a palette of emotions. Even her hands were tools of incomparable expression. From the way she fiddled with her hair from the heaviness in her shoulders as she was dragged towards the guillotine, told Du Barry’s story. It wa so adept a performance, so remarkable a portrayal of humanity through the prism of her acting, that he felt intimate with her somehow.
After finishing the piece, he put his pen down, and reviewed what he had written. Then he read it again. It was a good piece. Quite good—maybe better than anything by Mizner. Then, glancing over at the ticking clock on his desktop, he realized that he’d about tarried too long in writing it. The morning edition of the paper was about to go to press.
He carried his piece directly to Walter Brisby’s office down the hall from the newsroom. Brisby was the long time editor-in-chief at The New York Courier. He worked late into the night—every night. Nothing was printed in The Courier without his approval. He was almost seventy years old. He needed a magnifying glass to see, yet he still insisted on doing the final revision of every article himself. His cluttered office walls were full of tarnished brass plaques, yellowing civic certificates of honor, and even a dusty ribbon of civil commendation from President Theodore Roosevelt, all attesting to his fifty-five years in the newspaper business.
Longevity, however, came with a price. Years of running a New York City daily, no better than fifth in circulation out of seven newspapers, of having to compete with better-funded staffs for stories and advertising dollars, had left him in poor health and easily-perturbed in temperament. He had a heart condition and took medication, three nitroglycerine blue pills every four hours, to help keep his blood pressure under control.
“Come,” he said without looking up when Dembow knocked on his open office door.
Dembow approached Brisby’s desk. “My latest column,” he said, sliding his piece across the top. “Approve it and I’ll run it down to the typesetter right now for publication in the morning edition.”
Brisby picked up the sheet of paper, glanced it over, peered up at the critic, and then said, without a single trace of emotion, “It appears this picture, this Passion, made quite the impression on you, Mr. Dembow.”
“That’s obvious from my piece”
“So did the leading lady—this…” He had to use the magnifying glass to read her name. “…Pola Negri.”
“A uniquely capable actress, Brisby.”
The editor handed the piece back to him with one word. “No.”
Dembow was shocked. Brisby had never rejected one of his columns before. “Why not?”
“A favorable review of a German picture?” the editor asked s if the answer should be obvious. “Are you mad? We can’t print it. With the way things are they would run us out of town.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Dembow said, understanding, but unwilling to concede to the editor’s point. “Talent doesn’t depend on nationality. If Da Vinci had been French, the Mona Lisa would still be the Mona Lisa.”
“And if Da Vinci was French, no one would care,” Brisby said. “But if we print something even perceived as pro-German, they’ll label it un-American and I have no interest in getting death threats or dealing with the American Legion over something as trivial as a moving picture. So put that column in the trash and forget you ever wrote it. That’s my advice to you.”
Dembow would not yield. “If you had seen Miss Negri’s acting, Brisby, you would understand why my review needs to be printed.”
Brisby wouldn’t listen. He ended any further discussion, stating, “That will be all, Mr. Dembow. Good night.” He then waved the critic away from his office and grabbed for a bottle of blue pills from his desk drawer.
The critic walked back to the newsroom in disbelief. Not publish the piece? Ordinarily he respected the editor’s judgment, but this time Brisby was wrong. The Courier’s readers had to know about the miracle he’d witnessed this evening—and Dembow wasn’t about to let Westland Mizner get to her first. It had to make the morning edition.
Yet Bertrand, the Chief Typesetter, wouldn’t just take his word for he lied and told him that Brisby had approved its inclusion in the morning edition. No, Bertrand would need to hear it from the editor—or at least someone who sounded like the editor. How hard could it be to fake it? He’d have to make it seem somehow that the call was coming from Brisby’s office. How?
The switchboard.
What he was planning was wrong, yes, but Dembow could think of no other way.
The building’s switchboard room was one flight down. Dembow had never been there, but he understood it to be staffed by three aged sisters referred to as “the Gorgons” around the newspaper. No one could recall ever seeing them outside of the tiny switchboard room and newsroom lore had it they came and went without detection. Yet they were marvelously efficient and they kept The Courier’s phone lines running with the in-going and out-going news tips that were the publication’s lifeblood.
Dembow was relieved to find the the switchboard room unlocked. He turned on the overhead light and closed the door behind him. The switchboard was a complex-looking device of connecting plugs and holes that looked impossible for a novice to master. He remembered, however, a short film he’d seen at the Rialto about phone operators. He’d arrived too late for the main show after enduring another one of Millicent’s fits and been forced to sit through the short twice. The operators were a thing of wonder and he had been amazed at the speed of their hands, pulling plugs and moving connecting cords around the board to the tune of about a thousand calls an hour. Emulating what he remembered from the film, he took a headset down from a hook on the wall, donned it, and then sat down on a stool that creaked ominously under his girth. On a peg he found a clipboard that listed the phone numbers for every department of the newspaper. It took him some time to study the numbers and figure out the connections. One abortive try connected him to the office of a music publisher—and someone named Gershwin—on one of the upper floors of the Haunt and another call accidentally got him the police precinct down the street. Cursing in annoyance, he tried yet again, inserting a proper into what appeared to be the correct portal and dialing what he hoped was number for the typesetting room.
The phone rang several times. “Typesetting,” came a voice, almost a shout against the fearsomely loud sound of the printing presses churning in the background. “Bertrand here.”.
“Bertrand—Brisby here,” Dembow said into the phone in his best approximation of the editor’s voice. “Last second addition coming.”
“But it’s already beyond deadline, Mr. Brisby!” Bertrand shouted back.
“Very important piece,” Dembow said, imitating the editor’s gruff voice. “Crucial it be run. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Bertrand said meekly. He wasn’t one to countermand Brisby’s decisions. “Of course, sir.”
“Mr. Dembow is bringing it down. Make sure it gets into the morning edition. Are we clear?”
“Very clear.”
Dembow, perspiring freely, pulled the plug, ending the call, and congratulated himself for his ingenuity. Apparently Betrand hadn’t suspected a thing. Yes, the critic was acutely aware that he had just done something deplorable, yet he also felt a spark of joy that had been missing in his life for some time now. He felt…good.
A few minutes later, out of breath from again negotiating the stairs, he ambled into the sub-basement lair next to the paper’s printing presses, yelling to the ink-stained Chief Typesetter that he had brought the change that “Brisby” had called down about. He handed his column to an aggrieved-looking Bertrtand,
The Chief Typesetter, rolling a fistful of metal printing blocks in hand, looked at the article and shook his head. “Can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “Too big. Not enough room for it on the page.”
“You have to make it fit!” Dembow yelled at him.
Bertrand again shook his yead and replied, “I don’t see how. The only way would be to pull something else. Some other article.”
Dembow glanced over the typesetter’s mock-up and noticed a review of a French sculpture exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. Boring. No one would miss it. “Take this one out,” he shouted at Bertrand, starting to pull out the metal letters. “That should leave enough room.