Chapter 4
Four
In their early twenties, Franklin and Loretta had been dreamers with limited resources, but they also possessed vision and ambition.
With enough discipline to work seven days a week, they carved out a place for themselves in a new industry with a bright future—moving pictures.
Those were the days of silent films. Mary Pickford.
Harold Lloyd. Fatty Arbuckle. Charlie Chaplin.
Although I was seventeen when Franklin and Loretta found me, I’d never seen a moving picture.
Their home contained a screening room. In addition to a library of all the productions of Fairchild United, their company, they possessed copies of numerous films made by their friends, including many comedies.
During my first month in Bramley Hall, I laughed more than in all my previous years combined.
For so long, laughter had been my best defense against the desire to be done with this world, but it had always been tainted by bitterness or keen anger. Now I discovered that laughter could be an expression of pure joy.
Franklin and Loretta were producers. He directed. She wrote the scenarios and composed succinct and witty copy for the flash cards that guided the audience through the plot and conveyed essential dialogue that, in those days, could not be captured on film.
In the beginning, they were wise enough to choose actors whose careers were stalling short of major stardom, who could be hired for modest fees while still bringing name value to the project.
Broncho Billy Anderson’s days as a star of Westerns were fading as William S.
Hart, who had once been a real cowboy working cattle drives, was captivating audiences with his gravitas.
Over time, while still making their own movies, they invested some of their profits in co-financing deals with the studios that were on the rise and would one day be multibillion-dollar companies.
In 1923, Paramount’s The Covered Wagon was one of the biggest hits to date, and they owned a piece of it.
The brightest new star of the year was a handsome German shepherd named Rin Tin Tin.
Franklin and Loretta, dog lovers, had a special reason to love Rinny.
Their money helped finance Tom Mix Westerns and much else.
On September 5, 1930, not yet having met my emancipators, I had no hope that I would escape the cruelties and indignities that were as much a part of my life as air and water. I hadn’t surrendered to despair, but I had resigned myself to a life of mistreatment, loneliness, and imprisonment.
That Friday, Franklin and Loretta set off on a much-needed vacation, leaving their children in the care of a nanny. They didn’t go far—only down the coast to San Diego, to stay at the fabled Hotel del Coronado and enjoy the city’s Little Italy, East Village, and Gaslamp Quarter.
Not surprisingly, they were combining pleasure and business, for they were never quite able to indulge strictly in the former.
Prohibition had been in effect for a decade. Bootleggers flourished and quickly metastasized into the organized gangs that thereafter plagued the country. The empowerment of the gangs and the related corruption of politicians that followed struck them as promising material for a film.
In those dry days, the Gaslamp Quarter, though famous for its beautiful Victorian architecture, was known as well for its brothels and the easy availability of demon rum.
Some speakeasies were dim and dirty places that provided sports betting and card games.
Others were stylish supper clubs that did business under the protection of city hall.
Blue Mood was the most elegant of such establishments in the Gaslamp Quarter.
It occupied a former garment factory on a back street.
There was no sign or parking lot to call attention to the place; customers curbed their vehicles on surrounding streets or taxied to and from this fountain of forbidden brews.
The windows had been infilled with bricks, and an effort had been made to soundproof the walls. Nevertheless, muffled music could be heard a block away, because Blue Mood employed a nine-piece band that accompanied some stage acts and provided dance music.
Occasionally a member of the Temperance Union or Anti-Saloon League filed a complaint with authorities. They were told that the garment factory had been repurposed as a recording studio and venue for big bands to practice, a legitimate enterprise.
If those who complained were to doubt that explanation, they might discover that water and power were no longer provided to their residences.
This reliably proved to be a billing error, and it was regrettable that two weeks or more passed before the mistake could be rectified.
Fate meddled in the lives of the complainers with impressive creativity, visiting a variety of misfortunes on them until they convinced themselves that, indeed, the old garment factory had been repurposed as a recording studio.
On Saturday, September 6, on their second night in San Diego, Franklin and Loretta went to Blue Mood for a steak dinner, superb wine, and research.
This was not the first speakeasy they visited over the past decade.
However, in the higher social circles, Blue Mood had a singular reputation for its elegance, fine cuisine, and risqué entertainment, which suggested that this was the place most likely to provide two filmmakers with colorful material for a movie.
The ma?tre d’ sported a tuxedo, and every waiter wore black slacks and a white shirt.
Members of the band, excellent musicians, were dressed alike in black slacks, powder-blue sport coats, and black neckties.
There was a comic who relied on blue material.
There were two gorgeous chorus girls, resplendent in sequined and feathered costumes; they shared the stage with the funnyman and acted as his foils, and both were topless.
Franklin and Loretta were sophisticated.
Neither the foul-mouthed comic nor the topless beauties shocked them.
However, they weren’t prepared for a thing like me or for the humiliation to which I was subjected—or for the laughter and applause with which the other two hundred well-heeled patrons responded to every indignity that I was forced to endure.