"Lost to the Light" by Frank Scozzari
The reel spun futilely. The end of the film flapped repeatedly against the empty film gate while a steady beam of light shone out onto the screen below, featuring nothing more than dust particles flashing by. And through the keyhole from the theater seats in the grand old auditorium, came the grumbling sounds of patrons.
“Roll the film, damn it!” one cried out.
“Come’on for God’s sake, start the movie!” yelled another.
But the old man did not awake. He lay still, breathing heavily, his head resting on his arm which lay on the table. In his mind was a vision of Greta Garbo in full Mata Hari headdress, dancing seductively before a mesmerized crowd. His ears were full of the sultry sounds of middle-eastern music and he could see smoke rising from the incense burners in the nightclub’s elegant showroom. Dancing like a drunken elation in his head, Garbo approached the multi-armed deity, a statue of Shiva, and her hips began moving feverishly and the coin-laden scarf around her waist chattered with great intensity. The audience, consisting of bartenders, politicians, tourists, and military attachés, went silent with anticipation. Then she came right up against the statue, took her top off, and pressed her body into it. For a moment it was as though she is going to make love to it. Everyone was breathless. Then the room darkened and a cloaked woman dashed by, coving Garbo from view.
“She’s not a spy,” the old man mumbled. “She is not the great enemy of France like everyone thinks! She is not!”
A loud bang awoke him. And when he lifted his head he saw the projection booth door slammed opened against the front wall. Through it came René, the theater manager, rushing past him like a madman.
“You imbecile!” he yelled.
René bolted for the second projector and clicked the ‘switch over’ button. Instantly the film began to roll and angled beams of light shone once again through the keyhole, bringing back to life the oscillating images of characters and the sound of their dialogue.
“Bravo!” somebody yelled from theater seats.
René came back to the first machine, turned it off, and pressed his palm against the lamp canister, but it was so hot he had to withdraw his hand quickly.
“Where is your brain?” he cried. He pushed at the old man’s chest; his eyes were burning. “What is it with you?”
In truth, the old man knew, he had taken too many naps, too often at the wrong times, and with greater frequency in the past weeks. It was a problem he could not cure.
“If you cannot do the job,” René cried. “I will find someone who can.”
The old man only looked up at René with his sorry, puppy-dog eyes.
René looked around. The projection booth was in a typical state of disarray. There were film canisters lying on the floor, some with their lids off, candy wrappers shattered about, and a half-eaten sandwich dried and crusty from the day before, lying on the table. The trashcan near the door was full and overflowing.
“You can’t leave this place like this,” he said. “You can’t leave these lying around,” referring to the film cans. He gathered them up, put their lids back on, and stacked them in a neat pile against the wall. “You have to clean this place up! It’s part of your job! It’s your last chance. If you want to sleep, go home and sleep!”
The old man wisely remained silent.
After a few more minutes of huffing, René stood silently with his hands on his hips. He glanced up at the big wall clock. “It is the last showing. Can you handle it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t forget to cap the film canisters!”
“I know.”
“And the lamps! Remember to shut off the lamps!”
He was referring to the time the old man had forgotten to shut off a projection lamp and burnt out an expensive bulb.
“Yes.”
“And lock up properly.”
“Of course.”
René took another glance around the projection booth. “Only three more months!” he said, shaking his head.
When he turned to exit, the old man mumbled something, inaudible.
“What?” René asked.
“Nothing.”
René hesitated at the door, but then left, closing it securely behind him.
Spencer Tracy would have never stood for that, the old man thought. Not for a second. He wouldn’t have.
When the film finished, the audience slowly cleared the auditorium and departed out the front lobby doors. The old man watched them through the key hole until the last patron was gone. Then he canned the two film reels and set the canisters on top of the neat pile René had stacked against the wall. He tidied up the projection booth, swept it clean with a broom, hiding the small pile of trash in a corner, and he made sure the lamps were off. Then he exited, locking the projection booth door twice around with the key before descending the narrow staircase to the foyer. He swept up the popcorn and garbage scattered throughout the theater auditorium, dumped a garbage pail into the dumpster out back, and fixed the large theater curtain so no screen was showing. Finally he returned to the lobby, opened a wall panel and pulled down the switch that doused the large marquee light out front.
A lonely walk down a lonely dark street brought the old man to his dreary, one-room apartment. He has lived there for too many years, but was thankful for it all the same. It was a place to lay his head and close his eyes, and imagine himself in another world; a cinematic world of swashbuckling swordsmen and adventurous sea captains. There were no windows inside the apartment; only a bed, a little table, a sink, a small closet, and a separate closet for the toilet. He took off his jacket, hung it on a hanger, and lay down on his shaggy old mattress.
Though he lay there very tired, he was unable to sleep. He stared up at the dark, opaque ceiling.
There is no magic, he thought. Not there in this lifeless cubical he called home.
Though he could obtain a semblance of peace in his apartment, he could never find the remedial harmony of the projection booth, and the peace he did find was only because he had etched so many cinematic scenes in his mind. Thank God he had red carpet connections, and Hollywood’s high society to depend on, he thought.
“You are the beauty,” he said, speaking to Garbo. “I understand every word you speak. I understand every move of your dance.”
The old man felt rather privileged that way; that he and he alone could communicate with Greta Garbo. It was some kind of telepathic, kinetic energy, and he found great delight in it.
“It is you, yes? It is you who will save the world from itself? And not for country, but for love itself. Am I correct in my thinking? Of course I am.”
He pictured her clearly, as if she was standing there in the room beside him. Her image was as vivid and beautiful as she had ever been on screen.
“If you want, I’ll help you. I’ll be your secret accomplice, your attaché fidèle. I know where to go, how to end it. I have seen how it ends, and we will end it differently. Together we will overcome the French military and German spies. Okay?”
He waited for her reply, but there was none. It didn’t always work, he knew. Sometimes it was just that way, but tonight he was really hoping for a two-way dialog and he was sad that there was not.
Then he thought of René’s words and he became even more depressed. ‘Only three more months!’ It was true he knew, the era of film projection at the Arlington was to come to a horrific end. When he first heard about it he didn’t believe it or accept it was possible. How could an art form requiring such skill and finesse be replaced by a computerized robot? But it was going to happen. He had even read about it in the papers. A new, digitized projector was to be delivered in the coming months and the old-school method of threading film and swapping reels was to become obsolete. As the silent era gave way to sound, the film era would go down to light; the light of new technology. Which meant the craft of the projectionist would die with it.
Curse all new technology and all those who advocate it! the old man thought. Especially René! Sometimes the old way is the better way!
He looked over to his small table. There was a bottle of gin there waiting for him. He could see it in the darkness. It had been there for more than five years now. It had been that long since he’d been away from it. And if he returned to it now, he knew he would return to it for good – until the end. It was the great morphine, he thought. It was the anesthesia for life’s tragedies; the sweetest of all escapes. And it was not unusual. All the stars had one in one form or another. For Ray Milland it was whiskey on his long Lost Weekend. For Richard Burton it was vodka and soda water, which he liked as much in life as he did in his on-screen rants with Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And as for Sinatra, well, of course, he preferred a well-mixed cocktail with the merest hint of dry vermouth, although heroin was his fix in The Man with the Golden Arm.
But it was gin that Spencer Tracy liked best. It was his favorite, his one and only; the drink he used to kill the real-life pain of the ordinary man.
The old man closed his eyes and tried to sleep. And though he finally drifted off, his sleep was restless. On through the night he awoke often, and when he did he looked over at the table and saw the bottle of gin still there waiting.
The morning was usual, nothing different; a poached egg at the corner café, some time to browse the newsstands, and a long walk along the river. He kept occupied until it was time for work. That was his routine, anything to keep him from his dreary apartment. When the afternoon came, he made his way to the old downtown district. A long sidewalk led him to the vertical, art deco marquee of the Arlington Theater. The overhead billboard displayed the films ‘Now Playing;’ Beat the Devil and The African Queen.
“Ah, it will be Bogie night,” the old man mumbled.
He unlocked the front door, went into the lobby, and looked around. Everything was as he had left it the night before. He climbed the narrow staircase to the projection booth, slipped the key into the door lock, and opened it.
As always, the projection booth greeted him like the arms of a beautiful woman. Stepping inside always gave him a warm feeling, like a welcoming home. He smiled broadly. That is, until he saw the note René had left on the clipboard along with the daily features. It read: “Don’t fall asleep! And don’t forget to turn off the lamps!”
The old man tore the note off the clipboard, crumbled it up, and tossed it in the corner.
“He knows nothing of film projection! He is the boss of no one!”
He searched though the pile of film canisters, and when he could not find the scheduled films, he glanced around the room and located them on top of the projection table. Evidently René had placed them there to make it easier for him.
“So now he thinks I’m not capable of finding the proper film cans?”
There were only four reels, which was good, he thought. It made it easy. It required only two changeovers per film. Not like the old days when you had to do three or four changeovers in one movie.
He opened the ‘Beat the Devil’ canister; the one marked ‘one of two,’ and took out the reel. He flipped opened the cover on the first projector, placed the reel on the sprocket, pulled out an arm’s length of film, and held it to the light. Once he found where the numeric countdown begun, he threaded the film through the gate, running the machine just long enough for it to catch, then looped the end of it onto the empty reel and advanced the film to the opening credits. He repeated the process on the second projector, loading the second reel and advancing it to the switch-over cue.
“Life is an illusion,” he mumbled. “It is best to live it as such. Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose.”
He sat at the table and ate a sandwich. After forty minutes, he looked down through the keyhole and saw only one person seated in the theater auditorium. When he looked down a second time, the audience had grown by three. At a quarter to four, he pressed the mechanical button which opened the theater curtains. And when it was exactly four o’clock, he started the film, framing it first, sharpening the focus, and synchronizing the sound. When all was set and done, he sat at the table and listened, to what, for him, was a most beautiful melody – the sound of film clicking through a gate at twenty-four frames a second. It was a six-thousand foot reel, which meant he’d have an hour before he would need to switch over to the second projector.
Through the keyhole came the sound of Humphrey Bogart’s voice. Though he could not see the film from his seated position, he knew every scene, every film angle, and every word of dialogue, verbatim. He had seen the film a hundred times, maybe two hundred.
“What's our wide-eyed Irish leprechaun doing outside my door?” Bogart’s voice asked.[1]
“Just wanted to have a little talk,” the voice of Peter Lorre replied.
“Okay, but make it fast,” said the old man quickly, stealing the line before Bogart could speak it.
“Okay, but make it fast,” Bogart then repeated on the big screen.
The old man chuckled.
After fifty minutes, he turned on the lamp on the second machine, giving it time to warm up. After another five minutes he began watching for the cue mark; a small circular flash in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and when he saw it, he clicked on the motor of the second projector. And when it flashed a second time, he pressed the changeover button. Then he heard the splice go through the machine and the images from the second projector immediately took over, flicking out the black and white celluloid, without interruption, exactly where the first reel had finished off.
“Now that’s the way to do it!” he said. “None of this three, two, one,” referring to the numerical countdown seen onscreen if the cue mark was missed.
The old man chuckled, thinking back to a time when René had mistimed a changeover. He had been left to manage the projection booth for only a minute and still
[1] Dialogue from the public domain movie Beat the Devil, screenplay by John Huston and Truman Capote.
couldn’t get it right! And there was that awful gap of white screen between the reels, and the painful groans of all the theater patrons.
The old man clicked off the motor on the first machine and began watching the film through the keyhole. On screen now were Jennifer Jones and Humphrey Bogart, standing on the Terrace of Infinity, high above the Amalfi Coast. The cinemascope image provided a panoramic view of sea and mountains that stretched from one side of the screen to the other. It seemed to be filmed from the height of an airplane, which gave a real appreciation for the beauty of this place. And the dialog was the quick and clever, bringing a smile to the old man’s face.
“There are two good reasons for falling in love,” Jennifer Jones said. “One is that the object of your affection is unlike anyone else, a rare spirit. The other is that he’s like everyone else, only superior, the very best of a type.”[2]
“Well if you must know, I’m a very typical rare spirit,” the old man said before Bogart echoed the same line onscreen.
“How long have you lived here?” asked Jennifer Jones.
“The longest I’ve lived anywhere,” the old man recited, again beating Bogart to the punch.
“Didn’t you ever have a mother and a father and a house?”
“No I was an orphan,” the old man said loudly. “Then a rich and beautiful woman adopted me.”
The old man smiled as Bogart repeated the lines; “No I was an orphan. Then a rich and beautiful woman adopted me.”
[2] Dialogue from the public domain movie Beat the Devil, screenplay by John Huston and Truman Capote.
It was like Sunday mass, the old man thought, easier than reciting lines from the good book. And as the movie progressed, the old man lost himself, as he often did, in the romantic action and intriguing storyline. The images on the screen danced in his head as if they were real.
Now a trio of characters, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, and Bogart, found themselves shipwrecked and washed ashore on a deserted beach. A hoard of horse-backed nomads stormed down a hillside firing shots at them. Everyone in the scene was frightened, except Bogart, and the old man, who stood fearless in the projection booth.
The old man raised his hands and said bravely, “Better get down everyone!”[3] He made his voice sound tough and cynical.
Seconds later, Bogart raised his hands and repeated the line on the big screen.
“Africa,” the old man then said aloud as if he were speaking directly to the nomad chieftain. “It’s not a bad place to land. No customs forms to fill out.”
When Bogart repeated the lines, the old man chuckled.
The film finished, and during the intermission the old man replaced the reels with the second feature, The African Queen. He waited the customary twenty minutes for everyone to return from the concessions and then rolled the film. Once he heard the projector running smoothly, he sat down at the projection table and listened to its melodic sound.
“You are a good machine,” he said, patting it on its side. “You bring life to the ordinary. You create magic from nothing.” Then he sighed. “But like me, you are old and replaceable!”
[3] Dialogue from the public domain movie Beat the Devil, screenplay by John Huston and Truman Capote.
He stretched his arm out comfortably on the table and laid his head upon it, and in his mind he watched the movie, following along as if it were playing in his head. He knew every scene, every word; all the facial expressions. The smooth clicking sound of film rushing through the gate, coupled with his cerebral reenactment, brought him to the place he loved best, his nirvana.
But he did not watch Bogart and Hepburn. He was with them in the boat, going down the Congo River. And he recited Bogart’s lines as if they were his own. And he watched Katherine Hepburn’s transformation from one who despised an aging old drunk, to one who loved. And now that she’d become smitten with this rugged old guy who was as unkempt and yet as capable as he, he accepted her expressions of adornment as if they were meant for him.
The celluloid images danced vividly in his head. Before he knew it, Humphrey Bogart was strapped to the mast of a ship and was being interrogated by a nasty German sea-captain as Hepburn was held helplessly to the side.
But it was not Bogart; it was he, the old man, strapped to the mass.
“Don’t give in!” the old man mumbled, feeling the ship rocking beneath him. “Be brave Rose! Be strong! It is for love and country!”
As the large German vessel, the Louisa, drifted closer to the African Queen, dancing on stormy seas with its makeshift torpedoes pointing from its bow, it was like the old man was having an out-of-body experience. He could see it all from above. He could see the torpedoes, closing in on the hull of the Louisa, and he knew, at any moment, they would strike and the entire ship would explode and sink.
“Take cover Rose!” he shouted, looking over to Hepburn. “I’ll be with you shortly!”
And he braced himself for the inevitable.
In his head, the reels spun forward at lightening speed. Though the movie had reached its end in his mind, it had barely finished the first reel on the projector beside him. On the screen, the first cue marked flashed by, then the second, then the end of the film looped through the gate, and suddenly, nothing but a white stream of light shone out from the projector. And the groaning and booing from the audience was almost instantaneous.
“Roll the damned film!”
“Hey! Wakeup up there!” another screamed from the front of the house.
But the old man’s head remained down on the table, resting on his out-stretched arm; his eyes closed and his expression intense. Even if he wanted to move he could not. He was strapped to a ship’s mast nevertheless! And the ropes were so tightly around him, he could feel them cutting into his arms.
“Be brave, Rose!” he mumbled again.
Then the projection room door swung open with a bang, slamming against the forward wall, and in stormed René, as livid as he could possibly be.
“This is it!” he screamed. “You are through!”
The old man lifted his head and looked on as René rushed past him and pressed the changeover button on the second projector. Instantly, the images returned to the silver screen below.
“Thank you!” someone yelled from the auditorium.
“About time!” another screamed out.
“You are finished!” René shouted to the old man. “Get your things and leave!”
“What?” the old man asked.
“You’re fired!”
It took a moment for the old man to gather himself. He had barely stepped off the deck of the Louisa.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Get your things and leave! Now! I’ll mail you your check.”
“But I thought I had three more months?”
“Not no more. You are through, now!”
René grabbed the old man’s collar, lifted him from the chair, and using his grip, escorted him to his bag, which was against the wall. The old man picked up the bag and then René pushed him to the door.
There was nothing the old man could do. He was too dazed and confused to resist, and when he was heaved through the door, pushed out like a rag doll, he nearly tumbled down the stairs. He dropped several steps before he could stop his momentum and regain his balance. Then he straightened himself, turned back, and looked up at René, who stood with both hands on his hips.
“Get out!” René yelled, pointing toward the front door of the lobby.
The old man continued down the steps, made his way through the foyer, and pushed his way out the front doors.
“He is a man without honor,” he mumbled to himself. “He is a man with no loyalty.”
As he walked down the street in darkness to his apartment, he thought of Garbo; her persona as Mata Hari, strong and defiance against all odds and in the face of certain death. Her image danced in his head, feverously; the coins of her hip-scarf chattering like wind chimes in a hurricane. Every movement of her body showed him her strength and will to overcome. She is the bold and daring one, he thought; the one never to give in to the misalignments and abuses of power.
Then, in his mind, he saw the bottle of gin awaiting him, there on his table in his dreary apartment, and the image of Garbo faded to black.
“Roll the film, damn it!” one cried out.
“Come’on for God’s sake, start the movie!” yelled another.
But the old man did not awake. He lay still, breathing heavily, his head resting on his arm which lay on the table. In his mind was a vision of Greta Garbo in full Mata Hari headdress, dancing seductively before a mesmerized crowd. His ears were full of the sultry sounds of middle-eastern music and he could see smoke rising from the incense burners in the nightclub’s elegant showroom. Dancing like a drunken elation in his head, Garbo approached the multi-armed deity, a statue of Shiva, and her hips began moving feverishly and the coin-laden scarf around her waist chattered with great intensity. The audience, consisting of bartenders, politicians, tourists, and military attachés, went silent with anticipation. Then she came right up against the statue, took her top off, and pressed her body into it. For a moment it was as though she is going to make love to it. Everyone was breathless. Then the room darkened and a cloaked woman dashed by, coving Garbo from view.
“She’s not a spy,” the old man mumbled. “She is not the great enemy of France like everyone thinks! She is not!”
A loud bang awoke him. And when he lifted his head he saw the projection booth door slammed opened against the front wall. Through it came René, the theater manager, rushing past him like a madman.
“You imbecile!” he yelled.
René bolted for the second projector and clicked the ‘switch over’ button. Instantly the film began to roll and angled beams of light shone once again through the keyhole, bringing back to life the oscillating images of characters and the sound of their dialogue.
“Bravo!” somebody yelled from theater seats.
René came back to the first machine, turned it off, and pressed his palm against the lamp canister, but it was so hot he had to withdraw his hand quickly.
“Where is your brain?” he cried. He pushed at the old man’s chest; his eyes were burning. “What is it with you?”
In truth, the old man knew, he had taken too many naps, too often at the wrong times, and with greater frequency in the past weeks. It was a problem he could not cure.
“If you cannot do the job,” René cried. “I will find someone who can.”
The old man only looked up at René with his sorry, puppy-dog eyes.
René looked around. The projection booth was in a typical state of disarray. There were film canisters lying on the floor, some with their lids off, candy wrappers shattered about, and a half-eaten sandwich dried and crusty from the day before, lying on the table. The trashcan near the door was full and overflowing.
“You can’t leave this place like this,” he said. “You can’t leave these lying around,” referring to the film cans. He gathered them up, put their lids back on, and stacked them in a neat pile against the wall. “You have to clean this place up! It’s part of your job! It’s your last chance. If you want to sleep, go home and sleep!”
The old man wisely remained silent.
After a few more minutes of huffing, René stood silently with his hands on his hips. He glanced up at the big wall clock. “It is the last showing. Can you handle it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t forget to cap the film canisters!”
“I know.”
“And the lamps! Remember to shut off the lamps!”
He was referring to the time the old man had forgotten to shut off a projection lamp and burnt out an expensive bulb.
“Yes.”
“And lock up properly.”
“Of course.”
René took another glance around the projection booth. “Only three more months!” he said, shaking his head.
When he turned to exit, the old man mumbled something, inaudible.
“What?” René asked.
“Nothing.”
René hesitated at the door, but then left, closing it securely behind him.
Spencer Tracy would have never stood for that, the old man thought. Not for a second. He wouldn’t have.
When the film finished, the audience slowly cleared the auditorium and departed out the front lobby doors. The old man watched them through the key hole until the last patron was gone. Then he canned the two film reels and set the canisters on top of the neat pile René had stacked against the wall. He tidied up the projection booth, swept it clean with a broom, hiding the small pile of trash in a corner, and he made sure the lamps were off. Then he exited, locking the projection booth door twice around with the key before descending the narrow staircase to the foyer. He swept up the popcorn and garbage scattered throughout the theater auditorium, dumped a garbage pail into the dumpster out back, and fixed the large theater curtain so no screen was showing. Finally he returned to the lobby, opened a wall panel and pulled down the switch that doused the large marquee light out front.
A lonely walk down a lonely dark street brought the old man to his dreary, one-room apartment. He has lived there for too many years, but was thankful for it all the same. It was a place to lay his head and close his eyes, and imagine himself in another world; a cinematic world of swashbuckling swordsmen and adventurous sea captains. There were no windows inside the apartment; only a bed, a little table, a sink, a small closet, and a separate closet for the toilet. He took off his jacket, hung it on a hanger, and lay down on his shaggy old mattress.
Though he lay there very tired, he was unable to sleep. He stared up at the dark, opaque ceiling.
There is no magic, he thought. Not there in this lifeless cubical he called home.
Though he could obtain a semblance of peace in his apartment, he could never find the remedial harmony of the projection booth, and the peace he did find was only because he had etched so many cinematic scenes in his mind. Thank God he had red carpet connections, and Hollywood’s high society to depend on, he thought.
“You are the beauty,” he said, speaking to Garbo. “I understand every word you speak. I understand every move of your dance.”
The old man felt rather privileged that way; that he and he alone could communicate with Greta Garbo. It was some kind of telepathic, kinetic energy, and he found great delight in it.
“It is you, yes? It is you who will save the world from itself? And not for country, but for love itself. Am I correct in my thinking? Of course I am.”
He pictured her clearly, as if she was standing there in the room beside him. Her image was as vivid and beautiful as she had ever been on screen.
“If you want, I’ll help you. I’ll be your secret accomplice, your attaché fidèle. I know where to go, how to end it. I have seen how it ends, and we will end it differently. Together we will overcome the French military and German spies. Okay?”
He waited for her reply, but there was none. It didn’t always work, he knew. Sometimes it was just that way, but tonight he was really hoping for a two-way dialog and he was sad that there was not.
Then he thought of René’s words and he became even more depressed. ‘Only three more months!’ It was true he knew, the era of film projection at the Arlington was to come to a horrific end. When he first heard about it he didn’t believe it or accept it was possible. How could an art form requiring such skill and finesse be replaced by a computerized robot? But it was going to happen. He had even read about it in the papers. A new, digitized projector was to be delivered in the coming months and the old-school method of threading film and swapping reels was to become obsolete. As the silent era gave way to sound, the film era would go down to light; the light of new technology. Which meant the craft of the projectionist would die with it.
Curse all new technology and all those who advocate it! the old man thought. Especially René! Sometimes the old way is the better way!
He looked over to his small table. There was a bottle of gin there waiting for him. He could see it in the darkness. It had been there for more than five years now. It had been that long since he’d been away from it. And if he returned to it now, he knew he would return to it for good – until the end. It was the great morphine, he thought. It was the anesthesia for life’s tragedies; the sweetest of all escapes. And it was not unusual. All the stars had one in one form or another. For Ray Milland it was whiskey on his long Lost Weekend. For Richard Burton it was vodka and soda water, which he liked as much in life as he did in his on-screen rants with Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And as for Sinatra, well, of course, he preferred a well-mixed cocktail with the merest hint of dry vermouth, although heroin was his fix in The Man with the Golden Arm.
But it was gin that Spencer Tracy liked best. It was his favorite, his one and only; the drink he used to kill the real-life pain of the ordinary man.
The old man closed his eyes and tried to sleep. And though he finally drifted off, his sleep was restless. On through the night he awoke often, and when he did he looked over at the table and saw the bottle of gin still there waiting.
The morning was usual, nothing different; a poached egg at the corner café, some time to browse the newsstands, and a long walk along the river. He kept occupied until it was time for work. That was his routine, anything to keep him from his dreary apartment. When the afternoon came, he made his way to the old downtown district. A long sidewalk led him to the vertical, art deco marquee of the Arlington Theater. The overhead billboard displayed the films ‘Now Playing;’ Beat the Devil and The African Queen.
“Ah, it will be Bogie night,” the old man mumbled.
He unlocked the front door, went into the lobby, and looked around. Everything was as he had left it the night before. He climbed the narrow staircase to the projection booth, slipped the key into the door lock, and opened it.
As always, the projection booth greeted him like the arms of a beautiful woman. Stepping inside always gave him a warm feeling, like a welcoming home. He smiled broadly. That is, until he saw the note René had left on the clipboard along with the daily features. It read: “Don’t fall asleep! And don’t forget to turn off the lamps!”
The old man tore the note off the clipboard, crumbled it up, and tossed it in the corner.
“He knows nothing of film projection! He is the boss of no one!”
He searched though the pile of film canisters, and when he could not find the scheduled films, he glanced around the room and located them on top of the projection table. Evidently René had placed them there to make it easier for him.
“So now he thinks I’m not capable of finding the proper film cans?”
There were only four reels, which was good, he thought. It made it easy. It required only two changeovers per film. Not like the old days when you had to do three or four changeovers in one movie.
He opened the ‘Beat the Devil’ canister; the one marked ‘one of two,’ and took out the reel. He flipped opened the cover on the first projector, placed the reel on the sprocket, pulled out an arm’s length of film, and held it to the light. Once he found where the numeric countdown begun, he threaded the film through the gate, running the machine just long enough for it to catch, then looped the end of it onto the empty reel and advanced the film to the opening credits. He repeated the process on the second projector, loading the second reel and advancing it to the switch-over cue.
“Life is an illusion,” he mumbled. “It is best to live it as such. Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose.”
He sat at the table and ate a sandwich. After forty minutes, he looked down through the keyhole and saw only one person seated in the theater auditorium. When he looked down a second time, the audience had grown by three. At a quarter to four, he pressed the mechanical button which opened the theater curtains. And when it was exactly four o’clock, he started the film, framing it first, sharpening the focus, and synchronizing the sound. When all was set and done, he sat at the table and listened, to what, for him, was a most beautiful melody – the sound of film clicking through a gate at twenty-four frames a second. It was a six-thousand foot reel, which meant he’d have an hour before he would need to switch over to the second projector.
Through the keyhole came the sound of Humphrey Bogart’s voice. Though he could not see the film from his seated position, he knew every scene, every film angle, and every word of dialogue, verbatim. He had seen the film a hundred times, maybe two hundred.
“What's our wide-eyed Irish leprechaun doing outside my door?” Bogart’s voice asked.[1]
“Just wanted to have a little talk,” the voice of Peter Lorre replied.
“Okay, but make it fast,” said the old man quickly, stealing the line before Bogart could speak it.
“Okay, but make it fast,” Bogart then repeated on the big screen.
The old man chuckled.
After fifty minutes, he turned on the lamp on the second machine, giving it time to warm up. After another five minutes he began watching for the cue mark; a small circular flash in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and when he saw it, he clicked on the motor of the second projector. And when it flashed a second time, he pressed the changeover button. Then he heard the splice go through the machine and the images from the second projector immediately took over, flicking out the black and white celluloid, without interruption, exactly where the first reel had finished off.
“Now that’s the way to do it!” he said. “None of this three, two, one,” referring to the numerical countdown seen onscreen if the cue mark was missed.
The old man chuckled, thinking back to a time when René had mistimed a changeover. He had been left to manage the projection booth for only a minute and still
[1] Dialogue from the public domain movie Beat the Devil, screenplay by John Huston and Truman Capote.
couldn’t get it right! And there was that awful gap of white screen between the reels, and the painful groans of all the theater patrons.
The old man clicked off the motor on the first machine and began watching the film through the keyhole. On screen now were Jennifer Jones and Humphrey Bogart, standing on the Terrace of Infinity, high above the Amalfi Coast. The cinemascope image provided a panoramic view of sea and mountains that stretched from one side of the screen to the other. It seemed to be filmed from the height of an airplane, which gave a real appreciation for the beauty of this place. And the dialog was the quick and clever, bringing a smile to the old man’s face.
“There are two good reasons for falling in love,” Jennifer Jones said. “One is that the object of your affection is unlike anyone else, a rare spirit. The other is that he’s like everyone else, only superior, the very best of a type.”[2]
“Well if you must know, I’m a very typical rare spirit,” the old man said before Bogart echoed the same line onscreen.
“How long have you lived here?” asked Jennifer Jones.
“The longest I’ve lived anywhere,” the old man recited, again beating Bogart to the punch.
“Didn’t you ever have a mother and a father and a house?”
“No I was an orphan,” the old man said loudly. “Then a rich and beautiful woman adopted me.”
The old man smiled as Bogart repeated the lines; “No I was an orphan. Then a rich and beautiful woman adopted me.”
[2] Dialogue from the public domain movie Beat the Devil, screenplay by John Huston and Truman Capote.
It was like Sunday mass, the old man thought, easier than reciting lines from the good book. And as the movie progressed, the old man lost himself, as he often did, in the romantic action and intriguing storyline. The images on the screen danced in his head as if they were real.
Now a trio of characters, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, and Bogart, found themselves shipwrecked and washed ashore on a deserted beach. A hoard of horse-backed nomads stormed down a hillside firing shots at them. Everyone in the scene was frightened, except Bogart, and the old man, who stood fearless in the projection booth.
The old man raised his hands and said bravely, “Better get down everyone!”[3] He made his voice sound tough and cynical.
Seconds later, Bogart raised his hands and repeated the line on the big screen.
“Africa,” the old man then said aloud as if he were speaking directly to the nomad chieftain. “It’s not a bad place to land. No customs forms to fill out.”
When Bogart repeated the lines, the old man chuckled.
The film finished, and during the intermission the old man replaced the reels with the second feature, The African Queen. He waited the customary twenty minutes for everyone to return from the concessions and then rolled the film. Once he heard the projector running smoothly, he sat down at the projection table and listened to its melodic sound.
“You are a good machine,” he said, patting it on its side. “You bring life to the ordinary. You create magic from nothing.” Then he sighed. “But like me, you are old and replaceable!”
[3] Dialogue from the public domain movie Beat the Devil, screenplay by John Huston and Truman Capote.
He stretched his arm out comfortably on the table and laid his head upon it, and in his mind he watched the movie, following along as if it were playing in his head. He knew every scene, every word; all the facial expressions. The smooth clicking sound of film rushing through the gate, coupled with his cerebral reenactment, brought him to the place he loved best, his nirvana.
But he did not watch Bogart and Hepburn. He was with them in the boat, going down the Congo River. And he recited Bogart’s lines as if they were his own. And he watched Katherine Hepburn’s transformation from one who despised an aging old drunk, to one who loved. And now that she’d become smitten with this rugged old guy who was as unkempt and yet as capable as he, he accepted her expressions of adornment as if they were meant for him.
The celluloid images danced vividly in his head. Before he knew it, Humphrey Bogart was strapped to the mast of a ship and was being interrogated by a nasty German sea-captain as Hepburn was held helplessly to the side.
But it was not Bogart; it was he, the old man, strapped to the mass.
“Don’t give in!” the old man mumbled, feeling the ship rocking beneath him. “Be brave Rose! Be strong! It is for love and country!”
As the large German vessel, the Louisa, drifted closer to the African Queen, dancing on stormy seas with its makeshift torpedoes pointing from its bow, it was like the old man was having an out-of-body experience. He could see it all from above. He could see the torpedoes, closing in on the hull of the Louisa, and he knew, at any moment, they would strike and the entire ship would explode and sink.
“Take cover Rose!” he shouted, looking over to Hepburn. “I’ll be with you shortly!”
And he braced himself for the inevitable.
In his head, the reels spun forward at lightening speed. Though the movie had reached its end in his mind, it had barely finished the first reel on the projector beside him. On the screen, the first cue marked flashed by, then the second, then the end of the film looped through the gate, and suddenly, nothing but a white stream of light shone out from the projector. And the groaning and booing from the audience was almost instantaneous.
“Roll the damned film!”
“Hey! Wakeup up there!” another screamed from the front of the house.
But the old man’s head remained down on the table, resting on his out-stretched arm; his eyes closed and his expression intense. Even if he wanted to move he could not. He was strapped to a ship’s mast nevertheless! And the ropes were so tightly around him, he could feel them cutting into his arms.
“Be brave, Rose!” he mumbled again.
Then the projection room door swung open with a bang, slamming against the forward wall, and in stormed René, as livid as he could possibly be.
“This is it!” he screamed. “You are through!”
The old man lifted his head and looked on as René rushed past him and pressed the changeover button on the second projector. Instantly, the images returned to the silver screen below.
“Thank you!” someone yelled from the auditorium.
“About time!” another screamed out.
“You are finished!” René shouted to the old man. “Get your things and leave!”
“What?” the old man asked.
“You’re fired!”
It took a moment for the old man to gather himself. He had barely stepped off the deck of the Louisa.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Get your things and leave! Now! I’ll mail you your check.”
“But I thought I had three more months?”
“Not no more. You are through, now!”
René grabbed the old man’s collar, lifted him from the chair, and using his grip, escorted him to his bag, which was against the wall. The old man picked up the bag and then René pushed him to the door.
There was nothing the old man could do. He was too dazed and confused to resist, and when he was heaved through the door, pushed out like a rag doll, he nearly tumbled down the stairs. He dropped several steps before he could stop his momentum and regain his balance. Then he straightened himself, turned back, and looked up at René, who stood with both hands on his hips.
“Get out!” René yelled, pointing toward the front door of the lobby.
The old man continued down the steps, made his way through the foyer, and pushed his way out the front doors.
“He is a man without honor,” he mumbled to himself. “He is a man with no loyalty.”
As he walked down the street in darkness to his apartment, he thought of Garbo; her persona as Mata Hari, strong and defiance against all odds and in the face of certain death. Her image danced in his head, feverously; the coins of her hip-scarf chattering like wind chimes in a hurricane. Every movement of her body showed him her strength and will to overcome. She is the bold and daring one, he thought; the one never to give in to the misalignments and abuses of power.
Then, in his mind, he saw the bottle of gin awaiting him, there on his table in his dreary apartment, and the image of Garbo faded to black.