“I’m dying to hear it, Dallas,” Sam said. “Shoot.”
Dallas Burke leaned forward and began talking. “What’s everybody in the world most interested in, kid? Love—right? And this idea’s about the most holy kind of love there is—the love of a mother for her child.” His voice grew stronger as he became immersed in his story. “We open in Long Island with a nineteen-year-old girl working as a secretary for a wealthy family. Old money. Gives us a chance for a slick background—know what I mean? High-society stuff. The man she works for is married to a tight-assed blueblood. He likes the secretary, and she likes him, even though he’s older.”
Only half-listening, Sam wondered whether the story was going to be Back Street or Imitation of Life. Not that it mattered, because whichever it was, Sam was going to buy it. It had been almost twenty years since anyone had given Dallas Burke a picture to direct. Sam could not blame the industry. Burke’s last three pictures had been expensive, old-fashioned and box-office disasters. Dallas Burke was finished forever as a picture maker. But he was a human being and he was still alive, and somehow he had to be taken care of, because he had not saved a cent. He had been offered a room in the Motion Picture Relief Home, but he had indignantly turned it down. “I don’t want your fucking charity!” he had shouted. “You’re talking to the man who directed Doug Fairbanks and Jack Barrymore and Milton Sills and Bill Farnum. I’m a giant, you pygmy sons of bitches!”
And he was. He was a legend; but even legends had to eat.
When Sam had become a producer, he had telephoned an agent he knew and told him to bring in Dallas Burke with a story idea. Since then, Sam had bought unusable stories from Dallas Burke every year for enough money for the old man to live on, and while Sam had been away in the army, he had seen to it that the arrangement continued.
“…so you see,” Dallas Burke was saying, “the baby grows up without knowing her mother. But the mother keeps track of her. At the end, when the daughter marries this rich doctor, we have a big wedding. And do you know what the twist is, Sam? Listen to this—it’s great. They won’t let the mother in! She has to sneak in to the back of the church to watch her own kid getting married. There won’t be a dry eye in the audience…. Well, that’s it. What do you think?”
Sam had guessed wrong. Stella Dallas. He glanced at the agent, who averted his eyes and studied the tips of his expensive shoes in embarrassment.
“It’s great,” Sam said. “It’s exactly the kind of picture the studio’s looking for.” Sam turned to the agent. “Call Business Affairs and work out a deal with them, Peter. I’ll tell them to expect your call.”
The agent nodded.
“Tell them they’re gonna have to pay a stiff price for this one, or I’ll take it to Warner Brothers,” Dallas Burke said. “I’m giving you first crack at it because we’re friends.”
“I appreciate that,” Sam said.
He watched as the two men left the office. Strictly speaking, Sam knew he had no right to spend the company’s money on a sentimental gesture like this. But the motion-picture industry owed something to men like Dallas Burke, for without him and his kind, there would have been no industry.
At eight o’clock the following morning, Sam Winters drove up under the portico of the Beverly Hills Hotel. A few minutes later, he was threading his way across the Polo Lounge, nodding to friends, acquaintances and competitors. More deals were made in this room over breakfast, lunch and cocktails than were consummated in all the offices of all the studios combined. Mel Foss looked up as Sam approached.
“Morning, Sam.”
The two men shook hands and Sam slid into the booth across from Foss. Eight months ago Sam had hired Foss to run the television division of Pan-Pacific Studios. Television was the new baby in the entertainment world, and it was growing with incredible rapidity. All the studios that had once looked down on television were now involved in it.