Chapter XI: Stranded in Rio (2)

The “Companhia Brazileira” advertized extensively, and the Kinetophone was well patronized from the start. Brazilians take readily to novelties, especially if they can be made the fashion, and our audiences of the second day included both priests and “women of the life,” which is a sure sign of popular success in Brazil. As our doubled entrance fee of two milreis was high for those times of depression, also perhaps because the “Cinema Pathé” was considered a gathering place of the élite, we entertained only the well dressed, or, perhaps I should say, the overdressed. They were blasé, artificial audiences, never under any circumstances applauding or giving any sign of approval; they always gave me the impression of saying, “Oh, rather interesting, you know, as a novelty, but I could do much better myself if I cared to take the time from my love-making and risk soiling my spats and my long, slender, do-nothing fingers.” But as they continued to bring us as our share of the receipts more than a conto of reis a day, it was evident that they found the performance pleasing.

The moving picture might be a real educating influence on the imaginative and emotional Brazilians, were it not that those who manipulate this business see fit to put their faith in an intellectual bilge-water which gives chiefly false notions of life in the world beyond their horizon. The same “Penny Dreadfuls” in film, concocted of saccharine sentimentality, custard-pie “comedy,” and a goodly seasoning of the criminal and the pornographic, that add to the weariness of life elsewhere, are the rule in the Brazilian capital. Here even the élite, or at least the well-dressed, flock to see them. This is partly due to the lowly state of the legitimate stage in Brazil and the atrocious performances given by nearly all the “actors” who seek their fortunes in South America. Though some Latin-American playwrights, and a few of the players, have done things worth while, the stage depends almost entirely upon “talent” imported from Europe, entertainers of Spanish (or, for Brazil, of Portuguese) origin, with the crudest notions of histrionic art, or superannuated discards from the French or Italian stage, mixed with youthful hopefuls who have crossed the Atlantic to try it on the dog. These misplaced porters and chambermaids, mere lay figures dressed to represent certain characters, romp about the stage in their natural rôles, their eyes wandering in quest of friends in the audience, whom they give semi-surreptitious greetings and seek to charm by “grandstand plays,” making the while the mechanical motions they have been taught and automatically repeating what they are told to say by the prompter. It is strange that the often artistic Latin races will endure the prompter, instead of insisting that actors learn their parts. It is a rare experience to find a place in the house where one can hear the play and not hear the prompter snarling the lines five words ahead, so that any semi-intelligent person in the audience could repeat them after him more effectually than do most of the louts behind the footlights. As is the case with literature, the theater in South America is mainly designed to appeal to the male. Respectable women are rarely seen at the average playhouse, not merely avoiding the “casino” with its “specially imported blond artistes” of not too adamantine morals, but even what corresponds to our vaudeville, where the audience sits smoking with its hat on and the boxes are graced by demimondaines. In fact, the stage and respectability have no connecting link in the Latin-American mind. All over South America, and especially in Brazil, “actress” is synonymous with less complimentary terms; nor is it possible to convince a Brazilian that such is not universally the case elsewhere. Rarely anything better than stupid and salacious appeals to men, it is small wonder that the living drama has been nearly ousted from South America by the cinema, with its easily transportable, international form of entertainment.

The motion-picture having come after all the business part of Rio was built, there was no room to erect “movie palaces” which have elsewhere followed in the train of Edison’s most prostituted invention. All the cinemas along the Avenida Central are former shops, without much space except in depth, and as the temperature quickly rises when such a place is crowded, the screen often consists of a curtain across what used to be the wide-open shop door, so that one on the sidewalk may peep in and see the audience and even the orchestra, though he can see nothing of the projected pictures within an inch of his nose. Alongside the “movie” house proper another ex-shop of similar size is generally used as a waiting-room. Here are luxurious upholstered seats, much better than those facing the screen, and some such extraordinary attraction as a “feminine orchestra specially contracted in Europe.” For the waiting-room is of great importance in Rio. It takes the place in a way of a central plaza and promenade where the two sexes can come and admire one another, and it is often thronged immediately after the closing of the door to the theater proper, by people who know quite well they must sit there a full hour before the “section” ends. In fact, young fops sometimes come in and remain an hour or two ogling the feminine charms in the waiting-room and then go out again without so much as having glanced at the show inside. In contrast, many cinemas have “second-class” entrances, without waiting-room and with seats uncomfortably near the screen, where the sockless and collarless are admitted at reduced prices.

It does not require long contact with them to discover that Latin films are best for Latins, for both audience and actors have a mutual language of gestures and facial expressions. The lack of this makes American films seem slow, labored, and stupid, not only to Latins, but to the American who has been living for some time among them. It is a strange paradox that the most _doing_ people on the earth are the slowest in telling a story in pantomime or on the screen. What a French or an Italian actress will convey in full, sharply and clearly, by a shrug of her shoulders or a flip of her hand, the most advertised American “movie star” will get across much more crudely and indistinctly only by spending two or three minutes of pantomimic labor, assisted by two or three long “titles.” The war quickly forced the “Companhia Brazileira,” as it did most of its rivals, to use American films; but neither impresarios nor their clients had anything but harsh words for the “awkward stupidity” and the pretended Puritanic point of view of those makeshift programs—with one exception, Brazilian audiences would sit up all night watching our “wild west” films in which there was rough riding. Curious little differences in customs and point of view come to light in watching an American film through South American eyes. For instance, there is probably not a motion-picture director in the United States who knows that to permit a supposedly refined character in a film to lick a postage stamp is to destroy all illusion in a Latin-American audience. Down there not even the lowest of the educated class ever dreams of sealing or stamping a letter in that fashion. An American film depicting the misadventures of a “dude” or “sissy” was entirely lost upon the Brazilian audiences, because to them the hero was exactly their idea of what a man should be, and they plainly rated him the most “cultured” American they had ever met. Bit by bit one discovers scores of such slight and insignificant differences, which sum up to great differences and become another stone in that stout barrier between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon divisions of the western hemisphere.

On Thursday came the customary mid-weekly change of bill, and we were thankful for a new program after hearing the old one more than thirty times. Also the “music,” which the cinema orchestra ground out incessantly during every moment when we were not giving our part of the show, changed, though hardly for the better. We were a godsend to the musicians of that orchestra, especially to the player of the bass-viol. Hitherto they had been required to play unbrokenly from one in the afternoon until nearly midnight; our advent gave them ten or eleven twenty-minute respites during that time. This they usually spent lolling around the room behind the screen, about the phonograph and our trunks, where they frequently fell asleep. Particularly the anemic quadroon who manipulated the largest stringed instrument seemed never to catch up on his sleep. Barely did our part of the program begin than he stretched out in such comfort as he could find in the improvised green-room and went soundly to sleep, so soundly that no noise under heaven could wake him—save one. When it came time for them to return, his companions would shout at him, jostle him, sometimes even yank him erect; nothing had the slightest effect on his somnolence. But the instant the first strains of their never-varying “music” were heard in the orchestra pit outside, the sleeper would awake with a flash, make one spring through the door, and be automatically scraping off his part with the others by the time they had reached the second or third note.

Sunday is the big theater or “movie” day in Brazil, for then the families of the “four hundred” turn out in full force. On our seventh day they were standing knee-deep in the waiting-room most of the afternoon and early evening. The congestion increased that part of my duties which had to do with auditing, for the head of a family often paused to shake hands effusively with the door-keeper, after which the entire family poured boldly in, and it became my business to find out whether there had been anything concealed in the effusive hand, and if not, why the box-office had been so cavalierly slighted.

One afternoon the Senhor Presidente da Republica came to honor the fourth performance of the day with his patronage, and to give us the official blessing without which we had been forced to open. A corps of policemen was sent first to hang about the door for nearly two hours—giving passers-by the impression that the place had been “pinched.” There followed a throng of generals, admirals, and un-admirables in full uniform, who waited in line for “His Excellency.” The president came at length in an open carriage, his girl wife beside him, two haughty personalities in gold lace opposite them, and a company of lancers on horseback trotting along the Avenida beside them. The waiting line fawned upon the leathery-skinned chief of state, bowed over the hand of his wife, then the whole throng surrounded the loving pair and, pushing the humble door-keeper scornfully aside, swarmed into the cinema without a suggestion of offering to pay the entrance fee. Luckily the doors were not high enough to admit the lancers, who trotted away with the red of their uniforms gleaming in the afternoon sunshine. It was my first experience with the official “deadheads” of Brazil, but by no means my last.

We quickly found, too, that the official gathering was bad for business. Surely any American theater holding 510 persons would fill up when the President of the Republic and his suite were gracing it with their presence! Yet here there was only a scattering of paying audience as long as the “deadheads” remained, which, thanks perhaps to a film showing them in the recent Independence Day parade, was until they had heard the entire program once and the Kinetophone twice. The president, it seemed, was hated not only for his political iniquities, but the élite looked down upon him for marrying a girl little more than one-fourth his own age and letting her make the national presidency the background for her social climbing; and to enter the theater while the president and his retainers were there was to risk losing both one’s political and social standing as a high class Brazilian.

It soon got on our nerves to know that we were the only persons, alive or dead, in the whole expanse of Brazil who could operate the Kinetophone, that if anything happened to either of us it meant a ruined performance, our income cut off, and an unamused Rio élite. Let one of us fail to be on the dot ten times a day and the thing would have been ruined, for the _Carioca_ is nothing if not critical and of so little patience that, had we missed a single performance, word would have gone out at once that the “novelty” at the “Cinema Pathé” had failed. I decided, therefore, during our second week to get and break in a native assistant, and next morning the two principal dailies contained this appealing announcement:

_Preciza-se de um operador de
cinema, jovem, sem familia, com ao
menos dois annos de experiencia,
sabendo bem a electricidade e algo
de inglez._

I intended to be particularly insistent on those points of youth, “without family,” and “something of English,” but I soon found that we would be lucky even to get the other and indispensable requirements of cinema experience and a knowledge of electricity. In Buenos Aires mobs had besieged Linton’s hotel in answer to a similar announcement; in New York it would probably have brought out the police reserves. Yet hardly half a dozen applicants turned up at the Praia do Flamengo after our morning swim, languidly to inquire our desires. The first was a stupid looking negro who did not seem to fulfill any of the requirements; the second was a shifty-eyed mulatto with no physique—badly needed for the one-night stands ahead; the third was quite visibly impossible. I engaged the fourth man to appear. Carlos Oliva was about “Tut’s” age, which did not hinder him from already having a wife and four children. But then, so do all Brazilians, legitimately or otherwise. He was a _Paulista_, that is, born in São Paulo, though of Italian parents, a practiced mechanic and experienced operator of ordinary “movie” films, and he looked intelligent. To be sure he spoke no English, but that vain hope had died early and it became evident that “Tut” would have to learn enough Portuguese to get along when it came time for me to go ahead of the show to make bookings.

I had gradually been acquiring a better command of that tongue myself, and now made use of it to draw up a formidable contract tying Carlos hand and foot. Though I was forced to pay him the equivalent of a hundred dollars a month and traveling expenses, I required him to stay with the Kinetophone until the tour of Brazil was completed, not to exceed one year. On every “second feast day” after the first month he was to get four-fifths of his pay, the rest to remain in the hands of the “Linton South American Company” until the tour was finished, when the balance was to be paid him in a lump sum, together with his fare back to Rio. If he left before that time, both the balance and the transportation were forfeited, for we did not propose to spend weeks training a man only to have him leave us at the first whim or better offer—though the latter contingency was not likely. Lastly, he was not to engage in any other occupation while with us, he could be discharged upon a week’s notice if he proved unsatisfactory, with balance and fare paid, and he was required never to show or explain to others the workings of the Kinetophone, nor disclose knowledge of anything connected with our company which he might learn directly or indirectly. With all these clauses duly included and the document signed in duplicate, I fancied even a Brazilian could find no means of leaving us in the lurch. Little had I suspected, when I was tramping the streets of Rio six weeks before, carrying all my worldly possessions wrapped in a square yard of cloth, that I should soon be strutting down the Avenida Central as one of her captains of industry, laying down the law to mere mortals, and shouldering my way daily through her narrow downtown streets to deposit a large sum of money.

About the time Carlos joined us I found myself in new and wholly unexpected trouble—silver trouble. It scarcely seems possible that anyone could protest at getting too much silver, but many strange things happen in Brazil. There is no Brazilian gold, except in theory; and its paper does not suffice for small transactions. One day the Rio manager of the “Companhia Brazileira” met me at our usual noonday conference with the announcement that he would have to pay me a part of our percentage in silver. I saw no reason why he should not, other than the trouble of carrying it a few blocks to the bank, and accepted 200$000 in paper-wrapped rolls. But when I dropped these down before the receiver’s window, he declined to accept them. I fancied the tropical heat had suddenly affected his sanity, and went in to see one of the English “clarks.” From him I learned that it was only too true; the banks of Rio _do not_ accept silver! I had heard of South American bankers doing all kinds of tricks, but I had never before known one to refuse money. I tried several other banks of various nationalities with the same result; they all accepted only silver enough to make up odd multiples of ten milreis. The English manager of the British bank, who had lived so long in Brazil that he had lost some of the incommunicativeness of his race, took the trouble to explain the enigma to me. The year before, the agent of a German firm had arranged with certain Brazilian officials to issue a new coinage and the firm had flooded the country, about the capital, with shining new silver 500, 1000, and 2000 reis pieces. But silver is legal tender in Brazil only up to two milreis; therefore, when it suddenly became plentiful, the banks could not accept any great amount of it because they had no outlet and would have had to build new vaults to hold the stuff. At the cinema door we naturally took in much _prata_, so that even after making change a donkey-load of it remained to be divided each noonday. I could not buy drafts with it on New York; the government would not receive it—nor its own paper money in most transactions, for that matter; being “made in Germany” it was hardly worth melting up. The one rift in the silver clouds was that merchants were so anxious for trade during this period of depression that they would accept any kind of money in any amount if only people would buy. We paid Carlos in silver and we spent silver ourselves whenever we had to spend. What we could not get rid of in that way I could only sell at a four per cent. loss, and as I was already paying 5$000 a dollar for drafts, I finally took to dropping pounds of silver into our trunks.

But the worst was still to come. Commerce was suddenly swamped under a flood of nickel! Its “refunding loan” having failed, Brazil was hard put to it to find money for current expenses, and disgorged anything that could be found lying about the federal treasury. If the government refused to take its own silver and nickel, it did not by any means refuse to pay it out. The lower and less influential officials were paid, when at all, in rolls of silver, those without any political pull whatever in nickel, and there were cases of being paid in _vintems_, the obsolete copper coins of twenty reis each which may be seen in use only among beggars and negro street hawkers. On government pay-days, ever more rare now as time went on, one might see a government bookkeeper or a school teacher come in to buy a long-needed bar of soap and a flashy new shirt, lugging in both hands, like dumbbells, great lumps of paper-wrapped silver, nickel, and even copper.

It was not until September 25 that I could risk letting Carlos run the stage end of the show, even under my immediate supervision, but he learned with reasonable speed and three days later I spent the afternoon climbing Tijuca and turned up at the cinema after eight, much relieved to find that nothing had gone awry. “Tut,” however, was forced to stick close to his booth during all performances as long as we remained in Rio.

Then came the end of the month, the figuring up of accounts, and the startling discovery that I was a millionaire! In a single week I had earned more than I had spent since entering Brazil three months before, and my salary and commission for the month, little more than half of which we had been playing, summed up to 1,250,000 reis! What it would have been under normal conditions, when Brazilians were able to maintain to the full their reputation as “good spenders,” only the mathematically minded can compute. Now that I had my first million, by all the rules of Wall Street I should have had no difficulty in rapidly joining the multimillionaire class. However, when I found that at the prevailing rate of exchange my earnings amounted to barely three hundred dollars, and when I added the knowledge that a five-cent handkerchief sold for 1$500, that it cost 600 reis to have a collar badly laundered, and that rather a thin letter mailed to the United States required the equivalent of twenty-five cents in stamps, I realized that I was in no immediate danger of descending into the pitiable class of the idle rich.