“It's 1913, and the world is thrilling to that fabulous invention, the motion picture. In their drab New York rooming-house, Jack and Susan are just across the river from glamorous Fort Lee, New Jersey, home of the exciting new film industry. But when the movies move West, Jack and Susan (and Tripod) decide to go along with them, only to discover that not all of the bad guys are on the silver screen.”
As noted, for the next book in this series, author Michael McDowell jumps back in time to the year 1913 and the early days of the motion picture industry. This time around Susan is an actress and Jack an inventor (who is and isn’t). After a run-in with the mysterious Russian Consul, on her way home from the theater on a snowy street in January, Susan breaks her leg. A mister John Austin feels guilty because the commotion, and threw a bunch of circumstances that can only happen in these books, she finds herself nearly penniless as no one wants to hire an actress in a plaster cast. Susan finds herself courted by a shadowy fan, soon after, while constantly running into Jack, who lives below her and always finds ways to call attention to him. The tinkerer, named Jack Beaumont, is working on a instrument to help the Cosmic Film Company that holds film in place as it passes through movie cameras. Soon, with intervention of Jack, Susan finds her way into the burgeoning “flicker” business, where she finds steady work as a screenwriter and casts Jack in her films.
There is a lot interesting bits in this second novel, mostly a fascinating look at the early film industry. In some ways, I can praise McDowell for his intricate eye for historical research and accurate details. There are digs at Motion Picture Patents Company, started by Thomas Edison and others in 1908 and which was notorious for enforcing those who could be seen as competition, by refusing equipment (like cameras and film stock) to uncooperative filmmakers and theatre owners. They were not above terrorizing independent film producers, as well. It was eventually disbanded by court order in 1918 as they were seen holding a monopoly and being anti-competitive. Ironically, The Movie Trust, which was based in New York and other cities of the East Coast, was indirectly responsible for the establishment of Hollywood, Calif., as the nation’s film capital, since many independent filmmakers migrated to the latter town to escape the Trust’s restrictive influence in the East.
There is also an obvious anti-Semite issue that existed in Hollywood in that time period, as Jack discovers when trying to rent a room (though it’s also covered by additional issues with people who work in the movie industry –like a lot new fangled things, the early silent era was seen more lowly than the stage- and Hollywood at the time appeared to be a “dry town” –no alcohol)
Anyways, the book follows the formula as the first, and sits well in the era of the time when films such as this book would’ve been popular –I think they may have been B films. A lot happens to both Susan and Jack, most of it silly by our standards of today, but plausible in era that the book is set. Yes, Susan is portrayed as more independent and smarter than most, but I don’t think that is a stretch to say there were women of that period who could more than what life handed them as females of the human species.
Suffice it to say, it all works out in the end, which takes place in the far-off land of Hollywood, CA, during the making of the most monumental of Susan’s pictures.
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