If they didn’t see it, it was good.
They could understand why we’d want to keep a process that good a secret.
“We can practically guarantee there’ll be more work for you to do later on.”
Their interest was plain.
“We’re not going to predict when, or make any definite arrangement, but we still have a trick or two in the deck.
We like the way we’ve been getting along, and we want to stay that way.
Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a date with a blonde.”
Johnson was right about the bidding for the release.
We—or rather Johnson—made a very profitable deal with United Amusement and the affiliated theaters.
Johnson, the bandit, got his percentage from us and likely did better with United.
Kessler and Johnson’s boys took huge ads in the trade journals to boast about their connections with the Academy Award Winner.
Not only the Academy, but every award that ever went to any picture.
Even the Europeans went overboard.
They’re the ones that make a fetish of realism.
They knew the real thing when they saw it, and so did everyone else.
Our success went to Ruth’s head.
In no time she wanted a secretary.
At that, she needed one to fend off the screwballs that popped out of the woodwork.
So we let her hire a girl to help out.
She picked a good typist, about fifty.
Ruth is a smart girl, in a lot of ways.
Her father showed signs of wanting to see the Pacific, so we raised her salary on condition he’d stay away.
The three of us were having too much fun.
The picture opened at the same time in both New York and Hollywood.
We went to the premiere in great style with Ruth between us, swollen like a trio of bullfrogs.
It’s a great feeling to sit on the floor, early in the morning, and read reviews that make you feel like floating.
It’s a better feeling to have a mintful of money.
Johnson and his men were right along with us.
I don’t think he could have been too flush in the beginning, and we all got a kick out of riding the crest.
It was a good-sized wave, too.
We had all the personal publicity we wanted, and more.
Somehow the word was out that we had a new gadget for process photography, and every big studio in town was after what they thought would be a mighty economical thing to have around.
The studios that didn’t have a spectacle scheduled looked at the receipts of “Alexander” and promptly scheduled a spectacle.
We drew some very good offers, Johnson said, but we made a series of long faces and broke the news that we were leaving for Detroit the next day, and to hold the fort awhile.
I don’t think he thought we actually meant it, but we did.
We left the next day.
Back in Detroit we went right to work, helped by the knowledge that we were on the right track.
Ruth was kept busy turning away the countless would-be visitors.
We admitted no reporters, no salesmen, no one.
We had no time.
We were using the view camera.
Plate after plate we sent to Rochester for developing.
A print of each was returned to us and the plate was held in Rochester for our disposal.
We sent to New York for a representative of one of the biggest publishers in the country. We made a deal.
Your main library has a set of the books we published, if you’re interested.
Huge heavy volumes, hundreds of them, each page a razor-sharp blowup from an 8x10 negative.
A set of those books went to every major library and university in the world.
Mike and I got a real kick out of solving some of the problems that have had savants guessing for years.
In the Roman volume, for example, we solved the trireme problem with a series of pictures, not only the interior of a trireme, but a line-of-battle quinquereme. (Naturally, the professors and amateur yachtsmen weren’t convinced at all.) We had a series of aerial shots of the City of Rome taken a hundred years apart, over a millennium.
Aerial views of Ravenna and Londinium, Palmyra and Pompeii, of Eboracum and Byzantium.