“We weren’t lying and we weren’t exaggerating when we said the actual photography was ours.
Every frame of film was taken right here in this country, within the last few months.
Just how—I won’t mention why or where—we can’t tell you just now.”
Kessler snorted in disgust.
“Let me finish.
“We all know that we’re cashing in, hand over fist.
And we’re going to cash in some more.
We have, on our personal schedule, five more pictures.
Three of that five we want you to handle as you did the others.
The last two of the five will show you both the reason for all the childish secrecy, as Kessler calls it, and another motive that we have so far kept hidden.
The last two pictures will show you both our motives and our methods; one is as important as the other.
Now— is that enough?
Can we go ahead on that basis?”
It wasn’t enough for Kessler.
“That doesn’t mean a thing to me.
What are we, a bunch of hacks?”
Johnson was thinking about his bank balance.
“Five more.
Two years, maybe four.”
Marrs was skeptical.
“Who do you think you’re going to kid that long?
Where’s your studio?
Where’s your talent?
Where do you shoot your exteriors?
Where do you get costumes and your extras?
In one single shot you’ve got forty thousand extras, if you’ve got one!
Maybe you can shut me up, but who’s going to answer the questions that Metro and Fox and Paramount and RKO have been asking?
Those boys aren’t fools, they know their business.
How do you expect me to handle any publicity when I don’t know what the score is, myself?”
Johnson told him to pipe down for a while and let him think.
Mike and I didn’t like this one bit.
But what could we do—tell the truth and end up in a strait-jacket?
“Can we do it this way?” he finally asked. “Marrs: these boys have an in with the Soviet Government. They work in some place in Siberia, maybe.
Nobody gets within miles of there.
No one ever knows what the Russians are doing—”
“Nope!” Marrs was definite.
“Any hint that these came from Russia and we’d all be a bunch of Reds.
Cut the gross in half.”
Johnson began to pick up speed. “All right, not from Russia.
From one of these little republics fringed around Siberia or Armenia or one of those places.
They’re not Russian-made films at all.
In fact, they’ve been made by some of these Germans and Austrians the Russians took over and moved after the War.
The war fever had died down enough for people to realize that the Germans knew their stuff occasionally.
The old sympathy racket for these refugees struggling with faulty equipment, lousy climate, making-superspectacles and smuggling them out under the nose of the Gestapo or whatever they call it—That’s it!”
Doubtfully, from Marrs: “And the Russians tell the world we’re nuts, that they haven’t got any loose Germans?”
That, Johnson overrode. “Who reads the back pages?
Who pays any attention to what the Russians say?
Who cares?
They might even think we’re telling the truth and start looking around their own backyard for something that isn’t there!
All right with you?” to Mike and myself.