Page 51 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lennie had found Rose an agent. His name was Forrest Van Kerk; nearly everyone called him Van, but those closest to him called him Woody.

Lennie liked him from the first because he had been a movie actor, having played dozens of supporting roles, so he knew what was involved in standing in front of a camera.

He had inherited from his father a pickle-canning company – Van Kerk pickles were a favourite in northern California – and had successfully run it before, during and after his acting career.

He’d gone into agenting accidentally one day on set by representing a shy and tongue-tied fellow actor’s perfectly reasonable demands to the management, and now had a small but impressive stable of clients.

He was in his forties, with a pleasant face that could look handsome in certain lights; he was patient, calm, intelligent, sensible, tenacious and very likeable, upending the accepted belief that, to be successful, an agent had to be a ferocious brute.

The first meeting with Rose went well – she said to Lennie afterwards that she particularly liked his ‘furry’ voice – and Lennie felt comfortable about entrusting her to Van, who was surely too old and too pleasantly ordinary to be the object of one of her crushes.

Van liked Al Feinstein. ‘He’s a great guy. He knows the business inside out.’

‘But it’s important that he’s not allowed to walk all over Rose,’ Lennie said, thinking there was such a thing as being too nice.

‘I’ve always found his underlying instincts are sound,’ Van said. ‘The old boy is cinema to the bone. He likes to pretend he’s a fire-breathing dragon, but he doesn’t scare me. We understand each other pretty well.’

So Lennie felt able to step back once again from Rose’s concerns, and look to his own business.

Rose was still living in the guest villa at his mansion, Bel Air, with her own household, as well as Lennie’s housekeeper, to watch over her, so he took a trip to New York, where he owned a radio station, W2XKX, and had the headquarters of his radio-manufacturing business.

‘I want to see how they’re getting on with television,’ he told Rose.

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Television? Nobody’s interested in that.’

‘That’s what they said about the movies, honey. Then they said Talkies would never take off.’

‘I saw one once, in a shop window. It was all grey, and only about a foot square. Why would anyone want to look at such an itty-bitty screen when they could go to the movies?’

‘I’ll tell you why – because people are fundamentally lazy. Okay, television’s not good enough as it stands. But let’s say one day they can get the picture as good as it is on the big screen.’

‘Could never happen.’

‘Just suppose. If you could give people a movie theatre in their own home, you’d kill cinema stone dead.

People wouldn’t have to put their shoes on and get the car out and drive into town, and wait in a queue with a lot of strangers to buy a ticket, and maybe have to sit next to a fat sweaty guy, or behind a woman in a crazy hat.

Why, they could sit on their own sofa, in their own lounge, in their slippers.

They’d have beer and pretzels right there in the kitchen.

They could go to the john whenever they wanted. ’

‘Uncle Lennie!’

‘It’s a factor,’ Lennie insisted. ‘And at the end of the movie, they can just switch off and shuffle up to bed. No drive home, no putting the car away, no coming back to a dark house. Maybe it’s cold and wet outside.

I’m telling you, honey, television could be the next big thing.

’ Rose only sniffed. He went on reflectively, ‘You probably don’t know, but President Hoover put me on a special White House committee for television back in 1929.

I’ve taken my eye off the ball since Hoover lost office.

Had other things on my mind. But television must have moved on a lot since then.

And if it’s a question of investing – well, the man who gets in on the ground floor is the one who makes the gravy. ’

Rose gave him an indulgent smile. ‘I think this is all just excuses because you’re restless and want to take a trip.’

He grinned. ‘You got me.’

‘Well, go with my blessing. I’ve been taking up a lot of your time lately, and I’m sorry. But I’m okay now, and you don’t have to worry about me any more.’

‘I’ll always worry about you,’ he said, standing up and leaning down to kiss her forehead, ‘but I’m not worried now. And if you need me, I’ll come back in a hurry. I could even fly back if I had to.’

‘Fly?’ Rose exclaimed.

‘TWA does a flight from New York to Los Angeles, with just three stops, and it only takes about twenty-five hours.’

‘You’ll meet yourself coming back one of these days,’ Rose said wisely.

‘You sounded just like your mother then.’

When Lennie had been involved in it, television meant shining a neon lamp through a spinning Nipkow disc, which was punched with equidistant holes in a spiral pattern.

As it revolved, the disc split the image into slices, which were projected onto a sensor as a pattern of light and dark lines.

It was a simple and cheap system, and John Logie Baird had demonstrated it in Selfridges in London as early as 1925.

From 1929 the British Broadcasting Company transmitted experimental programmes using Baird’s 30-line system, while W2XAB transmitted in New York on 48 lines from 1929 to 1931.

The BBC had improved the image by an intermediate film process, where footage was shot onto cinefilm, which was then scanned.

Now it was broadcasting a limited range of programmes from Alexandra Palace in 240 lines.

But the mechanical system was limited. The more lines, and the quicker the spin, the clearer the image, but there was a limit to how big and how fast you could make the disc.

The fact was that mechanical-scanning television had never yet been good enough to tempt the general public.

Now Lennie caught up with Allen B. DuMont, whom he had met at Westinghouse in New Jersey when he was working for the Television Commission.

DuMont was working on electron currents in vacuum tubes, creating an electrical field that accelerated the passage of electrons from the cathode to the anode.

The electron scanning process was infinitely better than the mechanical, and DuMont had started his own company in New Jersey to work on manufacturing long-lasting and reliable cathode ray tubes.

Lennie spent a very interesting day with DuMont, who was just a few years younger than him – and, amusingly to Lennie, viewed him as something of a pioneer of the air waves – and was pondering to himself whether DuMont’s company might be something to invest in.

But DuMont let fall the information that EMI, which had just merged with Marconi, had developed an all-electronic scanning system, which they had improved to 405 lines, and that the BBC was already trying it out.

EMI-Marconi, Lennie reckoned, was already too big for him to get in on the ground floor.

That evening, he met Joseph Kennedy at his club, the Metropolitan on East 60th, for dinner and a long chat.

He and Kennedy had been co-investors in the early days of movies.

Kennedy had moved on now, investing mostly in real estate and importing liquors – such lucrative fields that his fortune was said to be $180 million.

But he still loved the movies, and was interested in everything Lennie had to tell him about the Hollywood scene.

When Lennie mentioned television, however, he lost interest. ‘Just a toy.’ He dismissed it.

‘It’ll never amount to anything. But you’ve made your fortune, haven’t you? Manning’s Radios are everywhere.’

‘You know as well as I do that you can’t stand still,’ Lennie said.

‘Okay – but politics, Len. That’s where you should be pitting your energies.

Controlling events, not following in their wake.

I got Roosevelt back in – shut down that renegade Coughlin.

Roosevelt’s eighty-one per cent of the Catholic vote?

He owes that to me! And he won’t forget it.

I’m in for a big position, once he gets his feet under the table.

An ambassadorship – a good one. And come 1940, I’m gonna succeed him to the White House. ’

‘You’re going to be president?’ Lennie said, more amused than amazed.

‘What d’you think I’ve been working towards all these years?’ Kennedy said, flashing him a grin with his great white tombstone teeth. ‘First I’m gonna be president, then my son, Joe Junior. I’m gonna make it hereditary!’ He laughed infectiously.

‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ Lennie said, laughing too. ‘If kings can do it—’

‘Kings nothing! They get it handed on a plate. I worked for mine from the bottom up. I deserve it – and I’m gonna have it.

And my nine kids are all gonna benefit. The Kennedy Dynasty.

It’s got a ring to it, don’t you think? But what about you, Len?

You married yet? No? You ought to think about it.

People trust you more when you’re a family man.

And you can’t get far in politics if you’re single.

You should get married and get a family going.

You’re not getting any younger, you know. ’

‘I haven’t met the right girl yet,’ Lennie said. ‘Or, rather, I met her, but she met someone else.’

‘There’s thousands of girls out there,’ Kennedy said cheerfully. ‘And I’ll tell you a secret,’ he added, with a wink. ‘One’s pretty much the same as another, when you get right down to it.’

Kennedy was a famous ladies’ man, despite having a high-energy, politically engaged wife. Or perhaps, Lennie thought, because of it. He had met Rose Kennedy a few times and had found her exhausting. And a little bit frightening.