15

THE FRAIL, distinguished-looking, white-haired, elderly gentleman had a Vandyke beard and a cane. Bundled in a thick brown cardigan sweater, he was waiting at the metal gate of his home in Sherman Oaks when Coltrane parked in front. The expansive Tudor house was high in the hills, the glinting lights of the valley spread out below.

“I didn’t realize how late it was,” Coltrane said after he shook hands and introduced himself. A cool breeze tugged at his hair. “If I’d thought about it, I never would have let the guy in the video store call you.”

The elderly man made a “think nothing of it” gesture. His voice was reedy. “Sidney knows I don’t go to bed until two or three in the morning. Anybody who wants to talk about the work of George B. Seitz is welcome anytime.”

“Actually, Seitz isn’t why I’m here.”

The elderly man looked confused.

“What I’m really interested in is an actress he directed in The Trailblazer.”

“Which actress?”

“Rebecca Chance.”

The elderly man nodded.

“You know about her?” Coltrane asked.

“About her? Not in the least.”

Coltrane felt something deflate inside him. “I guess I’ve bothered you for nothing. I’m sorry. I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“But I’ve seen her work.”

Coltrane froze in the act of turning toward his car.

“You came to talk to me about The Trailblazer. Don’t you think it would be more satisfying if you watched it?”

“Watched it?”

“I don’t have every picture Seitz made. Many of the silents were on film stock that disintegrated before they could be preserved, although I do have copies of the most famous ones, such as The Perils of Pauline, which he wrote before he became a director. The sound pictures he directed are another matter. From Black Magic in ’29 to Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble in ’44, the year Seitz died, I’ve managed to track down a print of every film Seitz made.”

The dignified gentleman, who introduced himself as Vincent Toler, escorted Coltrane into his house, the living room of which had a screen behind retractable oak panels at one end and a projection room adjacent to the opposite end, the two rooms linked via a space behind an Andrew Wyeth painting that slid to the side.

Toler, Coltrane learned, was a widower, a retired neurosurgeon who lived alone. He had hated being a neurosurgeon, he explained. “I never wanted to enter medicine, but my father, who was a doctor, bullied me into doing so. What I really wanted was to work in the movies. In what capacity, I had no idea. I just knew that was what I loved, but my father wouldn’t hear of it, and I wasn’t brave enough to stand up to him.” After Toler retired, he had happened to see an Andy Hardy movie on the American Movie Classics channel, had remembered the delight with which he had watched it as a boy, had reexperienced the same delight, and had noticed when viewing the movie on its next AMC showing that the director was George B. Seitz.

That name had meant nothing to him, but when he asked the clerk at a video store he frequented (the same video store to which Coltrane had gone) to find other movies that Seitz had directed, Toler had been delighted to discover that Seitz had directed almost all the Andy Hardy movies and many other movies that Toler recalled fondly from his youth. “I started collecting videos, but some of Seitz’s movies weren’t available on video, so the next step was…” Toler indicated the reel of film that he was attaching to the projector. “It’s been an interesting hobby. You could say that I’m collecting my youth.”

As he finished setting up, Toler explained that Seitz had invented the cliffhanger serial in 1914 and had eventually switched to feature films in 1925, making westerns, mysteries, crime melodramas, and comedies. “He was a professional. His pictures were on schedule and underbudget. More important, he knew how to entertain.”

Settling into a plush chair, Coltrane was surprised that his anticipation of seeing Rebecca Chance move and speak was making him uneasy. After Toler turned off the lights and then turned on the projector, tinny epical music, evocative of rivers, plains, and mountains, obscured the projector’s whir. Simultaneously, a beam of light hit the screen, showing a brilliant black-and-white image of a hand that opened a book and revealed the title, The Trailblazer, with Seitz’s “directed by” credit below the title. Coltrane gripped the upholstered arms of his chair as the cast list appeared. There wasn’t any separate card for the star; rather, all the actors’ names appeared together on a list, with the star’s name at the top. Rebecca Chance’s was the sixth name down. Seeing it made Coltrane lean forward.

Writers. Cameraman. As the hand continued to turn pages, the music built to a dramatic peak, and all at once, Coltrane was startled by the last of the credits.

“Produced by Winston Case?” Coltrane said in shock.

“You recognize the name?” Toler asked from the darkness behind Coltrane.

Good Lord, Coltrane thought. Rebecca Chance hadn’t only bought Case’s house, she had worked with him. They were connected. “Do you know anything about him?”

“Not a lot. This is the only picture he produced for Seitz.”

“What about Rebecca Chance? Was she in any other of Seitz’s movies?”

“No.”

While they spoke, the screen showed a wagon train making its way across a prairie. A lean, tall man in buckskin, Bruce Cabot, was leading the pioneers. The vista was impressive, as was the multilayered sound track – the creak of wagon wheels, the plod of hooves, the jangle of harnesses. The dramatic use of sound was amazing, given the limitations of recording devices then in use. But Coltrane didn’t care about that. All he did care about as he watched intently, scanning the crowd of pioneers, was a glimpse of…

“I did a little research on Case,” Toler’s disembodied voice said. “He started producing in 1928, just as sound was coming in. Except for The Trailblazer and one other film, he wasn’t associated with anything I’ve heard of.”

“That other picture wouldn’t be Jamaica Wind, would it?”

“How did you know?”

“That’s the other picture I’m looking for. Rebecca Chance is in that one also.”’

Coltrane kept staring at the wagon train. It entered a canyon, where Cabot frowned toward smoke rising from a hollow. He told the wagon train to wait while he and one of the pioneers investigated.

“But you’ve never seen her act?” Toler asked.

“I’ve only seen stills.”

“What made you interested in her?”

Avoiding the question, Coltrane asked, “When does she appear?”

“Soon.”

In the hollow, Cabot galloped to the burning wreckage of a Conestoga wagon. He found a dead dog with an arrow through it, dismounted next to a middle-aged man and woman who were sprawled on the ground, and checked to see if they were still alive. His scowl toward their heads, which were discreetly out of camera view, made clear that they had been scalped. The pioneer who had come with him heard a noise, pulled out his handgun, crept toward a stream, and shouted for Cabot to come running.

Movement behind reeds against the bank of the stream revealed a terrified figure emerging from a hiding place. The figure was a woman, and Coltrane became even more attentive, trying to identify Rebecca Chance’s features. But despite her disheveled hair and grimy face, it was instantly clear that she wasn’t Rebecca.

“I keep forgetting she’s only a supporting player.”

“But she has an important part,” Toler said.

After the woman had been helped to the wagon train and cared for, introducing herself as Mary Beecham, Coltrane understood. There had been someone else in their party, she told Cabot, sobbing – her sister, Amy. The Indians who had attacked their wagon had taken her with them.