American Dreams by John Jakes Page A

fine.'
    'Good.'
    "I am going to New York to meet my sweetheart, Athena, she come from Piraeus on big boat. We marry.'
    'Congratulations. I hope you'll both be very happy. Will you play?'
    She sang with him. The rowdy little boys ran back and joined in. Soon the whole car was singing.
    They sang 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.' They sang carols for half an hour, all except the button salesman, who folded his arms, Scrooge-like in his scorn. The dining car opened and dispensed free coffee and cocoa.
    Fritzi slept a little, thankful for the new coat. Around five a.rn. a work train with a plow on the engine rumbled past from the west, opening the rightofway.
    The sun came up cold and dazzling over the white fields. Looking out the window at the horizon, she could see for miles. She'd survived the night, thrown off her gloom. She could take the worst that New York had to offer and defeat it. So she thought early on Christmas morning, 1906, without the benefit of experience.

PART TWO
STRIVING
    And do not say 'tis superstition ...
    - Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale
    Page 62

    We're going to expand this company, and you will see that it will grow by leaps and bounds. The proper system, as I have it in mind, is to get the car to the multitude.
    - Henry Ford
    11 Adrift in New York
    In the spring of 1908, the New York papers announced a return engagement of one of the great ladies of the stage, Mrs. Patrick Campbell. She had launched her American tour at the Lyric Theater the preceding fall, then toured coast to coast for twenty-six weeks, traveling with her company in a private train. 'The immortal Stella7 would conclude the tour with a farewell week at the Lyric, again playing Hedda Gabler, the Electra of Sophocles, and the title role in Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, the play that had scandalized the West End and propelled her to stardom in 1893.
    Fritzi had seen most of the great women of the stage, from the young and beautiful Ethel Barrymore to the old and wooden-legged Sarah Bernhardt, and of course her idol, Ellen Terry. Last November she'd gotten to the box office too late; the run was sold out. She vowed to see the great lady this time, even if she went hungry to buy the ticket.
    Which,
    as a matter of fact, she did.
    At ten a.m. on a Monday morning in May, in response to an audition notice in the Dramatic Mirror, Fritzi climbed the stair of a building on Sixteenth Street a few doors from Union Square West. Her destination was the office of one of the casting agents scattered throughout the neighborhood.
    She didn't like casting agents; most were venal, and tended to take liberties with women. They shoved the same questionnaire into her hand time after time. Parts played? Wardrobe owned? Sing or dance? Learn lines fast? If a producer cast you, the agent took a third to a half of the first week's salary and thought he was doing you a great favor.
    54
    Striving
    So far agents had done her no favors; she'd auditioned for scores of parts without landing a role. At the Mehlman agency this morning she had read for a new drama by Edward Sheldon called Salvation Nell, soon to Page 63

    open. Eleven other actresses read for the same small part, eighteen lines.
    Mehlman didn't even bother with the courtesy of taking each into a room by herself; they all huddled together in his rehearsal studio. The most brazen performance was given by a redhead with breasts the size of cantaloupes.
    Mehlman beamed as the redhead emoted two feet from his chair, leaning forward to be sure he noticed her assets. At the end of an hour and a half -- surprise! -- Mehlman asked the redhead to stay and told the others to go.
    She had another reading scheduled in the afternoon; perhaps that one would be better. At least the agent had telephoned to ask that she appear.
    But she couldn't help feeling discouraged. All she had to show for more than a year of effort was a walk-on as a supernumerary, fifty cents a night, in a flop called The Mongol's Bride. It had