“Still,” sighed Mr. Bamburger, “still the public will know.”
“I hope,” said Winston Ayers earnestly, “I hope from the bottom of my heart that they do. But I have my own doubts.”
Jane Roberts’ part was that of a sweet, innocent country maiden in Queen Lani’s kingdom. It was not a big part, but it was worth ten starring roles. It gave her an opportunity for all the dramatic emotions she cared to display. It fitted her to perfection. It was a brilliant condensation of all the great parts she had played.
Claire Nash gathered all her strength. She remembered all her famous roles and took the best from each. She brought to her part the sweet, helpless glances, the tremulous lips, the famous smile of innocence, all the movements, manners, and graces that had been admired so much by fans and critics. She did everything she had ever done and more. Never had she acted so well in her life.
Six months later came the reviews:
“
Child of Danger
is the picture of the century. Words are inadequate before the magnificence of this miracle of the screen. One must see it in order to comprehend the enchantment of this cinematic triumph. The story is as great as its author—Winston Ayers. And when this is said, everything has been said. Werner von Halz gains his right to immortality by his brilliant direction of this one masterpiece. Heddy Leland, the new star, is a discovery that surpasses anything ever seen on the screen before. Her acting bears the flaming seal of that genius which makes Screen History. . . .
“If we may be permitted to carp on minor flaws in such a stupendous achievement, we would like to remark in passing on a small annoyance in a perfect evening. We are speaking of the second feminine lead. It’s one of those innocent, insipid little things with nothing but a sweet smile and a pretty face. She reminds us of some star or other, but her weak, colorless portrayal of the country maiden shows the disadvantages of a good part in the hands of an inexperienced amateur. The part is played by one Jane Roberts.”
Part II
THE EARLY THIRTIES
Red Pawn
c. 1931-32
Editor’s Preface
In 1930, while still working in the RKO wardrobe department, Ayn Rand began to outline
We the Living
. But she interrupted the novel late in 1931 to write a movie original, hoping to earn enough money to enable her to write full-time. Ayn Rand regarded
Red Pawn
as her first professional work. Happily, it was also her first sale: she sold it to Universal Pictures in 1932 for $1,500, and was thus finally able to escape RKO. The payment of $1,500 was for a synopsis of the story as well as the screenplay.
Universal later traded the story to Paramount (for a property that had cost Paramount $20,000). All rights are now owned by Paramount Pictures, which has never produced the story, but which has granted permission to reprint the synopsis here.
Red Pawn
presents Ayn Rand’s first serious, philosophical theme: the evil of dictatorship—specifically, of Soviet Russia. Miss Rand’s full objection to dictatorship involves her whole system of philosophy, including her view of the nature of reality and of the requirements of the human mind (see
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
). But in
Red Pawn
the argument is reduced to its essence. Communism demands that the individual renounce his independence and his happiness, in order to become a cipher selflessly serving the group. Communism, therefore, is the destroyer of the individual and of human joy. Or, as we may put it in terms of the themes of “The Husband I Bought” and “Good Copy,” the philosophic issue is: Communism vs. man-worship and Communism vs. the “benevolent universe,” i.e., Communism vs.
values
. This is the link between the political theme of the story and Ayn Rand’s lifelong ethical concerns.
The answer to Communism, Ayn Rand held, is the recognition of man’s right to exist—to exist by his own mind and for his own sake, sacrificing neither himself to others nor others to himself. The goal and badge of such a man is the kind of happiness symbolized in this story by the “Song of Dancing Lights.” This song is, in effect, Ayn Rand’s refutation of Communism; the song’s laughing spirit—the fact that such joy is possible to man—is the answer to the apostles of selfless toil. To demand the renunciation of such joy, Ayn Rand held, is evil, no matter what benefit any recipient claims to gain from the sacrifice.
Red Pawn
has a subtheme: the philosophic identity of Communism and religion. Both subordinate the individual to something allegedly higher (whether God or the state), and both equate virtue with selfless service. From her early teens, Ayn Rand saw clearly that Communism, contrary to its propaganda, is not the alternative to religion, but only a secularized version of it, with the state assuming the prerogatives once reserved to the supernatural. (The alternative is a philosophy of reason and rational self-interest.)
The plot situation in
Red Pawn,
like the theme, is very similar to that of
We the Living.
Both works involve a triangle: a passionate woman (who dominates the action), her anti-Communist lover (or husband), and a dedicated Communist who holds power over him, and whom she must court in order to save the lover’s life. In the conventional triangle of this kind, the heroine despises the second man, and sleeps with him only for practical reasons. In the Ayn Rand version, however, the Communist is not a villain, but a misguided idealist whom the heroine grows to love; this gives the heroine a much more painful situation to resolve, and the story an incomparably greater suspense.
As in most Ayn Rand fiction, the story leaves one with a special, uplifted sense of human stature, and even grandeur, because the essential conflict is not between good and evil, but between good and good (the two men). In accordance with her view that evil is impotent, the villains in Ayn Rand’s fiction rarely rise to the role of dominant, plot-determining figures. For the most part, like Fedossitch in this story, they are peripheral creatures doomed by their own irrationality to failure and defeat. The focus of the story, therefore, is not on man the sordid, but on man the heroic. (In
The Fountainhead,
the main conflict is not Roark against Toohey or Keating, but Roark against Dominique and Wynand. In
Atlas Shrugged,
the main conflict is Dagny and Rearden against Galt and the other strikers.)
In
Red Pawn,
as befits a story for the screen, the central situation is presented in simplified terms. The husband (Michael) is a prisoner on a desolate island, the Communist (Kareyev) is the Commandant, and the goal of the wife (Joan) is to help the husband escape. The details and the pace are thus very different from what they are in
We the Living
—and so is the ending, which is in itself a brilliant touch; the suspense is resolved by four unexpected but logical, even inevitable, words uttered by Joan to the soldiers. The title seems to be a play on words: Joan is a pawn made available to Kareyev by the red state, but Kareyev is a red who is a pawn of Joan’s own plan.
By its nature, a movie synopsis focuses on dramatic action open to the camera to record. This synopsis offers a Romantic director an abundance of such drama. One can almost see the close-up of Michael’s face as he waits table on his wife and rival, torn by jealousy but unable to speak; or the spotlight stabbing an urgent message into the void, accompanied by the pealing of the bells; or, at the end, the two sleighs moving slowly apart, in opposite directions across the trackless snow, with Joan’s eyes intent on a head that is held proudly high as its owner rides to his death.
The most brilliant visualization of the theme occurs in the prison library. Kareyev is standing between a Communist poster and a painting left on the island by ancient monks. The poster depicts ant-sized men sweating beneath a slogan demanding sacrifice for the collective; the painting depicts a saint ecstatically burning at the stake. And across from both there is Joan with “her head thrown back, her body on the dark altar steps, tense, listening to the song [of Dancing Lights] . . . seem[ing to be] a sacrificial offering to the Deity she was serving.” Here is the reverence of man-worship contrasted with its two destroyers—and all of it captured in one
visual
scene.
That
is “writing for the movies.”
It is astonishing how much of purely literary worth this mere synopsis contains. There is Ayn Rand’s eloquent economy of means, enabling one or two words in the right context to speak volumes. (For example, when Kareyev asks Joan why she came to the island, she tells him she heard that he was the loneliest man in the republic. “I see,” he says. “Pity?” “No. Envy.”) There are the dramatic antitheses in the style of Victor Hugo, whose novels Ayn Rand admired above all others. (“The civil war had given him a scar on his shoulder and a contempt of death. Peace gave him Strastnoy Island and a contempt of life.”) There are the sensuous descriptions with their evocative images (for instance, the description of the monastery at twilight, or of the waves at night).
After
Red Pawn
and
We the Living,
Ayn Rand rarely wrote again about Soviet Russia. She had had her say about the slave state in which she had grown up. Thereafter, her interest moved from politics to the fundamental branches of philosophy, and from slavery to the achievements (and problems) of life in a human country.
A note on the text: Ayn Rand wrote an original draft of this synopsis, then edited about twenty pages, to the point where Michael first sees Joan on the island. Presumably, these pages were sufficient as a submission to the studios and further editing proved unnecessary. This is why the early pages are somewhat tighter and smoother than the rest.
In her editing, Miss Rand changed the names and backgrounds of some of the characters. Joan was originally Tania, a Russian princess; Michael was Victor, a Russian prince; and the prisoners generally were drawn from the Russian nobility. I have had to make many small changes to render the manuscript consistent with the new opening. I have not, however, written new sentences; I have merely changed the necessary names and deleted references to backgrounds that were altered.
—L. P.
Red Pawn
——I——
“No woman,” said the young convict, “could accept such a thing.”
“As you can observe,” said the old convict, shrugging, “there’s one who has.”
They leaned over the tower parapet to look far out at the sea. From the frost-glazed stone under their elbows, the tower was a straight drop of three hundred feet to the ground below; far out at sea, where the white clouds rolled softly like a first promise of snowdrifts to come, a boat plowed its way toward the island.
Down on the shore guards were ready, waiting under the wall, on a landing of old, rotted boards; on the wall, guards stopped in their rounds; they leaned on their bayonets and looked at the boat. It was a serious breach of discipline.
“I’ve always thought,” said the young convict, “that there was a limit to a woman’s voluntary degradation.”
“That,” said the old convict, pointing at the boat, “proves there isn’t any.”
He shook his hair, for it got tangled in his monocle; there was a strong wind and he needed a haircut.
A faded gilt cupola rose high over them, like the countless peaks that raised gold crosses into the heavy sky over Russia; but its cross had been broken off; a flag floated over it, a bright, twisted, flickering tongue of red, like a streak of flame dancing through the clouds. When the wind unfurled it into a straight, shivering line, a white sickle and hammer flashed for a second on the red cloth—the crossed sickle and hammer of the Soviet Republic.
In the days of the Czar the island had been a monastery. Fanatical monks had chosen this bit of land in the Arctic waters off the Siberian coast; they had welcomed the snow and the winds, and bowed in voluntary sacrifice to a frozen world no man could endure for many years. The revolution had dispersed the monks and brought new men to the island, men who did not come voluntarily. No letter ever left the place; no letter ever reached it. Many prisoners had landed there; none had returned. When a man was sentenced to Strastnoy Island, those he left behind whispered the prayers for the dead.
“I haven’t seen a woman for three years,” said the young convict. There was no regret in his voice; only a wistful, astonished wonder.
“I haven’t seen a woman for ten years,” said the old convict. “But this one won’t be worth looking at.”
“Maybe she’s beautiful.”
“Don’t be a fool. Beautiful women don’t have to do things like this.”
“Maybe she’ll tell us what’s happening . . . outside.”
“I’d advise you not to speak to her.”
“Why?”
“You don’t want to give up the last thing you’ve got.”
“What?”
“Your self-respect.”
“But maybe she . . .”
He stopped. No one had told him to stop and he had heard nothing behind them, no steps or sound. But he knew that a man stood behind them, and he knew who it was, and he turned slowly, without being asked to turn, wishing he could leap off the tower rather than turn to face that man.
Commandant Kareyev stood there, at the head of the stairs. People always knew when Commandant Kareyev entered a room, perhaps because he was never conscious of them, of the room, or of his entering it. He stood without moving, looking at the two convicts. He was tall, straight, thin. He seemed to be made of bones, skin, and anesthetized nerves. His glance held no menace, no anger. It held no meaning at all. His eyes never held any human meaning. The convicts had seen him reward some guard for distinguished service or order a prisoner to be flogged to death—with the same expression. They could not say who feared him more—the guards or the prisoners. His eyes never seemed to see people; they saw, not men, but a thought; a single thought many centuries ahead; and so when people looked at him, they felt cold and lonely, as if they were walking into an endless distance on an open plain at night.