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52 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT
Alone, his own salesman and factory manager, Adolph Zukor found the sensational specialty for which he had been looking. That was the period of balloon sleeves; and Paris had put forth the short fur “shoulder cape,” which was selling furiously in New York. Modern illustrators, portraying or caricaturing the ’nineties, love to hang this garment on the ladies of their pictures; it had a touch of the chic and another of the ridiculous. The top of it clasped over the high choker collar then in fashion; thence it flared out just to the outer and upper corner of the exaggerated sleeves. In front it curved like a bib across the collarbone. Adolph Zukor experimented with the new style until he got the trick. The first samples had a ready sale. His next partner said of him in after years: “Adolph was always in too much of a hurry.” Having picked the fur cape as his winning specialty, he gambled all the resources of the Novelty Fur Company. Going still further, he borrowed from the bank to the limit of his credit.
It was a short-lived fashion. Before Adolph Zukor really started, the vogue was dying out in New York. Chicago took it up only to drop it abruptly. Adolph Zukor ended his first season as sole manager of the Novelty Fur Company with a storehouseful of dead stock and a staggering burden of debts. “Go into bankruptcy,” advised some of his elders. But he shut that trap of a mouth and shook his head. It was not an honest way out; it would be a black spot on his record.