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104 the house that SHADOWS BUILT
walking. That night, he walked Pittsburgh into the small hours. Next morning, on his own responsibility, he rented a set of Porter’s films. Thereafter, as soon as the “train” reached the summit of Mont Blanc or the head of the Royal Gorge, the jiggling machinery stopped and The Great Train Robbery began on the screen. Interviewing his customers at the door, Zukor found that they liked this piece of melodrama better than the scenic tour. Business began to pick up.
But too late, Brady felt. Preparing for a busy season on his own account, much more interested in his Broadway productions than in any flier with a five-cent show, he took time to run over the statements of Hale’s Tours, and fell into profound pessimism. They had sunk a small fortune in the machinery of the enterprise; each car, with the apparatus which made it sway and clatter, cost from six thousand dollars to eight thousand dollars. And it was mere scenery; only scrap iron and kindling once the show closed. They had liabilities of one hundred and eighty thousand dollars; and assets, mostly frozen, of little more than one hundred thousand. Though The Great Train Robbery had stimulated receipts, the company was still running behind.
“In this business,” he told Zukor, “you must know when you’re beaten. A thing goes or it doesn’t go. Many a manager has ruined himself by hanging to a losing proposition. Great Train Robbery and all, it’s still a onetime show.”