Suspects by David Thomson

Author:David Thomson [Thomson, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843444992
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
Published: 2014-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

L. B. JEFFRIES

James Stewart in Rear Window, 1954,

directed by Alfred Hitchcock

It was the turning point in Jeff’s life, and in the end nothing about it displeased him as much as that. He didn’t believe in turning points happening to him. He had photographed plenty of them: a tidal wave shattering a building, a figure lifted off the ground by the bullet that was killing it, a racing car stuck in midair, life-and-death instants. But he had been the cool recorder of them all, and he lived by the principle of never getting into the picture himself. Now there he was on all the front pages, both legs in plaster, with a plan of the courtyard. He had even posed for one idiot, holding the telephoto lens up to his face. And the paper had gotten a picture of Thorwald and put it on the lens. “Peeping-Tom Pix Man Snaps Murder,” was the headline, as if he were the only voyeur in New York, a city of windows and vantage points.

Was this what forty-two years of acquired craft had been leading to? He felt trapped, not just by another eight weeks in plaster—if there were no complications, and the surgeon had told him about what to expect at his age—but by the media, the phone and Lisa. Lisa Carol Fremont, a dame with class, turning on a light with each name. He had to marry her now. It was the will of the city and its newsprint love for a hero and a heroine. She could tell him she had proved herself in action, wriggling her hand at him to show him Mrs. Thorwald’s wedding ring on her finger. Giving him the finger and letting Thorwald work out the dotted line across the courtyard to where Peeper Pix Man was sitting and waiting.

Lionel Bartleby Jeffries, born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, 1912. Graduated with honors in English/journalism from the University of Wisconsin in 1934, the first student to get photo projects accepted for credit. He’d stayed in the Midwest for two years working on papers, getting quicker, building his portfolio. He never did atmosphere or portraits, just hard news stuff. He got a jewelry-store robbery on the Loop in Chicago, and he sold those pictures in New York and Europe—with old ladies scattering, and the bag in one jittery thief’s hand spilling open, pearls in midair like drops of milk. He was getting known.

In 1937, he went to New York, freelancing. An old La Crosse contact led him to Joe Losey, who was making documentaries for the Rockefeller Foundation. He hired Jeff and it was good work, but Joe had been full of political angles; he liked emotional pictures of poor people. But they got along, arguing all the while, and on the side Jeff had taken a series of pictures of the Mississippi in flood: houses floating, with people perched on the roofs, rowboats full of chickens, that kind of thing. Life had bought three of them—it was his first time in the magazine.

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