Sublime

The Beat.

In the brief time he had served as the president of Continental Airlines, Tom Plaskett learned that aircraft suppliers made a point of keeping a little something in reserve in any negotiation with Lorenzo, even past the point of the handshakes, because Lorenzo would try to re-trade the deal. They called it the “Frank factor.” Phil Bakes would call

shocked by his rudeness. He was scowling in an unattractive way, and yet despite that I could tell he was good-looking, in the way of a rugged journalist or an Indiana Jones sort of adventurer.

Encouraged by the unexpected success of his idiosyncratic Broken Blossoms, he had decided to leave Hollywood in 1920 and make movies independently in his own studio in Mamaroneck, New York.