Motography (Jan-Jun 1913)

April 5, 1913 MOTOGRAPHY 229 Sans Grease Paint and "Wig By Mabel Condon Gilbert M. Anderson. I WENT out to the Essanay studio to see somebody else and instead, I saw G. M. Anderson. I didn't even know he had a desk out there, but he has, in the Spoor and Anderson private office that is so very private and so far removed from the publicity room that it is quite a trip to the sanctum sanctorum, and takes you through all the other offices, and just about when you decide you're on the wrong trail and guess you'll go back where you started from, if you think you can remember the way back, you take another forward step and you're there. At least I was, and the man who rose to shake hands and say, "How'do; won't you sit down?" was Mr. Anderson. So I sat down at the half of the double desk that was Mr. Spoor's and put my muff and hand-bag and gloves and veil-pin on top of a file of papers that meant thousands of dollars worth of contracts (maybe), while Mr. Anderson lit the short fat black cigar he had been holding and, having lit it, made no attempt to smoke it, so in about five minutes it was out again. Meanwhile, I assured Mr. Anderson that anybody would know him anywhere from his pictures, and he said he was aware of the unfortunate fact and added that too much popularity is an unhappy thing, as there are times when it is rather embarrassing to be "BronchoBillied," to-wit, when one is walking down San Francisco's very nicest promenade with a friend and some very normal boys tag in one's wake with the insistent request, "Let's see y' pull y're gun, Broncho Billy!" The cigar was re-lighted and again allowed to extinguish itself while the smokeless smoker aired some views, distinctively his own, on the subject of pictures, their makers and patrons. His first bomb-shell was "The public is quite satisfied with pictures as they are" but I administered mental absolution and voted him three cheers — mental also — when he added "and the motion picture industry is not in its infancy. I'm tired of hearing that it is; aren't you? "The public is quick in forming its likes and dislikes" commented Mr. Anderson, reaching for the matchbox, "It doesn't take long for an actor to spring into favor, if he appeals to the public in his first appearance. Take Augustus Carney in the role of 'Alkali Ike," for instance. Now, just give a rough guess how many 'Alkali Ike' pictures have been made?" "Forty-seven," I guessed; it was, indeed, a rough one. "Twelve," triumphantly announced Mr. Anderson. "But from the popularity they have gained, anybody not in a position to know, would think them many more." "What gave you the inspiration for an 'Alkali Ike' series?" I asked in the pause which followed Mr. Anderson's answering the desk telephone, and his wait for somebody at the Sherman House to get on the wire. "The series was unpremeditated, entirely," he replied at me and, into the transmittor — "well, that's what I am doing, waiting!" "You see, I think up all my own scenarios and I just happened to hit on the 'Alkali' name for the title of one story and it took so well that he tried another, and after that—" Then the person at the Sherman House end of the wire got real busy and so did Mr. Anderson for about a minute, and I was left to a scrutiny of the millionaire picture man whose thick, brown hair waves exactly as it does on the picture screen, and whose laugh is just as hearty as picture patrons imagine it to be. I had just decided that his brown, fuzzy suit and accordian knit tie with the diamond stick-pin in it, were" quite becoming when the wearer banged up the receiver, struck a match, and applied it to his ever-lasting cigar and resumed : "So that's how the 'Alkali' pictures started." "And what about the 'Broncho Billy' series?" I inquired of the man who made B. B. famous. "Started the same way, by accident. The first one was 'Broncho Billy's Christmas Dinner,' more than a year ago and the second one didn't suggest itself for about two months. The people liked them so they've been coming ever since. When I go back to work, I intend to make some three reel Bronchos — am kind of planning the idea now. I never write out my scenarios," he announced, "I just get an idea, think it out and produce the scenes around it just whenever they occur to me. "I don't know how the other producers do it, whether they all use written copies of their story or not, but that's my way; I get results and I like it. Another thing; I never tell my cast the story of the scenario in which they are acting. It may be the last scene or the middle scene they are playing ; they don't know. I figure that their acting is not going to be affected by their not knowing, and it saves a lot of time. I don't think a man would make love any differently if he knew that in the next scene somebody was going to try to win his girl from him, or that his mine was going to be blown up or his horses stolen ; do you ?" I admitted that I didn't but thought it would be nice to know just the same, and Mr. Anderson said that's the way Brinsley Shaw, his heavy man, feels about it. He "gets sore as the deuce" during the production, not knowing what's coming next, but when it's all finished he declares it's an all-right way. "Many producers depend on acting to make their stories successful. I don't, I depend on producing. There are three things I deem essential to the success of the players as players; they are personality, mentality and emotion, sympathy being the most effective emotion displayed. "It takes a stronger personality to make a success in pictures, than on the legitimate stage. That is all the actor has to depend on to get his role 'over', his personality. "That Costello fellow and Arthur Johnson are, to