Moving Picture World (Nov - Dec 1918)

)ecember 21, 1918 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD 1329 RUBBERNECKING IN FILMLAND rHE week that has just slipped by has shattered another delusion about western Filmland. The beief that the festive hurricane never •isits our shores has been laid to rest n the same sepulchre where sleeps the ond idea that 95 per cent, of California's lours are filled with sunshine; that you ;ould stop anywhere along a rural highway and gather a hatful of oranges .vithout getting your hide full of buckshot; and that the steam radiators in ipartment houses are intended for something other than ornamental purposes. Last Sunday a hurricane, alongside of which, according to Captain Leslie T. Peacocke, who was born there, the Big Wind in Ireland was but a gentle breeze, visited our fair city. A tornado that tore down trellisses, played hob with pergolas, uprooted accacias, eucalyptus, lemon, magnolia, orange, olive, rubber, camphor, oleander, palm and pepper trees, ripped the roof from the prop room at Vitagraph, demolished a big set on Mack Sennett's foothill, damaged Fatty Arbuckle's scene dock, eloped with one of Dave Griffith's roofs, set the Lasky people back eight thousand dollars for broken glass, and deposed a tall and stately smokestack from its proud position on the brow of the apartment house wherein resides he who writes these memoirs. Otherwise, it has been a pretty big week, punctuated with many important arrivals from the East. Those of us who, since the theatres have closed down have been forced to go down and watch the train come in for amusement, have been richly repaid. New York Accommodation Busy. Every time the New York-Los Angeles accommodation pulled in at the depot, either an actor, an actress, or a director got off. Mr. Alexandria, our popular hotel keeper, says he will have to put on an extra hack to haul the people to his hotel if the rush keeps up the way it has started. Among the new arrivals were noted Albert Capellani, Jack Pickford, Viola Dana, Maxwell Karger, Peggy Hyland, Oscar Apfel, Forrest Stanley, and Henry Los Angeles Correspondent Personally Conducts Our Readers Through the West Coast Studios By Giebler B. Walthall and his new bride, nee Mary Charleson. I went over to Vitagraph just after the storm and saw the damage done by the wind. There was the prop room with its dome gone, and its secrets open to the curious gaze of any one who cared to rent an airplane and fly over the place, and a street set that had been erected with great cunning and no telling how many feet of lumber leveled to the ground by the gale. There is something fine and admirable in a movie street. I always get great pleasure in looking at one, but a movie street groveling in the gravel of the desert hillside, prone upon its stomach, is a sad sight. In the language of a well known press agent in his more careless moments, "I like to have wept" over its fallen estate. An Accordion's Sweet Music. There was not much doing at Vitagraph, everybody, except Bessie Love, being out on location. I watched Dave Smith direct Bessie, Charles Wheelock, Frank Glendon, Karl Herlinger and Otto Lederer in a scene from "The Enchanted Barn," where Bessie dives under a piano and comes up on the other side just in time to fall into the hands of a couple of villains, while listening to Paul Rondes -make sweet music on an accordion. After making arrangements to return and see Bill Duncan do some of his breakneck stuff and watch Antonio Moreno and other Vitagraphers act, I started back to Hollywood, from which destination, however, I was deflected by a battle. I love battles, especially movie battles. The sight of the brave director-general, armed with a megaphone, ordering the troops to mortal combat; the sounds of strife; the foe advancing and receiving it in the neck, arouses and fires my warlike soul. The acrid smell of the smoke pots is sweet incense to my martial nose. I love to hear the crackle of the machine guns popping like popcorn; the foe falling in rows like ripe beans before the reaper — it would sound better to say ripe corn, but we don't raise much of anything but beans out here, and I am very strong for local color — I can see a whole regiment go down before the terrain and lay sprawling around on the barrage with the utmost equanimity, because I know that the entire company will shortly rise, brush the dust of battle from its pants, proceed to the studio, and draw down good iron men for its day's work. Gets Lost in the Scenery. As I was proceeding along a pleasant road bordered on one side by a grove of the stately eucalyptus and on the other by variegated California scenery, I was arrested by sounds of a booming nature that indicated a movie battle proceeding somewhere in the immediate vicinity. Plunging into the depths of the forest with the utmost bravery and utter disregard of danger, I immediately got lost, and after wandering around for an interminable time I emerged just in time to see the last fallen foe arise, and Elmer Clifton, who had been putting on war stuff for a Dorothy Gish play, with his cameraman and other assistants, fading into the distance. After this I had a real mystifying adventure. Charles A. Taylor, who is also known as the master of melodrama, opened up the Norbig studios in Glendale a short time ago and started making a big feature with a star that is totally unknown to the film world. Various stories of her wit, beauty, grace and ability to do anything in the world with horses began to circulate in the colony, but none knew her name. Society reporters from the local press interviewed her, but always in the presence of Mr. Melodrama Taylor, and no one learned anything. George Walsh in "I'll Say So Peggy Hyland in "Caught in the Act.' Stars and Scenes in Two Fox Productions.