Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1919)

32 Photoplay Magazine 1 he first celluloid " Uncle Tom's Cabin was a three-reeler of 1909. trafn of cars, took them out in New Jersey and sent them off a high trestle to complete destruction. My bill for this rolling stock was a little over $50,000. And I'm free to say that that debauchery didn't make half the impression of extravagance that the little old burning electric supplied. Thus, familiarity with expense also breeds contempt. To return to our motor thieves: when they were cornered in their shack (crooks always hide in shacks) they put up a terrific battle with the "posse." This was filmed on the roof of the Morse building in Nassau street, lower Manhattan, and our neighbors in adjoining office buildings made complaint that the conflict caused all the office boys to spend their time hanging out of the windows, while the stenographers were frightened by the shots. So, I devised a scheme of doing it soundlessly. I stationed a boy with a box of talcum powder at the shack window, just out of camera range, and every time a trigger clicked a cloud of talcum flashed as the smoke. When the scene was finished the robber band, dead upon the floor, were indeed pale corpses! In fact, they more nearly resembled recumbent millers, for the "smoke" had settled. The scene had to be retaken— with as many men but much less Mennen's. "The Life of Moses," which w^e put on in IQ08, was the first five-reel feature ever attempted. It was an ornate production for those days, and I have a vivid recollection of the large black-snake we hired for the scene in which Aaron casts down the rod that becomes a serpent. It was winter, and friend reptile was as lively and as cold as a piece of steel cable. Our property man, fertile with the notions of genius, determined to provide a little artificial summer for our coil of actor by heating a piece of sheet-iron to slip under the floor cloth. He did the job so thoroughly that had the floor cloth not been part a.sbestos, it would probably have exploded. Moses and two hundred extras heUl the dramatic pose, and once more our day-laboring serpent was tossed out to his job. He touched the floor, gave one convulsive wiggle — and entered into rest. Fried snake. Next day we borrowed a genuinely healthy black snake from the Bronx Zoo, and the scene accompanying his individual performance had enthusiasm and alacrities that I had not dreamed of. He was a large snake, more than eight feet long, and so friendly that he immediately determined to make the personal acquaintance of every extra in the place. He was a good glider, but those Egyptians were handy with their feet, and in five minutes the whole neighborhood was full of flying subjects of Pharaoh. My own assistant was a nervous little Frenchman. With an almost ladylike horror of all creepmg things. He didn't come back until the following day. Some of my pleasantest recollections concern the very merry Christmases the original Vitagraph family enjoyed. Every employee got a turkey, and Albert E. Smith and I stood, white-aproned like a brace of butchers, behind the pile of "white and dark," handing them out. Then there were the Christmas bonuses, ranging from a $10 bill to a $500 check, and innumerable small personal remembrances. And the giving was not all onesided. Many mysterious packages tied with ribbon and holly found their way to the managerial desks. I remember that in igog we did a Biblical picture called "Jeptha's Daughter," in which, for the first time, "back lighting" was used.