Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

Stranger Tkan Fiction 23 tionize the picture industry as soon as he can sell his patented device for projecting pictures upside down, meets the woman who wants a contract to write scenarios hy the science of numerology, evolving her plots hy a slide rule from the numerical movements of the stars. They will exchange theories earnestly, and he fore you know it, the man will be mixing mathematics with his theory that the eye can distinguish objects more clearly when inverted, and the woman will he standing on her head to read the stars. All this so far seems quite vague and general, so I shall try to produce concrete examples, not so devastating as the man who wants to show pictures upside down, but of sufficient leaning toward the picturesque to be peculiar to Hollywood. I know a scenario writer, for instance, who is said to be a gypsy, and is a firm believer in the existence and power of the "evil eye." He is ever on the lookout to prevent its being fastened on him in Hollywood. Still, looking back on it, I'm not sure this guy's so crazy at that. And remaining in the scenario writers' cage, there is one who once contended, quite seriously, that he gets inspiration from eating peanuts, and is never without a large bowl of them on his desk while he is at work. Lest you think I am imagining this, I will name him as none other than Carey Wilson, who in other respects seems as ordinarily rational as his profession will permit. Whether Carey still holds to this contention I do not know. It may have changed to dried herring, or preserved waffles, by this time. But the peanut theory was true, for at his own instigation I once took a picture of him so doing, in my capacity as press agent for the studio in which we were both employed. And surely no one would put forward such a statement, and have it registered by the camera, unless he meant it ! Then too, outside a circus, perhaps where could one find a man who picks up a comfortable living shooting apples and other objects off people's heads, and out of their hands? Hollywood has him, and his official name is "Pardner" Jones. He is upward of sixty now, and has never hit anybody yet. I suppose directors will keep on hiring him until he does. Or perhaps they engage him out of mere speculative curiosity as to when it will happen. Then there is the star of Westerns, and a very prominent one, too, who has gone to such pains to convince the public and interviewers that he really is a product of the range, that he has utterly convinced himself as well. It is pretty generally conceded that he was never on a ranch, until he stepped from the stage to the movies, but he has been playing "let's pretend" so long that he is his own best customer to the deception, and he actually believes that he came rightly by his drawling, Texas accent, quaint expressions, and similes of the range with which he enlivens his speech. And in what other industry, I ask you, could a man draw a salary upward of $40,000 a year, who can neither read nor write. Yet there is a star — and it is neither a child prodigy or a performing animal — who, I swear by whatever heathen spirits may rule over me, can do neither, to my knowledge. I spent two years in the same studio A certain beautiful star professes a fancy for watching surgical operations. with him trying to find out, not from any malicious motives, but for my own personal satisfaction. But try as I could, I never succeeded in pinning that man down to writing something before my eyes, or reading something the contents of which I was sure he could not have known. Then there is the man around the studios whose business card states solely that he is a chess player, lie is attempting to make his living by serving as technical director on scenes in which actors play chess, and seems to be succeeding at it. I once spent an evening with a gentleman who came all the way from Spain for the purpose of exhibiting his device for the revolution of motion pictures. He was not an ignorant man, either, but seemed highly intelligent. His idea was, to say the least, thorough. It was his plan to make drawings to correspond to every foot of action in filming a motion picture. Thus one could plot out the entire picture, and see how it would look before recording it on film, dnd any weak spots could he changed. He had made a model, too, some several hundred drawings which represented the first reel. He had been at work on them for several years. He admitted that it might take a little longer to make movies his way, but thought the process might be speeded a little in time. I recommended him to Erich von Stroheim. We must not, of course, forget the man on Sunset Boulevard, whose sign in front of his office advertises him as an alchemist. Then there are the hobbies of Hollywood! And I am convinced that most of them are not the creations of press agent-. Reginald Denny is an enthusiastic archer, and went hunting bears with a bow and arrow; Colleen Moore, who is a big girl now. not only collects dolls, but admits it: Huston Branch, a prominent scenarist, collects dictionaries andhas some forty assorted editions, though he rarely uses them, his profession .being little concerned with either the spelling or definition of words. [Cont'd on page 118] A well-known scenario writer believes in the existence and power of the "evil eye."