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28
The Lasky Studio
ful acting, at two dollars and seventy cents a minute, would pacify them if Seville was not Seville. You see, these film-fan fellows are getting too canny for us. We don't spare expense any more. The Plaza de Toros cost us five thousand dollars to build. We used twenty-five tons of plaster of Paris in it, and only show the scene on the screen for thirty seconds."
And so I began to learn why the Lasky pictures are such perfect ones.
Then we strolled over to the Villa Marmosa, used in "Mr. Grex, of Monte Carlo," also a perfect reproduction, mightily expensive. And when we walked around the corner, I found myself where Forsyth Street turns into Houston, in New York.
"Around the world in fifteen minutes, I call this," said Mr. Lasky.
And immediately we were in Chinatown, in San Francisco.
"Notice this Chinese lettering on the window?" he questioned. "A Chinaman did that. You never can tell when a Chinese missionary or a Chinaman, will visit a moving-picture theater."
Out of Chinatown, into a little Algerian village on the edge of the Sahara Desert, was the next startling change. It was a set used for LouTellegen's picture play, "The Unknown." I gazed upon it with awe, and was brought back to my surroundings only when Mr. Lasky went on : "We made an interesting discovery when that was built. Something didn't look right about it when they tried out a picture. They sent for our most expensive director; they put the research department at work, even called to the thousand-a-week actor, who happened to be passing by, for advice. Finally the assistant camera man hit on the trouble. It was dirt.
Director General de Mille instructing Miss Farrar in the technique of the silent drama, at the Lasky studio.