Reel Life (Sep 1913 - Mar 1914)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Reel Llie 9 "The Filly" Domino skylights and all of the accessories usually found in a moving picture studio. "The films are made here," IMonsieur Bourgeois explained, "because the animals do not act so well when we take them to a strange place. Here they are at home — and behave. So the other actors — men and women — come to us, and we have no trouble at all. Now for the animals." A door at one side was opened and we passed into a long room lined on either side with iron cages and resembling an ordinary menagerie or zoo. Wild animals filled the different cages, a few of them apparently dozing, while others paced nervously back and forth. At our entrance all ran to the bars and peered anxiously through, some rearing upon their hind legs to obtain a better view of the proceeding. "How," I asked, "when the animals are really dangerous can women be induced to run the risk of being torn to pieces in the brief, but all too long periods of posing?" "Oh, they are not as dangerous as they look," replied Monsieur Bourgeois. "And then — I do not know how to explain it — ^the women seem to be more fearless than men. Look" — and he pomted to a beautiful young, tigress in a nearby cage. "That is Princess, one of our stars. She has taken part in four productions, so far. Doesn't she look gentle ? "One of the productions referred to," continued the trainer, "was 'Beasts of the Jungle,' which called for a little girl to associate on friendly terms with a tiger whom she met when she was lost in the jungle. Princess, the tigress, while something of a pet, was of not exactly the plaything a child would choose, but this little actress nestled up to it and apparently felt no fear of the great yellow eyes and dangerous claws. The company, the trainers, and the employes of the moving picture company were not so secure as to the disposition of Princess, and stood in breathless silence, each carrying a loaded revolver pointed at the beast." Although Monsieur Bourgeois is a master of the business of furnishing domestic and wild animals to the different moving picture manufacturers, and although he has at one time or another in his eventful career come in contact with many birds, beasts, and reptiles, he has not yet discovered any real histrionic ability among these creatures. Books, he says? have never helped him in the ten years he has been studying the ways of different wild animals. "Every animal, you see. has a personality of its own, and you cannot treat all tigers, all lions, or all elephants alike," he explains. "My method of training wild beasts," he continued "is as simple as A B C. Oppression and cruelty will turn any lion into a demon, while firmness, kindness, and patience — infinite patience — will make him as gentle as a tabby cat. And so it is in dealing with all the brute creation." One must devise all sorts of plots and schemes to make the animals do the right thing at the right moment, says Monsieur Bourgeois. If it is desired that a leopard should jump out of a window, for example, a chicken is held up on the outside at just the very second for the spring; if the scene calls for a bear up in a tree, bruin is coaxed to remain aloft by smearing the branches with honey; if a fight between two animals is wanted, a means must be found to provoke them at a signal from the camera man, and so on. Each little scene in which the animals figure must be gone over and over again until the desired action becomes a habit. Habit and not intelligence is the great secret of a successful moving pictrue actor. — ]VUliamsport {Pa.) Grit.