Screenland (Oct 1923-Mar 1924)

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r d^How many players have been sacrificed to the big scene? Just what is the toll in inju red and dead? that chariot charge, in So-and-So's picture, which ends in a melee of plunging horses, trampled men and shattered equipage, Mr. So-and-So ordered the axles sawed almost in two so a realistic 'spill' would be evolved." "I cannot understand how such a canard could be foisted upon you," he answered. His smile congealed. Pain, grief at my gullibility was limned on his face. name. Oblivion has engulfed him and his fracture once more. The publicity man who fathered the story received no praise but only C. In the filming of "Auction of Souls" extra girls were kept lashed to crosses through a hot California day and into the cold night. As a result pneumonia took its toll. Hospitals on Location Unn Jl_ he script called for a chariot charge. Everybody got all messed-up but fortunately but one man was injured, a broken leg. "We protect our players in every conceivable way. We make things as safe as possible. The exhibitors demand thrills. We supply 'em but we take care of our people. "Why, we had a hospital and a corps of doctors and nurses on that location!" he concluded indignantly. The reader can draw his own conclusions. Broken Leg for Charioteer The newspapers, at the time, printed a story of the charge, telling of the man's broken leg. "After eighteen years of anonymity as an extra, Michael Moon, 48 years old, by dint of his nerve, as the driver of a chariot in a thrilling charge, breaks into public notice, etc., etc.," was the tag on which the name of the production was hung in this instance. Moon is not the (l^When you sit in your comfortable theater chair, do you stop to think what has happened in the making of the celluloid thrills? d,How many screen players have actually placed their lives in the balance — and how many have lost? d,To make a recent chariot charge it is alleged that the axles of many of the flimsy wheels were partly sawed. The result was a startling melee of plunging horses and trampled men. d,Many extras were injured when the horses stampeded during the filming of a big recent circus tent fire scene. But it meant a spectacular scene. CE,An extra girl's back was broken recently when she was tossed into a howling mob of extras. But it meant a tiny thrill for the jaded. d,Who is at fault? The producer, the exhibitor or the audience? Are YOU to blame ? reprimand for his pains for the high gods of the cinema relish not news of this character. It is not considered comme il faut to speak of killings, woundings and mannings resulting from picture-making, in their presence. Such conversation is strictly and definitely "out." Chariots with Sawed Axles T he canard of the chariot axles which had known the toil of the sawyers was not such a canard after all. Vide the words of an eye-witness: "Those chariots were the flimsiest things I ever saw, light, cheap material thrown together almost as substantially as if they had used safety-pins. They had worked on the axles with saws so they'd get the spills they wanted." Producers are torn between the demands of exhibitors and the desires of extras in regard to realism. The crop of exhibitors is fairly constant, so many hundred hardy perennials. The crop of extras is so large as to drug the market. Thousands compose it. When one falls in the harvest of realism, hundreds leap to take his place. The producers pay one for the pay of the 37