Amateur Movie Makers (Dec 1926-Dec 1927)

Mediterranean MOVIES By Gardner Wells Photograph By James Boring's Travel Service. 'AND WHERE ARE THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE ACROPOLIS? ASKED THE OLD LADY EVER since the day when the first reader of "Innocents Abroad" put down the book with a sigh, and rushed to the nearest steamship office all the world has been flocking to the Mediterranean. At the height of the tourist season Cairo and Constantinople, Jerusalem and Athens are American cities. You meet friends in Naples or Nazareth as casually as on Fifth Avenue or Main Street and arrange rendezvous in cities two continents away, and weeks ahead. The dollar passes current everywhere, and those of a nonmathematical turn of mind are spared the torture of translating drachmas and piastres into cents. English is spoken by hotel clerks, guides, bartenders, storekeepers, and the man on the street. Travel is hardly more intricate than it is in America. Every American carries a camera and four out of five have movies. From Cadiz to Constantinople the native has learned to recognize the buzz of the box and to demand instant baksheesh if he stands anywhere within hearing distance. A new profession has been created, and men or women with striking faces put on their most picturesque native garments and hang about the points most frequented by tourists, to pose and swank before the never failing procession of cameras — for a price. The Mediterranean idea of an American is a man with unlimited money who points a camera at you and pays for the privilege. There were more cameras this winter than ever before. Three years ago cinematitis was confined to a few sporadic cases. Now it's an epidemic and nobody is safe. But the Meddy isn't all shot out in spite of the thousands of feet of it that have been brought back to America in the little yellow boxes. If movie cameras were machine guns, the Pyramids would be in ruins, and the Sphinx a heap of dust, but there are plenty of shots that i made yet. And there are innumerable novel angles from which to shoot the same old things. Don't forget that the more different your travel picture is, the more interesting it will be — and the more interesting it is, the more envy it will cause in the breasts of your fellow fans who have shot over the same ground. If you can make them sit on the edge of their chairs and say, "Why didn't I think of getting that ?" then you have a picture to be proud of. I find that when I am making a movie of a cruise, I must keep my ears open as well as my eyes. Many a title, or germ of a title, is contained in the casual remarks, naive or witty, of one's fellow passengers. For instance, on the Acropolis in Athens this winter a dear old lady asked me where the Four Horsemen of the Acropolis were. She was perfectly satisfied when I told her that they had been taken down to be used in the movies. There's a germ of a title there. On another occasion, I was walking about one of the little towns in Malta with the ship's doctor. We were shooting the innumer nobody has able goats that supply the island with milk, and while I was making a close-up of one family's Grade "A" being extracted from Nanny, the doctor murmured in my ear that this must be the origin of Malted Milk. Of course, I turned around and beat him cruelly about the head with my camera — but there is the germ of a title in his remark. If you go on a Mediterranean Cruise you must expect to miss a lot of the regular sightseeing. The interiors of mosques and museums, palaces and cathedrals are not for you, except for the briefest of glimpses. But you will not mind that very much. A cathedral a day is heavy diet for any one. A passenger told me last winter that he never would go on another cruise unless he had from the tourist company a written agreement to take him into no museums. So stay on the outside of public buildings, wander about in the streets while your gang is within, and absorb local color THE DESTROYER Twenty