American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1924)

August, 1924 AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER Thirteen Red Goes to Hell It was hotter'n hell. In fact, I was in hell. Don't ask me how I got there because I don't know. The last thing that I remember was that the thermometer was trying to break through the bottom of the mercury ball, up in the mountains about two days by pack from Truckee. The snow was deeper'n one of them Freud novels and the weather was colder'n a newly-starred's ritz. To make maters worse, Toughliver, our prize German police dog star — pardon me, I mean shepherd dog star — had run off in the woods and was running true to the form of all the animal yarns by letting himself be vamped by one of them she-wolves. Well, one night when I got burnt out over geting frozen up all day long looking for old Liver I up and bought one of the demijohns of firewater that one of the redskins who was hanging onto the company was peddling around — I ' thought that it would be great stuff to keep the chills from coming through the chinks in the logs of the cabin and hopping on my back and playing catchers all up and down it. Anyway, hard-guy directors always made me have a preference for hard liquor — hard' and straight. All of a sudden I kind of felt myself slipping like — which was unusual for a guy like me who always could drink the thirstiest right under the table. I kept on dropping and shooting through the air — it was sure some uncomfortable feeling, just like walking down Broadway and slowly realizing that your suspender had snapped and that your garter was slipping. I consoled myself by thinking that I would have to land some place and I quick felt around me to make sure that I wasn't locked up in any torpedo that was being shot to Mars. Nope, here I was, all intact, with nothing cramping my style. I wasn't any spirit either because I could reach down and feel the bunion on my left little toe, and my cranking arm was OK and everything. Well, I thought, maybe I'm on my way to heaven. I reach around and to feel if any wings were shoving out but I couldn't make sure because my shoulder blades were always kind of sharp. Just about the time I was ready to give St. Peter the high sign and check in on my harp, and step out on the streets of pearl curbed in gold and strum off a nice little ditty, what should happen but that I shoot in some dark place that seemed mighty much like a tunnel. Before I had time to throw up my hand to see whether I could see it before my face I landed right smack down into a long hall that was redder than an aging star's second chin on a close-up. Hold on, what's this, I thought, this is too red to be red gold even, and it sure is a darn sight hotter'n I ever expected heaven to be. I guess I'd better open my collar for sure as I'm born, them walls is burning asbestos. When I reached up to yank off my collar, lo and behold there wasn't no collar there, and right there I realized that maybe I was right about feeling my suspender snapping and my garter slipping — because I didn't have nothing on but a pair of trunks that looked like there were woven out of filament of electric light bulbs, and that was just what the material was. But somehow I didn't feel hot in spite of all the blazing around me. The next thing I got to thinkin' of was how to get out. In Which a Troubled Second Cameraman Is Whisked into Control of the Lower Regions I looked in the back of me and she was blacker than the old ace of spades. I then sides over cautiuosly like and takes a punch at the burning asbestos walls, but they wasn't no trick drop curtains — they was walls and harder than a production manager's head. And the ceiling was the same kind of stuff. Well, thinking I, since they's no way to retreat there's nothing to do but to go ahead. So ahead I begins to step. As I went on the floor which had been plain stone and not bothersome to me changed to red hot cinders. Strange thing, they didn't hurt my feet a bit. All at once, when I got over speculating was to if the cinders were going to scorch my tootsies, I got a bright idea ! It wasn't so bright either because it made my mouth, my heart and my tummy switch places. I wasn't in heaven at all ! I was in hell ! You could have blowed me over with a megaphone. All my life I had counted so strong on strolling the pearly streets that when I got on the direct road to hell I didn't realize where I was. Talk about mind over matter — how's that! Well, being in the moving picture business so long had made me an optimist so I quick recalled something that I had always said in fun — that if I got to hell I'd at least meet my friends there. I figured that I could run into some of them there anyway. Maybe some of them would have some of the cold checks, some how or other, that I had got and been holding on different jobs — this might be a good place to warm them up and get some action on them. I was in this kind of pensive mood, sweating plenty but not getting burnt any, when I steps on a cinder that was bigger than the rest, and presto, right on my right opens a door. Well, I've shot enough airplane stuff to be adventuresome, even if I am only a second cameraman, so I pops in the door, and for the life of me if I didn't think that I was in the outer office of some Poverty Row producing company. I couldn't help but feel that I was waiting for a job or was trying to get one, and I expected the old dame in the office to look up from the smoking hot book she was reading (it wasn't any of Elinor's either) and tell me, No, Mr. Makemquick can't see you right now, but he will be at liberty in a few minutes — which might mean one day or three weeks even. Instead, when she looks up she gives me a double O, instead of a double X, and gasps like if I was a young Valentino Apollo and a Don Juan all rolled into one — a guy with a pan like I got. She singed out of the back door of the office and pretty soon she was back with three guys that were dead ringers for the censorship squad in Podunk. Come right this way, O, noble sir, they said, and I begun to think that maybe hell had an Oriental slant to it. They steered me through a series of offices and I sure did think that I was going to apply for a job, only with some big company this time. Because here was all the secretaries that you had to slip through to get to the Big Boys only none of the sexy sees were heading me off this time. Pretty soon we busted right into a big room that for (Continued on page 15)