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as you wished. This phonograph was geared to the camera so that the film was kept in exact correspondence with the wax cylinder. I used this arrangement first in my picture of Anna the Adventuress, which as I said was a story of twin sisters, one very rich and not very good and the other very good and not rich at all. Alma Taylor played both the parts and, as she had to change her appearance entirely when she changed from one to the other, she had plenty of time to forget the details of the work she had already done.
There were several of these double -photography scenes in the film but I need only describe one of them as the procedure was much the same in all. In the one I have in mind the line dividing the two halves was not vertical but ran diagonally from the top left-hand corner to the bottom right. It was, of course, completely invisible in the finished picture. It was a bedroom scene and the rich girl was perched up on the bed, dealing out some of her discarded clothing to her poorer sister seated on the floor beside her. I wanted her to toss these clothes to her sister who would catch them and lay them in a little heap at her feet. Obviously, very accurate timing was essential.
When all that the two girls had to do was understood by one, we started to take the scene. While the camera was running, all my directions shouted to the girl on the bed were recorded by the phonograph, and as soon as the scene was finished she ran away to change. While she was away the camera was carefully turned backwards until the counter registered 'nought* and the actual first inch of the film was in position behind the lens — which, of course, had been covered meanwhile.
The wax record, being close-geared to the camera, was automatically reversed also, and carefully checked to see that the needle was now in the same exact position as at the start; and the dividing shutter in front of the lens was thrown over to the second position. Then Alma came back and took up her place at the foot of the bed. The camera was started up and she heard the phonograph shout back at her the exact instructions I had given her before, something like this : — 'There are a lot of things here I don't want — I shall never wear them again. Look at this dress; it is quite out of date now. It's the very thing for you. Here take it and put it with the others. Catch.' She had in the previous take thrown the dress on the word 'Catch.' Now a 'stand-in' girl, sitting on the bed and of course invisible, threw the same dress to her exactly
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