The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

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26 The Educational Screen would do. The research department was asked to get the thing, and they got it. When I asked, "How?" they just smiled. Apparently that question never bothers them. When the needed information cannot be found within the department, the workers mr.st go outside. They spend hours, sometimes days, in the public libraries of Los Angeles, museums, and other public institutions. Frequently they go far afield in their search. They never take a fact for granted, never assume that a thing is so, and go ahead without making sure. Once it was necessary for one of the staff writers to know the exact law re- garding the employment of convict labor on roads in a certain state. His story was held up until the research department furnished him the information. Among their other amazing bits of general and specific information, they know the uniforms of the police and fire departments of every important city in the United States. They know, more- over, the dates on which the policemen change from sr.mmer to winter uniforms and vice versa. Recently a curious thing occurred. On a set showing the stage and dressing rooms of a New York theater, the usual "No Smoking" sign had to be posted in order to complete tha effect. You or I would have been satisfied with any sign at all; but it was not so simple as that. The director, himself a man of many years' stage experience, could not recall the exact wording of the many signs he had seen, nor could those in the cast who had had stage training. The research department was called in; eventually nearly everyone in the entire organiza- tion was called in; finally a wire was sent to the company's New York office, asking for information. And that was not the end. Some one in the New York office made a hurried trip to a theater, learned the correct wording of the sign, and wired it back to Hollywood. Then the delayed production went on. Again, an entire cast was obliged to wait half a day after some one had no- ticed that in what was supposed to be a night scene in a replica of the New York Grand Central station, all the trains posted on the bulletins were day trains. Trust any New Yorker to have dis- covered that mistake, had it slipped past! A further check on inaccuracy in pic- tures is furnished in the person of the technical director. He—or sometimes she—is not necessarily one who knows anything about making pictures. He is chosen for his knowledge of certain localities. Thus, a woman who had spent a number of years in Siam supervised the Siamese scenes in a recent picture. Although she had no hand in the actual direction of the scenes, she was able to prevent the occurrence of anything wrong or out of harmony with the set- ting, any mistakes due to the director's ignorance of that locality or its customs. And so it goes—time, thought, money spent in the serious endeavor to make the picture truthful and, as a rule, small thanks from the viewing public for the 99 points that are right in a picture; the 100th point looms large. M. T. O. Hollywood.