The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

November, 1959 Page 331 But this time he stepped to the editorial staff of Everybody's Mayasinc. After that, in 191,}, he was made managing editor of the Detiiwalor, holding forth at the Butterick Publications with other staff nii-mfiers who included Sinclair Lewis and George liarr Baker. Ellis did some very creditable writing in his period; but it was his av<x-ation which was to mold his future—his keen interest in amateur photography. He was very good at it, and an active and popular member of the celebrated New York Camera Club. .■\monK ICIIis"s many writer friends was R. Campbell MacCulloch, trained as an engineer but author of much short fiction—principally stories of the sea-— published in the national magazines. In 1915. in New York. "Bob" MacCulloch had just i)ecoine publicity director of the newly formed Triangle Film Cor])ora- tion. Wanting someone he could trust til represent his department in the West Coast studios of Triangle, he engaged KIlis, who departed immediately for Hollywood. It was therefore in Los .Angeles that Ellis first learned, first- hand and under the finest auspices of the day, the inner secrets of professional motion picture production. Following his year there he returned to become eastern scenario editor for the same concern. After his next step, to the sore travail for Universal under Harry Levey, the sketch of his career in these pages is fairly complete. One of the most pretentious subjects which Ellis made on his own responsibil- ity, in the "Autographed Films" period, was "The High Road." a three-reeler for the Young Women's Christian Associa- tion. The time was winter in New York and, as the story called for many out- door scenes with heavy foliage, he took his company all the way to Savannah to make it. The finished picture was so successful that a few years later it was edited to a two-reel length; but by that time the emancipation of women had progressed so far that the shirtwaists and the long hair anti skirts shown in the action ruled it out. Then there was "Well Bom," a cele- brated two-reeler on pre-natal care, and "Sun Babies," a single reel on the pre- vention of rickets, both for the Child- ren's Bureau of the U. S. Department of Labor. "Foot Folly" was another Y.W.C.A. venture, a one-reeler on proper shoes, which has been exhibited for years from Coast to Coast. Still another notable subject of his making was "New Ways for Old," one of the most effective films ever distributed by the welfare division of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Com- pany. And one must not forget "The Kid Comes Through," the immensely popular reel which he produced for the New York Association for the Prevention and Cure of Tuberculosis. At this writ- ing, Ellis is in Hollywood, building a liesh reputation as motion picture editor and general editorial representative of The Spur. Bill BrotHerhood In the later years of the business, Ellis had moved—along with Walter Yorke's Edited Picture System which sublet his office space to him—uptown to 130 West 46lh Street. That was when those in charge of the Ma.sonic Temple Building had grown tired of motion picture tenants .-■nd resentful of the high rates of insur- ance which their presence entailed, and preferred not to renew their leases. But, in the earlier years, when Ellis had plenty of non-theatrical neighbors there, there were distinct advantages in the address. There was the Kineto Laboratories up- stairs ; and when he required casual pro- jection for editing or demonstration pur- poses, he could go downstairs just a floor or two to the office of William Brotherhood. This was a room not much larger than Ellis's, with a "screen" painted on the wall at one end, and a raised, fireproof, built-in booth containing a Power Canieragraph, at the other. It was an inner office, and there were no Admirably planned, well organized, and efficient through trying years, the Pathescope Company of America has amply confirmed the executive genius of Willard B. Cook. windows—just ventilators over the doors which led to flanking public halls. A half-dozen wicker chairs stood before the booth to accommodate the audience when there was one and, lining the walls in front of these were a desk, a table, an artist's easel, an animation stand, and an accumulation of miscellaneous items including a terrestrial globe, an old tripod or two, and stacks of drawn back- grounds for title cards. The meaning of which was that, when there was no audience, the proprietor . went to work producing non-theatrical pictures, or, what was more frequently the case, short bits of a hundred feet or se, to be inserted in films being produced in other respects by his friendly competi- tors. You see, among most of these non- theatrical folk, with their hard-won liv- ing, commercial rivalry was almost un- known. In his best days, as an independent producer, Brotherhood was assisted by an able animation artist and letterer, Wil- liam Sherman, and by a general handy- man whose particular job was to run the projector, Dan Dugger. But even with these efficient aides, it was always a marvel that Bill was able to produce as much as he did for, just as he'd be ready to do a bit of work, in would come some- body with a reel or two to run, and all the lights would have to go out. Never- theless, and although projection charges were then only from fifty to seventy-five cents per reel, Bill apparently found his screening service a fairly goixl insuraiKC. Especially valuable to him was the cut-rate patronage of Community Service, which was always wanting to insi)ect new reels; and then, beside—just as Tichenor's fine Simplex Projection Rooms uptown brought Eastern Film so much additional business—many an odd little job fell, through his humbler convenience, into the lap of Bill Brotherhood. He made and photographed numerous hand-lettered title cards, so plentiful in those silent pic- ture days, did simple animation involving maps and charts, and even hired a cam- eraman by the day occasionally—Walter Pritchard. if and when possible—to shoot .some routine scene wanted by a client. In earlier time Brotherhood had been an actor in England. In this country he had appeared in support of Amelia Bing- ham, notably in her successful vaudeville offering, "Big Moments from Great Plays." After all these years I have a clear mental picture of Amelia Bingham, her husband, Lloyd Bingham, and Bill Brotherhood, on the stage of Percy G. Williams' New York Alhambra Theatre in a scene from Sardou's "La Tosca." Bill, I recollect, had a rather heavy stage presence; brt, for all that, he was very acceptable support—and in those ilays, good-looking besides. After that long vaudeville experience, and, I think, a season in one of the im- portant companies of Brieux's "Damaged Goods," Bill took a flier in one of those then despised motion pictures. He had most of the qualifications held to be neces- sary by the studio moguls of that time. He had been a Broadway actor, and through having served in one interval of his adventurous career, as a Canadian Northwest Mounted Policeman, he could ride, swim and shoot. .Ml these talents won him distinction in the early cowboy pictures of Essanay in Chicago: and I believe that it was for the same concern that he first became a picture director. At the time, however, there was no great distinction in being a director: it was kn«wn in the industry as "a dog's life." It usually meant only that the holder of the title had more to do. Everybody in the studio then did a little of everything, and Bill was no exception. But now he was finding his all-around training very useful. His ability to crank a camera, to hand-letter a little, te make- up a human subject with greass-paint, powder and crepe hair, and to improvise .scenic backgrounds, stood him in excellent stead. At least, until the coming of sound it enabled him te earn a fair living for his trim little wife, two fine growing boys and himself. He was a man much liked by all wh« knew him. What a shock it was, about 1922, after the talkie revolution had wrecked the concerns of liMle produoers, to hear that the cheerful, self-reliant.