The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 150 MOTION PICTURES— NOT FOR THEATRES By ARTHUR EDWIN KROWS The Educational Screen Installment 26 is a further chapter of two decades ago. While experimenters explored novelty techniques in non-theatrical pic- tures, research specialists were finding teacher-training ways, means and standards THE younger critics, ever ready to dep- recate the findings of exix;rience in which they did not happen to partici- pate had only to look back to 1915 to see virtually all of these methods full blown in Mack Sennett's Keystone Comedies, if they did not care to go further back to the days of ficlair, Thanhauser and Lubin. But in those far-off seasons films had been despised by the intelligentsia, and fledgling reviewers were conscious of nothing but the echoing scorn. This foreign resurrection now was new to them, and they hailed it as progress. So Hollywood producers said, "If this is what the public wants, let us revive it, too." Forthwith they turned their better equipment to imitations of the fashion, but down in their hearts their seasoned convictions remained, and they heaved a sigh of relief when the fad began to wane. Nevertheless, this disruption of slowly perfecting professional method has proved useful in reminding true artists of resources which might otherwise have been forgotten or ignored. And, with schoolmen now attentive for being at the awakening of a visual education move- ment, the foreign jolt to attention had an added importance non-theatrically. When the native reaction was at its height, the services of cameramen who could best perform these fantastic tricks were at a premium. Carl Gregory could accomplish most of them at home on his celebrated optical printer. It would have been child's play also to John Holbrook. But they were "old-timers," and the pres- ent demand was for "new blood." None in this eddy of the youth movement reached the temporary fame of Alvin Knechtel, a clever young photographer whom I knew when he was an obscure but promising technician at Pathe. At the proper juncture of time and tide he found a place for his especial talents. He rang the changes on multiple exposures, shooting through prisms, zooming and performing other cinematographic sleight- of-hand to the mystification and presumed delight of new audiences. In Hollywood he even attained the distinction of being credited on main titles for "camera ef- fects," a precedent which his fellow- workers in the line were quick to seize for themselves. Then, as Alvin Knechtel became prosperous, he was able to in- dulge in his hobby of flying. About 1930 his ship crashed and he was killed. The Puppeteers In this period of the early twenties, attention was drawn to a fresh departure along a road opened long before by Commodore Blackton, when he worked magic with animated toys, and more re- cently noticed when Jack Levcnthal made life patterns with blocks to train the soldiers. For this newest spurt that ver- satile genius, Tony Sarg, the illustrator, was in a way responsible. About 1915 Sarg, financed and other- wise encouraged by the noted stage pro- ducer, Winthrop Ames, had turned the main stream of his abundant energy into giving marionette shows, thereby becom- ing the acknowledged "father" of the modern puppet movement in America. The idea of presenting the puppets in films was in natural sequence, and there presently came to pass a series of novelty shorts entitled "Tony Sarg's Almanac." For this release Sarg prepared a number of comic episodes performed in silhouette by "prehistoric" characters. Unhappily they were not especially funny, but they were masterpieces of detail in motion. Herbert M. Dawley's startling re- creations of prehistoric life opened a new vision of possibilities in us- ing movies for teaching apparatus. To the uninitiated they seemed to be just extraordinarily smooth animated drawings. Actually, they were pictures of beautifully articulated, two-dimensional shadow puppets, clearly inspired by those of the old Chinese shadow theatre, pho- tographed, however, by the well known animation "stop-motion" principle. As shadow plays these were not the first upon the screen. A recent series of silhouette performances on the film had been that entitled "Inbad the Sailor," produced with human figures by the il- lustrator C. Allan Gilbert, under the Bray patents, and released through Paramount beginning January. 1916. So far as pup- pet plays in celluloid were concerned, they also had been occasionally known. One of the earliest in my own recollec- tion was a marionette baseball game in Gaumont's "Reel Life," about October, 1916. Sarg. with his manifold interests, was obviously too busy to execute the appall- ing amount of labor involved in these productions personally. That phase was cared for by Herbert M. Davvley, artist and actor. Herbert Dawley outfitted a small studio in his home town of Chat- ham, New Jersey, not far from New York City, acquired a modest, but en- thusiastic and efficient staff, and went to work. With a camera poised overhead. Major Dawley photographed the silhouetted fig- ures lying flat in the horizontal plane, substantially the same arrangement used for animated drawings save that his field of camera vision was much larger than usual. His animation table was so very sizeable, in fact, that he and his entire technical staff could sit upon it to con- fer, and frequently did. The cut-out fig- ures representing human beings were, I believe, approximately four feet tall, with all other surrounding subjects in pro- portion. The articulated joints were moved bit by bit between exposures, with a mathematical accuracy and artistic deli- cacy which gave an entirely new screen pleasure. Movements were astonishingly detailed and varied, fingers and toes twiddling, eyes opening and closing, bod- ies breathing, and all as smooth-flowing as anything ever accomplished by Max Fleischer in the early days of his amaz- ing Ko-Ko—save when a figure made a turn and went in another direction. This was always done with an odd, cat- like swiftness, the reason being that the figure was only a two-dimensional pro- file, without thickness. All properly in keeping, however, with the convention of presentation, in silhouette. Had there been at that time any con- siderable groups of dilettante photoplay- goers, these interesting efforts might have found a truly appreciative audience, for they had all the charm of the old Ger- man shadow plays without their me- chanical limitations. But the order in America then was for mass entertain- ment—racy, violent, vivid. The deliber- ately slow pace for proper enjoyment of the quaint fun, was found borcsome by a restless crovi'd craving excitement. How could a silhouette complement of a thumb and four fingers on one hand, as Dawley showed them, hope to be noticed by theatregoers who still have rarely ob- served that Mickey Mouse and the other merry conventional screen cartoon char- acters of this present day, have only three fingers on each hand as a draughtsman's convenience ? The ".Almanacs" became available finally for non-theatrical use, and, with renewed hope. Major Davvle.v turned to that field with his equipment. The edu-