Exhibitors Herald (Mar-Jun 1923)

April 28, 1923 EXHIBITORS HERALD 47 Tom Holby did not speak but he reached out and, seizing Mem's hand wrung it with an eloquence beyond words. He seemed to be squeezing h;r heart with clinging hands. plays had prospered mightily when the boom was at its height. The critics were likewise saying that the moving pictures were unworthy of the patronage they were not getting. But the fault was with the public dyspepsia and not with the cooks. In any case, the vast cinematic industry was in as serious a plight as the steel, the copper, the lumber, and all the other giant industries. In spite of the ferocious slashes in salaries, wages, sets, most of the studios were declaring holidays of a month or more. The orders had gone forth to rush the Holby picture to a conclusion. The big night-storm scenes had been scheduled for the final takes. They would appear early in the story, hut too many accidents might happen if they were shot in sequence. It would be lamentable if any of the actors were injured at any time, but it would be disastrous to have an arm or a head broken or a case of pneumonia in the middle of the work. It had happened. Actors occasionally died with extravagant inopportunity, or broke bones, or marred countenances that could not be matched or replaced. The expense of some of these mishaps was appalling, with an overhead of two thousand dollars a day. On the final morning the first scenes were begun promptly at nine. Kendrick promised to let the company go at three to rest for the all-night grind, but delays of every sort occurred. A light wculd flicker during an important scene. In a close-up one of the characters would swerve outside the narrow space allotted. When the actors were again attuned and the director was impatient to cry. "Camera !" one of the camera men would find that he had not film enough and a new magazine must be fetched. Such inevitable, incessant delays were peculiarly irritating to a company on the razor edge of emotion, but there was rarely an outburst. Emotion, being property, was conserved. There is probably no class of people who act so rarely as actors. The general opinion to the contrary is like most general opinions based on ignorance. At three o'clock there were still many scenes unshot. The work continued and it was not until half past seven that the day's work was done. The "rushes" of the day before were still to be inspected in the projection room, whither the company scampered. It was eight o'clock before anyone could stop for dinner. The actors were not considered, but the work crews had to be humored. Some of them were members of unions and it was a legal peril also to keep extra people at work more than eight hours in a day. Tom Holby and Mem sought their dinner in a little shack near the studio. They perched on stools and ate T-bone steaks, fried potatoes, doughnuts, and coffee with the voracity of longshoremen. At nine they went to the first of the sets. The Californian night was black and bitter cold. The night in the story was one of tempest and battle. Tom Holby must run an automobile into a ditch and make a desperate war against four brutes who were instructed to put up a good fight. The public would not stand a mock engagement. Fists had to land. Heads had to rock, and when a man fell he must fall. He must go over with a crash wherever the blow sent him. The actors wanted it so. Tom Holby expected to end the night bleeding, bruised, tattered, and mud smeared. He had cracked many a bone and lost a tooth or two on such gala occasions ; and once he had splintered the bones of his right hand when his fist missed the face it was aimed at and struck the stone beneath it. Mem's share in the hurricane was to run through the wildest of the storm and bring rescue. Such scenes in the movies are often railed at as cheap sensationalism, yet they are heroic art. In an epic poem, or a classic drama, they are accounted the height of achievement. Winslow Homer's high seas. Conrad's gorgeous simoons, are lauded as triumphs of genius. The author rifles the dictionary and guts his thesaurus, the painter wrecks his palette and his brushes, and is celebrated as of the grand school. When the moving-picture geniuses likewise exhaust a vocabulary of mechanical effects, and spread before the world visions of beautiful drama, the critics pass by with averted gaze. Mem had five scenes to dash through. Her pilgrimage was to be a sort of "Pippa Passes," but she was not to go singing : she was to be stormed upon as Sebald and Ottima were. Each bit of scenery through which she was to flash had been made ready the day before. Three long perforated rain pipes were erected on scaffolds and connected with the standpipes, and they were reinforced by men who would play a fire hose or two upon the hapless actress. The gale was to be provided by an airplane engine and propeller mounted on a truck. Mem. suffering the chill of the night especially because of fatigue and excitement, inspected the settings she was so briefly to adorn. "Why do they build that fence around the wind machine?'' she asked Kendrick. "To keep people from walking into the propeller and getting chopped to mincemeat," said Kendrick. "My assistant was engaged on three pictures where airplane propellers were used, and a man was killed in each one of them. In one of them an airship caught fire and fell during a night picture. He was the first man to reach the aviator. He' picked up the poor fellow's hot hand and his arm came off. It was charred like — Excuse me !" Mem gasped and retreated from the rest of ft, and «he kept as far as possible from the giant fan. The propeller made a deafening uproar when it was set in motion, and it churned the air into a small vertical cyclone. Caught in the first gust of it. Mem was driven like an autumn leaf with skirts whipping away from her. In her first scene she was to dash from a house and down its steps. First, the men with the fire hose soaked the shell of the house, the porch, and the steps, and the ground about them till they were all flooded. Then the rain machine was tested and sent its three showers from overhead. The wind machine was set in motion and the air was filled with sheets of driven rain. The lightning machine added the thunder of its leaping sparks to the turmoil. Kendrick. in thigh boots and a trench coat he had worn in France, went to the porch to test the storm. In his hand he carried an electric button with a cable to the lightning machine. This rang a bell for the man in charge of it. The noisy wind machine was controlled by wigwag signals with his hand. The director was a god in little. He could bid the rain rain, the wind roar, and the lightning blaze. He rode upon the storm he created. At first the storm was too mild for his taste. At his command it was aggravated until he cculd not stand up before it. Gradually he achieved the exact magnitude of violence, and the men in control of the forces of imitated nature understood that thus far they must go and no farther. Under a vast umbrella, and behind shields of black flats called "niggers", the battery of camera men stood arranging focuses and lights. Two of them used lenses that would make close-ups. while the others caught the long shots, for there would be no chance of taking special close-ups. After an hour or more of harrowing delay the army was ready for the battle. Mem climbed up the scaffolding back cf the palatial front door and porch. The assistant director explained the signal he was to relay from the director, and the storm was ordered to begin. A gentle rain fell from the pipes. The fire hose, aimed up in the air. added its volume. The wind machine set up its mad clatter. The rain became a deluge of flying water and the lightning filled it with shattering fire. Then Mem was called forth. She clutched her clcak about her and thrust into the tempest. It was like driving; through a slightly rarefied cataract. She hardly (Continued on page 64)