Film Fun (Jan - Dec 1916)

■■ '^WV-y-" "SILENT BILL" HADDOCK, THE DIRECTOR WHO NEVER USES A MEGAPHONE The Man With the Voice "lyiLLIAM HADDOCK, director for the Gotham Film Company, has never used a megaphone in directing a picture. His voice is a natural megaphone. When he cups his hand around his mouth and roars forth a direction, everybody, from the camera man to the extras waiting out in front of the gate, hears every word he says. Haddock is a genius at directing. He's been picture making for eight years and is interested in little else, if you bar his love of yachting and his mania for joining every lodge that is organized. He gets his passwords all mixed up and hands out the wrong pass for the right lodge; but once the doorkeeper hears that Haddock voice booming out a request to get in, he just says, "Pass in, brother," and lets it go at that. Early in the winter Mr. Haddock asked the loan of a lively pair of twins from a friend, to make a scene in a picture he was directing. The twins were new to the motion picture, and along about five o'clock, when every moment of light was precious, they tuned up for their evening repast. Haddock used every art he had to keep them in a pleasant frame of mind for the next scene that was coming right along, but he mistook the symptoms. No well-regulated twin will accept a rubber rattle when he knows it is bottle time. Haddock tried to find written directions for emergencies, but it took a female member of the company to suggest that he offer them their usual five-o'clock bottle instead. "I hustled around for a bottle and fed those twins," confessed Haddock, when we asked him how the affair turned out, "and we got them smiling again just in time to catch those last few rays of good light. No, sir, I never ask an actor to do anything I would not have the courage to do myself — that's why I fed the twins. In my early days as a director, I once did order my actors to do something which to me looked very simple, but I found out differently when I made up my mind to go in and do the thing myself. We were putting on one of those early Edison comedies in the 'Casey' series. This one was called 'Casey and the Steam Roller.' Casey was at work on a street-paving job and was to be struck in the back by a steam roller and rolled out quite flat. This result was obtained by trick process, that of substituting a piece of heavy flat wrap ping paper cut out somewhat in the shape of a man, to be substituted by joining to the other film at the instant Casey was struck by the steam roller. Several of my actors refused to be bumped by the steam roller, and in anger I made up as Casey and went in to do the work myself. I know you will believe me when I tell you that I had to rehearse that scene twelve times before I could quit looking back to see when the steam roller was getting close enough. Once I had my coattails caught in the middle of the roller, which was slotted. I did twelve falls on the gravel, and when the scene was finally over, I spent some time picking gravel out of my hands. It was a more dangerous job than it appeared to be, and from that time on I never asked an actor to do anything risky without first putting myself in his place. "I remember a funny incident in Savannah, Ga., which will serve to illustrate how a very small object can upset the best laid plans of the motion picture director and cost the company considerable money. We were down there doing a picture for Edison (this was before the days of censors), in which the story called for one man to shoot another Tver a game of cards. It is always customary for stage managers to shoot a pistol off once to test its working order. I tested the pistol with a bullet from a fresh box of cartridges, and it worked perfectly. Then the cameras began turning on the scene. I had a number of people engaged, and we were quite a distance away from the city. The scene worked up to its climax at which the shooting occurred. The pistol did not explode, and the scene was ruined. We tried it again, and once more the pistol did not explode. After three or four more failures on the part of the pistol, the situation grew desperate, because we were running out of film and it was too far back to Savannah for anyone to make a return trip for film before sundown. The worst part of the dilemma was that in looking over the box of cartridges we could not tell which were the good ones and which were bad. I loaded the revolver full of them and commenced to work the trigger. They were all bad. In fact, the only good cartridge was the one I had fired at first when I was testing out the pistol. And this goes to show how so small a thing as a box of bad cartridges can sometimes cost somebody several hundred dollars." HADDOCK WAS TRYING TO KEEP THE TWINS QUIET FOR THE NEXT SCENE