Film Fun (Jan - Dec 1918)

tion, those who for one reason or another are obliged to remain at home. These folks must depend upon the daily papers for their war news and pictures or upon occasional visits to the movies, but they are being well supplied in both directions. It is a question if many people, when they open their morning paper at a very interesting series of war photographs, ever pause to consider how a photographer happened to be on the spot to get these wonderful snapshots. As a rule, it did not "happen" and was not a "lucky accident, ' ' but was carefully planned. Nowadays, wherever there is an event of any sort taking place of any possible human interest, there will be found the news photographer, an active, cool-headed young man of astonishing nerve and fearlessness, ready to snap a .picture. Some of these photographers are attached to the staffs of the daily papers, but by far the greater number are employed by the various news agencies and syndicates, which sell their output to the newspapers, weekly publications and monthly magazines throughout the world. While it sometimes happens that a rank amateur gets a most important news picture which would do credit to the reputation of the best professional news photographers, as a rule it is the veteran who captures the prize. There is probably no branch of news gathering which requires greater skill or longer experience for reliable results. The modern camera used for the securing of newspaper illustrations is really a very complicated instrument, requiring weeks and months of use by the operator before he can hope for even a reasonably fair percentage of results under the very trying and difficult conditions he is obliged to work. Then, again, there are other things which go toward the successful make-up of a news photographer. Courage is as necessary as skill, for naturally in taking war pictures the operator's work takes him into tight places. On some precarious perch, poorly hidden by hasty camouflage, perhaps of his own manufacture, he is obliged to dodge shot, shell and shrapnel while getting his pictures. These once taken, his work is by no means over. Competition in war photographs, as in all other lines of news photography, is keen, and next to getting the picture, speed in developing it and then making a train or boat with the film, so that it arrives at the home office at the earliest possible moment, is the all-important thing. A few hours one way or the other may make all the difference in the world between a total loss and a handsome sale. Not a few civilian picture makers taking pictures under .fire have been badly wounded while traveling the battlefields of Europe, and some have been killed; yet others have immediately arisen to fill their places, no more disturbed by the danger than they are by the click of their camera shutter. Here is the story of a news photographer's experience in photographing General Pershing, now in supreme command of our forces at the front. ' ' About three years ago, ' ' he said, ' ' I arrived with my camera at El Paso. General Pershing was in command at Fort Bliss. That day El Paso was celebrating a holiday, and the military men gave a field day in the park. I had been grinding out pictures for half an hour when an orderly stopped me. " 'General Pershing wants to see you,' he said. "I didn't realize he had delivered alighted bomb. I picked up the fuse, so to speak, and also my camera. "General Pershing was sitting in a box with some ladies and surrounded by officers. I thought what a fine, soldierly picture he would make. Then I noticed the severity of his gaze. His first words struck the thought of Pershing as a film star entirely out of my mind. " 'What do you mean by taking pictures here?' he demanded. "Very much embarrassed, I named the officer who had allowed me to work. " 'I want you to understand that Captain So-and-So has no right to authorize you to take pictures at this post. I am in command here.' "The general's indignant tone upset me so that, under the fire of all those official eyes beside him, I didn't know which way to look nor what to think. " 'I've a good notion to put you out.' "His tones cut like a saber, but at least they admitted freedom of a sort. I looked at Pershing. In the instant his face changed. A genial, good-fellow smile spread from lips to eyes. " 'Just go ahead and take everything you want,' said he, in that tone which has won so many men's hearts; 'and if there's anything else you'd like to have — any fancy stunts — just call on me, and I will have them done for you.' "He was all graciousness. I began by making a picture of Pershing and his aides, with their guests. This was, perhaps, the last happy picture made of General Pershing, for not long after his wife and three daughters lost their lives in a fire at the Presidio, California." Another class of news camera men who have been working in the war zone so that those at home may gain some knowledge pictorially of the war are the moving picture men, those who take the views for the various pictorials and war plays thrown on the screens of our moving picture houses. Some of these men have set up their cameras in the first line of trenches, within fifty yards of the Germans. Such work requires the nerve of a veteran soldier, for the Boche bullets do not discriminate and are no respecters of noncombatants. One of these men, with a large staff of expert assistants, for several months has been taking pictures in the allied trenches and vicinity for a screen play on the war. He says that only a motion picture camera, which has ten thousand eyes, can see the war. Some of his stars were taken to England and France to be filmed amid ruined villages and battlefields. Recently he returned to this country and had this to say regarding his personal experience: "As an American the British and French people accorded to me every privilege possible. This meant much, for the presence of a non-military personage in the trenches (Continued in advertising section.)