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HOLLYWOOD S INVISIBLE MEN 213
Witte is versatile in his use of compressed air. With it, he can blow water ninety feet into the air and turn over a boat or he can gentle it down to BB-gun potency. There are times, however, when "live" shooting must be used, and Witte has marksmen on call who can shoot over an actor's shoulder, put out a lamp, blast a cup and saucer from his hand or riddle a plate-glass window or an adobe wall right in front of him.
"Our rain rigging hangs fifty feet in the air," he explained. "It consists of a series of pipes held up by telephone poles. A canvas is laid over the pipes so we can control the amount of light. Water is forced up into the pipes by pumps, and the amount of pressure we put on the water determines whether we will come up with a mist, fog, light rain or heavy rain. We can rain on as much as five acres at one time."
No matter how great the quantity involved, water is Witte's dish. The lake he built for the burning of Old Chicago was filled with 2,500,000 gallons of the soppy stuff. He tied the lake's contents into the studio's fire-protection system, so that pumps could dish it out through sprinklers in case of a real conflagration.
Alfred Hitchock's production, Lifeboat, offered Witte a challenge. He rose to it nobly. When the script called for floods of water to buffet the actors in the boat, tanks of water holding 30,000 gallons each were released, and waves swept down fifty-foot-high spillways slanted at an angle of fifty degrees. "Those lifeboaters really took a beating," said Witte proudly. "Our ocean was a tough guy, with no respect for glamour."
Fire is another of Witte's trained seals. Buildings to be burned are piped with jets and atomizers. Combustible fluids are pumped through these pipes and are electrically ignited. "We start a fire and turn it off just like that," exclaimed Witte, snapping his fingers like a crapshooters. "You push a button which acts like a pilot light in your gas stove. It's a funny thing to see. One minute you have a whale of a fire crackling way, and a second later, all you've got is a little tendril of smoke curling up. Then you go out with a garden hose and put out what's smoldering, to save the set for the rest of the