Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1924-Jan 1925)

flCMTOzOT enthusiasm for railroading had vanished long before I left the hospital. Soon after my recovery I got the chance to join the Zouave troop in Ringling Brothers' Circus, and as I had always wanted to travel around and see the country, I took it. The Zouave troop was a drill team. Our act lasted only fifteen minutes, so each member had to work with other acts in the circus as well. I became a clown — you know, white paint on the face and everything. I stayed with the circus a year, but at the end of that time, having satisfied my desire for travel, I quit. I must say that the next job I picked for myself wasn't an easy one, for I went to Pennsylvania to work in the coal mines. You see, I was restless — didn't know just what I wanted to do with my life because I had no definite aim. I thought there was something rather exciting about the life of a coalminer, and at that age I was looking for change and excitement. I got a job as donkey-boy in the mines east of Pittsburgh. My work was to guide the donkeys hitched to the coal carts from the chamber where the miners were working to the elevator. After three months at Edwin Bower Hesser this pleasant pastime, working ten hundred feet below the surface of the earth, something happened one day which caused me to decide upon a change of occupation. The chamber next to the one in which I was working caved in, killing the miners who were trapped there. When I got up into the sunshine again, believe me, I was thru with coal mining. Well, then I headed West, paying railroad fare when I had it, beating my way when I hadn't. There's a lure to the West, and after working in the coal mines I thought that life on a ranch would have many agreeable contrasts to offer. When I got out to Montana, I went to work at the Flying V ranch, in the Flathead Indian Reservation. I liked ranch life. It isn't so picturesque as it appears to be on the screen, but you're out in the open all the time, and if it's born in you to love the out-of-doors that means a lot. I learned horsemanship on the Flying V. My ability to Above, in the back row, are two extras from the Griffith picture Enoch Atden, which featured Lillian Gish At the right, is the amazingly youthful and handsome Monte Blue adored by the fans of today do all sorts of stunts on horseback was to prove a drawback to me in my film career, but at that time nothing was farther from my thoughts than that I would some day become an actor. Presently — you see, I was still restless, still in search of adventure — I drifted farther West, into the State of Washington, and went to work in a logging camp near Spokane. Here the idea of Socialism took a firm hold on me. I'd heard a lot about the struggle between capital and labor back in the coal mines and now I became all worked up over the doctrine of the full dinner pail. I'd always thought myself something of an orator, back in my school days, and the lumberjacks proved an appreciative audience. The police of Spokane, tho, didn't appreciate my sidewalk speeches. I took my doctrine over to Seattle, on the coast, and here the authorities requested me to leave the state. I fell in with the idea, drifted over to Wyoming and joined the Bar S ranch at Big Piny. You know, it seems to me that Big Piny was just about the last of the real frontier towns. When I was there, the men were still carrying their six-shooters. It was a live cow town. But I couldn't seem to settle down to ranch I Can you find Monte Blue in the picture above ? No? Well, he's at the extreme right. This group was snapped in 1914, on the old Fine Arts lot, two hours after Monte was given a job around the studio as a day laborer seem life again. I hadn't seen my mother for years, and presently I went back to Indianapolis to visit her. I was older now, and for a while at least the spirit of wanderlust left me. I went to work for the BakerVawter Company in Benton Harbor, Michigan. This company makes filing cabinets and all sorts of office equipment. I started in as a stock clerk, and before I left them three years later I had worked up to the position of superintendent. My success didn't make me happy tho. I hadn't yet found the work in which I could be really happy, and in the spring of 1914 I went out to the Coast again, this time to Oregon. Things were rather quiet up in the Northwest about that time. I couldn't seem to find any job that I fitted into, and so, with no particular object in view except that I wanted to get to work somewhere, I came down the coast to Los Angeles. A friend of mine had told me there (Continued on page 82) 33 PAG t