Motion Picture Magazine (Feb-Jul 1926)

around a bit and get acquainted with the job. At one o'clock the warning gong rings loud enough to wake the town, but it dont have much success on the lot. There was about two hundred extras that had to be accounted for, so they told me to find them. I no sooner get here than I begin to do all tin work. Well. I gouged those buzzards from behind doorways and sets till I had must of 'em on the job. Gee, what a sleepy crowd. I had to go to Ernest Torrence's dressing-room to tell him we was ready to shoot. On my way there I passed thru a dark street that had a lot of dummies lying around on it. I stumbled on one of them and fell right down on top of it. It was soft and life-like. It could even snore, so I gives it nose a pull, and tells it to get on the job if it dont want the gate. Got to close and get to work now. Lots of love. Monday. ry-..\R Mazie: You'd have died laughin' yesterday to *-* have seen what I saw. Lehrman, the comedy directoi, told a coon to get ready for an ablution scene. He meant be wanted him to take a bath, you see. The coon was a little shaky about it all anyway, but when the director told him to put a lot of suds on his back, so a lion •kl come in and lick it off like it was ice-cream, that m turned white. 1 thought his eye was goin' to pop any minute. lie looks at Lehrman and >ays "What lion's goin' to lick whose back?" Lehrman trys to smooth matters over by tellin' the coon that the lion's tame, that it was brought up on a bottle. The coon thought that one over for a couple of minute and then says: "Los-. I was brought up on a bottle, too, but I sure enough eats meat now. No sub. boss. I'm goin'. good-bye." Things are goin' same as usual, Mazie. i know and you know, tho, who's doin' the work. Ain't that right, sweetie? Thursday. Dear Mazie: We'd been makin' comedies all morning ever since seven o'clock. Slim Summerville and Bobby Dunn, those two comedians who are always having fun pulling jokes on each other, are just about drivin' us wild with their darn foolishness. 'When the lunch gong rang, I was glad to get away while the two hun< went crazy. It' a great life, change. from the strain of that set. So I goes in V and has a good lunch. When I come back, I found Bobby Dunn up in the air on a wire. He and Slim had been the last ones to leave the set, and Slim had thought it would be a swell joke to leave him there while we were all eating. Bobby was good and sore, so he gets a hold of Sloppy Gray, a fellow who is workin' with Slim during the afternoon, and puts him wise. There were two hundred extras standing around wait~fl\ JL ing to be told what to do. Sloppy I ,L-i was told to run in and jump over :' : a table. The camera started to fi£y grind, and the extras started in to do their stuff. All of a sudden Sloppy runs in and holds up his hands, hollerin' to stop the ■ camera. After we stop, Sloppy announces from the middle of the floor that he cant go ahead because he doesn't feel the scene. Slim chased him all over the lot *o hundred extras waited. And I just about honey, but I'm getting ready for a Tuesday. P\ear Mazie: I was goin' home the other night, when the boss called to me. "Here's a little assignment I wish you'd take care of before tomorrow," he says. His little assignment proves to you what they think of my ability out here. All he wanted was thirty black cats, an elephant, another cat that will eat out of the same bowl with rats, a horse that will blink its eyes and cry. a chicken' that will swallow a fake diamond the size of a golf ball, a man that will roller-skate around the top edge of a twelve story building, a rooster dressed up in a trick suit of clothes and one thousand whiskey (Continued on page 109)