We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Adventures
Extra
Sometimes amusing — sometimes dramatic — but always interesting are the experiences of the unknowns who work on Hollywood's motion picture sets
ON A movie set an extra holds about the same position as a spear-carrier in a show, or the wen on your Aunt Susie's nose— it's there, and the less said about it the better ! We're a necessary evil— and that's about the best that can be said for us.
I'm an extra and I ought to know !
But in spite of the fact that nobody loves us, we're an essential part of most pictures. Who else would be shoved all over the place in mob scenes? You guessed it! The extra is the only specimen known to take such punishment. Of course we're not always right. We make our mistakes too ! Like the time in one of De Mille's super-spectacles when thousands of extras were battering at the walls of Paris. In the "rushes next day it was discovered that three of the wild revolutionaries
36
A scene from The Their lot is hard,
were storming the gates of Paris with allday suckers in thei^ mouths! De Mille didn't like that. But after all, we're only human ! We have to have a little diversion. That's one grand thing about Jean Harlow's pictures— we like to work with her. She's gay and friendly and keeps the sets humming. She has a phonograph with her and the mmute the director yells, "Cut !" the victrola starts— with all the latest jazz. It keeps her in the mood— and as a result, keeps every | body else in the mood too.
You see, like chameleons, we take on the color of our surroundings. I've been on sets with a star who resented each tiny noise— and after awhile you could actually hear the quiet . Everybody tiptoes around; a whisper brings you dirty looks and a laugh brings an army of second assistant directors on your neck. By five o'clock you're so down that nothing matters anv more; and when you go home you startle your family by sneaking around the house and whispering to yourself.