The Moving Picture Weekly (1916-1917)

THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY H Henry McRae. I T seemed a dreadful calamity when Jacques Jaccard, who was both writing and directing the serial "Liberty," became so ill that continuing such arduous work was out of the question for him. But the Universal is a fortunate institution. This has been proved many times, and never more forcibly than in this crisis. If any one could take charge in this crisis that man was Henry McRae, of 101 Bison fame, the past-master of the punch. And the Universal possessed his services. McRae has such a string of successes to his credit that there is no room in a book of this size to enumerate them, that is if you want the magazine to contain anything else. But one cannot refrain from mentioning that breath-taking drama "Behind the Lines," which he put on for Bluebird, with Harry Carey and Edith Johnson. It was a sort of epitome in five reels of the capabilities of this human dynamo. He took hold of the serial in the thirteenth episode, the unlucky thirteenth it might have been called, had any one with less ability been called upon to assume the difficulties of finishing another man's job. But McRae did his patching with such skill that it is impossible to detect the change. From the thirteenth episode the action has started to run at a speed which is amazing, and which promises to surpass even the McRae Now Directing liberty" record of Henry McRae himself. His story reads something like one of his own pictures. It is a series of obstacles overcome. No middle name, please. An undisceming, Scotch-Presbyterian, theatreabhorring father sandwiched "Alexander" between "Henry" and "McRae," but the initials "H. A. M." on the end of a wardrobe trunk — well, imagine it. Bom in Toronto in 1878. Educated there. Started a course in medicine. The greatly reverenced and all-wise professor one day asked the boy how to spell "can't," and the future Bisonite decided that education from books didn't come up to specifications. Amateur theatricals had always thrilled the boy. Through the list from Romeo to Shylock, he had appeared at once as bill poster, business manager, stage director, leader of the orchestra and leading man in these school productions. The stage! Just the thing. Dad said no. Henry< being half Irish, joined a stock company at five dollars per week. He had good clothes, trunks full of them. TTie five per week went for laundry bills and the young Beau Brummel made most of his meals on — enthusiasm. In the months of semi-starvation, dirt and the discomfort of being knocked about from town to town, Mc Rae developed the main quality which has brought him to his present position. In common parlance, that thing is "to use the bean," in plain English, "common sense." "I soon realized," he says, "that it was the fellow who filled his job with equal parts of energy and brains who was constantly shoved along toward the top." "Using the bean," McRae organized his own stock company and toured the country with marked success. He owned theaters in Tacoma and Seattle and took his company to Honolulu where they stayed for many months and became so popular that the residents of that city are still asking for a return engagement. After a three-day inspection of the Selig plant in Chicago, McRae decided to go into the movies as a producer. Selig decided so, too. About four years ago the Universal asked McRae to join the tremendous plant at Hollywood, California. The result is the famous Bison Pictures. "Show me the name 'McRae' in the corner of a picture and I don't have to look at the film to know that it will bring me money," said an exhibitor. Ask any member of McRae's company what he thinks of his director and you will get the same answer: LIBERTY display of the Plaza Theatre, Detroit, Mich. The proprietor expended almost a hundred dollars on the paper mache statue of Liberty. There also are two large Liberty bills hanging from each comer of the theatre which do not show in this photo.