The Moving Picture Weekly (1916-1917)

-THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY 15 Treed by Wild Pigs •pHE filming of the Bluebird Photoplay, "The Show Down," most of which was accomplished in Santa Cruz Island and in Palm Canyon, was enlivened for the company by several w^ild pig stunts, in which sport the entire pai'ty became proficient. Jean Hersholt, one of the players, brought back several pairs of tusks, six inches in length, as a proof of his prowess with the spear and the gun; while most of the actors of the company had at least one pair to their credit. The small wild pig can be hunted with spears, but the large animals are too ferocious for that slight weapon, and the men went after them with guns. Several of the biggest charged directly at the actors, among whom were Hersholt, George Hernandez, Arthur Hoyt, George Cheseboro and Edward Cecil, and they had to do some lively sidestepping to get out of the way. Mr. Hersholt and Miss Myrtle Gonzalez, who play leads in the picture., accompanied one of the hunting parties, one day, simply to watch the sport. They became separated from the others, and suddenly a big hog broke out of the undergrowth directly in front of them. They had neither gun nor spear, and lost no time in taking to the tall timber. Hersholt jumped for one tree, and Miss Gonzalez for the other. The wild hog selected the tree in which the actor was perched, and made himself comfortable there, apparently for a long stay. Occasionally he would glance up from one tree to the other, in a fashion which made the two players decidedly uncom fortable. It was not until two hours later that the director and the others traced the missing members of the company; and when they did appear, the hog charged the whole party. A well-placed shot, however, took all the fight out of him; when weighed, he tipped the beam at 300 pounds. SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS WORTH OF PEARLS §EVEN thousand dollars worth of carefully selected pearls play an important part in the Butterfly Picture, "The Midnight Man," starring Jack Mulhall, and directed by Elmer Clifton. The pearls were borrowed by Clifton from the firm of Ivan Berry and Co., leading jewelers of Pasadena, California, and he did not have an easy minute until they were returned to their owners. Many of the scenes of the picture were taken at Pasadena, and the company invaded the Maryland Hotel in force, to film incidents in the story. Hundreds of touripts were witnesses of the progress of the play, finding the show too fascinating to leave. The players worked surrounded with an enthusiastic audience all the time. Both Clifton and his young star, Jack Mulhall, are sticklers for realism, and they declared that the use of ordinary imitation pearls would spoil the picture, as they always show on the screen by their irregularity and lack of lustre that they are not the real thing and destroy tJie intensity of the plot in this way. In this case, they are particularly important, for the whole theme centres upon the theft of the pearls. So Clifton set out on a borrowing tour, and succeeded in persuading Berry and Co. to lend him a string valued at seven thousand dollars, on the condition that several special police should be on hand to guard them all the time they were away from the store's safe deposit vault. "I heaved a sigh of relief," said Clifton, "when I saw the pearls back in the hands of their owners. It is too much to have seven thousand dollars' worth of beads in one's care besides the responsibility of a fivereel picture." Scene from the coming Butterfly Picture, "The Midnight Man."