Moving Picture World (Jan-Feb 1927)

January 22, 1927 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 265 Who’s The Star Who In Director “Long Cameraman Pants” The Extra HARRY LANGDON WE varied from our regular course in presenting the pre-release facts and studio atmosphere concerning pictures in the making with “Long Pants” because we could not have said all we wanted to say about Harry Langdon in this column. We put Harry Langdon in the feature story because, figuratively, Harry Langdon is “Long Pants” and “Long Pants” is Harry Langdon. This is a picture which is truly a vehicle and Harry occupies the "“carriage” from the time it starts rolling until it reaches its destination. “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” Langdon’s first feature length ■comedy of note was followed by “The Strong Man” and now comes “Long Pants.” With the latter production Langdon will unquestionably take place in filmdom and its box offices unsurpassed by any star comedian. Hollywood is unsparing in its inside criticism of its colony. They know things here as the outside world will never know -them. They know whether the actor really has the material to achieve and hold his footing on -the slippery wall of the precipice glorified as “constellation.” They talk about Langdon out here. They talk about him in the camps of his contemporaries. Their talk may be summed up in this line: “He’s got the goods. He’s different. He can deliver.” Harry was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. At the age of ten he was peddling newspapers. He got his chance during an amateur night. FRANK CAPRA FRANK CAPRA who directed Langdon in “The Strong Man” is wielding the megaphone in “Long Pants.” And he states that “Long Pants” will undoubtedly establish itself with fans as not only an unusual type of story for Harry Langdon but a picture far away from the beaten path of comedy features. Capra, who has been in the picture game for the past five years possesses an engineer's diploma. He no sooner received it, he told us, than he framed it and headed for the motion picture industry. Capra cannot be too emphatic about directing pictures being far more attractive for him than bending over maps and juggling figures. Thus Capra has developed into an ardent director whose business as well as pleasure is directing. But Director Capra admits that a dramatic story for a comedian is one of the toughest jobs imaginable to bring to the screen. Adjusting the action so as to get an audience to laugh at the proper time means everything, he told us. A poorly timed laugh would ruin the work of the past nineteen weeks, he stated. However, Capra is confident that the time and study devoted to this production will insure its reception as < Harry Langdon’s masterpiece and a picture that will be remembered for a long time after it has exhausted its runs for its originality. As to Langdon, Capra states that he has never known this comedian to be so exacting in the making of any previous production. ELGIN LESSLEY IN an opening scene in “Long Pants” the audience will get the photographic effect of looking for a book in a big library. They will swing from the bottom shelf to the top row before they will pick out a well-known romantic tale. This effect Elgin Lessley, Harry Langdon’s chief cameraman, obtained by laying out a track some fourteen fedt long in front of the library set in “Long Pants.” Upon this track he placed a movable platform where he perched his camera. From this position Lessley could secure the thousand and one angles for this unique shot which could not have been obtained had his photographing apparatus remained stationary on the studio floor. Lessley has been a cameraman since 1911, getting his initial experience with the old Malies Star Film Company. He has been with Langdon slightly over one year during which he has photographed all of that comedian’s feature productions. Prior to then Lessley spent five years with Roscoe Arbuckle and about five years with Buster Keaton. Camera work on “Long Pants” had occupied nineteen weeks on the day this week when we saw Lessley in the First National Studios. He told us then that “Long Pants” had then used 300,000 feet of film negative and that he expected another 100,000 feet would be exposed before work was completed. This footage has passed and is passing through not only Lessley’s camera but that of his assistant. BETTY FRANCISCO WHILE wandering over several of the thirty-two sets erected at the Burbank studios of First National as background for most of the action in Harry Langdon’s “Long Pants,” we nearly stepped on a pretty blonde warming her feet behind a large studio stove. “That’s Betty Francisio and she’s too well-known an actress to go in this column,” Don Eddy told us. After assuring him that we had heard of Miss Francisco and that we would like to have her photograph to give this page the essential touch of femininity, we wandered back to the aft side of the stove. “Yes, I love to act in the movies,” Miss Francisco winked. “So that when I tell Amercia’s exhibitors about you, you want me to expound about the delightful California sunshine?” “Brrr Brrr — It’s wonderful but you’d tell a terrible fib if you had me saying that today. My face is roasting and my back is freezing.” Miss Francisco in “Long Pants” plays the part of the blonde adventuress who has the fight with the brunette vamp, essayed by Alma Bennett, in front of the jail where Harry Langdon as the adelscent youth is incarcerated because of his adolescency. All of Miss Francisco’s seven years in the picture game have been spent before Hollywood cameras, she told us. In all of that time this is the first time in which she has played in a Harry Langdon vehicle. Langdon And His Loyal Aides