Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1912)

THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD "57 John Bunny Abroad The Man Who Has Made Millions Laugh, Relates His European Experiences in the Making of "Pickwick Papers." By Hugh Hoffman. ON September 7th the steamer "Berlin" warped into her dock in New York City with her water line two inches below sea level. Mr. John Bunny, the famous heavyweight comedian of the Vitagraph Company, was on board. Mr. Bunny sometimes jocularly speaks of his success as a triumph of avoirdupois. But anyone who is fairly well acquainted with him knows that his success is really due to superior mentality and long years of experience. Mr. Bunny and party, consisting of Lawrence Trimble, director; a cameraman, and his son, George Bunny, were returning from a three-months' sojourn in Europe, where they went with the specific ; object of doing some of the scenes from "Pickwick Papers," with Mr. Bunny in the role of Mr. Pickwick. A day or two later the writer had the pleasure of a long chat with the rotund comedian, quite alone in the Vitagraph greenroom, after all the others had departed for the day. Mr. Bunny was overflowing with enthusiasm over his European excursion and for two hours poured out the most interesting of anecdotes which we are only too sorry cannot be given here in full. As to motion picture making, the jovial John declares that he is many times wiser than he was when he left these shores. Obstacles of many kinds began to appear almost from the beginning, but he states with a certain amount of pride that they were all met and overcome. The principal difficulty encountered was bad weather. The English climate is, of course, well known for its drawbacks, ' photographically speaking. Then there were the customs of the people to be learned; their habits and the diplomacy required for obtaining concessions of various kinds. John Bunny is a picture fan of the first-water. He has been thoroughly weaned away from the stage and his crowning ambition is to make moving pictures of the reliable kind. He loves accuracy and authenticity. He believes that the works of famous authors should be translated into pictures at the original locations where the events are supposed to have taken place. The costumes, he believes, should be not only correct, but, as far as possible, should be those actually made and worn during the period of the story. "The making of Pickwick," he said, "has been one of my fondest dreams for several years. It has been my desire to reproduce in pictures the famous character of Pickwick amid the very scenes of which Dickens wrote, and I think when these pictures we have made are shown to the public it will be said that our work has not been in vain. "Before doing 'Pickwick' we did a picture entitled 'Bunny at the Derby.' We had only two days of preparation for this, having heard upon landing that the Derby would be run at Epsom Downs, the next day but one. We did some scrambling to get ready for that picture which would show the famous English Derby as a background. I appeared as a costermonger with donkey and cart. We had no actors engaged and we were obliged to act in all capacities. We had to be managers, authors, directors, property men, booking agents, stage managers, wardrobe people, diplomats, financiers and the rest of the list all in the same day. "I never shall forget my experience as a costermonger at the Derby. No one expected us and yet nearly everybody JOHN BUNNY among the thousands assembled there knew me at a glance when I appeared upon the track in my donkey cart. A howl of delight went up from thousands of throats when they spied me, and one girl, who had seen me often in moving pictures, when she came face to face with the living image of the apparition she had seen upon the screen so often, she exclaimed: 'My God, mither, 'tiz th' movin' picthur' mon!' "While in England we did three of the adventures of Mr. Pickwick. The first was the coach ride to Rochester. For the making of this picture we were fortunate enough to find the original coach and harness that were used to make, the daily trip in the days of Pickwick. In this picture we used also the original home of Mrs. Bardell in Goswell Street. We tried to find one of the two-wheeled cabs such as were in vogue when Pickwick papers were written, but no such vehicle existed except one that is in the British Museum. This the Museum authorities would not allow us to use; therefore we had an exact replica made of it and this vehicle appears frequently in the pictures. Arriving at Rochester we found the Bull's Head Inn and made excellent use of it as a background. While we were in and about Rochester the city was practically turned over to us and the enormous crowd that gathered each day to watch us work, required nearly the entire police force of Rochester to keep it at the proper distance. Anything we wanted we could have and the Mayor and police force were even solicitous to see that everything was exactly as we wished it to be. "The second reel we did was the hunting expedition of Pickwick and his friends. It may be well to say just here that all of the cast, excepting myself, were English actors, selected by me in London. The two selected for the parts of Alfred Jingle and Mr. Snodgrass could not have been better if they had stepped out of one of Cruickshank's illustrations. The part of Sam Weller was also admirably handled by a very clever English comedian. This second reel includes the wellknown wheelbarrow episode on Captain Bolding's estate. We had almost as much fun in doing these scenes as the public, I am sure, will find in them. "The third of the Pickwick series was the imaginary elopement which the rogue Job Trotter confessed to Mr. Pickwick would take place that evening when Alfred Jingle was to elope with a young lady from the select seminary for young ladies. We waited for a good rainstorm for these scenes and you may be sure that Pickwick got a very fine ducking. "From London we went to Dublin and then to Paris and Berlin. We went to France and Germany for recreation and to look over the ground to get ideas for scenarios to be used on our next trip. I found myself better known than I had any right to expect. "I was rather amused at the various names by which I am known on the Continent. In Paris they don't know me as Bunny, but as 'Monsieur Cinema.' In Berlin I am known everywhere as 'Herr Kintop'; in Russia as 'Pockson,' the latter being a slang term of endearment much on the order of our American expression, 'Sunny Jim.' I was surprised to find the Paris plant of the Vitagraph Company to be much larger than the home plant at Brooklyn. "We were gone exactly three months, and during my absence in foreign countries I could see enough work laid out ahead of me to keep me busy for a hundred years. I hope the public will like our efforts in 'Pickwick' and that their approval will be our warrant to return again to England and complete the picture version of that exquisite comedy creation of Charles Dicken's — 'The Pickwick Papers.' "