Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1924)

Pictures and PichureQuer FEBRUARY 1924 Y Read nig downward : Trafalgar Square as Maurice Towrneitr filmed it in " The Christian." The Norfolk Broads which figured tn " The Persistent Lovers," and Minna Grey. Betty Balfour and the Kyles of Bute in " Wee McGregor's Sweetheart." our beautiful country," D. W. Gri frith said to mc when he was in London on his last visit, " How I should love to work in it. The climate bad? . . . Perhaps . . . but I guess 1 could make as good pictures here as I can back home . . What exteriors ! What lovely scenic shots ! It must be great to make pictures in locations that are so rich in tradition and history. Sure, I'm comingsome day !" . . . You must be quick, Mr. Griffith. There's competition for this homeland of ours. Other producers beside you have seen its beauties and its romance, and other producers have got ahead of you with their cameras and their rolls of film. America has discovered little old England. Do you remember that sleepy old cathedral town in If Winter Comes? The winding streets, the hill down to Mark Sabre's house, the crowded town on the day when the regiment of the Pinks went off to France? Did you recognise our own Canterbury in that picturesque old town? On the whole, though, it is less the English country lanes than the London streets that fascinate the producer from America. For to him London is England, and England simply London. All these English visits are done on the hustle. Xo producer and no star has time to spare when his scheduled work is over, and that schedule is a crowded one. 1 can assure you. Perhaps the record in hustle is held by John Barrymore who made a flying visit-— in the literal sense of the word !-in order to put a little genuine Baker Street into his American version of Sherlock Holmes. Ho played Slurlock Holmes on the Embankment, in the Easl End. South of the river, in the Temple and at Hampton Court. Quite another thing was the coming of .Maurice Tourneur to make The Christian, for Goldwyn. He arrived with flying colours and much shouting down megaphones, accompanied by Richard Dix who was to play John Storm, and Mae Busch, the Glory Quayle of his story. Throughout their stay they kept London in a constant state of upheaval, what with night shots in Trafalgar Square and on Westminster Bridge, crowds on the wet Embankment, and mob scenes in the Temple. He shot acres of the East End — and cut most of it when the picture was finished. And in addition to all this he hired special motor-buses and took a large party of actors and spectators to Epsom Downs on Derby Day where his cameras were working from start to finish. Truly Maurice Tourneur seemed determined to show that whosoever homeland it was it was not exclusively ours ! A more thoroughly English London was George Fitzmaurice's in Three Live Ghosts, a comedy film of hybrid parentage, half English and half American. It was made for FamousPlayers Lasky at their Islington studios, now deserted, by a company of which the stars were American and the small part players English. Then there was Bryant Washburn. He not only came over in order to show America what London was really like, but also to teach the English cameraman how to take photographs of his own country. Bryant declared that our angles were all wrong. He was going to show us a London we had never seen before. It all depended on the way it was photographed — or so he said. He didn't do anything different — not so as you could notice it. anyway — when the Road to London finally emerged from his cameras on to the screen, but his intentions were good, and he sure did shoot London some !