Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

Back to Pioneer Days 73 Angeles, where he has renewed his activities as a producer. "My studio," he began, "was a small loft in a dingy building in an obscure Chicago street, 43 Peck Court. The 'stage' was twenty-five by fifty feet. My capital was what I had in my pocket. I had one employee as an assistant and lots of imperfect tools. My funds were daily so near to rock Iwttom that I walked the five miles between home and studio twice daily to save the car fare." Previous to this time Colonel Selig had been a theatrical manager. His lifelong hobby, however, was the art of photography. Particularly was he interested in the new discoveries and inventions of cameras that would actually photograph motion. After many years of study of lectures, writings, and inventions of every authority from Edward Muvbridge to Thomas Edison he invented a camera of liis own as early as 1890. It was a failure, but undaunted he continued his arduous labors tmtil 1895, when he finally succeeded in building a camera which proved a success. "I filmed a train going by as my first venture," he said. "The next day I photographed a little girl feeding chickens in a yard. Then I made my first comedy, a watermelon-eating contest between several young colored boys. These scenes were in twenty-five to a hundred-foot strips. "Actors? I've forgotten the names of the first ones I engaged, it's been so long ago. But I used to go to the Hopkins Theater, on South State Street, and persuade actors in the stock company to come to my studio the next morning and play in the scenes. Most of the scenes were exteriors because sunlight was absolutely necessary. We had no artificial light. I'd photograph the scenes in the daylight. At night I would develop and print the film. Unlike to-day we never wasted a foot of film. This calamity had to be avoided because it cost six and three quarters cents a foot. Besides, the film was not the finished product it is to-day. It shrank terribly, and we had to cut both positive and negative to equalize. Although the crudities of our first little pictures would be greeted with howls of laughter to-day, I can assure you that we looked upon our results as miraculous." At this time there were three motion-picture ducing companies in the United States — Edison, graph, and Selig. In Europe there was only Lumiere, in Paris, which was actively operating. Where did these producers show their proBioone. Sets were improvised, rather than, built, in the early days, and all the scenes — even the interiors — were taken out of doors , in sunli'jiit. Colonel William N. Selig is the oldest person — in point of service — in motion-pictures to-day. films ? Mostly in vaudeville houses, although wide-awake traveling salesmen who had heard of the new miracle would invest and travel about, exhibiting the "living pictures" wherever they could find an empty storeroom or hall. As the producer sold his product for twelve to fifteen cents a foot, fortunes weren't made in a day. I asked Colonel Selig what he considered his first successful picture, thinking, of course, that he would refer to one of the early classics. Instead it happened to be a comedy called "The Tramp and the Dog." The scene depicted a Weary Willie stealing a pie from a window sill, only to be apprehended and pursued by a bulldog which succeeded in separating him from the seat of his trousers. This comedy was the first big hit, and it kept the colonel busy supplying prints to fill the demand, "Nature was the background for most of our scenes," he went on. "Our patrons usually seemed more interested in watching an incident of daily life than in any dramatic attempts. When incidents could not be filmed outdoors, comedy ideas were photographed against Continued on page 90