Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

85 He Hit New York in a Box Car Robert G. Vignola, one of the most successful of directors, believes that the hardships he had while getting started were valuable experiences. By A. L. Wooldridge ALONG in the early spring of 1904, a freight train /A pulled into the Eastern terminal yards of the New York Central, and an unshaven, exceedingly soiled young man slid from a box car and headed toward the boarding house of good old Mrs. Ruggles, on Eighth Avenue, near Forty-second Street. His clothing carried specimens of the soil of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and also a few cinders which had come from somewhere near the coal mines of Pittsburgh. -. The Page of "Romeo and Juliet" was arriving in the city ! Romeo and Juliet and Esealus and Paris and Mercutio, and other members of the company, were strung along the route all the way from a little town in Minnesota, doing their best to make Broadway. Thev were broke. But the Page arrived with wealth. He had twelve dollars. It wasn't the first barnstorming troupe to try to "swim" home. Hundreds of competent but unappreciated Joseph Jeffersons and Julia Marlowes had oft before been forced to beat their way back to the bright lights because the natives in the sticks didn't appreciate their art. There wasn't any disgrace in it, but it was uncomfortable, this riding in side-door Pullmans. But to survive a stranded "Romeo" troupe with twelve dollars in real money, and emerge from the railroad yards of New York with it intact, was unheard of. "All I gotta do with this," the young man figured, "is buy a suit of clothes, get a bath, pay carfare, acquire a necktie, some socks, underwear, and a hat. Shucks, that's easy! With twelve dollars." Cautiously, he crept from the railroad yards, past the billboards on which were emblazoned the names of Richard Mansfield, Chauncey Olcott, George M. Cohan, and a lot of other celebrities of the day. He headed for a store where thev sold second-hand clothing. He went carefully and critically through the stock, and finally emerged with a very splendid outfit that hadn't been worn — much. Seven of his twelve dollars were left behind. Then he cleaned up, shaved, and presently strode out upon that wonderful street where the white lights, to some, appear as colorful as the glow that radiates from the Land of the Midnight Sun. Chesty ? Why he owned New York ! I sat, a few days ago, on the sun porch of the beautiful home of Robert G. Vignola, famous director, on the brow of a hill high above Hollywood, and heard him tell stories of those barnstorming days when he was paid fifteen dollars a week — sometimes. This man, who directed Corinne Griffith in "Declasse," who guided Marion Davies in "When Knighthood was in Flower," and who wielded the megaphone in such other successes as "The Woman God Changed," "Yolanda," "The World and His Wife," "Married Flirts," "The Way of a Girl," and so on, has a chuckle over all those experiences of his in the days when the going was rough. "An iron foundry lost a mighty good hand when I decided to become an actor," Vignola said. "Would you believe that I worked in a foundry during the day and studied to be an artist at night? Look in here!" He led the way to his bedroom where, on the wall, was a painting framed in bronze, depicting a bunch of roses. It was his first completed picture, a possession he has retained through all his unmarried years. "I had other faults besides," he continued. "I recited ! I was a regular orator at church and home entertainments. When some one finally paid me five dollars for a special appearance, that settled it. I decided to be an actor ! The management of the iron foundry didn't object. In fact, a delegation of employees visited my father and asked him to encourage me in art. "I advanced upon New York and began as a curtain puller. I went out on the road with a company playing 'Fabio Romano,' a Marie Corelli story. We went broke in Bloomington. I signed out with another. It went broke in Omaha. I went with a 'Romeo' show. Broke in Minnesota ! That was where I hit the freight trains to get back home. "There's an old saying, 'It's no disgrace to run when you are #cared.' Well, it's no disgrace to crawl into a box car when vou want to get back to food, friends, and maybe a job. "After I got cleaned up that day in New York, I met Sidney Olcott. He got me a place in pictures. He got George Melford a job about the same time. Kalem took us on. We made five dollars each and every day we worked. I was the first Kalem actor ever to be placed on a regular salary. I got twentyfive dollars a week for acting, helping to move the sets,, obtaining the props, casting, and, once in a while, directing. We made a picture in a day, cut and edited it the second day, and prepared to go to work on another on the following morning. Each picture cost two hundred dollars — no more. Everybody, star or butler, leading lady or ingenue, got five dollars — and lunch. "Picture acting was new then. The usual practice was to do a scene and then hold it, as for a curtain or a tableau, for several seconds. There were no close-ups. All the acting was 'broad' as a consequence. "But picture making was destined to increase in cost. Two hundred dollars was not sufficient to produce 'The Little Mother,' the first one Kalem gave me exclusively to direct. "It cost two hundred and thirty-five dollars! "It was a super-special and took two days to makeone in the studio and one outside. But from it I got the Continued on page 104