Picture-Play Weekly (Apr-Oct 1915)

26 PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY ding, to hold the powder in shells from which bullets had been extracted. The scheme was great. One jear later, Santschi was playing in a Western picture. At the climax, he hid in a closet, the "heavy" hot after him with a sixshooter that fairly itched under his villainous finger. His part was to fire through the closet door to "get" his man. From this point Santschi relates the story. "The minute I entered the closet, a most peculiar feeling struck me," he said. "Although I was positive they were using blank cartridges, still the presentiment of danger forced itself upon me to such an extent that I drew aside from the door. At that moment, what seemed to be a shower of bullets came tearing through the door, striking the tack of the closet and splintering the iDoards there. If I had not withdrawn to one side, I would have been killed instantly. "Believe me, there was some investigation right there on the spot. We then discovered that there were no bullets in the cartridges, but that each one of the so-called blanks had been wadded with soap, which had hardened to such an extent that it passed through two inches of wood, while the "heavy" was shooting at me. I wish to Moses I could find out who revived that soap-wad invention." Then up spoke one of the crew from Chicago, right manfully and brave, telling of the exigency of the sham battle, the genius' suggestion, and the soap that iDecame almost fatally solid when converted into bullet wadding. Many a narrative of Santschi's adventures has crept through devious channels into the press, but this one he accounts the closest call lie ever had. Not alone does your husky hero figure in the sacrifices made for realism nowadays. Miss Williams herself has gone through many a tight squeeze — squirmed through actual situations that would liave grayed the hair of a policeman. When, with Harry Lonsdale, the English actor, she was working in "The Ne'er-do-well," under the veteran Colin Campbell's direction, they made use of scenes along the Panama Canal. Governor Goethals kindly loaned them the Tise of his gas speeder, which ran on the rails along the canal, and which was capable of fully thirty-five miles an hour under full throttle. Spinning around a curve, they confronted, head on, a sand train whose momentum, at twenty miles an hour, was terrific. The situation was one which Miss Williams to this day will not allow to be discussed in her presence. Their driver shut off his throttle so suddenly that he "killed" his engine, and there was not the slightest chance of reversing and getting away from the approaching locomotive. Death was rolling down on them surely, swiftly. There was no chance to jump. They froze to their seats. As if in a dream, the pair heard the frantic shrieks of the locomotive whistle. Like a man in a daze, their driver worked in vain at throttle and battery, trying to reverse the stalled speeder. There was a squeal from the tortured brakes on the sand cars, and the train, with wheels locked, slid down on them, spitting sparks that glowed, though it was broad daylight, in brilliant showers of burning steel. A scant ten feet of saving distance was between them and the shuddering locomotive when that train had ground down its momentum to a standstill on the smoking track. This is one of the "Adventures of Kathlyn" that has never been told before. Eugenie Besserer, the brilliant French actress, appearing at the Selig mission studio, is another to whom death has come close, though perhaps never in such a harrowing adventure as that just related of the daring Kathlyn Williams. Miss Besserer was thrown from her horse, and when they picked her up it was found that both legs had been broken at the knee. So twisted and distorted were they that all hope of her ever walking again was given up. Months of agony in casts, with weights torturing the bones into place, followed. After a year she found she could walk, and to-day she has to her credit such performances as she made in the exacting "When a Woman's Forty" and "Phantoms." Miss Stella Razeto, leading lady of the E. J. le Saint Company, was in the hospital this year with what was thought to be a fractured skull. She was a passenger in a covered wagon which was merely required to ride past the camera, but there was an upset as the wheels left the beaten trail, and turned a somersault which brought the photo play up short. Miss Razeto was the only one seriously injured, and for a time her life was in danger. At last she fought her way to consciousness and to health, and is now back at work. Among other names might be mentioned Bessie Eyton, a Selig star who has to her credit some of the most daring swims ever attempted in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Not content with this, she has driven breathless auto races against the lightning-speed Santschi, in the photo drama "Unrest." In this she urged her motor up to sixty-five miles an hour, curves and all, for several thrilling scenes of the play. Accidents, near accidents, and perils that would send ordinary women to a nerve sanitarium are passed up by this player as mere incidents. "I never had any escapes," she says, yet, when an actor was required to "drown" in one scene, and was on the verge of strangulation, having forgotten the proper time to inhale air and spit out water, the little lady, cool as a cucumber, swam up to him and supported him until a boat could come. The veteran Frank Clark, of the same company, once thought he saw his finish when, at Lake Sisson, ]\Iount Shasta, his horse dumped him off an incline into tangled reeds that made swimming an almost impossible means of escape. Herculean efiforts landed him safe ashore, but had he not been a nervy man, of stalwart build, that episode would have ended his career. Curiously enough, the happy-go-lucky movie actor laughs these things off, yet always his friends — or her friends — declare "Some day you'll take one chance too many." Even now Colonel Selig is strenuously on record as objecting to Tom Mix's love for real bullets. But the redoubtable Thomas still plays tag with powder and lead. The Three Pickfords. T N "Fanchon the Cricket," the Famous * Players' recent release, the three members of the famous Pickford family are shown in one picture for the first time since they have been appearing on the screen. "Little Mary," who is the most popular motion-picture actress, without a doubt, plays the leading role in this production, and is supported by her sister, Lottie Pickford, and her brother Jack. Eugene Pallette, the well-known actor, has become a Selig star. He is to take leading roles with Selig Pacific-coast stock companies.