Reel Life (1915-1916)

The Making of a Railroad Screen Novel By SAMUEL S. HUTCHINSON President of Signal Film Corporation and American Film Company, Inc. Samuel S. Hutchinson, President Signal Film Corporation. “The keyboard of life lives in The Girl and the Game, and author, director and star bring forth in natural continuity and definite sincerity the pictured chants of regrets and anthems of triumph, the great human notes of which are characters of blood and bone.” Helen Holmes, Star of “The Girl and the Game.’1 FROM the day that the idea of the power of steam was conceived in the mind of a boy sitting in his mother’s kitchen, watching the stream of vapor rise from the spout of a boiling kettle, down to the present day of billions of dollars’ worth of railroad properties and the speed of the lightning express trains and powerful mogul engines, there has not developed a theme of greater popular interest than the railroad. In all rural and suburban communities the people depend upon the railroad as a means of transportation. In the larger cities and the business centers of our civilization, commerce depends upon the railroads. A large percentage of the working class are directly or indirectly in the employ of these great organizations, and countless thousands of persons, great and small, in our social scale derive their livelihood from the earnings of these common carriers. Capitalists watch the management and earnings of railroads as well as legislation for or against them, as the chief barometer of the times. It can be well said that in the railroads beat the pulse of our national life. Therefore, to portray a railroad story on the screen requires that those who attempt it, be the best in their art. Frank Hamilton Spearman, the author of The Girl and the Game made a study of railroad life which carried him into the innermost secrets of the financial and operating ends of transcontinental lines. He knows “the game.” JAMES P. McGOWAN, the director, is a practical railroad man and his screened pictures have won for him the praise of railroad officials the country over. Helen Holmes, the heroine in The Girl and the Game, is the ideal for the part. She possesses that deep and thorough understanding of picture values and ability to present exceptional dramatic interpretations and the courage to take any sort of personal risk to bring realism to the story, that places her in a niche all her own. Miss Holmes is fair and fearless — the heroine perfect. In order that the director and his company might be accorded every facility for the taking of the unusual and spectacular scenes in The Girl and the Game, I had erected a depot on the grounds of the Signal studios, practicable in every way inside and outside, switch towers at various points on the Signal trackage; and all the known safeguards as well as hazards of the rail were installed or provided for, including locomotives and rolling stock. AN idea of the completeness of the Signal studios may be gleaned from this ; in the taking of the first chapter of The Girl and the Game, Director McGowan twenty minutes after the author’s script had been given to him, had a train consisting of Pullmans, parlor car, diner, baggage car, day coaches and engine ready for the camera. In the actual operation of railroads there is much that is romantic, much that is adventurous, bringing into the hearts of all, a responsive feeling of compelling interest. Great writers have turned to the rail for their theme, but Mr. Spearman has felt the pulse of “the game” as has no one else, and a fertile imagination has enabled him to present, in all this realism, “the girl,” dainty, charming and daring. Mr. Spearman has deciphered the mysterious web entangling the operations of vast railroad enterprises, drawn it gently aside from off the statuesque shoulders of a pampered daughter of society and hidden with it the piercing eyes of some charmer of another sisterhood, who has put her jewel-laden hands into “the game.” IT is because there is so much of the human element in the life of those of the rail that Mr. Spearman was attracted to it as a subject teeming with unusual heart interest. He is thrilled by the hum of the long steel threads and the #chant of the telegraph key, distributing its messages of mingled hope, success and despair. It all means something to him and he has knowingly written what that meaning is. Were he not a writer it would mean just as much to him, for his understanding of it all is beyond a suppression of feeling — something unconquerably big and undeniably dominant. Thus, in The Girl and the Game he gives you himself — his innermost self, wrapped in a lingerie of literary lace and a tremendous storm-coat of vigorous thought— which Director McGowan with convincing realism has put upon the screen. The keyboard of life lives in The Girl and the Game, and author, director and star bring forth in natural continuity and definite sincerity the pictured chants of regrets and anthems of triumph, the great human notes of which are characters of blood and bone. “It can be well said that in the railroads beat the pulse of our national life. Therefore, to portray a railroad story on the screen requires that those who attempt it be best in their art.” REEL LIFE — Page Fourteen