Screenland (Apr-Sep 1924)

86 SCREENLAND Will Production Desert the W est—from page 57 pose. One scene he caught waj the death of a man shot by the enemy. But when it came to be shown on the screen the tragedy assumed a honibly comic light! The man had leaped into the air, doubled up and fallen! It would never do. So a scene more in keeping with a movie audience's idea of a hero's death, in which the hero fell gracefully into a trench with the light streaming on his handsome profile, was substituted for the stark bit of tragic realism. It was at the old Universal, too, that many of the famous film folk were trained, and that many a director got his start. Rex Ingram made his first pictures there; so did Lois Weber; Hobart Henley received his training at Universal; so did the late Wallace Reid when Dorothy Davenport, favorite, became his wife. And when first I met Jack Holt, he was one of the cowboys at Universal, having just come down from Alaska. The Days of the Open Stages TIhose were the days of the open stages. I remember coming on Lois Weber's set one cold winter morning, and discovered all the women in evening dress, with bare necks and arms, and the . thermometer down to freezing point. The actresses were quite blue with cold, among them was Maude George, and of course they had to drink ice water to keep their breath from showing in the films! When they weren't actually on the set, they could keep fairly warm by leaning over an open stove known as a salamander. I understand that Carl Laemmle paid around $40,000 when the property was purchased by him in 1912. Now it is worth over a million. The Sennett Studio was a tiny place in Edendale. But it held such comic artists as Charlie Chaplin, Syd Chaplin and Mabel Normand; and you used to see these stars sitting about quite like ordinary playeis on the set or working on the little stages or eating their lunches in a little lunch-counter place near the studio. And none of these, even now, has ever lost the democratic feeling, though they work these days amidst luxurious surroundings so far as dressing rooms and offices are concerned. I remember how lovely I thought Mabel Normand the first day I met her. I was to interview her on the dress fashions in the films, and she conducted me into what was considered a very elegant dressing room in those days. The rough walls were papered, there was a washbowl and pitcher in the room, and a little dressing table covered with chintz. In these days when Mabel and all other stars have suites of rooms, elegantly carpeted and upholstered, with a phonograph and chaise longue, and a tiny bath, room, I suppose such a dressing room would be scorned, but it was the cat's eyebrows then. Jumping from $25,000 to a Million M ack Sennett purchased the studio property, which consists altogether of thirty acres, for around $25,000 twelve years ago. It is now valued at $1,000,000. It has eighteen hundred feet frontage on Glendale Boulevard. He may vacate one of these days, because the property is on an important car line and will be broken up into business and residence property. Sennett himself had a little old dark back office now occupied by his publicity director's stenographer, while he himself has an elegant little suite back on the lot. I met Charlie Chaplin when he was working for Essanay. He was working in a big, vacant family mansion, formerly owned and occupied by the haughty Bradbury family. Charlie was making a fairly good salary, but was having offers that worried him a good deal, because he didn't know what he ought to do. I found him a charming, quiet, diffident, earnest little man. "Why, I fairly perspire with worry every morning when I come down to the studio, wondering what I shall do next in my picture," he explained, "and now I'm wondering what I had better do about all these offers." Building the Chaplin Studios Now Charlie owns a tremendous piece of property on La Brae Street in Hollywood, which is the location of his picturesque English-village-street studio as well as of a big house which his brother, Syd Chaplin, occupies, and which I understand is to be sold — -or at least a large portion of it — as too valuable for mere grounds for a residence and location of a lemon orchard which now occupies a large pait of the space. A thousand memories cluster about the rambling group of buildings known as the old Griffith Studio on Sunset Boulevard. The place seems to whisper of Broken Blossoms, Intolerance, Birth of a Nation, even though Jack White's comedy companies now romp about in quest of new gags. I remember the first time I met Mr. Griffith, he led a crowd of us, newspaper folk and the big exhibitors of the day, into the projection room to see The Birth of a Nation, though they called it The Clansman then. Griffith was the only man, by the way, in the picture business at that time to realize the value of publicity, and he had the popular Bill Keefe as his press agent. Keefe was balm to the wounded spirits of the newspaper representatives who found the picture producers acting as if we were trying to steal something instead of giving them something! Life Story of Marion Davis—; from page 30 muscial comedy career never took her away from Broadway. After Chin Chin she went into Miss IQ17 at the Century Theatre, which was a pretentious but unprofitable musical revue combining the talents both of Charles Dillingham and Florenz Ziegfeld. Then came a musical comedy called Betty and after that the Follies. The young Marion, still in her 'teens, was enjoying more success than she ever dared hope for. Marion Goes into The Follies EL ambition never soared beyond musical comedy. Although the featured beauties of the Ziegfeld Follies often are more important than the principals, Marion had an idea that she would like a small dancing and singing part. She had, of course, done some solo dancing and she was growing used to the spotlight; still she wanted definitely to shake herself free of the chorus. In the Fall of 1917, Comstock and Gest engaged her for a small part in Oh Boy! Oscar Shaw, Marie Carroll and Anna Wheaton were the principals in the show but Oh Boy! is now remembered on Broadway as the play in which Marion Davies, dressed as a doll in a pink dress and a pink bonnet, came out and did a dance. The title of the piece, Oh Boy! was Justine Johnstone's one speaking line. The two blonde beauties were enough to carry any musical show to success. Couldn't Get Over Self-Consciousness M iss Davies says that she never felt quite at her easo in musical comedy. No matter how much experience she had on Broadway her fatal fault of self-consciousness dogged her in the wings and followed her on the stage. Her dancing