Screenland (May–Oct 1927)

Suddenly there is a mad scramble and yells of delight. The contents of a bucket of water have suddenly de' scended from a runway under the roof where the electric lights arc wheeled up and down, and the director of the comedy, Bill Watson, is drenched from head to foot. The entire company of a hundred people howl with glee. Watson has had everybody on the set soaked since nine A. M. and an agile youth up in the studio heavens has been trying all day to duck the director. At last he has succeeded. All is not work after all; a minute of horseplay makes all the gang feel better. When a lull occurs in the aquatic seminary, we take a look at stage two. It seems to be a fire-and-water day at Christie's. Standing in the middle of a cabin interior in six inches of water are Jimmie Adams and Vera White. More fire hoses are playing up into the roof in apparent abandon as far as direction is concerned, and the contents are coming down like rain through the leaky roof of the cabin. It is a Kentucky mountain shack where the comedian in the course of the picture, is being alternately shot at and halfdrowned. Around the cabin set, the stage has been built up and tar-papered for a depth of ten inches so the water will stay on the floor. Everybody is soaked, including the property men, electricians, and all the actors. The electrical gang are carefully laying their cables and moving their broadsides to avoid the ever-present hazard of high voltage carried through sheets of water. The next day the outside of the same cabin will be shot, and the fire hoses will be in evidence again. Only the exterior of the cabin is ten miles from the studio, on the forty-acre tract of Westwood where the Company has its bigger sets and street scenes. The outside of the cabin matches, in every detail of entrances and exits, the interiors which are in the studios. There's a job for somebody — keeping track of the sequences of scenes inside and outside, matching the light effects and the right and left of the entrances and exits, the adjustment of the streams of water so they will time with the action, and so on in a hundred ramifications. Four o'clock this same afternoon word is received of an accident with the Bobby Vernon company which is out on Lankershim Boulevard taking, supposedly, their last scene of a new comedy. For several days at the back of the studio, a special truck has been in process of construction, one of the studio cars with camera platforms mounted at one side of the front. Bobby Vernon and Eddie Baker, the heavy, are handcuffed together. Another car, a roadster, is supposed to come weaving down the road ahead toward the cameras, suddenly swerving to the left and making a narrow escape from hitting the camera truck which is cued to swerve to the right. Somebody got his cues mixed. At the last second the roadster swerved to the right. A crash and the camera truck is head-on into the roadster. Vernon and Baker go headlong into the highway. A few seconds later when they come to, the handcuffs are lying in the road. Both men are bruised and their legs cut slightly but no other physical damage. The late Houdini, in his palmiest days, could not have gotten out of handcuffs quicker. Nobody knows yet how Vernon and Baker got free but out they were. Of course the equipment was all smashed up, and the final scene of the picture deferred several days till it could be re-assembled and the same kind of a rented roadster obtained. In the meantime, the comedians may limp around and collect their equilibrium. One of the most thrilling stunts which I have ever seen, which will later furnish a few seconds running time in a Dooley comedy was an aeroplane crash done by "Fearless" Finley Henderson out on Ventura Boulevard a few weeks ago. Henderson has done the stunt only once before, in Indianapolis, and he says that it is all scientifically figured out how he can crash his aeroplane into a shack, completely demolishing it and his aeroplane and walk out of the ruins unscathed. It sounded hazardous and I still think, after seeing it done, it is a chance in a hundred. A shack was built of one-inch thick boards out in the middle of a field. Two telegraph poles were firmly embedded in the ground a few yards in front of the house. Henderson bought an old aeroplane and flew it from fifteen miles away to the scene of the stunt because the field on which the shack was located was too small and too rough for a take-off. He circled around a few times and was given a signal that everything on the ground was ready. He circled once more and swooped down toward the shack, shutting off his motor. He hit the telegraph poles first which are supposed to shear off the wings of the plane, but it all happened so quickly that the collapse of the poles, plane and house, seemed to be one. A deafening clatter and the whole thing was a mess of splintered boards. A few seconds later the firemen rushed up with their extinguishers but there was no fire. Henderson Was crawling out of the mess, doffing his umpire s mask and lighting a cigarette. The only thing of value left of the aeroplane was the motor, which Henderson sold for a hundred dollars. There used to be an old by-word credited to a couple of comedy producers in Hollywood years ago who were said to have bawled out one of their directors who wanted to take a company to Big Bear Valley, a hundred miles away, to take some scenes, speaking thusly, "Veil, a rock's a rock; a tree's a tree. Vy don't you shoot it in Griffith Park?" From those days may have grown up the impression that a comedy is just shot anywhere and any old way, in the least possible time and with the least possible expenditure of money. But times have changed from the old backyard days when anything was good enough for a comedy. I found from Al Christie's production manager that at least two-thirds of all the scenes in the average comedy are taken in the studio, which means, among other details, exactly the same kind of electrical generators and lights of the latest modern invention which are used in the making of the finest and most artistic feature production. I found a complete wood-working shop which takes carload lots of raw lumber and turns them out into every conceivable kind of cabinet work and the finer finishing for doors and windows and stairways and -whatnots; an iron-working shop; miles of cables, a blacksmith shop, all kinds of automobiles for hauling and transporting, and making wind machines and carrying cameras in doing the tricky traffic stunts on the streets. (Com. on page 90) JULIA FAYE'S SPANISH SHAWL HAS BEEN AWARDED TO MISS FLORENCE HURLEY University of Oregon 1466 East 13th Street Eugene, Oregon whose letter of appreciation so aptly described the brilliancy of Julia Faye's glowing personality. The scarlet Spanish shawl will brighten the scholarly halls of University of Oregon and will always recall to Miss Hurley the many good wishes which Miss Faye sends with it. 66