When the movies were young (1925)

The Movies Tempt 33 Vitagraph, Shakespeare — for "King Lear" and "Richard the Third" with Thomas H. Ince in attendance, were screened as long ago as this; at Edison, religious drama. There she rode the biblical jackass. The Kalem studio was in the loft of a building on West Twenty-third Street. You took the elevator to where it didn't run any further and then you climbed a ladder up to a place where furniture and household goods were stored. Bob Vignola could be seen here dusting off a clear place for the camera and another place where the actors could be seated the while they waited until Sidney Olcott, the director, got on the day's job. Sidney Olcott was an experienced man in the movies even in those early days, for had he not played a star part in the old Biograph in the spring of 1904? As the Village Cut-up in the movie of the same name we read this about him in the old Biograph bulletin : Every country cross-corners has its "Cut-up," the real devilish young man who has been to the "city" at some stage of his career, and having spent thirty cents looking at the Mutoscope, or a dollar on the Bowery at Coney, thinks he is the real thing. The most common evidence of his mental unbalance is the playing of practical jokes, which are usually very disagreeable to the victim. . . . In a few years Mr. Olcott had evolved from the "village cut-up" at Biograph to director at Kalem. Here he engaged Miss Auer for society parts and adventuresses. Stopped her on the Rialto one day. "I know you are an actress," said Mr. Olcott, "and that beautiful gray silk dress you have on would photograph so wonderfully, I'll give you ten dollars if you'll wear it in a scene — it's a society part." For a dress that was gray, and silk