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Cobb Acts for the “Movies”

Irvin S. Cobb, the” well-known humorist, recently had the. interesting experience of acting for the “movies” in connection with “Our Mutual Girl” series—to be more exact. Reel No. 24.

In this film production, the Mutual Girl meets Irvin S. Cobb, who takes delight in telling her a story. It is a narrative of great humor and credit is due to Our Mutual Girl Weekly for the account given below.

“In a small Southern town two negroes, who were both personal and business enemies, kept rival short order eating houses. One evening the official bad man of the community, a killer with half a dozen notches on his gun stock and an ambition for further ornamentation along the same lines, swaggered into one of these establishments. He was half drunk and he fixed a bloodshot and threatening eye on the dusky proprietor, who instantly became uneasy and excessively polite.

“‘Nigger,’ he demanded, ‘have you got a beefsteak here that measures about eighteen inches from tip to tip?’

“‘Yas, suh,’ said the darkey, ‘I got a——’

“‘Well, you fry it for me—with onions; and don’t ever fry it too much or I’ll fry you, see? And you spangle it over with fried aigs and bring it to me purty damn quick, along with some fried potatoes and griddle cakes and celery and a pot of coffee and apple pie and anything else you’ve got around this dump that’s fitten to eat!’

“The negro, who was both waiter and cook, hurried away to his cubbyhole at the rear and almost instantly the smell of hot grease filled the place. In an amazingly short time he was back staggering under the weight of an enormous platter piled high with smoking dishes. He spread the order before the glowering patron in an array which covered the table. The bad man ate what he wanted and ruined the rest.

“When the meal was over he leaned back and producing a spring back dirk knife flipped out a five inch blade and began casually picking his teeth with its point. Suddenly he turned on the scared darky.

“‘What sort of a dump does that nigger up the street keep?’ he demanded.

“‘Boss, you wouldn’t lak dat place at all,’ said the darkey. ‘It ain’t fitten fur a white gen’l'man to go into. Why, boss, dat nigger thinks a fly is somethin’ to cook wid-—he do so.’

“‘That ain’t all,’ said the bad man. ‘That nigger is a robber. I went in his place last night and had jest about what I had here to-night—maybe a lettle more, maybe a lettle less. And when I got through I asked him what his bill was, and do you know that black pirate had the nerve to charge me a quarter ? Yes, sir, a whole quarter of a dollar! Of course I oughter killed him. That’s what I oughter done—jest killed him on the spot. But something stayed my hand. All I done was jest to cut off both his ears with this here knife and throw ‘em in his face.’

‘Now,’ he added, ‘what do I owe you for this mess of vittles?’ “‘Boss,’ said the darkey, ‘I reckon a dime would be ample. Yas, suh, ample !’”

Mr. Irvin S. Cobb on being interviewed about his appearance in the film, made the following remark concerning how to act:

“To beginners I would say that when engaged in being a movie actor it is well just to be a movie actor and let it go at that. This is, the system which I pursued. I began by demanding the center of the picture. I believe this is customary among the veterans of the profession. I insisted that all the other performers so favored as to be permitted to appear in the same film with me should take the background and make themselves as unobtrusive and inconspicuous as possible. This also I understand to be the standing rule among those actively engaged in the business. Finally I made a point of requiring that my picture should be featured on all advertising, lithographing and other printed matter and that my name should appear in letters not less than eighteen inches high and correspondingly broad. Wherever possible I favored red letters. In short, I endeavored to act as nearly as possible like a regular movie actor.

“I trust the completed film will show that I succeeded.”

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Talking Devices are Revolutionizing Movies!

By GEORGE C. HENDERSON

MILLIONS of dollars are being spent by movie magnates in equipping studios for the production of talking pictures. Mr. Henderson visited a “talkie” in the making and in this article gives a fascinating glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes.

THEY’VE got to wear sneakers on their cowboy boots in moviedom now. The yelling director has been stricken dumb. His megaphone has gone back to the prop room. The big fellow with the blasting voice is outside the gates looking in, on the “extra list.” They say he “bloops.” The little lady who speaks with a hissing sibilance is out there with the blooper. She is called a “sizzler.” The hollow-voiced tragedian is told that his tones are “tubby” (as if he were speaking into a tub) and if he cannot correct the defect, he goes out too. Weak voiced persons “get the gate” with those above mentioned. They are called “juice suckers.”

They’ve invented a new lingo in Hollywood since the talking motion picture became the vogue. The human side of the big change has attracted first attention and. this lingo has singled out defects that become magnified on the microphone and make the actor or actress ineligible in the talkies.

But changes in personnel have been few and inexpensive compared with the vast outlay in the mechanical and technical end. The fact is most stars, through voice culture and otherwise, can make good in the sound drama. A few who are “mike dumb” have had to be relegated to the silent screen. This is not so bad as it sounds. All pictures are taken first on the lot in the regular way, where voices do not count. The film is then run off and the executives decide where talking sequences will be inserted. Only important portions of the picture are re-shot in the sound-proof stages.

After the executives have selected the portions to be re-shot, one of the editorial staff is called in to write the “talking sequences.” This is the conversation. He must give the matter great care. Sometimes he takes weeks for it. The dialogue must not only be snappy, interesting, dramatic and to the point; it must be entirely free of certain words. The letter S should occur rarely at the beginning or the end of a word. If a “sizzler” were to try to say, “Sister Susie’s sewing shirts for soldiers” it would reproduce as one long continuous hiss after the voice-recording apparatus had got through with it.

Next come the rehearsals. Everything is rehearsed to perfection. There can be no prompting once the two ton doors are closed and the director becomes a silent spectator. Slurred speech, excess movement which means excess noise, the rustle of paper which makes a noise like thunder in the microphone, the pouring of a glass of water which becomes a loud “blop—blop —blop,” the scraping of a chair leg over the floor, thus drowning out every other sound—all these little things must he prevented or arranged.

I watched them rehearse and film a scene at one of the big Hollywood studios (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). The set, which was like any other movie set in outward appearance except for the microphones hanging overhead and standing about, was located in a great concrete, sound-proof building. The construction of the building itself had been supervised by scientists. The walls were 8 inch thick concrete. Over that was a three inch layer of balsam wool, a half inch layer of acoustic plaster and a hanging of cheese cloth fastened on with chicken wire. The first sound stages were made by hanging felt against wooden walls. This would cut out the high notes but would not damp the low ones. The balsam wool in the new-structure shuts out the high notes, the rigid concrete the low and the acoustic plaster the medium notes. The floor was made of layers of concrete, sand, cork and two thicknesses of wooden floor. The cork absorbs mechanical vibrations from the ground.

It is very difficult to gain entrance. Even after everything had been arranged a policeman stopped us. It had been found expensive to admit visitors. They talked or scraped their feet and hundreds of dollars worth of work had to be done over again. Getting past the policeman, we came upon a scene of great animation. Here was a great vaulted room, cluttered up with big, powerful lights, the floor covered with wires, boxes and instruments and apparatus scattered everywhere, electricians, technicians, carpenters and roustabouts hurrying back and forth, men on girders overhead manning the overhead cranes that shifted heavy objects from one place to another. And right in the midst of it all an orderly little room furnished with fine carpets and drapes, chairs and divans—the set. Here the actors and actresses moved in range of the camera.

But where was the camera? We found it in a refrigerator-like vault, looking out on the set through double plate glass of the finest German make. Johnny Arnold, the camera man, explained that he had to enter this sound-proof vault and close the big heavy door to keep the clicking of his camera from registering in the microphone. It was hot in there, Johnny was perspiring. He said it made a camera man’s job harder because he couldn’t take any orders from the director.

Electrical engineers and acoustic experts were getting their apparatus set. A baritone walked around the set singing selections from an Italian opera to test the stage at every point. Another went around clapping his hands. The technicians were listening in, watching their recording de- vices as these tests were made. Rehearsals were completed.

“Ready for interlock,” said Director Van Dyke to the switch board operator. The operator flashed signal lights. The camera motor, the recorder motor and the test record motor all were synchronized on a master distributor when an expert at the recording building threw a switch. The operator on the stage received the report, “interlock O.K.” Arnold, the camera man, reported, “camera O.K.”

The stage switchboard man pressed a switch which threw on a green light, the signal that camera was ready. In the room where the recording apparatus set, the expert switched on, a white light. That meant the recording machine was set, that he had a wax record on the test machine and that the film making machine was all right.

Arnold entered his booth and closed the door. It was so hot and stuffy in there that he did not enter it until the last moment. The actor and actress, Nils Asther and Raquel Torres, took their seats at the table where they were to speak the love scene. The director took up a position off the set, out of range of the camera, but so that he could signal to Arnold. He watched Arnold throw on the motor and caught his signal. He snapped his fingers.

Suddenly the actor and actress began to talk. A snap of the finger set things to moving. There were no shouts of “Ready,” “Action,” “Camera,” no waving of megaphones, no lurid denunciations. The director dare not move. He was afraid to un-wrinkle the scowl on his face for fear it would crackle in the megaphone.

At the “mixer panel” overhead, two operators sat with earphones over their ears. They were reminders that this was an engineer’s job. The director, who had been all powerful, had to give way to scientists. These operators listened intently to the voices. When they began to get faint, they turned knobs to raise the volume. As the actress turned toward the microphone they decreased the volume; when she turned away they increased it. They had to watch every movement. In his sound-proof room Johnny Arnold was turning his camera, unheard, as if he were in another world. The actor and actress went through the scene without interruption, as if they were alone in a garden really making love.

They stopped talking, Director Van Dyke motioned to Arnold. Signal lights flashed. The synchronized motors operating the camera, the recording device and the test record all were halted instantly. Johnny Arnold flung open the door of his refrigerator and stepped out, wiping his brow. The man in the recording room had thrown off the interlock, placed the test record on the reproducer and taken the film from the recording machine and placed it in a box to go to the laboratory.

“Give me a playback,” said Director Van Dyke. That meant he wanted to hear how the voices recorded. “Give me a playback,” repeated the switchboard operator.

There was a general exodus into a room arranged like a theater, the monitor room. It was built like a theater so that the director could hear the voices as an audience would hear them. Everyone took seats. Up in the recording room, the man there put on the soft test record which ho had made and which can be played but once. Voices began to speak again. Through the horns we heard what had been said on the stage.

At one point in pronouncing a word, one of the speakers had slurred it.

“Take it over again,” ordered the director. Just for one word mispronounced the whole scene had to be re-taken.

It is impossible to estimate the thousands upon thousands of dollars that have been spent by the motion picture people for equipment, buildings, machinery and for experiment in this business of adapting the industry to the talkies. At this one studio two stages, each measuring 98 by 70 feet and constructed of the expensive, soundproof material have already been built. The recording building has 12,000 feet of floor space, the monitor room, 3,500 square feet. In the recording room were four separate recording machines, the battery rooms, cutting rooms, projection rooms equipped with the latest simplex projectors arranged for both record and light ray sound projection, elaborate switchboard equipment, power house installation and modulators necessary to handle sound recording.

Every bit of “juice” used on the soundproof stage comes from batteries. The regular line supply varies too much for the exceedingly fine work required of these machines.

Moving picture men admit that their big investments have only begun. They expect developments in the talkie industry that will mean the expenditure of additional millions for several years to come.

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Africa is 60 Miles from Hollywood (in the movies)

by JAMES BOWLES

If you think the title of this article is rather far-fetched, you’re doing an injustice to Hollywood’s cleverest location managers, whose special brand of geography, not taught in the public schools, crowds Alaska, Ireland, Honolulu and Holland within the bounds of the state of California. FRANCE is 20 miles from the South Seas, the Sahara Desert adjoins Holtville, California, and the dykes of Holland leak into Long Beach.

Crazy geography? Not a bit of it. It may not be according to conventional maps, but it suits the producers of movies with foreign settings. And as far as the talkies are concerned, the Steppes of Russia are only 40 miles from Hollywood and the haunts of cannibal head-hunters even closer than that.

Of course, these bits of foreign countries are used for movie purposes only. Politically, they’re part of the state of California. In the office of Fred Harris, locations manager for Paramount, there are 35,000 photographs of settings which can be used in representing foreign scenes.

A company actually shooting a foreign film abroad encounters too many difficulties in most instances to make the venture worth while. The absence of high voltage electrical lines and enormous costs of transportation and salaries make it advisable to use such California locations—and there are more than 35,000 of them—as are available.

In California every foreign scene—from the snow clad Alps to the jungles of South Africa—can be reproduced, with one exception: the rivers run upside down. That is not literally true, of course, but so many streams run underground around Hollywood that location managers often are driven frantic searching for streams that can be made to look the counterpart of others on the other side of the world.

From Hollywood one need travel only 60 miles to reach Africa, 90 miles to Alaska, 45 miles to the Canadian coast, 37 miles to reach English hills, 15 miles to the French Riviera, 35 miles to Holland, 37 miles to the hills of Ireland, 45 miles to Italian lake resorts, 35 miles to the Mexican coast and 45 miles to Tripoli. Oddly, midwestern towns near Sonora, 600 miles distant, are further from Hollywood than Siberia, 500 miles away at Truckee.

Victorville, in San Bernardino county, probably has been the background for as many exterior movie scenes as any other city in the world. Without moving the cameras other than to turn them around, there may be recorded on celluloid vistas of green fields, a river bordered with densely growing trees, and desert with drifting sands and sage brush and Joshua trees (desert palms). Nearby, the same cameras may record dry lakes and pyramid-like buttes which give an Egyptian touch, and valleys bordered by towering mountains. During the winter Alpine snow scenes are available.

But how are these locations found?

Suppose a studio should decide on a picture with the locale to be laid in France. An assistant director calls the location manager.

“This is Bill Blank speaking, George. We must have a French location next Monday; the French Riviera. What have you close by?”

This is an easy one for the location manager, who will reply, “French Riviera is 30 minutes from the studio at the Santa Monica palisades. Good bye”.

Another phone rings. A second assistant-director wants exteriors on the Sahara desert, and the location manager sends him to the Imperial Valley.

Another assistant director wants the locale in the South Seas. He is directed to the isthmus on Catalina Island, or the crescent-curved, rock-bound Laguna beach.

In Hollywood and on nearby locations pageants of all nations and all times are produced. Recently on two movie “ranches”— so called only because they were large areas of land outside the city—I witnessed the filming of a street battle during the French revolution, and of a Chinese town hard by a river bank. In both cases from the “camera angle” along side the cameraman I could see the hills of North Hollywood forming the skyline behind the scenes.

As the “shooting” of the Chinese pictures continued, on a nearby set, perched on the dry branches of a papier-mache tree, a sparrow warbled its greetings to the spring.

Without painstaking research, no foreign picture of consequence could be filmed in California; and without much greater expense than the run-of-the-mill picture warrants, a company cannot be carried to a foreign country. Therefore, research specialists, writers, photographers, and, in some cases, engineers visit foreign scenes and record in picture and drawing those scenes to be reproduced.

In preparing for the “Call of the Flesh” a scenarist spent six months in Spain, gathering atmospheric material—and searching for a Spanish police-patrol of about eighty years ago. When it finally was located, the patrol proved to be a small one-horse wagon with a simple iron cage on top. But the vehicle belonged to a museum and could not be sent to Hollywood. So the scenarist made exact measurements, sketched the patrol from various angles and wrote a complete description so it could be reproduced. Later, when it was shown in the Seville market place none could have distinguished it from the original.

Research staffs of the studios not only must pass on the California scene where the picture is to be filmed, but must decide upon the authenticity of every prop and setting to be used. They even censor the dialogue and music in order that nothing will be used which might offend a theatre patron in some country. Their principal difficulties come in reproducing authentic obsolete objects, such as uniforms, armor and clothing. Yet a good research director never will admit defeat.

“We never yet have been forced to send back word that we have failed,” declared Miss Natalie Bucknell, head of the research department for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. “Recently a director called for photographs of the seven wonders of the world—and he wanted them in 24 hours. Ordinarily I should have searched many volumes to find them, but I remembered having seen plates of these in a child’s book. So I sent them back with the same messenger. Some day, one of the seven wonders will rise on a southern California location and be filmed amid familiar surroundings.

“We must be very careful in dealing with customs, costumes, locales and historical events. We cannot use certain words. In the United States ‘bum’ and ‘lousy’ signify meanings so entirely different from their construction in England, that we cannot use them in an English picture. That is one reason we prefer technical advisers from the country to be represented in a foreign film.”

In viewing a picture involving Alpine snow scenes or the Sahara desert, your mind follows your eye. Seldom do you examine the picture for incorrect details, and seldom will inaccuracies creep in. And there’s a reason. The research department painstakingly arranges those details.

“What are the most difficult questions you have been called on to settle?” I asked Miss Bucknell.

“Oddly,” she replied, “these have not had to do with locations. Recently a director sent up a sheet of paper with two queries: ‘What is the uniform worn by postmen in the capital of Iceland? And, how are corpses of persons of the Lutheran faith laid out in Germany?’ Odd? Possibly. But it is of supreme importance that the letter carrier wear the correct cap and have the correct number of buttons on his coat, and that the corpse be laid out properly, or we’ll begin to receive uncomplimentary fan letters pointing out our errors.”

Another difficult problem comes in reproducing foreign prison scenes, foreign courtrooms, jails, etc. For years one studio has been making consistent efforts to obtain a series of pictures showing the interior of Scotland Yard. The Ritz bar in Paris was another much-sought scene. After many efforts the Parisian representative of one large film company, using methods he would not reveal, sent the pictures to Hollywood.

A recent picture shows actors at the British Foreign office. This was correctly reproduced, even to cobblestones on the street, from photos and drawings. When George Arliss played “Disraeli,” the English garden scenes were filmed at the famous Busch garden at Pasadena. Night jungle scenes for another picture were “shot” on a Los Angeles estate. And when the snow melted away from a Russian mountain scene, the company returned to Hollywood and completed the close-ups, using gypsum for ice and a painted curtain to represent the snow-laden trees in the background.

One script called for scenes to be laid on islands bordering the South Seas. “Prop” palms were planted in a cove on Catalina island, carpenters built high prows and repainted several canoes, and 200 Hollywood extras, blacked with grease paint, took spears in their hands and became man-eating warriors. Yet you would not have known, in viewing the picture, that the scene was nearly 100 percent “movie made”.

South Seas in California For another picture an actor was shown on the floor of the ocean near a South Seas island. In fact, he did descend to the ocean’s bottom and was filmed with a special camera. But the waving sea grasses were “planted” there to resemble the floor several thousand miles further south.

On another occasion a technical expert spent several months in England collecting data for the reproduction of scenes in London’s Mayfair, and particularly for a sequence showing an Oxford-Cambridge boat race. During this time a director flew daily in a fast airplane over southern California seeking locations. Finally the boat race was pictured near San Pedro.

While it costs only one-twentieth as much to film a foreign scene in sunny California as it would to transport a company of possibly 2,000 to the country depicted, sometimes the physical difficulties try the mettle of actors and technicians. No African desert could burn any hotter than the Imperial Valley. In fact, it sometimes becomes necessary to lighten the complexion of actors after the Imperial sun has baked them two weeks. And summer storms and winter snows sometimes chase them back to Hollywood or freeze them in, in some mountain “Russia” or “Siberia”.

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DOLLS Become ACTORS

DOLLS may replace drawings as actors in animated cartoon movies if the idea developed by three Italian brothers proves successful. The present way of making such films, the best example of which is Walt Disney’s Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, is to shoot thousands of drawings separately and then piece them together so that the subjects appear to move when projected.

To remove the need for a drawing of each movement of a character, the brothers decided to use dolls in miniature settings. Filming procedure is the same but the cost is less. By this method they have taken Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm’s old fairy tale, The Seven Ravens, and turned it into an interesting movie.

In the picture, several scenes of which are shown in accompanying photos, the story tells of an old man who had seven sons but no daughters. At last a girl was born, but she was so small and delicate she had to be christened at home. Her brothers were sent for water to baptize their newborn sister, but in their hurry they dropped the jug. Whereupon their father cursed them, saying, “May you all turn into ravens!”

Years later the daughter learns she is the cause of her brothers’ fate and that they live in the Glass Mountain. Seeking them, she grows tired and falls asleep in the forest A prince finds her, and their marriage delights his people, but her silence baffles him.

She is tried as a witch when her own sons turn into ravens and is condemned to die at the stake, but she remains silent, for to free her brothers she cannot speak a word for seven years. Previously the princess had taken care of an old blind man and his daughter. They demand her release, and at that moment her seven-year spell is over. Her brothers, restored to human form, rescue her and bring back her sons.

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HOLLYWOOD’S FROGMAN

Glen Galvin of MGM, attired in bathing suit and oxygen mask, is man behind the scenes in Hollywood’s fabulous underwater extravaganzas.

By Bob Willett

STANDING on the bottom at a depth of 12 feet, a man pulled steadily on a slender line. About 100 feet away, an object moved slowly toward him through the greenish-blue water.

As it drew near it took the shape of a beautiful young woman whose face and form could rival those of any mythical sea siren. She was bound hand and foot but, despite this apparent predicament, managed a cheerful grin when the diver finally reached out and grabbed her. Following twin streams of bubbles, they rose to the surface and he towed her to safety.

“A good one,” they heard director Charles Walters shout, “Print it!”

Glen Galvin slipped off his mask and quickly untied Esther Williams. They had just completed an underwater scene for the live-action cartoon sequence of Dangerous When Wet in which the MGM mermaid shares star billing with the comical cat-and-mouse team, Tom and Jerry. * Few fishermen would think of throwing back such a catch as the curvaceous swimming star and most men would consider working with Miss Williams nice work, indeed. Galvin is no exception. However, he wants it known that being a studio skin-diver, although enjoyable for the most part, isn’t as simple as it may sound. For one thing, his aquatic activities can be awfully hard on the nerves because Esther, whose father is a Los Angeles barge captain, has as much nerve as most males where water is concerned. Most actresses willingly accept doubles but she insists on doing the dangerous stunts herself. During filming of the one described above, Glen died a doz^n deaths.

“I kept thinking of what would happen if the line broke,” he says, “and I should be unable to get her out of the water before she ran out of air.”

Reducing the possibility of an accident to the absolute minimum is the reason he shadows her in every swimming scene. You never see him on the screen but he is always there, just out of camera range. He thinks it only common sense to avoid swimming or diving alone and never attempts anything underwater himself unless another expert swimmer is ready to assist him if necessary. His standing rule is, “If I don’t come up in three minutes, come down and look for me.”

In a movie made a few years ago, the script called for Esther to be imprisoned in a giant clamshell and the studio called for Glen to supervise construction and operation of this perilous prop. It was made to open and close through the use of micro- switches and remotely-controlled motors. During initial tests, a mechanical defect kept it closed with Galvin inside. Fortunately he was able to hold out until the movie mollusk could be pried open but the call was a little too close for comfort.

Following completion of Show Boat in 1951, it was decided to drain the large lake on Metro’s Lot 3 and allow The Cotton Blossom to settle on the bottom at the shallow end. Before this was done, Galvin went down and cleared away timbers and debris that might have damaged the hull when the boat was beached. He worked his way along in inky blackness, back and forth from port to starboard, shifting from stem to stern a double arm-span at a time. This cleaning-up operation brought back memories of his wartime salvaging experience, without which he probably wouldn’t have dared to do it.

He thinks entering the lower decks of a sunken ship is the most hazardous of the many odd assignments he’s had, recalling that once he was almost trapped in one on the bottom of the Red Sea. When he dived into the pitch-black engine room, he made a point of memorizing the number and position of stairways to aid in his ascent. However, a bump on the head made him lose his senses temporarily. His equipment consisted of a converted Italian gas mask and, though momentarily stunned, he managed to grope his way up by clinging to its air hose. The water temperature was nearly 90 degrees and marine life the most abundant he had ever encountered. A school of curious fish had followed him into the ship and it was while he was engaged in brushing some of them aside that he knocked his noggin on a bulkhead.

Perhaps because of this incident, Galvin is more afraid of getting lost underwater than anything else. He has often worked in water so dark or dirty that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his faceplate. The sensation, he says, is similar to being caught in a snow storm on land. It’s difficult to figure direction and easy to start going around in circles. Nevertheless, Glen doesn’t go for full-dress diving with weighted suit and air supply, nor does he usually make use of oxygen equipment of any kind.

“It’s not claustrophobia or anything like that,” he confesses. “It’s just plain caution. I like to depend on my own lung power and ability and, by keeping trim physically, I automatically insure myself against risk. I prefer to be in a position where I can put up a good fight for my life and have no desire to be a dead duck.”

The film capital frogman has only one complaint. Although he spends an average of five hours a day working in water and has waterlogged over 10,000 hours during his career, he’s never completely satisfied his love for swimming. Glen first met his wife Helen at the beach and their six-year-old daughter Kathleen and four-year-old son Bobbie are both accomplished swimmers. At his home in Manhattan Beach, Calif., he avidly pursues his hobby—skin diving!

Born in Melstone, Mont., Galvin got his first swimming lessons at the age of five in a creek on his father’s ranch. The family moved to California when he was still a child and when he started high school in Huntington Park, he joined the swimming team and played water polo. He went to the University of California at Los Angeles during the ’30’s where he made the football squad and saw action in the Rose Bowl. As a member of a Navy salvage crew, he helped refloat .a dozen merchant ships and a huge floating dry dock that had been sunk by the Italians in 1942.

“Galvin is a sinker,” a prop man pointed out. “Around the studio we call him Lead Head.”

I soon found out why. Whether he was born with the ability or acquired it as a result of his environment, he can sink in water to any depth at any time simply by stopping his swimming stroke. When he takes a header, he goes down like a shot. Even with his lungs full of air, he can lie flat on the bottom without rising unless he swims up. “I can’t float for sour apples,” he told me.

A skilled carpenter and an authority on water-resistant construction materials, Galvin has planted prop gardens, set up formations of fake coral, constructed complete furnished rooms and installed dance floors and playground equipment underwater. Of course, it is possible to do this type of work when a tank is empty but, as often as not, something objectionable is discovered after it is full. Because a halt in production to allow for draining and reconstruction can be costly, Glen does a lot of building and installing in water and he has learned the hard way that there is quite a trick to handling hammers, saws, wrenches and other tools below the surface. Construction crew members say they can always tell when he hits his thumb. The bubbles turn blue.

One of his most outstanding construction jobs was the huge glass tank, complete with live fish, used in Million Dollar Mermaid, the film biography of former swimming champion Annette Kellerman. Re-creating an accident that Miss Kellerman had experienced called for it to collapse on cue with Esther and 20,000 gallons of water pouring out through broken glass. While no actual test was made because of the expense involved, the scene was shot without a hitch, thanks to his planning and know-how.

His most memorable mishap was more humiliating than harmful. Artificial coral is made of glass cloth covered with laminae and its projecting edges can be as dangerous as barnacles. Before anyone else enters water where it has been set up, Glen goes down and files them smooth. While he was doing this for Dangerous When Wet he backed into a sharp corner that made him rise with more than his customary alacrity.

“When I came up, I was not only short of breath,” he says with a smile, “but minus my trunks.” •

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Making Trick PICTURES with a Home Movie Camera

by Walter E. Burton

Half the fun in making home movies lies in getting unusual shots that will mystify friends viewing your production. Taking such trick pictures is quite simple and easy, as told here.

IF YOU purchase, borrow, or receive as a present a motion picture camera, you will find the mere process of photographing everything in sight thrilling enough for the first half-dozen reels. Then you will look about for new fields to conquer. Perhaps you will undertake the making of your own dramas or comedies—movies with a plot or at least a basic theme.

Whether you set out to tell a story in pictures, or merely are trying to make short scenes that will cause your friends to say “How in the world did he do that?” you will find the production of “trick” movies an absorbing pastime, and not necessarily a costly one.

Fantastic Scenes Easy to Fake You are, for example, making a picture in which a tired business man relaxes a bit and sees the vision of a fairy—or maybe a certain chorus girl—dancing lightly on the desk before him. The photographing of the man sitting before his desk and of a girl of miniature proportions dancing on the desk top at the same time may seem an extremely difficult task. In reality it is extremely simple, once you know the trick. This is how it can be done: Miniature Chorus Girl Dances on Desk Arrange the man and his desk in front of a photographically black background, as illustrated in Fig. 3. A piece of dead black cloth or other material will do, if it does not exhibit highlights. Plush, for example, is unsuitable because its glossy texture reflects some light.

One of the easiest arrangements is to place the man and desk at some distance in front of a large open doorway leading into a dark room.

Now place the fairy or chorus-girl dancer on a black platform the same height as the desk, and several feet behind it. Set the camera with its lens at the desk and platform level, and focus so that both the near-by desk and man and the distant dancer are sharply defined.

Now according to the laws of perspective the dancer will be rendered in small size, compared to the man; and she will appear to be dancing on the desk top. Few spectators will notice that most of the background is black.

Producing Sand and Rainstorm Scenes The producing of rain and sandstorm pictures may appear difficult enough to be beyond the amateur cameraman’s resources. But this is not necessarily the case.

Consider the rainstorm first. If you place your camera at a fairly high elevation so that the area being photographed is not great, and squirt water with a hose so that it falls in drops just ahead of the camera lens, and directly on at least part of the scene as shown in Fig. 4, you will obtain a^* realistic storm effect. Of course, you must wet the players and surrounding objects beforehand. An electric fan or two will produce enough wind to give the effect of rain being driven before a gale.

Don’t make the fatal mistake of photographing a rain scene in bright sunlight. Choose a cloudy day.

Electric Fan Blows Sandstorm The production of a sandstorm is similar in method, except that sand is used instead of water, and is driven by an electric fan placed near the camera, and out of the lens field (see Fig. 10). You can throw dry sand in front of the fan with a small shovel, or let it run through a large funnel into the blast.

The terrain being photographed must be sandy, and the actors sand-spattered. In producing both rain and sandstorm pictures, you may not be entirely successful the first time, but practice will make for perfection.

How to “Shoot” Moving Subjects In the theatre you have probably observed time and again the effect of following actors who are driving a car, riding a bicycle, flying a plane, walking or moving by some other means. How were these pictures obtained?

The shooting of such scenes is easy with simple equipment. For instance, if you desire to photograph Junior while he is sailing back and forth in his swing, you need only arrange a strong outrigger to support the camera in front of the swing, and a similar projection at the rear for a counterbalancing weight, as illustrated in Fig. 1.

Fasten the camera securely, lock the button at the “on” position, and start the swing. The resulting film will show Junior at all times in focus, but obviously swinging because the background is in apparent motion.

Auto Shots Made From Platform This method can be extended to include an endless number of applications. With a camera platform attached to the front of an automobile as shown in Fig. 9, good motoring shots can be made. It is advisable to remove or let down the wind shield when possible.

For following or preceding walking actors, a small truck, called a “dolly” in studios, is necessary. A child’s coaster wagon, preferably one with rubber tires, is elaborate enough for amateur purposes. Fig. 2 illustrates how this stunt is worked.

Anyone who has attempted to develop a glass negative in warm weather, and seen his hopes slip away with the overheated emulsion, will know instinctively how to make a “dissolving” picture.

Making Dissolving Pictures On the screen the spectators see a face or other object that gradually melts into a confusing mass. The effect is highly amusing, and is obtained by arranging a positive transparency of the picture so that it will melt and slide off its support while it is being copied with a movie camera.

Glass photographic plates are superior to film for the positive, because the emulsion on them is easily affected by heat.

Arrange the glass-plate positive so that it is suspended in a glass-sided vessel into which warm water can be introduced steadily, or which can be heated over a flame. (See Fig. 11.) Focus the camera on this positive, and arrange back illumination so that the light is evenly distributed. Device for Making Moving Titles Take a few feet of the picture before it starts to melt. Then increase the temperature of the water until the effect is complete. A little experimenting with old negatives will teach you the trick.

There are dozens of ways to make moving titles—those which are too long to be included in a single frame on the film. To devise a moving title board that is mechanically simple, first have a tinsmith make a sheet metal holder for the printed title, and a frame in which it can be moved lengthwise, as illustrated in Figs. 7 and 8. Supports of heavy wire projecting beyond each end of the frame have pulleys through which a strong linen cord runs. This cord is looped several times around a heavy wire crank set into the frame, and the ends are attached to the opposite ends of the title-card holder.

Thus, by turning the crank, the operator moves the card past the camera lens as rapidly as desired. A good way to judge the speed is to read the title as you operate the crank.

Whenever possible, use a tripod for supporting your camera while making moving pictures. You will be rewarded by scenes that do not make spectators seasick to view them. But you cannot always carry a tripod with you. The best substitute is a good supply of ingenuity.

Tripods Easily Improvised A 3-in. piece of threaded rod that will screw into the tripod socket, and a washer and wing nut to fit, will be found useful for attaching the camera to various objects. Some of the clamping devices on the market can be used, but care should be exercised because of the considerable weight of the average movie camera.

If you make pictures from an automobile frequently, you will be repaid by installing a permanent mounting somewhere. A small iron bracket on the dash, where the camera can be aimed through the windshield or door, is one possibility.

Keyhole pictures sometimes lend a bit of humor to a reel. All you need to make such a scene—one that looks as if it had been photographed through a keyhole—is a piece of black paper and a means of fastening a small disc of it in front of the camera lens.

Unique Pictures With Keyhole Mask Cut out an opening the shape of a keyhole, in the center of the paper disc. Then place the disc, with the keyhole in normal position, in front of the lens. The larger the hole, the farther from the lens you must place it. Another method is illustrated in Fig. 6.

In making the exposure, give a little more time than the lens stop indicates. In photographing keyhole scenes, as well as other types where “freak” effects are desired, be logical. That is, do not shoot a landscape scene through a keyhole mask. Make it a burglar at work, someone stealing up the porch steps, or something similar. How to Make Objects Disappear The ability of the motion picture camera to stop while some detail of the scene or action is changed opens the way for performing all kinds of magic tricks on the screen. A man sits at the table, reads his menu and speaks to the waiter. Instantly the grapefruit appears before him, followed by the other dishes in rapid succession.

This effect is obtained by having the diner and the waiter hold their poses rigidly while the camera is stopped and the grapefruit set down. Then a foot or two is taken, and the actors are free to move. Again, the camera is stopped and another object placed on the table, and so on to the end.

Conversely, objects can be removed from a picture by the stop-motion method. You see a child walk behind a large cardboard box, or perhaps crawl into it. Then a truck comes along and flattens out the box, leaving no sign of the child. It’s easy if you stop the camera long enough for the child to move out of the picture.

Double-exposure effects, such as photographing a person inside a glass tumbler or flask, are obtained in a manner similar to that employed for the fairy dancing scene. Make the exposure when the main objects are placed in front of a black background. Of course, it is necessary to run the film through the camera two or more times.

Multiple-exposure work requires an accurate film footage meter. Walter Baer, a Pittsburgh photographer, has found that an old alarm clock makes a good meter. He removes all of the works with the exception of the hands and their connecting gearing. To the minute hand shaft he fastens an extension shaft that fits into the key socket of his camera.

By measurement he has found that, for the type of camera he uses (Filmo), a revolution of the hour hand indicates 36 feet of film, one revolution of the minute hand, three feet, and one-half minute equals a single frame on the film.

Action which normally is only moderately interesting on the screen becomes highly absorbing if it is reversed. A cat walking down the porch steps in regular order is not nearly as startling as one that proceeds up or down the steps backwards.

All you have to do to make such pictures is turn your camera upside down! Then, after the film is finished, cut out the section showing the scene, turn it end for end, and cement it in place.

Fancy diving, a man plowing a field, a motor car—in fact, any action that normally proceeds in one direction makes good material for this kind of trick.

If you want something really novel, use two cameras, one mounted upside down, and film the same scene with both of them. Then mount the two versions of the scene in series. On the screen the action will be seen to proceed normally, then suddenly reverse and repeat the same steps backwards.

An attempt has been made to suggest rather than describe how the amateur motion picture camera can be employed for photography other than the uninteresting run-of-mine variety. By exercising your imagination, and studying the unusual photographic effects, you see in motion picture theatres, you can add an endless number of other ideas.

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James Bond’s Weird World of Inventions

007 tangles with the trickiest assortment of supergadgets ever assembled for the screen in new James Bond movie, “Thunderball”

By HERBERT SHULDINER

Gadgetry is a smash hit in Hollywood. Dozens of new films and TV episodes are filled with zany gimmicks and pushbutton devices to entertain audiences.

The thing that started this remarkable trend is the unprecedented success of the gimmick-packed James Bond movies. The first three 007 films raked in over $75 million. Gold finger alone has earned about $43 million—more than any film has ever returned over a comparable time span.

Because their success has spawned so many imitators, the Bond producers now have to reach for some pretty spectacular devices to keep Bondophiles on the edge of their seats. So they’ve invested about $500,- 000 for the zany gadgets in the newest 007 thriller, Thunderball, starring Sean Connery.

Most of the infernal devices never existed in the original Ian Fleming stories. “Our only excuse for using them” says screenwriter Richard Maibaum, “is that such devices are available and cry out to be buckled onto James Bond’s back.”

Some of the gadgets actually are buckled onto Connery’s famous back. One is the Bell jet-pack flying belt Bond uses in the beginning of the film to escape from a French chateau. Connery has to wear a special Dacron suit whose color won’t bleach out when touched by the belt’s highly concentrated peroxide fuel. The belt provides about 20 seconds of flight, but only 10 seconds is used for the upward flight. It would be disastrous to run out of power a couple of hundred feet up in the air.

Thunderbolts prize piece of gatgetry is a $300,000. 64-foot hydrofoil yacht. It belongs to 007’s enemies—SPECTRE—a sinister gang of international criminals that has hijacked two H-bombs from NATO. They’re holding the bombs for $300 million in ransom. If the Allies don’t pay off, SPECTRE threatens to wipe out two Western cities.

SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion) is led by Emilio Largo from the hydrofoil floating fortress called the Disco Volante.

The come-apart boat. Thunderbolts production designer, Ken Adams, couldn’t find a hydrofoil imposing enough for the wide-screen Panavision film, so he decided to build a cocoon aft on a 60-footer, nearly doubling the vessel’s length to an overall 110 feet. This permits the film makers to add an exciting fillip. The cocoon can be jettisoned at the touch of a button, allowing the hydrofoil to zoom off at full speed.

The hydrofoil has a 1,320-hp. Mercedes-Benz diesel and can hit a top speed of about 40 knots. But Adams can improve on that—by filming it at one-third normal camera speed. Normal projection speed makes the Disco Volante appear to do over 100 knots. The hydrofoil is also the mother ship for a two-man sub and eight sea tows—one-man, powered underwater sleds.

Jordan Klein, a top expert in the art of undersea movie making, designed the sub. It’s supposed to transport the hijacked H-bombs to targets selected by SPECTRE if NATO doesn’t cough up the ransom.

The 18-foot sub weighs 3,880 pounds and has negative buoyancy. It is powered by three 3/2-hp. electric motors, each reversible so the sub can turn in its own length.

The motors are located forward, one on each side. A third motor is behind the cockpit in the stern. They are operated through control-panel switches and any one can be used separately. The battery-powered minisub motors run at 750 r.p.m. The sub has a top speed of 4-1/2 knots submerged and runs up to four hours continuously before its batteries have to be recharged. Six guns mounted in front of the sub fire four-foot-long spears on compressed air. The sub operates down to depths of 200 feet.

Klein also designed the sea tows. These are just under 10 feet long and are powered by battery-run, 3/2-hp. electric motors. They support the upper portion of a skin diver who steers the contraption with flippers.

When Bond discovers this formidable array of hardware, he calls for the head of his Q Branch to rush a shipment of counter-weapons. Most of these are off-the-shelf gadgets like the Heath marine radios and Voit skin-diving gear.

But where the real thing doesn’t exist, props have to be created. The man who put together the nonmarine gadgetry in Thunderbolt is John Stears, the special-effects genius of all the Bond movies.

Grenades are old-fashioned. Stears came up with all the unique devices for 007*8 Aston Martin in Goldfinger, and has even added a few to the car, which is also used in the new movie. Stears says the gadgetry the late Ian Fleming used is old-fashioned. Thus, where Fleming used a hand grenade tossed into an open Volkswagen to kill SPECTRE agent Count Lippe, Stears adapted a rocket-firing, 120-m.p.h. motorcycle to do the job in more spectacular fashion.

Stears added four rockets, which cost about $10 each to make. He used a regular artillery unit, ignited by a .38-caliber cartridge. The rockets actually detonate on contact. Two of the rockets contain napalm, and two ordinary black powder.

Bond doesn’t get any underwater vehicles to battle SPECTRE, but Q delivers some other fascinating items: • A wristwatch Geiger counter to help Bond search for the missing H-bombs.

• A pill-like transmitter that Bond swallows when he is trapped by SPECTRE in a sealed-off crater. The beam attracts a con- federate in a helicopter and guides him in.

• A skyhook device, which is dropped by the confederate to Bond. It’s a helium -filled balloon that pulls up a cable and holds it aloft for the co-agent to catch in the chopper’s winch and thus hoist 007 to safety.

• A rebreather. This cigar-shaped device provides Bond with two minutes of emergency oxygen—enough to get him out of another tight spot.

Only one of these devices—the skyhook-exists, but what Bond needs, Bond gets.

Agent 007 also gets a unique self-propelled underwater backpack on which two deadly impact-exploding spears are mounted. The pack consists of an aqualung with two tanks, plus a jet-propulsion unit. One tank provides air for breathing and firing the compressed-air spear guns. The second tank releases a pressurized liquid dye to make a screen for Bond. The spears have 12-gauge shotgun-shell heads that explode on contact.

Taking the action underwater. About 25 percent of Thunderbolt takes place underwater. It took about 845,000 worth of skin-diving gear to outfit the 45 skin divers for undersea fight scenes. Although much of the action is submerged, it’s easy to tell who’s who. The baddies wear black. Bond and his helpers wear bright orange outfits.

A flotilla of 29 ships, ranging in size from small outboards to a British Navy cruiser, are used in Thunderbolt. The cruiser just happened to be in the Bahamas where the film was shot, so director Terrence Young decided to work it into a chase scene.

At the climax of the film, SPECTRE ferries the H-bombs to the waters off Miami, where they are to be planted and set to detonate when the ransom deadline arrives.

Bond leads his troops to intercept Largo’s gang. Ian Fleming had the good guys pop out of a nuclear sub. The movie producers use a more spectacular team of interceptors. They arranged to film the jumping exercise of 15 U.S. Air Force aquaparamedics—the same ones who assist in astronaut landings— from a height of 1.200 feet. When they hit the water, the scene cuts to the extras engaged in a tremendous underwater battle with the SPECTRE gang.

We won’t tell you the outcome. But you can be sure that 007’s zany world of gadgets, girls, and vodka martinis—shaken, not stirred—will survive.

Movie screen in the parlor need no longer be a problem with this new device known as the Pict-O-Screen. Concealed within the frame of a lithograph print, it can be pulled into place with a cord whenever your projector is ready. When the show is over, just tug the cord again and the screen disappears. It’s made by Radiant Mfg. Co., Chicago.

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What Makes the Movies Talk?

By William F. Crosby

Electrical Expert and Radio Engineer Millions of people have heard and seen the new talking movies, but the theater-going public knows little about the machinery that makes this form of entertainment possible. In this article Mr. Crosby writes authoritatively of the development of the talking movies, being an electrical engineer who has made a study of the sound devices.

SPEECH reproduction as an accompaniment of motion pictures has been perfected to such a degree that the common variety of silent movie promises to become something of a rarity. Even the 100-seat side-street theater will soon be able to cast out its old mechanical organ and give its patrons the same high quality musical accompaniment that distinguishes the presentations in the largest movie palaces.

There are several different systems coming into wide use and many motion picture theatres throughout the country are being equipped with such apparatus as quickly as possible. Within a year nearly all of the major pictures and many of the minor ones will be available with means of reproducing either musical accompaniment or the voices of the actors. The talking movie systems are all closely allied and the differences in quality seem to be largely matters of personal opinion.

There are three major systems of movie voice reproduction. Briefly, these are: the film on which the music or voice is photographed directly; the use of a record which is operated in synchronism with the motor of the projection machine; and the third system which is not operated in synchronism but is manually operated by a trained expert.

Photographing Human Speech.

The first system is probably the most interesting of them all, for it is here that sound waves are turned into light and then back to sound waves after passing through apparatus as electrical waves. The entire success of this system depends upon a little device known as the photoelectric cell, a device not much larger than the vacuum tubes used in most radio sets. This photoelectric cell is sensitive to light rather than to pulsations of electricity. The tube itself is entirely enclosed in an opaque covering except for a small window through which a beam of light is directed. When there is no light the cell has the property of conducting full electrical impulses, but as the light gains in intensity the current drops off accordingly until, at full brilliance, there is no flow at all. Its response to each graduation of light is instantaneous.

Suppose that the camera is set up and we are ready to take a picture by this method. If recordings of the actors’ voices are to be made, it will be necessary to set up supersensitive microphones about the studio, arranged in such a way that we can cut in or off instantly any group of “mikes.” If the musical accompaniment only is to be made, this work will not be done until after the picture is finished and ready to show, when the usual score will be made and the music run off at a showing of the picture.

The sound is picked up by the microphone and is amplified in a device which is almost exactly like the ones used for radio purposes, except that it is larger and incorporates much finer apparatus than is usually found in such devices. These instruments represent just about the highest degree of manufacturing skill.

If there are several microphones to be used, each will have an amplifier and a control by means of which the operators can handle the situation from outside the “set.” All of these amplifiers then feed into a “mixer” panel where there is usually another amplifier and the resultant of this device is then brought to a device which operates something like the mechanism of an ordinary dynamic loud speaker, except x a Light Turned Into Sound A ray of light reflected from this polished surface is photographed on the film along with the action of the picture. The entire musical or audible part of the film is concentrated into a strip on the edge of the film, this strip being only one-eighth of an inch wide. It is called the sound track and when the film is developed and the prints made, each one will have the music or voice printed along with it as a part of the film itself. The sound track will appear like a lot of fine horizontal lines ranging from light to dark according to the accompaniment.

In the projection machine, used to throw the picture on the screen, a strong arc light passes through the film itself and thus projects the picture as desired. The sound track is screened off from this light and another and smaller light, called the exciting lamp, casts its beam through a carefully regulated lens and thence to the sound track. It passes through here in quantities in exact accord with the number of horizontal lines, to the photoelectric cell where the light ray is again converted back to electrical impulses which are exactly like those that came from the microphone and in accordance with the theory of the photoelectric cell as already explained. This part of the equipment might be likened to the detector in the radio receiving set.

This simple fluctuating electrical current will change with each change in light and shade in the film and it is a simple matter to feed the electrical output of the photoelectric cell into a line amplifier where it is eventually sent out on a wire that runs back stage to a series of especially designed loud speakers, far larger than anything used for home radio entertainment, yet almost exactly the same in shape.

The output of the amplifier may be sent through several of these speakers at the same time, giving the effect of great depth of tone. The speakers are placed in back of the screen, which is opaque enough to permit the picture to be fully visible yet has the property of permitting the sound waves to pass throughly freely, thus giving the effect of sound actually emanating from the lips of the shadow figures on the screen.

Speed Must Be Regulated Ordinarily, film is exposed through the camera at a somewhat slower speed than the rate used in projection but, obviously, with this system it is necessary that, the film should be run at equal speeds on both occasions. Speeding it up in projection will cause distortion in both voice and music. The same thing applies to an ordinary phonograph where, if it is speeded up too far beyond the normal speed of 80 revolutions per minute the music will become shrill and high pitched, entirely unlike the original reproduction.

Another popular method of securing somewhat the same results makes use of an especially made record which operates along lines somewhat similar to those of the ordinary household phonograph. Here, too, microphones and amplifiers are used, but the sound is impressed upon a master record from which other records may be made as needed.

Ordinarily, the reproduction of sound from the record thus made, would take place with the tone arm and horn, but this would be impractical for it would mean that the apparatus, including the horn, would have to be placed in the projection booth, thus destroying much of the illusion. If the machine were assembled back-stage in the theatre, it would be next to impossible to have it run in synchronism with the projection machine.

Magnet Regulates Sound Again electrical engineering has come to the rescue with a simple little device which is really a generator of minute electrical energy. An exceedingly small horseshoe magnet forms the basis of this device, and between the poles of the magnet a small coil of wire is so fixed that the needle in travelling over the bumps and hollows of the record will cause a slight movement of this wire coil. The result is a small electrical current which is in exact accord with the original sound reproduced and a great improvement over the older types of nonelectrical sound boxes.* Best of all, the output of this little magnetic unit may be fed into two wires which may be led anywhere to an amplifier and thence to the usual array of loud speakers. Thus the tone arm is done away with and the output of the record may be brought to. any point where a wire may be run. The device is as simple as it is effective and is being widely used on modern phonographs by leading manufacturers.

This type of record runs in exact synchronization with the projection through a turntable which is geared to the same motor that runs the projector. The records are not of the standard variety, but are somewhat larger and are designed to revolve at a much lower speed than usual, thus making it possible for one record to last throughout the showing of a reel.

Records Are “Faded”

The change from reel to reel and from record to record is accomplished through the use of two projectors and, of necessity, two turntables, with a device known as a “fader” which, as the first record nears its end, permits the first one to be faded out and the second to be faded in just as the change in film is made from one projector to the other. The music at the start of one record will overlap the music at the end of the other making it possible for an experienced operator to make the change from one record to the other without the audience being aware of it. This same fading idea has been in use for a long time in shifting from one film to the next so that there shall be no break in the continuity.

Another method, and one that is closely allied to the one just outlined, is called the non-synchronous system in which the record is turned on an entirely separate turntable at speeds in accord with the requirements of the film. This is work for an expert operator, but the system has been in successful use for some time.

This record is “cued” so that the operator can tell where it should be changed if necessary, and it has the added advantage that the operator does not necessarily have to be in the projection room, but can be anywhere in the theatre so long as he can see and hear what is going on. It is also unnecessary to have special low speed records for this work, and some of the phonograph companies are already turning out such recordings to go with certain pictures.

The ordinary theatre orchestra may be played for a certain part of the film, but during the most exciting parts it may be desirable to have the voices of the actors heard instead of stopping for sub-titles. Through the non-synchronous system this is possible although it may be adapted to the other systems as well.

Talking Doubles for Actors Continuous music may also be had through this system by the use of two turntables arranged so that the operator can fade from one to the other and, through a simple speed control, be enabled to regulate the speed to conform perfectly with that of the record. Special guides are sometimes used by means of which parts of the record may be picked out at will. Of course the same amplifiers and back-stage loud speakers are used with this system as in the others and many theatres are equipped to use any of the three systems according to the film being shown.

In addition to these uses, the line amplifiers and speakers may be connected to a microphone in the manager’s office, thus permitting special announcements to be made audible to the entire audience. Should the theatre be poor acoustically, the use of a microphone on the stage will add greatly to the audibility of vaudeville acts or special presentations and since the loud speakers are usually mounted on easily portable towers, the problem resolves itself into a rather simple affair.

These various systems and their closely allied kith and kin are generally pronounced by experts to be far superior to anything heretofore available. The entire industry is rapidly taking up the work and inside of a year or so it is predicted that the better films will have musical accompaniments equal to the finest theatres of the land. Just what will happen to some of the most popular film stars when it comes to recording their voices is a matter of much speculation and it may be more than possible that there will be “doubles” employed solely to give a fine speaking voice to some otherwise handsome idol of the screen.

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Behind the Scenes With Movie Sound Fakers

The baying of wolves, the clackety-clack of horses’ hoofs, the creaking of auto brakes—these sounds which you hear from the silver screen seldom come from their real sources. This story by an eminent movie sound expert takes you behind the scenes and shows you how these noises are faked.

by MURRAY SPIVAK
Famous Hollywood Sound Director

ONE afternoon recently I sat in the scoring room of the movie studio where I am sound director watching a team of horses gallop down a country road. Later in the picture trees swayed in a violent wind, and then brush broke as an actor ran through a forest. But never a sound issued from the talking screen.

At last the reel had been run. “Okey.” I said. “Now start her again and turn on the noise.”

Then, as we sat in darkness, the sound of hoof-beats, just as I had seen them on the screen, clicked off rythmically. Wind whistled through the swaying trees, and the brush crackled when the actor’s foot touched the ground.- Simple Machines Make Difficult Sounds Simple toy-like devices that any craftsman could turn out at his workbench had manufactured these artificial sounds—and had manufactured them so realistically that audiences of millions of movie-goers never become aware of the deception.

With these devices we can simulate in sound a sandstorm sweeping across an African village, earthquakes and the eruption of volcanoes, the grunts and squeals of pigs, the whine of an automobile tire, the click of a lock or bolt, footsteps on creaking stairs, rain falling in sheets on soggy ground or sweeping before the wind in a storm.

In fact we can reproduce some noises more quickly and at infinitely less cost and with more fidelity than we can catch the original at its source with a delicate microphone. Why wait on a hilltop for thunder to crash across the sky when a sheet of metal, shaken vigorously, serves the purpose better at the studio?

As we work to synchronize the correct sounds with such scenes as the aforementioned, there stands against one wall a machine consisting simply of eight wires radiating from a hub. A handcrank turns the wires, each of which has at the end a four-inch segment bent at right angles to the body of the wire.

Synchronizing Sounds With Picture On the floor rests a small machine containing four vacuum rubber plungers that beat against dirt. A sound effects technician stands near by, two small branches cut from a shrub in his hands. At his side is the shrub.

As the action unfolds the wires begin to speed through the air until the low moan of wind fills the room. The plungers are then worked up and down. A horse is trot- ting. And as the technician crushes dried sprigs in his hand, one visualizes heavy hoots tramping down the thin underbrush of the forest.

As the picture progressed, several types of wind were manufactured in the dim light of the scoring room. For whistling wind we have devised a second machine consisting of a Hat, plate-like screen. This revolves through a single plane and its noises sound like wind cutting around corners or driving through the rigging of the ship—exactly the kind you hear when walking home after dark any gusty spring evening. Its ends cut through the air, whistling as they go, and the onrush of air through the holes in the screen helps provide the sudden gusts.

Sandstorm Terrifies Even Sound Men By “mixing” these two simple devices, or turning them simultaneously, and by revolving two discs covered with sandpaper against each other, we create in a moment a sandstorm that sends shivers down the back of even the most experienced sound men.

This, however, was a simple storm. The sand merely blew away across the desert. Suppose we huddle in the lee of a building, directly in the path of the storm. Listen! The machines begin to turn, but now I bear down harder on one of the sandpapered discs.

Sand commences to blow hard against the imaginary wall. By increasing the friction on the sandpaper, 1 create the sound of the tiny particles being halted in their wild flight by the building that stood in their way.

We merely “build up” the sand part of the storm to make the storm .more violent. How much sound we would create in a sand storm for a given scene depends largely on what the eye would see.

If the scene shows sand blowing unhindered across a desert, it will carry less volume, less “beating,” than it would were it striking buildings or tents.

After the sand storm, we turn to the task of producing a rainstorm as one hears it within a closed room. Again the wind machines whistle while a sound man crushes bits of the shrub between his hands. One hears as many as five distinct noises coming from different parts of the room, but they enter the microphone together. Wind, rain, crushed shrubs and the beat of a horse’s hoofs in the distance. Stormy noise in a steam-heated room!

With the “horse’s hoof sound effects,” the only name by which I know the machine, we reproduce the rhythm of horses running 60 miles an hour, or some 20 miles faster than the world’s fastest can speed down the back stretch. Here’s how and why this works as it does: Three Machines Sound Like Dozen Horses One picture showed the heated finish of a race. The camera truck sped 35 miles an hour ahead of the horses, the lens focussed on the forelegs and feet. But the film was turning only a little more than half its usual rate. This produced on the screen the effect of a speed nearly twice that actually achieved.

Had the sounds of the hoof beats been recorded at the same time, when reproduced they would have lagged far behind the picture.

With the tiny machines, however, I know we could match any speed desired. So, into the scoring room we carried three of these “mechanical horse hoofs” and there, as the scene unfolded, three assistants turned the cranks and 12 rubber cups beat against dirt in the bottoms of the boxes to represent a dozen snorting horses tearing down a straightaway.

The operator does not need a sense of rhythm, as a series of cams is so set that the cups beat down like a galloping horse. While one machine sounds like a lone horse, the beats of three operating together become indistinct; thus, with three, the operators can “cheat” to represent as many horses as may be shown on the screen.

If the horses run on turf, the rubber cups fall on dirt; if a runaway on a city street is to be reproduced, a slab of concrete is inserted.

Better rain than that which falls from the sky can be produced indoors. For some “spots,” we ,use synthetic rain, while for others, we actually “mix” the real and the false. As a sound track of real rain is run, from the side of the scoring room comes the patter of tiny rocks and marbles and other small objects tumbling over low obstacles in a revolving drum.

One has what the other hasn’t. We use real rain for distant water particles striking the earth or trees, and the synthetic to represent a “beating” rain, the kind that smacks down on a roof. Sometimes actual rain sounds like hail and when it falls into a pool of water it gives off a metallic click which sounds too mechanical for our purposes.

The rain and wind and volcano machines look simple—and are—yet from them come some of the talkies’ most ominous sounds. Recently we made and delivered in less than a day an earthquake with a background of a cyclone and the eruption of a volcano.

Faking Terrifying Volcano Noises Bowling balls, rolled over padded wood strips in the revolving barrel, supplied the thunder rumble. The more immediate thunder claps came from thunder drums. The two wire machines supplied whistling wind, while a louder, deeper wind blew out from a blower. Several sticks of dynamite, buried deep in the earth several hundred feet from the microphone, furnished the low booms of the volcano. Recorded separately, these sounds later were “mixed” for the completed effects.

From an earth-shaking volcanic eruption to the squeals of beasts and birds of the barnyard was but a simple step when we turned, after “scoring” the volcano and earthquake, to a series of horns mounted on a music rack.

These once were organ vox humana pipes which had been tuned to a lower note. By blowing a sudden, short “burst” into one, I produced the grunts of a hog. With assistants blowing two more horns, a whole barnyard full of pigs and boars walked into the room!

Even Door Slam Is “Dubbed”

Sounds of people moving about in their homes are among the most difficult to synchronize naturally. The door in a movie set, on account of the high pitched flimsy construction, does not slam with the reverberation and boom that should come from a door slamming in the ordinary home.

So, when an actor stealthily slips a key into the back door, tip-toes up the creaking stairs and, finally, by mistake slams his bedroom door, you do not hear what you see.

These sounds came from a “door cabinet” and a small frame containing five stair steps. The box behind the door, which stands no taller than a child and is about three feet wide and three feet deep, supplies the reverberation of a room when the door is slammed.

And a resin-covered tongue of leather, inserted between the two wooden members of each step, which are held apart by a small spring, furnishes the squeak. If the door squeaks, that noise comes from a tight fitting joint rubbing against resin in a cylinder fixed alongside the cabinet.

With this device, one assistant can provide the click of a key or bolt, turning of the knob, squeak of opening and closing and the slam without moving from his position.

A vibrator, used in better days to massage an actor’s face, hums to represent an elevator, whose gate and glassless door are built into one framework. Since an elevator gate gives out a metallic click, this part is made of iron.

But the door came from the carpenter shop and in its center may be inserted a pane of glass when needed, for an elevator door with glass tingles more than does a door of wood only.

Every week we invent new devices that rival and often surpass nature in the perfection of their tones. We seek constantly new ways of bringing to the screen sounds that are imperfect in themselves or the recording of which in the natural state are too costly.

Here’s a Servant Out of This World
A seven-foot eight-inch robot does its master’s bidding in M-G-M’s new movie, “Forbidden Planet.” Made of plastic and synthetic leather, the robot is animated by electricity. Ears are rotating antennas, and its grillework month hides a loudspeaker.

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Creating Illusions for the Talkies

by MARY SHARON

You can’t believe everything you see in the talkies, and it’s a bit of luck for you that you can’t; for these illusions lower production costs and help keep the admission price within your reach.

“IF THE mountain will not come to Mohammet, Mohammet must go to the mountain.”

“But, most noble prophet, it costs too much to go to the mountain.”

“Then we’ll fake a mountain right here in the studio.”

Faking mountains, or anything else you can think of, is now easily accomplished by what is known as Dunning Process Shots. This method has done more than any other one thing towards putting talking pictures within reach of the masses. By this process, a cameraman is able to turn out films that show upon them things that the camera eye never actually saw. Production costs have been cut in half by this method, since portions of costly sets can be eliminated simply by matting in on the negative whatever is needed.

Hardly a single talkie has been released that has not made use of this process. The method is a difficult and painstaking one and numerous tests are necessary before the scenes will pass muster. Aside from cutting down expenses, there are many scenes that cannot be shot “as is.” For instance, it is impossible to shoot night scenes showing stars.

Any talkie showing stars has made use of the Dunning Process shots, which is a tedious method of covering a portion of the lens and matting in the desired background with stars overhead. This is doubly difficult with the advent of talking pictures, because it cannot be imperfect in any way. In silent pictures, if a few feet of the negative were distorted, the cutter destroyed the faulty portion and patched the negative to hide the missing part. Now, not a foot can be cut because even a misplaced or lost syllable would gum up the recording of the whole scene.

In order to make stars in a night sequence, tests are made of the scene, and the sky is blotted out by the simple method of covering the lens in that particular spot on the negative as is done in ordinary double exposures.

An artist now takes the test shot of the scene and measures exactly how much and where the film was covered while shooting. Next, a studio artist makes a black and white painting of the sky with a few clouds and in all probability the moon. With the painting completed, he then pricks holes through the canvas, which is placed in a stationary frame used for the purpose and set about three feet from a camera, which has been mounted on a concrete column to insure it against vibration and to have it always in readiness for use.

Fifteen or twenty feet behind the framed canvas is a board covered with strips of tinsel, arranged so that one end is loose. An electric fan is turned on the tinsel so that the loose strips wave back and forth and a strong light is placed between the tinseled board and the frame holding the canvas. The light coming through the pinholes photographs like twinkling stars.

By matting, location costs are cut in half. If a scene is supposed to occur in a valley,

with mountains in the background, the artist is called in to mat in the required scenery.

William H. Dietz, ace of moving picture trick cameramen, has been responsible for many spectacular process shots. He is a licensed aviator, having learned to fly in order to be able to take desired sequences from the air. He found it impossible to tell another pilot just when to tilt his plane for the shots he wanted. Since he has learned to fly, he has had a camera mounted on the wing of his plane and equipped with an automatic release. When he gets the angle he wants, he pushes the button on his instrument board and the scene is recorded. For certain sequences in “What a Widow,” Dietz spent five nights flying over the Pacific Ocean in order to get certain light effects on the water. A number of scenes are laid in the Dornier plane. Dietz secured the needed background and with the use of a small model of the Dornier he shot the sequences in the studio. The model was about two feet long. In the place of motors, it had small circles of isingglass. When the plane was moved about, the reflections op the circles looked like motors whirring, and the scenes were quite effective.

Painted mats were used for the backgrounds.

The same method was used in shooting the sequences of the Ille de France in mid-ocean. An exact model of the great liner was made which was about seven feet long. It was placed on the studio pool and waves were generated by immense paddles and by means of a small tube run up through the bottom of the model, smoke was forced out the funnels. The background of sky and waves was matted in and on the screen it looks as if the model were the great He de France in mid-ocean.

For the interior shots in the plane in this same picture, the Dunning Process was used. Two films were placed in the camera, one of them amber-colored, the other one blue. The interior of the plane was painted in different shades of amber and the back-drop outside was painted a brilliant blue. When the scene was filmed, the blue canvas outside the open windows of the plane did not register on the negative, being neutralized by the blue film in the camera. The actors wore a heavy amber make-up for these’ scenes and amber lighting was used to intensify the coloring of the set and the actors.

After such a scene is filmed and recorded, a test is made of it and this strip is given to the artist to compute the exact place on the negative where it is to be matted. Now, the film is placed in the camera and the lens is covered over the portion of the negative that was first exposed. The canvas on which was painted the background is now photographed. It usually takes about three days to achieve the desired result and dozens of tests are made before the negative is completed satisfactorily.

A number of scenes were required in this same production showing the Grand Central station in New York and also the business district and sky line of New York. Dietz flew to New York, shot the background and matted it in behind the railroad scenes shot in Los Angeles, thereby-saving the studio and Gloria Swanson the wear and tear and needless expense of taking the cast to New York and back.

With the aid of a prism lens, Dietz also introduces some spectacular scenes and titles for the Swanson production. A prism lens refracts a scene in the same way that a prism refracts light. Dietz shot a scene of a pair of hands playing on a piano and the prism lens recorded it as if there were six keyboards on which six pair of hands were playing, an unusual and striking effect.

He made the ballet scenes in “Paris Bound” with an ordinary lens in the same way that double exposures are made, by covering a portion of the lens and then exposing it later. Eighteen exposures were made. Standard size film is 32mm. wide. It can readily be seen how difficult it would be to compute exactly where the lens should be covered and where the actors should be placed on the set to prevent overlapping.

Miniature effects, which are another specialty of William Dietz, are secured through covering a portion of the lens and exposing the negative by degrees. Such scenes as those showing a man standing on the palm of a girl’s hand or a ballet girl sitting on the rim of a wine-glass are secured through double and triple exposures.

Wherever there is no motion on that part of the negative, matting can be done for a very small expenditure. It is used in practically all interior sets. Ceilings of ballrooms are almost always painted and matted in. So are chandeliers and the tops of columns and walls. The carpenters build the sets so that the walls extend several feet above the heads of the actors and the artist paints the rest. Columns are built which do not reach entirely to the ceiling and instead of wasting needless wood and finishing, the artist paints the upper portion and the ceiling. It is tedious but economical.

In theatre sets, since the faces of the audience farther back than the fifth row are always blurred, the studio does not fill its theatres with extras. Instead, the heads of people are painted in from the fifth row back. This is very simple. The artist knows where the seats in the theatre are supposed to be and puts the heads above them, row on row, and the blurred effect hides the fact that they are merely daubs of paint. In “Her Private Affair,” the immense theatre set was constructed at a nominal figure. Matting was resorted to in the matter of the boxes at the opera. The curtain was a real one, but the boxes were painted in and filled with people and the film was double and triple exposed.

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Behind the Scenes with the MARCH of TIME

by JAMES DYSON

A FLOURISH of trumpets and the announcement “March of Time”, coming through the loudspeaker at your local movie theater, represents the introduction of a new kind of motion picture journalism—dramatized news pictorially presented to impress you with the importance of current events.

Like the fast moving drama of its daily radio news presentation and the vivid stories of its companion magazine, March of Time on the screen has won public favor because it combines the striking events of the present with the unusual background so often forgotten in the hustle of the average newspaper editorial rooms. A clever harmony of realism and illusion swiftly flashed on the screen indelibly stamps on the minds of the spectators the historic importance or the social or economic significance of the story being unfolded before them.

The making of this new type of newsreel is a captivating story of originality put to work. The ingenuity of the inventor, the trick lighting and angles of the expert photographer, the realistic portrayal of actions and voices of personalities by the prominent persons themselves in the role of amateur actors or by professional character actors, and the audacity of the fearless news reporter all play a part with the psychological importance of sound to convert the ordinary newsreel scene into a story that will not be forgotten.

March of Time’s camera crews, stationed in important centers of the world, are ready to dash to an unfolding news story and catch real life scenes. But when circumstances make this impossible, the technique of re-enactment is employed. The completed film is a judicious blend of old and new pictures, real voices and actors, actual scenes and re-enacted scenes, harmonized with true sound effects, the voices of the narrators, and superimposed sound.

The task of supervising the production of each release, which comes out once a month, is in the hands of three men—Roy E. Larsen, president of the March of Time Corporation; John S. Martin, vice president and editor, and Louise de Rochmont, production chief. These are the men who cull from the news events of the month the happenings that are significantly important to the present and future life of the motion picture public.

It is the task of these men to see that each sequence has some bearing on a news story of national significance and that it is treated intimately. Instead of the short unrelated scenes of the usual newsreel, each sequence must have a definite beginning, a middle, and an end—it must be a complete story in itself.

If necessary the March of Time will go to considerable expense and call upon the » greatest ingenuity of the camerman for a scene needed to complete a story. It would have paid a good sum for a few intimate close-up shots of Sir Basil Zaharoff, the mysterious European munitions king, at the time the editors were working on a story of the munitions industry. As none was available, a March of Time cameraman was sent from Paris to the Riviera to obtain the snaps.

The cameraman was well aware of the difficulties facing him, for the 85-year-old Zaharoff is surrounded by a seemingly impenetrable bodyguard to ward off photographers and reporters. By posing as a taxi driver with a camera concealed in his cab, the March of Time cameraman obtained several excellent shots of the munitions magnate descending his hotel steps and being assisted into his Rolls-Royce. The same cameraman also got a job as a pushcart peddler of refreshments at a railroad station from which Zaharoff was to depart. When Sir Basil appeared in a wheel chair, the cameraman pushed his cart by, impertinently offering his wares to one of the body guards while an automatic camera, concealed among the oranges, took the first close-up motion pictures ever made of the “mystery man of Europe.” The preparation of a story for a March of Time sequence is assigned to one or more script writers. The script may be rewritten from twenty to 150 times before it is approved by the editors. Once it is approved, conferences are held to determine what camera shots will be needed. Some of the scenes needed already are on file in the laboratories or can be obtained from film libraries. Others must be re-enacted because no camera record exists. These may be made with the actual persons, involved in the story, performing as amateur actors. If necessary doubles of these persons are called upon to re-enact the scene and supply the necessary realism.

Prominent Men Enact Scenes These re-enactments are probably the most difficult part of the entire work and call for a great amount of ingenuity.

Sometime ago, in an issue which described the career of the late Huey P. Long, the senator himself posed for bits of the episode in his Washington office. In another issue, which was devoted to the retirement of Giulio Gatti-Casazza, general director of New York’s Metropolitan opera house, the famous Italian allowed a cameraman, dressed in top hat and evening clothes, to shoot scenes of himself backstage at the opera house. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes of the Supreme Court is another important personality who has permitted himself to be photographed for a sequence describing life in Washington.

Editors Must Forsee Events The March of Time has on file the names and photographs of hundreds of actors, who can be called upon to appear in the scenes that must be re-enacted. There also is a list of actors who can impersonate the voices and actions of important characters. These sometimes are called upon for only a few feet of film necessary to complete a story.

Because the professional news cameraman can not always be at the scene when a story breaks, the editors of the March of Time are willing to correspond with amateurs who may have been fortunate enough to be present or who have unusual scenes which might prove of importance in the filming of future issues.

Sometimes the editors must look forward to events that are expected to occur. The scenes must then be pre-enacted. This was the case in a sequence that depicted the inauguration of the trans-Pacific Clipper air service by Pan American Airways. The filming of this story actually took place several months in advance of the actual date of the flight.

The filming took place in the Caribbean Sea, thousands of miles away from the scene of the takeoff on the Pacific coast, at the time Pan American was testing the Clipper ships that were to be used on the airline. Mr. de Rochemont, his assistant, Tom Orchard, and a crew of cameramen spent three weeks preenacting the flight. The company’s air base at Miami was transformed into a movie studio.

From blueprints of the landing stations in far-off Pacific islands sets were built on Florida shores. Through the help of the U. S. Hydrographic office an abandoned lighthouse, the exact duplicate of the Spanish type lighthouse in the Philippines, was located. The actors, that were needed to take the place of passengers on the airliners, were recruited from vacationists at the resort.

The illusion of reality in the March of Time, when re-enacted scenes must be combined with real shots, is made possible by the expert supervision of the editors in cutting the negatives. The sound effects, narrator’s voice, and music—each on different reels of celluloid—are assembled in the cutting room.

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Simple Things Complicated in Joe Cook Comedy

THE unemployment problem in this country would be quickly solved if all inventors would follow in the footsteps of Joe Cook, for that inimitable comedian of the stage and screen seems to have a perfect genius for complicating the simple things of life and employing nine men where but two were used before.

Take, for instance, the device pictured above, which is taken from a scene in “Fine and Dandy,” a Joe Cook musical comedy which is enjoying a successful run on Broadway. The hilarious Joe, who seems capable of performing every stunt ever attempted on the stage, in this scene decides to play a saxophone and figures out that to obtain the proper effect he must be accompanied by a trap-drummer’s triangle.

Now any ordinary saxophone player would be content to have the drummer in the orchestra pit tap the triangle at the proper moment and let it go at that. But not Joe Cook. Joe searches High and low for the world’s champion sleepy triangle tapper, and is then forced to go to the extreme pictured above to wake up the sleeping musician in time to get in the musical “pings” at the proper moment. Another one of Cook’s inventions in this comedy is the “Fruit and Flowers” idea. Joe is in the business of selling fruit and flowers.

and business being somewhat slow, he figures out a way of boosting his trade. It’s a boxing glove at the end of a spring which, when released, strikes the customer in the ribs, breaking two of them.

The customer then goes to the hospital and his friends send him fruit and flowers. All very simple, and it works—on the stage. Of course, if the fruit and flowers are bought elsewhere. Cook loses.

Three Dimension Movies Leap from Screen

PATENTS have recently been granted to Jacob Burkhardt of Detroit, Michigan, on a type of motion picture film which produces pictures having so realistic a three dimension effect that the actors seem almost to walk from the screen among the audience.

The new film has two pictures in a single frame, and the top and bottom of these pictures are parallel with the sides of the film instead of at right angles. The lower of the two pictures is the image or action picture while the upper is the background picture.

The background of the action picture is blacked out, as is the background picture in the space occupied by the foreground picture, so that the light from those sections of the film will not appear on the screen to mar the projection.

A refracting prism, placed in front of the lens, projects the side by side images as one complete picture on the screen. This prism also turns the image at right angles, so that it will appear right side up instead of standing on one end. Space has been allowed on the film for a sound track.

Radio Calls Movie Star to Work

HERBERT MUNDIN, movie star, recently had to work in four different pictures at the same time. Finding it rather difficult to keep track of his working day schedule, and to know just where he was wanted next, he had to use a portable radio set.

With radio communication the directors had but to step up to the microphone to call their “much-in-demand” actor.

The tiny radio set and batteries are supported by a slingstrap. Headphones are used for reception, with a tiny loop aerial attached to them. No ground wire is needed since transmitter is close.

“Movie-of-U” Makes Film for Screen Test in Six Minutes

ALL those aspiring to fame as movie stars can save themselves the costly trip to Hollywood for a try-out by using the newly invented “Movie-of-U” device shown in the photo at the left. The chief feature of the machine is a self-operating and developing camera. The aspirant enters the booth, inserts a quarter in the slot, presses the button that sets the electrically powered camera in motion, and proceeds to act. In six minutes after she has finished, the film is developed and is projected on the screen above the head for inspection.

Travelling Dressing Room—Movie Star Introduces Her “Dressmobile”

KEEPING temperamental moving picture stars happy and comfortable while on location has long been a serious problem with directors, but Metro-Goldwyn seems to be on the right track in the solution of this problem by providing luxurious traveling dressing rooms for the expensive talent.

To Marion Davies goes the credit for the idea of the dressing room on wheels which may be hitched behind a truck and towed wherever the company may happen to be working. The new moving bungalow has all the comforts of home including an electrical refrigerator, radio set, hot and cold water, boudoir equipment, and complete wardrobe facilities. Deep springs and powerful shock absorbers make riding easy. The running gear may be detached and rolled to the side.

Napkin Comes with Popcorn
A napkin is provided with each box of buttered popcorn, by an invention of Aston L. Moore, of South Bend, Ind. The popcorn box has a slot through which the napkin may be extracted from its storage space between the inside of the box and the oiled paper containing the popcorn, where it is kept free from stain.

Movies Aid Firemen’s Efficiency

FIREMEN of Paris, France, have devised a novel method of improving their fire fighting efficiency. They take movies of the various stages of the battle with the flames, and later study the films to see where they could have done better.

The movies of the fire are made from a special camera mounted on a platform on the rear of a motorbike.

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MOVIES IN THREE DIMENSIONS

How to adapt any 8 or 16mm movie camera and projector to take and show stereo movies.

By William G. Esmond

IF you own an 8 or 16mm movie camera and projector, you can make your own amazingly lifelike three dimensional movies in full color or black and white at a cost of less than $6 for equipment.

The principle of stereoscopic vision is simple. Each eye sees a slightly different aspect of any view. The right eye sees slightly more of the right side of solid objects in the foreground, and the left eye sees slightly more of the left side. In addition, when the eyes are gazing at an object in the foreground, the objects seen by the right eye in the background are displaced to the right, and the objects seen by the left eye in the background are displaced to the left. These two slightly different images that fall on the retinas of the right and left eye are transmitted to the brain and are fused into a scene which enables us to perceive depth.

The principle of stereoscopic movies taken and shown by the methods described in this article is quite simple. The images which are normally seen by the right and left eye of any scene are recorded photographically by means of a movie camera and an attachment, as two images, side by side, on a single frame of film. The film is processed in the normal manner and then projected on the screen and is viewed in such a manner so that the right image is seen only by the right eye, and the left image only by the left eye. The two images are then fused into a three-dimensional image. The amount of detail visible is far greater than that seen with ordinary movies.

The construction of an attachment for an 8mm movie camera is shown in the drawings. The attachment consists of two front surface aluminized mirrors and two right angle prisms mounted as shown. This at- ‘ tachment causes two images of any scene to fall upon the movie film. A record of the scene as seen through the right aperture falls on the left side of the film and the scene as seen through the left aperture falls on the right side of the film. Stereo pairs are thus recorded in rapid succession on the movie film. The mirrors and prisms are mounted on a stiff piece of wood or plastic and this unit is, in turn, mounted on a box made to receive the camera. The unit is mounted so that the prisms are centered in front of the camera lens with the line of separation between the two prisms being perfectly vertical and in the exact center of the camera lens. The unit shown was constructed for a Cine-Kodak Eight, Model 25 camera.

Front surface mirrors and prisms can be purchased from the Edmund Scientific Corp., 101 East Glouster Pike, Barring-ton, New Jersey.

To adjust the mounting before taking pictures, a simple double convex lens is placed in front of the prisms and is carefully located in the optical axis of the viewing device in essentially the same position as the camera lens. A ground glass screen is placed behind the lens to serve as a focusing screen. The focal length of this testing lens is not too important, but should approximate the focal length of the movie camera lens.

We are now ready to adjust the stereo attachment. Take the device into a dimly lit room and aim it directly at an object about 15 ft. away which is brilliantly illuminated. This can best be accomplished by placing the camera temporarily in the device and sighting through the view-finder until the test object is accurately centered. Remove the camera and install the test lens and [Continued on page 155] ground glass. Turn the 45° mirrors until the test object is centered in the strip on each side of the centerline on the ground glass screen. The object should be at the same level on each side. If one image is higher, it will be necessary to tilt the mirror on the opposite side slightly until the images are on the same level. If the image falls above or below the horizontal center line, it will be necessary to tilt the stereo unit on the camera holding box until the test object image falls on the horizontal line.

The next operation to carry out is the location of the right and left edges of the masking device. Block out the image from the left-hand side of the stereo attachment by covering the left mirror. Locate a strip of cardboard in the plane of the masking device. The image will be seen to be on the left side of the ground glass and when the cardboard strip is moved to the right, the right edge of the left image, i.e., the center edge, will be seen to move to the left. When the cardboard edge is moved to the left, the center edge of the left image on the ground glass will move to the right. By trial and error, move this edge back and forth until a position is found in which the right edge of the left image on the ground glass is exactly on the centerline.

When this has been accomplished, mark the location of this edge, and then proceed in a like manner, to locate the left border of the masking device for the left side of the stereo attachment. When the location of the two edges has been determined, cut a piece of cardboard exactly the right length and mount it as illustrated so that the edges are in the positions previously determined. This device prevents the right picture from creeping over into the left half of the frame and vice versa.

When these adjustments have been completed, the unit is ready to take stereo pictures. Load film into the camera in the regular manner. Since the angle of view has been cut in half by virtue of the fact that we are putting two pictures side by side on one frame of the film, it is necessary to cut out one-quarter of each side of the camera view finder with black masking tape. Since there is some light loss in reflections, and since only half of the camera lens takes part in the formation of each picture, it is necessary to open the diaphragm two stops. That is, if you normally shoot Kodachrome in bright sun light at f-8, open up to f-5.6 with the stereo attachment.

When the developed film is returned, it will have a stereo pair in each frame of film.

If the film is projected in the regular manner, a stereo pair will be seen on the screen, with the right hand member of the pair on the right.

And now for viewing. The problem is to present the right image to the right eye without the right eye being able to see the left image and vice versa. To polarize the light, secure a moderately large piece of flat polaroid sheet. Such a piece of polaroid can be obtained in the form of an automobile sun visor. These visors have been on sale recently for about one dollar. If you are unable to secure a polaroid sun visor, polaroid disks can be purchased from the Edmund Scientific Corp.

Construct a frame and mount two pieces of polaroid material in each half of the rectangle with the polarization axis of the right piece horizontal and the left piece vertical. If this frame is placed about six inches in front of the movie projector and carefully located, it will polarize the right image horizontally and the left image vertically. If the polarized images are then each allowed to fall on a flat front surface aluminized mirror, the images can be directed to the screen and accurately superimposed, one on top of the other.

You’ll need a screen which will not depolarize the light—an ordinary glass beaded screen won’t do. You can make such a screen by painting a flat surface with aluminum paint, or by grinding a sheet of window glass with No. 400 carborundum. Carborundum for this purpose can be secured from the Precision Optical Co., 1001 East 163rd Street, New York 59, N. Y. If the ground glass screen is used, the images are viewed from the back of the screen and each spectator wears eyeglasses containing polaroid disks. These glasses can be made by replacing the lenses in sunglasses with disks of polaroid material cut from the auto sun visor previously mentioned. The right polaroid disk is turned so that the polarization axis is horizontal and the left disk is turned so that the polarization axis is vertical. Thus the right image is able to enter only the right eye and the left image enter the left eye. The result is a brilliant, full-colored, three-dimensional motion picture. It should be noted that the reflection from the front surface mirrors in projection reverses the images, but when the scene is viewed on the back of the screen, the image is reversed again to its normal relationship. The use of the polaroid material cuts down on the light reaching the screen, but when a ground glass screen is used and viewed from the rear, you get a very brilliant image.

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Marvelous Movie Miniatures Portray Cities of the Future

THE scenarist’s dream of New York City in 1980 has been done in miniature at Hollywood for “Just Imagine,” a motion picture fantasy. This model took five months to complete and cost approximately $200,000. It was built in an old blimp hangar once used by the U. S. Army balloon corps and covers a ground area 75×225 feet, representing the most extravagant effort yet conceived by the American cinema industry.

Lofty office buildings 250 stories high, canals carried overhead on suspension cables, airplanes that land on a few square feet of flat space on the side of tall structures, streets with nine lanes and nine levels of traffic, are among the interesting features. Although the model city is futuristic, its construction violates no engineering practices. It is really engineering skill carried a bit farther than today.

A crew of 200 technical experts and artisans moulded and built the miniature, which is raised on a platform above the ground. More than five tons of plaster, to say nothing of hundreds of pounds of lumber, glass and other materials, were employed in this “giant” miniature, the tallest tower of which is 40 feet high — which would be close to 2000 feet in actuality. The model is built to a scale of one-fourth inch to one foot.

The utmost fidelity to truth was observed in making this set. No details of exterior construction were left undone. Even real glass was used for windows, and the plaster was colored just the same as in real structures.

Related posts

• What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008? (Jan, 1931)
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• Big Cities to Have COOLED Sidewalks (Jan, 1931)
• Endless BELT TRAINS for Future Cities (Jan, 1931)
• New York in the Year 2000 (Jan, 1931)
• Proposes Orientable Roof-Top Airports For Cities (Jan, 1931)

MOVIES NOW MADE FROM “BLUEPRINTS”

Motion picture directors now work from drawings when getting out a new picture. Before they start “shooting,” a set of sketches showing each scene in detail is made. They show how actors will stand or be grouped against backgrounds and how lighting effects will be arranged. On the margin of each sketch are notes or diagrams showing the number and arrangements of cameras to be used.

Cameramen, directors, and actors study these drawings, known as “pictorial continuity,” before going to work on the picture. When work starts, each one thus knows beforehand the requirements for each scene. Four hundred and twenty-eight of these drawings were made recently for a picture now under production in Hollywood.

Movie Fans Collect Stars’ Voices
A LIBRARY of phonograph records constitutes the unusual “autograph album” of two Hollywood enthusiasts, whose hobby is collecting the voices of movie actors and actresses. Not satisfied with mere signatures scrawled in a book, they have developed a technique of their own to obtain a more interesting souvenir. Leaving a theater after a “personal appearance,” a film star is greeted by Murray Bolen, the interviewer of the team, and engaged in conversation before a microphone that he holds in his hand. A trailing wire leads to a car parked at the curb, where his fellow hobbyist, Jean Jones, manipulates sound apparatus that records the chat. After processing, the finished record is decorated for identification with a picture of the celebrity whose “spoken autograph” it holds. It can be played on any phonograph, and is good for about 100 reproductions. Photographs on this page show the pair engaged in their novel form of celebrity hunting, from the original interview to the finished product.

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Hobbies Are His Hobby

HIS friends laughed when Cliff Arquette announced that he planned to create puppets which not only would emulate Charlie McCarthy by moving their mouths and eyes, but also would raise their hair when frightened. As he worked, Arquette solved the mechanical problems one by one, and recently a show of his creation appeared in an all-puppet motion-picture sequence which is considered tops for mechanical actors.

Arquette is not a professional puppeteer. He plays more than fifty parts on various N.B.C. programs, from Jack Benny’s father to the lawyer who harasses George Burns. He is the whole supporting cast on several air shows, and often plays a half dozen parts in a half hour. When not acting, he develops a variety of home interests, working quietly in his garage on bits of tin and lengths of pipe rescued from junk yards. He is known in Hollywood as “the man with a thousand hobbies.”

Walk through his home and you may see marionettes in various stages of building, a novel recording outfit and rubber-cushioned microphone, spotlights made from large popcorn cans, an odd projection screen, a lightweight truck for still and movie cameras, and a set-up for filming movie cartoons in color. Arquette made all of them, – As all hobbyists know, one development leads to another. Take the marionettes, for instance. Arquette became interested in puppets five years ago. They must be different, he knew, if his little figures were to receive recognition. So he devised a plan for cutting the bodies six at a time, modeled the heads, and reproduced them in a plastic material. Then he installed movable mouths and eyes, for good measure setting the hair in a skull cap hinged through the head to a spring which could be controlled to make the hair literally stand on end.

“To make sure these little fellows operate properly,” Arquette tells you, “we design them on paper, and follow the drawings in detail.” “We” includes Bob and Bill Jones, two friends. So popular have the marionettes become that Arquette turns them out for his friends.

Primarily a showman, Arquette went on from animated puppets to animation on celluloid. Two years ago he was seeking some way to record the growth of his baby from Christmas to Christmas. But by what novel approach? He hit upon the idea of producing a fantasy in colored pictures.

First he trained a sixteen-millimeter camera on a ball mirror, which both reduced and distorted the baby’s figure. Using this film record as a guide, Arquette made scores of drawings on celluloid, exactly as the professional cartoon makers work. He placed his camera on top of a drill-press stand, adjusted two lights on the sides to avoid reflections from the celluloid sheets, and began shooting.

Every year he adds to his original script, using the cartoon idea to record the baby’s reaction to his Christmas toys. He exposes two frames on each bit of action. By lowering the camera eighteen inches in quarter-inch steps and changing focus three times, he moves in for close-ups, thus making one set of painted “cells” do double duty. At that, he paints 1,500 separate cells for 100 feet of action, shooting at times through six cells of foreground action into background scenery.

This fantasy led to another interesting hobby development. Arquette writes radio scripts. Continuity of the cartoon led him to think he could evaluate his work better if he created an entire program in sound before submitting it to a sponsor. Accordingly, he built a complete recording outfit, assembling a six-stage amplifier, two turntables, recording head, two pickups, a radio receiver, microphone, and boom.

Standing before the microphone for one half-hour show, he recorded a theme song, swung into an announcement, and alternately played the parts of a vocalist, a comedy team, an old lady giving household hints, a guest star (Lionel Barrymore) and a guest conductor (Ben Bernie). At proper spots, he dubbed in music and applause to make the thing even more realistic.

To achieve the best possible reproduction, the playwright-producer-announcer-actor-inventor mounted the dynamic mike in a sponge-rubber-lined tin can. “This arrangement,” he explains, “increases sensitivity and kills live hum and shock.”

ARQUETTE pursues his hobbies with an eye to the future. Recently, while pondering the problems of television, he asked himself: “Where will I fit into talking-pic-tures-on-the-air ? ”

He recognized two hurdles which must be overcome—quick changes of costume and make-up for the actors, and equally rapid changes of scenery. To step from one costume into another is simple, but to go from youth to old age in seconds presented a more complex problem. He submitted the makeup question to the drawing board, and from his garage came plans for a close-fitting rubber mask, which snaps over the face.

Arquette first models a mask in clay, casts it in moulage, brushes on hot latex in thin layers, and finally tints the cheeks and forehead. He carves in the wrinkles and tints the surface for age effects. Already he has worn such a mask in stage appearances, made up as an elderly female comic. Actors, fitted in advance, can change faces in a few seconds, while the television show fades out and in, according to a novel idea for quick scenery changes that he has worked out.

He bought an oblong piece of glass, thirty-six by forty-two inches, and applied eight coats of liquid transparent cellulose. With the ninth coat, he mixed whiting, which provided a dull surface. When the last coat had dried, he stripped the hardened cellulose film from the glass, punched eyelets through the edges, and mounted it in a wooden frame so that it would serve as a motion-picture screen. Around the center he added four coats of cellulose to diffuse the “hot spot”

that would be thrown from the projector. With this ingenious homemade screen, he proceeded to make “process projection” close-ups, filming the head and shoulders of his wife against a motion picture projected onto the screen from the rear. As hobby No. 1001, Arquette now plans to build a much larger screen, piece together on a thirty-five millimeter film various natural scenes in proper sequence, prepare masks for several changes by a small troupe of actors, and have them ready for a complete show when television tryouts hit Hollywood.

ALL his devices are useful, yet few cost more than a couple of dollars. Two lights used in making photographs, both movie and still, stand on bases which a decade ago were steering wheels in fine automobiles. Cost: fifteen cents each. The stands themselves were music racks, picked up for a dime apiece in a junk store. Beside the stairway you see a shade which swings in all directions on a swivel to shield the lenses of his many cameras from the direct light of the sun or lamps. That shade once shielded pas- sengers in a sedan.

Standing in a corner of the dining room, merging with the walls in both color and form, is a barrel on wheels. When swung around, however, the barrel reveals itself as a miniature three-tier bar, with room for twelve glasses and eight bottles. Arquette started with a three-ply packing barrel, sawed out one side to form a “U,” added shelves, bound the top with copper weather-stripping, decorated it with large-headed upholsterers’ nails, and mounted the fixture on four casters.

Whenever he needs some new device in a hobby he builds it. Not long ago he was taking pictures in his garden, and was having trouble moving his tripod. Two weeks later he rolled his camera down the driveway on a collapsible truck, which resembles a “T” when open, but folds up into a small package. Weighing only a pound and a half, it will support the weight of his heaviest movie camera. By punching a button brake with his foot, he easily locks it in place.

Pursuing a thousand hobbies is Arquette’s first interest in life. With them he not only has a lot of fun in his spare time, but tries to keep a step ahead in his profession. No useless trinkets clutter his workbench. “Unless they serve a good purpose, I don’t want them,” he says—which is pretty good advice for any hobbyist.

MUSIC MADE VISIBLE IN WEIRD MOVIE

Futuristic patterns of light and shadow are projected upon a movie screen to accompany the music of Wagner’s “Song to the Evening Star,” in a unique sound film recently completed for exhibition in a New York theater. Marching rhymically across the audience’s field of view, the odd designs were produced by trick photography, with the aid of bracelets, toy balls, silks, and crushed tissue ribbons.

Famous Manager Predicts Egg-Shaped Playhouses

Plans to Paint Movie Theater Sets on Walls with Light THE day is coming soon when we shall not merely look at the movies; we shall live in them. By scientific blending of color-light painting with action and music, by consummate artistic realism, we shall be transported to a vivid land of drama, where pulsating, colorful life springs from the very walls of the theater in which we sit. While the drama unfolds before us, we shall be encompassed by ever changing lifelike scenes—now the crashing waves of a sea; now the shadows of a great forest; now the towering buildings and the crowded streets of a city—projected in color on the walls about us.

We have this assurance from the managing director of the world’s largest movie theater—from S. L. Rothafel, who already has carried into execution in the Capitol Theater of New York City some of his ideas for synchronizing light painting, music, and drama, which he prophesies will bring the motion picture art to a degree of realistic perfection surpassing the legitimate stage.

The theater in which these ideas will be fulfilled, as pictured by Rothafel, will have an egg-shaped auditorium with bare walls. He describes it as follows: “Entering the theater, we are carried by escalators to an upper floor, where we find ourselves in a vast auditorium seating 5000 persons. Instead of elaborate architectural decorations, the walls of the egg-shaped auditorium are bare and white. But as the lights go down, we are suddenly flooded with colored light from a thousand re- flectors cleverly hidden in the walls. Then, as a hidden orchestra plays, the walls that a moment ago appeared bare, become alive with changing panoramas—a forest, a sea, a great city —each in turn painted on the walls by colored light projectors above.

“While we are thus carried in our imagination to the land where our drama is to be enacted, the drama itself begins to unfold on the screen, the moving figures and the settings made real by lifelike colors and by stereoscopic perspective. Action, color, music, delicately blended and ever changing, melt our souls into the story on the screen, and we experience what the movies have been striving for ever since their first conception in crude form. “My reasons for saying that the moving picture theater of the future will be an egg-shaped, balcony-less, bare-walled auditorium are various, ranging from the esthetic to the purely economical. In the first place, it is obvious that a theater of this shape will occupy the least valuable ground in the block— the ‘core;’ it will have a frontage of but a few feet; it will allow the entire lower floor to be used as a store. The audience will enter from the rear and leave by the front, saving endless confusion. The painting of walls with changing scenes by light would not only mark an advance from a standpoint of beauty, but it would actually be an economy.

“Ten thousand scenes could be painted every year for far less than the decoration of the walls would cost. Light painting would not be possible, of course, on flat, rectangular walls. In the matter of seating arrangements it will make possible a greater number of seats and more comfortable than a theater of any other shape could provide. “All of these things may not be accomplished. But I can speak with surety when I say that most of them undoubtedly will be accomplished in the near future.”

He Began as a Failure
ONCE a failure at everything he attempted, S. L. Rothafel today is managing director of the world’s greatest movie theater and ranks as one of the ten foremost motion picture geniuses of America—just because he learned how to make use of his own brilliant “visionary” ideas such as he presents on this page.

Rothafel began his movie career in a makeshift theater rigged up behind a barroom in a Pennsylvania mining town, renting his seats from the undertaker. There he conceived the idea of twilight projection of motion pictures to relieve the gloom of theater auditoriums. As a result, he was selected to manage a large theater in Milwaukee, Wis. Later he assumed charge of the Regent, Strand, Rivoli, Rialto, and finally the Capitol theaters in New York City.

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Mickey Mouse Goes Classical

By ANDREW R. BOONE

MOVING sound has been added to moving pictures to bring greater realism to the screen. Accompanying Walt Disney’s newest Technicolor creation, “Fantasia,” in which Mickey Mouse and a host of new companions perform to the rhythms of classical music, this latest Hollywood invention made its first public appearance a few weeks ago at the Broadway Theater in New York.

Moving sound is literally that. Four circuits using sixty loudspeakers make it possible to chase music right around an audience, out of the screen and back into it, or make notes die away into infinity overhead. The sound equipment alone fills thirty-five packing cases. For that reason “Fantasia” will be screened only in selected metropolitan theaters where the speaker systems can be installed.

Two years of painstaking work by Disney, R.C.A. engineers, and 1,000 Disney assistants went into “Fantasia,” which is really a pictorial interpretation of seven great compositions. The music is by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Deems Taylor, music critic and composer, aided in making the production.

Behind “Fantasia” lies Walt Disney’s desire to always give the public something new and better than what they have known in the past.

“We know,” he said recently, “that music emerging from one speaker behind the screen sounds thin, tinkly, and strainy. We wanted to reproduce such beautiful masterpieces as Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria,’ and Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony so that audiences would feel as though they were standing on the podium with Stokowski.”

To achieve this effect, he knew that means must be found to spread sound throughout the theater, that “point sources” must be concealed from the ear. The sound recordings must be such that each and every instrument or voice would be heard clearly and distinctly in its proper proportion to the whole orchestral effect.

The recording alone for “Fantasia” took almost eighteen months. Approximately 3,000,000 feet of sound track from individual takes, prints, and remakes were condensed into the final 10,778-foot, four-track negative.

Neither Disney nor the engineers knew just where the experiment would lead when the 110 members of the orchestra first took their places on the stage of the Philadelphia Academy of Music early in April, 1939. Thirty-three microphones faced the musicians. From them nine channels carried the music to nine recorders set up in the basement of the building. Seven channels transmitted sounds from individual groups of instruments such as the wood winds and the violins. The eighth caught the complete orchestration, while the ninth carried the beat of a telegraph instrument which later enabled the animators in Hollywood to fit the action of “Fantasia” to the tempo of the music.

Seven weeks Stokowski and the orchestra labored. All that time a second director faced the recording instruments, guiding the recording on film of each passage. From a duplicate score he brought choirs in and out, stepped up solos. Engineers tuned volume controls, guided by oscilloscopes which told them just how much sound was coming through their machines.

Exactly 483,000 feet of sound track were recorded in forty-two days. Cans of film were shipped by air to Hollywood for processing. After that retakes were made where necessary to obtain exactly the desired tonal combinations of choirs, soloists, and instruments.

Then came the problem of mixing these sound tracks into one realistic whole. First the engineers tried multiple speakers fed by a single sound-transmission system. That spread the sound over a wide area, but when the characters spoke, the synchronization of words and lip movements was lost.

There were further experiments before the producers were satisfied. The solution was finally found in combining the nine tracks into four; three for “entertainment sounds,” such as voices, music, and special effects, and the fourth for a control frequency governing the volume of the other three.

Operators in the projection booths of theaters where “Fantasia” is presented will face no unusual complications. Their problems will be the routine ones of threading the film and focusing the picture.

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• What Big Arms You Have . . . and So Many (Jan, 1941)
• Nutty Inventions Paid Me A Million – by Rube Goldberg (Jan, 1941)
• What Makes MICKEY MOUSE Move? (Jan, 1941)
• Sound Tricks of Mickey Mouse (Jan, 1941)

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$97 Movie Made in Hollywood Kitchen

By A. L. WOOLDRIDGE Special Hollywood Correspondent

Stories of millions of dollars spent in producing ten-reel movie features have given the public an idea that only a big company could produce profit-making motion pictures. But Robert Florey, expending $97 produced a picture which is making him wealthy!

IF YOU have $100 or so, plus a few old cigar boxes, a motion picture camera, and a desire to break into the movies—as who hasn’t?—you can be your own director and cameraman and produce a motion picture worthy of exhibition in theaters throughout the country. That is, you can it you are as skillful and economical as Robert Florey, who cut his sets from cardboard and cigar boxes and produced in a Hollywood kitchen, at a total cost of $97, a movie which is being shown in United Artists theaters all over America.

Futuristic creations, Florey calls them. “Creations of a genius!” say old studio heads.

Florey, who has been about everything in pictures from wardrobe designer to assistant director and “gag man,” has exploded the theory that a “movie” must be made in a million-dollar studio beneath the glare of the Kleigs, while soft music is playing. Rather, he has demonstrated that a marketable production may be filmed most anywhere—in a kitchen where the music of pots and pans is played, or out in the street where tram cars and traffic take roles.

Hollywood was astonished a few years ago when Josef von Sternberg made “Salvation Hunters” in a studio on Poverty Row at a cost of $4,500. Critics didn’t think much of “Salvation Hunters,” but it was extensively shown and made money. Robert Florey’s pictures now make von Sternberg’s $4,500 accomplishment look like nabob extravagance, as neither he nor his associates could afford any such reckless expenditure of money. One hundred “bucks” had to be the limit on the first production because one hundred “bucks” was about all the money he had. Even now, while their offerings are going good, that sum isn’t greatly exceeded.

“We didn’t have any treasury, any stockholders, any props, any anything except our weekly pay-checks,” said Florey at the side of his camera when I called the other day. “And,” he added, “some of us didn’t even have pay-checks. I had the idea for my first picture and one night in a restaurant I met Slav Vorkapich, the Serbian painter, to whom I confided my plans.

” ‘Let’s buy the short ends of films at the studio,’ I suggested, ‘and make a picture. Short ends will cost us about 1 cent a foot. New film in rolls costs about 3 cents. I’ll cut out sets in miniature—make them from cardboard that comes back with my laundered shirts, and from boxes. Then you paint ‘em. When we need big scenes, we’ll grab ‘em on the streets.’ ”

The idea hit. Florey and Vorkapich pooled their possessions and went to work. They found they would have to invest fully $3 at a 5-and-10-cent store for three toy trains, four toy automobiles and a boy’s mechanical building set. Then there would have to be string, mucilage, a paper of pins and a few other small items.

In Vorkapich’s kitchen one night, Florey cut “buildings” with scissors and knife while his companion painted doors, windows, fire escapes and chimneys upon them. It took days to complete the task. Then the “producer” went out in search of actors temporarily out of employment, or rather, “between pictures,” as they term it.

They found Jules Raucort, a Belgian, who years ago was leading man for Pauline Frederick and later the star of several Maurice Tourneur productions. They stumbled upon Voya George, a Serbian whom Vorkapich knew. Both agreed to lend their talents, not for immediate compensation but for “part of the benefits” which might accrue. Adrian March, an “extra” girl, was induced to play the heroine of the picture for similar remuneration. In addition to these, the producers took roles themselves. Gregg Toland, cameraman for Samuel Goldwyn, agreed to photograph the production.

“Twenty scenes an hour,” directed Florey. “This is going to be a great picture. One hundred and fifty scenes. Let’s go.”

“Crazy” Story Makes Hit Their story, “The Life and Death of a Hollywood Extra,” was based on the experiences of an actor seeking employment. On every hand he encountered the sign, “No Casting Today.” He moved about in a daze, tired, hungry, revolving in his mind, “No Casting Today! No Casting Today I” A producer valuing him as only one of the thousands of “extras” brands him on the forehead with the number 9,413. He begins going “blah-blah” and moving his lips like a dummy. The world goes dizzy, buildings whirl round and round, street cars shoot toward heaven. From unexpected places pop out traffic signals “STOP” and “GO.” The goofy extra tries to comply with the confusing directions.

He meets a star who “high-hats” him, but finds that the star, too, is going crazy. Then the little heroine becomes demented. Finally, in utter exhaustion and thoroughly disgusted with life, the poor “extra” lies down to die. His spirit leaves its earthly body and turns to look at what has been carrying it around.

Then the extra awakens.

“Crazy!” one exclaims on seeing it.

“Impressionistic!” corrects Florey in mock hauteur.

Just the same, persons laugh uproariously at the exotic, distorted, “looney tale.” Virtually every trick of the motion picture camera is incorporated in its making. There are cut-backs, fade-ins, fade-outs, lap dis- solves, scenes shown upside down and others revolving.

At a private showing in the home of Charlie Chaplin, there were present Joseph Schenck, Doug and Mary, Camilla Horn, Harry d’Arrast and a few other motion picture people. As the impressionistic creation began to unreel, the audience snickered. Then it guffawed. Presently, in a dignified way, it howled.

“That’s good enough for our theaters,” exclaimed Mr. Schenck. “I think we could use a half dozen more.”

Players Share in Melon The total expenditure on the production was classified, according to Florey’s books, as follows: Negative ……………….$25.00 5-and-10-cent Store Props….. 3.00 Developing and printing……. 55.00 Transportation, odds and ends. . 14.00 $97.00

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Putting Color Into the Movies

Everyone has seen the new color-talkies on the screen, but few people know how the startlingly life-like color effects are produced. This article gives the story of how technicolor films are made.

by RAY FRASER

BACK in 1915, Herbert T. Kalmus, a struggling chemistry instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, invented a camera which took two pictures at the same click.

He had hopes that it would prove helpful to the country constable in trapping the speeding motorist. The picture thus obtained would prove scientifically the speed at which the automobile was traveling and also register the number of the vehicle.

When he tried to find his way to a practical application, he found that one camera of this type would cost more than the sum total of taxes collected by most townships for a single year. But he felt he had an idea and clung to it tenaciously.

He thought of retaining the principle of the multiple-picture camera and concentrating on the injection of color into its prod- uct. Prominent Boston business men believed in this prophet of colored pictures and contributed $140,000 to attest to their faith.

Professor Kalmus, who has risen to the chair of physics and chemistry today, with a string of twenty degrees bestowed by the greatest universities on earth, worked sedulously for three years to perfect his first color camera.

Today technicolor has won its spurs in the motion picture industry. Practically all of the talking-picture producers are turning out color movies. It has come forth as a great industry. One of the faithfuls who nursed technicolor in its infant days was William Traverse Jerome, the famous New York district attorney who prosecuted Harry K. Thaw.

The tale of technicolor is as fabulous an episode of business and invention as has ever risen on the modern horizon, bringing millions not only to the engineers who have perfected the color talking-pictures, but also to those who followed its course through dim and uncertain days.

The swiftness with which producers are turning to color is revealed by the annual financial report of the Technicolor Corporation, which has a monopoly of the natural color process used in making this type of picture. The statement issued last February disclosed that the corporation earned a net profit before taxation of $1,173,980 during 1929. The previous year showed a deficit of $46,190.

This may be fairly taken as an indication of the growing popularity of color movies. Eight months ago, “On With the Show,” the first all-color talking and singing picture, started the march to color. The officials of Technicolor announce that this year more than 100 pictures will be made in color, in whole or in part.

Some idea of the vast success of this industry may be obtained from the fact that in addition to its profits for last year, the Technicolor Corporation was enabled to pay off its notes amounting to $750,000.

At this point it is appropriate, I think, to introduce to you the president of this Technicolor industry which has struck a rich gold vein. He is none other than Prof. Kalmus, the once obscure inventor.

How is it done?

What brings this added beauty to the screen? How is the absolutely accurate reproduction of a person’s complexion, tint of hair, and physical magnetism reproduced in natural hues?

All those are natural questions arising in one’s mind as one observes the film industry stampeding pell-mell into the color-talkies. This is not, of course, intended to be a blatant puff for the Technicolor Corporation, but it is the truth that every great motion picture producer in this country today is using the process with the exception of one.

Technicolor is not entirely a photographic process. In fact, after the negative has been exposed, it almost ceases to be photography at all and becomes something like a lithographic process, except that the colors are not put on by a heavy impression as in the printing of a colored plate on paper, nor as they are laid on in the making of a lithograph.

They are put on the film by what is called the imbibition process. In other words, the emulsion on the film imbibes or drinks in the colors, which are in the form of liquid dyes when applied.

To begin at the start, a technicolor negative differs very little from the ordinary motion picture negative film, except for some necessary chemical treatment added to the usual photographic emulsion. Otherwise, it is the same as the negative used in black and white photography.

It is twice as long, however, because while in photographing a black and white scene only one frame of negative is exposed at a given instant of time. In technicolor two frames are exposed simultaneously.

The reason for this double length is that behind the lens in the technicolor camera, there is a prism which splits the scene into two images, each identical with the other.

One image—or scene—reaches the negative through a red filter. The other reaches the complementary bit of negative which is being exposed at the same instant through a green filter.

Thus there are on the negative two images, one right side up, the other bottom side up, the top lines being parallel with each other.

Now, to follow the operations necessary to get the positive of this double negative printed on one side of a strip of film so that it may be presented to the eye on a motion picture screen remains to be achieved, and I shall explain this process next.

First, a positive film, somewhat hardened by chemical action, is treated with hot water; then a green etching, or relief map of the scene, is recorded upon it. Next, a red relief map is obtained by the same method on another positive film, which, of course, has been exposed to the red part of the negative.

While red and green are used as the terms designating the two parts of the negative, neither an absolute red nor an absolute green color is meant. By “red” is meant the warm colors of the spectrum. By “green” is intended the cold colors of the spectrum.

The red side is more in the nature of an orange-red, while the green side is more of a blue-green. Incidentally, it cost the group of inventors exactly $2,000,000 to get this color system in harmonious working order.

Now we come to the two relief map films. They are the matrices from which are to be made the hundred or more prints required for distribution to the theatres. With these two matrices ready, a black celluloid ribbon, which later is to become the film to be exhibited in the theatre, is treated with gelatine so that it readily will accept color dyes in liquid form.

Then the positive which bears the outlines, or microscopic hills and valleys, of the red matrix is brought in, soaked with a requisite amount of dye and applied like a master printing plate to this blank strip of gelatine-coated celluloid.

During this operation of transferring dye from the matrix to the blank celluloid, both the matrix and blank are rigidly mounted on metal backings. The result is that the red parts of the image, or scene, are impressed or printed on the gelatine-coated celluloid film and the latter drinks in from the red matrix all the color necessary to furnish the gradations of red required in the picture.

Processing the Positive The same process is repeated with that strip of positive film which has been exposed to the green portions of the negative; that is, a green matrix is made from it in the same manner that the red one was made. This green matrix is later soaked with dye of a greenish cast and laid on the gelatine-coated strip of celluloid directly over the color which already has been imbibed from the red image—or scene.

Through this second application the gelatine coating now drinks in from the green matrix all the color necessary to furnish the required gradations or shades of green. Thus the gelatine layer is inter-penetrated with both dyes—red and green—in exactly the same proportions that those colors with their varying shades existed in the scene as originally photographed.

When this has all been done, these colors are “set” on the film and the result is a motion picture with every one of its many and diversified scenes all recorded in natural colors on one side of the film and ready for showing in a theatre.

Because of the perfection of this process of putting the color all on one side of the film, theatre projection-machine operators are able to run a film in technicolor exactly the same as a black and white picture. No special appliance or any adjustment of the projection-machine is required.

Before the difficult problem of getting the color all on one side of the film had been successfully solved, technicolor was printed on both sides of double-coated film. This i was thicker than ordinary film and operators in the theatre often failed to make the proper adjustment for the free passage of this double-coated film through their projection-machines. This resulted in the picture being out of focus sometimes. At other times blurred streaks were reproduced.

The finishing touches are being put on a new $1,000,000 technicolor plant in Hollywood, which will supplement two other laboratories in that movie colony and the two in Boston. In conclusion, I have found that each one of the faithfuls who pitched in for that original sink-or-swim fund of $140,000 has ridden the crest of the waves into the millionaire class today.