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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.
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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.

I love how this guy makes such bold predictions about what the future of movie theaters will be like, but fails to anticipate little innovations like sound. The Jazz Singer came out only 4 years after this article was published and there were already short format talkies playing in NYC in 1923.

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Odd Machines Put Fun in Movies

By John E. Lodge

MOVIE studio men were stumped when a comedy script called for an oyster that would open its shell and wink one eye. But a New York maker of comedy props welcomed the job. A few days later, he appeared at the studio carrying an ingenious shell made of papier-mache. The two halves opened and closed on a spring hinge and an eye within winked when a studio man pulled a hidden string.
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NEW DOUBLE FEATURE – FISH AND FILMS!
James Beach never dreamed his customers would take home fish caught while watching his drive-in movie.

WHEN James Beach built his drive-in theatre on a lakeside at Winter Haven, Fla., he never thought that fish might be lurking in the waters offshore. But customers began lugging their fishing gear when they came to the movie and Beach soon noticed they were having good luck hauling in speckled perch and black bass. Enterprising Beach now provides fishing poles for patrons who park their autos around the rim of the 420-car lot. The one problem Beach hasn’t solved: free-loaders who pull up in boats.

Thrilling Performances All in Day’s Work for Stunt Man

Billie Bomar, flying stunt man, gambles with death for a profession. His job is to provide thrills.

HUNDREDS of spectators held their breath while Billie Bomar, stunt man of the Howard Flying Circus, crawled all over a plane that swooped, climbed and dove above the heads of the crowd below. Read the rest of this entry »

Making the “Invisible Man” Invisible

AN invisible man running amuck, terrorizing, killing! Solid flesh and bone pushing men over, strangling opponents, dealing crushing blows with fist or club, yet as transparent as air —such is ‘The Invisible Man” of the films—such is the fantastic tale originally conceived by the famous novelist, H. G. Wells!

Great secrecy surrounds the methods used by movie men in making this film, for all new photographic “wrinkles” are guarded by the studios as long as possible. For Modern Mechanix and Inventions readers, however, this simplified explanation of the filming methods is unofficially revealed.
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Wouldn’t the cabinet effect the sound more than his clothes would?

SITS IN A CABINET FOR SOUNDPROOF TESTS

Because his clothing might deaden the sounds of voices just a little, an engineer at the United States Bureau of Standards’ new sound laboratory sits in a box.

The laboratory is a miniature theater, where the acoustics of “talking movie” installations may be tested. The audience is made up of technicians of the Bureau. They hope to discover means of reducing the “echo effects” which many theater managers have had to combat since the advent of the talkies. It has already been found that not only the construction and the material of a theater’s walls, but even the upholstery of the seats and the clothing of the audience have an influence on the reception of sound. Read the rest of this entry »

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GUNS from All NATIONS Stock MOVIE Arsenals

THE machine guns of the beleaguered garrison, making a last stand, are rattling and spitting fire at an enemy whose rifles and revolvers crack viciously in reply. Casualties are strewn everywhere and the acrid smoke of battle hovers over the scene. It is a critical situation, indeed—or appears so.

Then the director shouts “cut,” and the “dead” and “wounded” arise and brush themselves off. For it is only a scene from a current talkie, and no one is really “wounded in action.” Read the rest of this entry »