"Blazing the Trail"

Part Two

In June, 1907, Kalem was admitted to the Motion Pictures Patents Company. This organization, which was bitterly assailed as the moving picture trust of its day, included also Vitagraph, Edison, Selig, Lubin, Pathe, Melies and Essanay.

It organized the producers on a business basis, opened up the era of prosperity which made millionaires of Mr. Marion and Mr. Long in less than five years and started up the ladder of success many of the actors who began at the very bottom and climbed high by hard work, enthusiasm and loyalty under that clever leader, Sidney Olcott.

Olcott had been engaged by Kalem to direct a one-reel picture of about a thousand feet every week for the munificent sum of ten dollars per picture! Today he is said to receive one thousand dollars per week, another indication of the almost unbelievable changes and developments in the moving picture industry.

Born in Toronto, Canada, Olcott was about thirty when he joined the Kalem Company. He had played in the support of the then famous melodramatic boy-actor, Joseph Santley, the same Joseph Santley who has been started in musical comedy and who more recently has helped to stage the Music Box Revues in New York. At that time Joe was a boy in short trousers, watched over by an adoring mother.

In appearance Olcott was of medium height, deep-chested, with slender sensitive hands, a small well-shaped head and close-cropped curly hair already turning gray. He was thirsty for learning that had been denied him in his youth, and doggedly determined to get it. Especially was he interested in philosophy and psychic phenomena and was psychic to an uncanny degree. It was unfeasible to conceal anything from Olcott. He knew what was going on, from some sixth sense. Consciously or unconsciously, he used the power of suggestion, even of hypnotism, on his actors. He would stare straight into our eyes with those large blue and slightly protruding orbs of his, never shifting his glance as he explained the situation or action, and no one thought of questioning his instruction or refusing no matter how difficult or dangerous the stunt he demanded.

Olcott was of Irish birth and possessed all the sparkle and sentiment of that emotional race; also he loved a fight and was as tenacious as a bulldog. His method of direction would not be tolerated today.

Shouts, threats, sarcasm, bullying, cajoling, petting, he would try each in turn. But after the scene was over it was always the same- an arm thrown round the shoulder, compliments, enthusiasm. His people adored him, respected him and would (and did) risk their lives for him. He was the sun around which they all revolved. Soon he was considered the best of all directors, and he held that reputation until another dynamic personality burst onto the screen world, D.W. Griffith.

About 1914 Olcott disappeared from view, as so often occurs in the moving picture world. It would be interesting to know what happened to him, where he hid himself and what he did during those years of oblivion. But obviously he kept in touch with pictures, watching and studying the changing technique and the methods in which he had no part. In his hiding place he too continued to grow and to keep pace with the newer motion pictures. For he emerged from his shell after an absence of seven years as director for Little Old New York starting Marion Davies, followed quickly by The Green Goddess with George Arliss, The Humming Bird with Gloria Swanson, Spanish Dancer with Pola Negri, and that exquisite production which marked Valentino's return to the screen, Monsieur Beaucaire- every one of them a sure-fire hit. I understand that his bullying bombastic style of direction has given place to the quiet courteous treatment demanded by present-day producers and stars.

During the summer of 1907 Mr. Marion stopped writing scenarios and asked me to try my hand at it. I made a crude scenario from a melodrama in which I had played, "Why Girls Leave Home." It was hopeless but in a few days I was asked to try again with "Tom Sawyer" and to turn out a scenario which we could take in one day outdoors, omitting all difficult situations, river or rough stuff. That scene of whitewashing the fence was my inspiration, for I saw it in every detail just as it would appear in the picture. The scenario was pretty dreadful but it was what Marion and Olcott wanted and it gave me the knack of writing. Henceforth I was the mainstay of the Kalem scenario department.

Tom Sawyer was the first of over three hundred which I wrote and produced or sold. The woods were full of ideas. The surface had scarcely been scratched. A poem, a picture, a short story, a scene from a current play, a headline in a newspaper. All was grist that came to my mill. There was no copyright law to protect authors and I could and did infringe upon everything.

We also traded on the names of successes, although the plot might be totally different. Thus "Polly of the Circus," an outstanding stage hit with Mabel Taliaferro, became Dolly the Circus Queen. I sometimes wrote three complete scenarios for one-reelers in a day, but generally under pressure, at the last minute when the company was idle and waiting for a story. After Tom Sawyer I never had a scenario refused, nor wrote one that was not produced. The compensation for these earlier efforts was twenty dollars a reel- a fairly high figure when you remember the director received only ten dollars for directing it.

That summer of 1907 introduced us to two wonderful new locations. Rambo's in Coytesville, New Jersey, and Windy Goal, the Ernest Thompson Seton place at Cos Cob, Connecticut.

Coytesville was the same sleepy little village it had been for a hundred years, with winding dirt roads and clapboard houses nestling among rose and lilac bushes, an ideal background for pictures. Rambo's, since pictured in hundreds of films, was our discovery. It was merely a barroom where light lunches were available at all hours. Substantial home-cooked hot meals were ordered in advance. Above were small bare sleeping-rooms where we made up. It was run by Mr. and Mrs. Rambo and Mrs. Rambo's sister, kindly interested folks who did everything in their power to aid us.

A narrow porch supported by uprights ran across the front of the house, which was plain, even to ugliness but typical of almost any part of the United States.

It served as a New England tavern, for many a western saloon, for Civil War recruiting stations, and dozens of other sets. Banisters and railings could hastily added, old-fashioned chairs, tables and flowering pots dragged out and, with the camera shooting the opposite direction, the old place could be, and has been, used for two different sets in the same picture. At the side was a wide old double wooden gate leading to a typical barnyard, with latticed pump, barns, haystacks, chicken yard, cowshed, wagons, horses, and all the other paraphernalia necessary to add color to a scene. And the prices were so reasonable. A dollar apiece for dressing-rooms, fifty cents each for the smoking hot dinner and nothing at all for the use of the exteriors and props. A year or so later, when Mr. Griffith, with his (for then) luxurious ideas, discovered this place which we had considered wholly our own, he started what to us was a riot of extravagance. Everything was paid for! Twenty-five dollars for the use of the exterior of the house! Two dollars each for rooms! And more elaborate dinners were ordered, at two dollars a plate!

Here we made The Days of '61, the first picture of the Civil War ever produced. The battle scenes were taken up at St. John's Military Academy at Manlius, New York, near Syracuse. The costumes came from Gus Elliott's, an old German down in St. Mark's place, and everyone went to select his own. It was a queer old shop such as Dickens might have written about. Costumes were rented for one dollar each, if not elaborate or of extra fine materials. Wigs also could be had.

The Thompson Seton place supplied the background for our first Indian pictures. An unforgettable lake was encircled by a primeval forest and tangled underbrush, all reflected on the mirror-like surface of the water oil which floated birch-bark Indian canoes. The owner was a nature lover, so wild birds and small animals lived unafraid in the grounds.

With this environment, plus costumes and props, we turned out pictures which were things of beauty even in those crude days. Here also the next summer we took Hiawatha, Evangeline and As You Like It. For by that time, you see, we had begun to reach for higher things.

All this was most interesting, but I still had no intention of remaining with the pictures. In the fall of 1907 I was rehearsing with a promising melodrama, "Texas," when an imperative call came from Mr. Marion. From force of habit I answered.

He explained that the Pain's Fireworks Company, which had been exhibiting a spectacle all summer on the racetrack at Sheepshead Park, was closing for the season. Here was a great opportunity to produce Ben Hur using the Pain Company's props, supers and standing scenery. Would I have the scenario ready in two days? It was October. The fall rains might begin at any time.

I was not familiar with Ben Hur and the mere reading of the book would ordinarily occupy two days. But by this time my self-confidence was unlimited and I promised. What is more, by dint of working nearly all of two nights I turned in the script on schedule.

Mr. Olcott and I went to the racetrack, found the props impossible and the supers inadequate, hurried back to Swain's Agency and interviewed people for the cast and for extras, and late in the evening rushed clown to Elliott's and remained until after midnight selecting props and hundreds of costumes. In five days after the idea was conceived we were at Sheepshead Bay taking the first scenes. In three days more it was finished and in the developing tanks. Just compare that with the two years or more that Metro-Goldwyn spent on the stupendous Ben Hur which recently dazzled the public and which represented several trips to Italy and an investment of millions.

Nevertheless, we were proud because we turned out the greatest spectacle and money maker up to that time.

Arrangements had been made for Mr. Frank Oakes Rose, stage manager for Pain's Fireworks, to stage the spectacle. Olcott was to be on hand merely to offer suggestions. Oh, the guilelessness and confidence of Mr. Marion!

The weather turned cold with a biting wind coming in from the sea, and the people had been called for eight o'clock in the morning. When I arrived a little before noon they were shivering in their thin Roman costumes and nothing had been accomplished. Not a scene had been taken. Chaos reigned and Mr. Rose was like a madman. He had never even seen a motion picture taken, knew nothing of technique or camera limitations, and had reduced Max Schneider, our cameraman, to despair with his impossible suggestions. Olcott sat on the fence of the racetrack kicking his heels, his whole attitude saying, "I should worry."

Last Marion came to him, almost with tears in his eyes. "For the love of Mike, Sid, get into this and get something done. That man doesn't know the first principles of pictures."

Sid twitched his eyebrows and laughed but he jumped down from his perch, which was promptly taken by Mr. Rose who was wiping nervous perspiration from his brow.

"Gad, that's the hardest thing I was ever up against," said the man who had produced a dozen spectacles. And there he sat for the rest of the day, learning how moving pictures were made.

For things began to happen. Fast and furiously Olcott drove his crowds and they, sensing an intelligent guiding hand, ceased milling and stampeding and settled down to constructive action. Three days it kept up and at the end of that time, exhausted but happy, we had the picture "in the box." And the next day it rained.

Of course viewed by present standards it was an atrocious film. Imagine producing Ben Hur in approximately one thousand feet and "sixteen magnificent scenes" is the advertisement read! The chariot race was the great climax and "sold" the picture. But there were no water scenes, no galley shots. Nevertheless, crude as it was, it was a step forward and a fine advertisement for the Kalem Company.

Most important, it brought to a climax the copyright issue, which had been rumbling and grumbling in the background of studios for some time.

Harper and Brothers and the General Lew Wallace Estate brought suit against the Kalem Company, the Motion Picture Patents Company, and the scenarist for an infringement of copyright, and asked for an accounting of profits. It was a test of copyright laws, for up to now no one had seemed to know just where they stood. The new industry had no precedents to guide it, moving pictures were distinctly neither stories nor plays and no author had thus far come forward with enough confidence or money to fight the already strong organization. However, the General Film Company wished to establish for its own satisfaction the exact status of its writers and to settle once and for all its own prerogatives. So the suit dragged year after year and through court after court, up to the Supreme Court of the United States, where a verdict was handed down for Harper's and against the film people. It cost Kalem twenty-five thousand dollars and the Patents Company, which had assumed the expenses of the suit as a test case, an additional twenty-five thousand dollars. And it settled the question of the copyright law for all time.

Gradually but conclusively the rights and limitations of the moving picture people began to be clearly defined.

Original article, 1928.

Gene Gauntier, "Blazing the Trail," Woman's Home Companion, Volume 55, Number 10, October 1928, page 7.

© 1997, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)

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