"Blazing the Trail"

Part Seven

The pages of my diary covering the motion picture season of 1910 and 1911 bristle with events which marked the sudden and brilliant growth of this infant industry, and with names of men and women who have since become famous on the screen.

I was mastering many new secrets of the industry. Mr. Long had initiated me into the mysteries of the "dark room" and whenever I was in New York. I was privileged to go in and out at will, watching the developing and printing, studying tests, and conferring with Joe Sprey, the head of the laboratory, about tinting, retakes, titles and other mechanical details. No women were employed as cutters in those days as they are now, and the dark room was a comparatively small place; but the men were most cordial and anxious to satisfy their scenarist.

During this period men who have since become famous directors were swinging from acting to directing and back again to acting, as yet unable to find themselves in the new art. Bob Vignola had turned out some admirable pictures while Sidney Olcott, George Hollister and I were in Europe, but he hated directing and on our return he immediately relinquished the megaphone and begged to be taken back into the acting fold.

"Never again!" he protested.

Thanks to this declaration we had the advantage of his acting ability and the pleasure of his companionship in our little company for two years. Then in 1912 he broke his vow and resumed directing for Kalem. Since the dissolution of that company he has gone straight to the top, producing his most successful pictures for Paramount and for Marion Davies.

Vitagraph had several companies working at their big glass-inclosed studios at Flatbush, and among their stars were Florence Turner, Maurice Costello, James Young, and Clara Kimball Young, Charles Kent, Van Dyke Brooke and, a little later, the Talmadge sisters and Lillian Walker. Edison also employed more than one company at their studio in the Bronx, a place so large that it was possible for three companies to work on stages at the same time!

The small towns, Fort Lee and Coytesville, which we had discovered three years previously, now had studios of their own, and Tannhauser, an Independent, had built one at New Rochelle and had established a stock company which included Marguerite Snow, Florence La Badie, killed in an automobile accident just as fame had come to her, and James Cruze who, like so many of the earlier actors, has risen to eminence as a director with such screen trumps as The Covered Wagon and The Last American to his credit. Bison, an Independent also, was one of the first to invade California and was followed shortly by Selig and Kalem. Griffith too transported his entire company to Los Angeles for the winter season, returning to New York in the spring. But strange to say, no one except Selig followed Kalem to the nearer sunshine of Florida. And I may truthfully say that no other company in subsequent years produced the successful motion pictures in Florida that Kalem did.

In the fall of 1910 Kalem organized three companies. Kenean Buel went to California, taking Alice Joyce as leading woman, Jane Wolfe, George Melford and his family and "Oppie," no longer a camera man but an actor, for he had developed real talent for acting.

Our Florida company consisted of Sidney Olcott, director; George Hollister, camera man; Allen Farnham, scenic artist; Arthur Clough, property man; me as scenarist and leading woman; Jack Clark, leading man; Bob Vignola; Ethel Eastcourt; and a new character man. Mrs. Hollister and her two young children were also to join the party.

Mr. Olcott went down in advance to make preparations for housing his people, leaving Vignola to bring on the company. But the day we were leaving the character man was taken seriously ill and there was no time to get anyone else. In this crisis J.P. McGowan walked into the office to bid us goodby. He had done one or two extra bits and Bob determined to take a chance on him.

An Australian, he had been a special dispatch bearer in the Boer War, and was a wonderful rider. No stunt was too risky, no scene too daring for Mack to pull off, nor did we ever hear a word of complaint from him no matter what he was asked to do. Later he became director of serials, many of which he wrote himself, including The Hazards of Helen with Helen Holmes as the star.

Jack Clark, the new leading man, was good-looking, Irish, and therefore charming. He had been leading man in musical comedy, was a good dancer, possessed a fine baritone voice which he lifted on every occasion, and played the violin. His roles on the stage had always called for immaculate dress and a fastidious appearance, but now he reveled in rough clothes, hammer and nails and the chance to work with his hands. He was the self-appointed first assistant to Farnham and, after borrowing Bob's famous red shirt, the same plaid garment I have mentioned before, he swore Bob would get it back only over his dead body. He wore it joyfully until his mother came. With horror she gazed on her erring boy and, despite his protests, back to pressed clothes and white collars he went. Not again, so long as she remained with us, was he the spirited fellow of the plaid shirt and corduroys.

Alice Hollister, George's dark-eyed young wife who had been raised in a convent, married at seventeen and had two babies, was now seeing life for the first time. French, pretty and bubbling with excitement in her new environment, she too proved an acquisition and developed into a good actress. Mrs. Hollister, young though she was, had a level head and her babies never developed into the detestable type of stage children.

Kalem had grown very prosperous, so we began to elaborate our pictures and to spend more time and money on them than heretofore. The stage was enlarged and sun shields were contrived from white muslin stretched over the tops of the sets, thus eliminating harsh shadows from faces and giving a softer tone to the photography. New sets and scenery were built, but although we had a couple of carpenters now, our boys could be found any idle day working on the stage as busily as ever.

Farnham and his carpenters built all of the period furniture for the Spanish costume pictures, but for modern and Civil War stuff props were readily obtainable from friends and acquaintances living near by. Bob Vignola was our best card when it came to wheedling precious things from homes. When the flats were finished and the stage ready for props, Bob would call the boys together:

"Jack, get the high-backed chair, the whatnot and those blue glass vases from Mrs. Snow. Mack, go to the third house on Talleyrand and ask Mrs. Scott for the old-fashioned stove in the woodshed, the rag carpet on the front room upstairs and those two footstools made of tincans. Take a couple of helpers and the wheelbarrow, for you won't be able to handle them alone. Ridgeley, you get the draperies, the big lamp and the 'tidies' Mrs. Girardieu said we could have. She promised to have them ready."

And soon the boys, bearing their spoils, would reappear, and Clough would hustle the props into place. Yes, Bob certainly had a taking way with him. Once for a setting of the interior of a Catholic chapel where a marriage ceremony was to be performed, he announced he would get the holy figures from the local church. We smiled and doubted, but sure enough, there came a van with Saint Joseph and the Child, and tapers, incense burner, laces and altar cloths.

Nor was that all, for the fine old Irish priest himself accompanied them and remained all day superintending the marriage ceremony, so that everything should be exactly right, incidentally enjoying himself hugely.

Meantime Storm Boyd had been made the director of the New York studio and was putting on the Bettie series of comedies, featuring Fred Santley and Lottie Pickford, younger sister of Mary. Buel was working at the new Kalem studio at Glendale, California, with Alice Joyce and a new leading man, Carlyle Blackwell. Before long another company was added to the west coast, with Ruth Roland playing leads and managing the Kalem House, where all the actors lived. There was a young chauffeur with the company, a likely lad of Irish grit, who eventually was given a chance to direct. This was Marshall Neilan, acknowledged today as one of the finest producers.

According to a survey made by Mr. Marion on a country-wide tour during the winter of 1910-11, Biograph stood first in popularity and sales, with Kalem and Selig tied for second place. Our pictures were also well known in Europe. The Lad from Old Ireland had given a big impetus to Kalem films abroad, three times more copies being sold than of any other picture sent over. By 1910 we had also invaded Germany, and a letter from my mother told of Marguerite Gauntier's name placarding the front of the Royal Opera where she was singing "Madame Butterfly," while a block away Gene Gauntier was blowing up an ammunition wagon in The Girl Spy Before Vicksburg. It was a busy time for Mama, her nights spent at the opera hearing one daughter sing, while in the daytime she sat through every show to watch her other daughter, three thousand miles away, flit silently across the screen.

Up to this time motion picture actors knew very little about each other. Occasionally we found time to see films produced by other firms, but there was no opportunity for the social contacts among players which mark life today in Hollywood and other producing centers. So there was great excitement when word came from New York that the Syndicate had decided to issue a monthly magazine on the general style of "Munsey's" but devoted entirely to motion pictures.

So was born "The Motion Picture Story Magazine" fathered by Mr. Blackton of the Vitagraph Company, and edited by Eugene F. Brewster at a salary of one hundred dollars per week of which he was very proud. Mr. Brewster has since become rich as publisher of various magazines of this type.

About the same time we learned that across the river from Jacksonville and reached by a ferry, Selig had taken over an abandoned dilapidated amusement park and had set up a studio for his Chicago company. Kathryn Williams was his leading woman and we heard that while they were taking wild animal pictures she was shockingly clawed by a leopard. Some of us had occasion to use the ferry while seeking a location, but we never met the beautiful Miss Williams. However we did meet a young chap in negligible clothes, spurs and broad-brimmed hat who introduced himself to us on the boat, a friendly sort of lad who said he was playing small parts and who was obviously suffering from an inferiority complex. The fortunes of motion pictures are strange indeed for here in Sweden where I am writing this article the name of that then unknown actor is blazoned on every side in huge black type and my maid has just been telling me what a wonderful actor is "Mr. Tomee Meex!"

Original article, 1929.

Gene Gauntier, "Blazing the Trail," Woman's Home Companion, Volume 55, Number 10, January 1929, page 13, 14, 94.

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

Blazing the Trail: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve

Silent Film Bookshelf Home Page