A Flora Finch tidbit here comes to light. Though fifteen years have elapsed, they have not dimmed the memory of the one hundred and eighty-five feet of “Those Awful Hats.” The exhibitor was told: “It will make a splendid subject to start a show with instead of the customary slides.”
The “set” represented the interior of a moving picture theatre. The company was audience. Miss Finch was also “audience,” only arriving late she had a separate entrance. Miss Finch wore an enormous hat. When she was seated, no one at the back or side of her could see a thing. But out of the unseen ceiling, soon there dropped an enormous pair of iron claws (supposedly iron) that closed tightly on the hat and head of the shrieking Miss Finch, lifting her bodily out of her seat and holding her suspended aloft in the studio heaven.
How many times that scene was rehearsed and taken! It grew so late and we were all so sleepy that we stopped counting. But pay for overtime evolved from this picture.
The members of the stock company that had grown up worked on a guaranty of so many days a week. Now with so much night work our director felt that the actors not on “guaranties” should be recompensed and it was ruled that after 7 P.M. they would receive three extra dollars. So when 6 P.M. would arrive with yet another scene to be taken, the non-guaranty actors became very cheery. More money loomed, and more sandwiches, pie, coffee, or milk, on the company. Frequently those not on the guaranteed list made more than those on it, which peeved the favored ones.
Along about now Mr. Herbert Yost contributed some artistic bits. Once he was Edgar Allan Poe and he wrote “The Raven” while his sick wife, poor little Virginia, died. We were a bit afraid of being too classic. The public might not understand—we must go slowly yet awhile, but not all our days.
Mr. Yost was one actor who used a different name for his picture work. He called himself “Barry O’Moore” in the movies. Not that he felt the movies beneath him, but he was nervous about the future reaction. He showed good foresight. For as soon as the big theatrical producers got wind of the fact that their actors were working in moving picture studios, they decided to put a crimp in the idea. The Charles Frohman office issued an edict that any actor who worked in moving pictures could not work for them. But the edict was shortly revoked. Even so long ago had the power of the little motion picture begun to be felt.
CHAPTER XI
MACK SENNETT GETS STARTED
One of our regular “extra” people was Mack Sennett. He quietly dubbed along like the rest, only he grouched. He never approved whole-heartedly of anything we did, nor how we did it, nor who did it. There was something wrong about all of us—even Mary Pickford! Said the coming King of Comedy productions: “I don’t see what they’re all so crazy about her for—I think she’s affected.” Florence Lawrence didn’t suit him either—“she talks baby-talk.” And to Sennett “baby-talk” was the limit! Of myself he said: “Sometimes she talks to you and sometimes she doesn’t.” Good-looking Frank Grandin he called “Inflated Grandin.”
But beneath all this discontent was the feeling that he wasn’t being given a fair chance; which, along with a smoldering ambition, was the reason for the grouch.
When work was over, Sennett would hang around the studio watching for the opportune moment when his director would leave. Mr. Griffith often walked home wanting to get a bit of fresh air. This Sennett had discovered. So in front of the studio or at the corner of Broadway and Fourteenth Street he’d pull off the “accidental” meeting. Then for twenty-three blocks he would have the boss all to himself and wholly at his mercy. Twenty-three blocks of uninterrupted conversation. “Well now, what do you really think about these moving pictures? What do you think there is in them? Do you think they are going to last? What’s in them for the actor? What do you think of my chances?”