Ham’s breakfast disposed of, we would rush to the ferry, seek our nook in the boat, and enjoy a short laze before reaching the Jersey side. At one of the little inns along the Hudson we rented a couple of rooms where we made up and dressed. Soon would appear old man Brown and his son, each driving a two-seated buggy. And according to what scenes we were slated for, we would be told to pile in, and off we would be driven to “location.”
“Old Man Brown” was a garrulous, good-natured Irishman who regaled us with tales of prominent persons who, in his younger days, had been his patrons. How proud he was to tell of Lillian Russell’s weekly visit to her daughter Dorothy who was attending a convent school up the Hudson!
Speaking of “Old Man Brown” brings to mind “Hughie.” Hughie’s job was to drive the express wagon which transported costumes, properties, cameras, and tripods. In the studio, on the night preceding a day in the country, each actor packed his costume and make-up box and got it ready for Hughie. For sometimes in the early morning darkness of 4 A. M. Hughie would have to whip up his horses in front of 11 East Fourteenth Street so as to be on the spot in Jersey when the actors arrived via their speedier locomotion.
Arrived on location, Johnny Mahr and Bobbie Harron would climb the wagon, get out the costumes, and bring them to the actor. And if your particular bundle did not arrive in double-quick time and you were in the first or second scene, out you dashed and did a mad scramble on to the wagon where you frantically searched. Suppose it had been left behind!
Hughie had a tough time of it trucking by two horsepower when winter came along. So I was very happy some few years later, when calling on Mr. Hugh Ford at the Famous Players’ old studio in West Fifty-sixth Street, N. Y., now torn down, to find Hughie there with a comfortable job “on the door.”
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David Griffith was always overly fastidious about “location.” His feeling for charming landscapes and his use of them in the movies was a significant factor in the success of his early pictures. So we had a “location” woman, Gene Gauntier, who dug up “locations” and wrote scenarios for the princely wage of twenty-five dollars weekly. Miss Gauntier will be eternally remembered as the discoverer of Shadyside. Shades of Shadyside! with never a tree, a spot of green grass, or a clinging vine; only sand, rocks, and quarries from which the baked heat oozed unmercifully.
Miss Gauntier’s aptitude along the location line, however, did not satisfy her soaring ambition, so she left Biograph for Kalem. Under Sidney Olcott’s direction, she played Mary in his important production “From the Manger to the Cross,” and was the heroine of some charming Irish stories he produced in Ireland.
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“The Redman and the Child” was the second picture Biograph’s new director produced, and his first Indian picture. Charles Inslee was the big-hearted Indian chief in the story and little Johnny Tansy played the child. The picture made little Johnny famous. He had as much honor as the movies of those days could give a child. Jackie Coogan was the lucky kid to arrive in the world when he did.