Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.
Making Use of a “Real” Incident.
In this scene, taken at the edge of the Mississippi, the young hero has just missed the old ferry, from which the pictures are being taken. He was unfamiliar with the machine he was driving, and nearly went to the bottom of the river. The scenario was changed to make use of this mishap.
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.
The Scene the Audiences Saw.
In the preceding illustration the cameras that took this picture are shown. But on the screen only what was included inside the “camera angle,” as shown here, appears.
Why are the Bill Hart pictures about the best of the so-called “Westerns” of the last seven or eight years? Isn’t it because on the whole Bill Hart has played the sort of chap that is most worth while—with courage, kindness, and loyalty, and ability to control his temper and do the right thing?
Only, did you ever stop to wonder how it happened that so often Bill Hart’s “hero” was a bandit or train-robber or outlaw? If the fellow Hart played had really been as good as he made out, would he have been robbing or killing so many times? At least, it’s worth thinking about. And in one of Hart’s Westerns the hero had to ride a horse over a twenty-foot bank—almost a cliff—to get away from his pursuers. It made you wonder how they could “pull a stunt” like that without too much risk. It looked as though both horse and rider were hurt.—As a matter of fact, the horse actually broke a leg, and had to be shot. Nobody seemed to think there was anything out of the way about that—merely killing one horse to get a good picture. But how does it strike you?