Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-04-22
SATURDAY
April %, 1916
POLICE WHISTLE
DIRECTS WORK OF
NEW PICTURES
Herbert Brenon, Fox Film Corpor-
atoms Director, Depends on
Novel Method to Direct

Almost any good motion-plcture dlreo-
tor can handle small cast Of players In
front Of camera and produce a pleas
Ing and worthwhile short feature film.
Almost any director Of ability can take
a man or woman of intelligence before
camera and make the player do big
scene well.
But in all the world there are scarcely
more than two or three directors who
can handle 10000 persons at once before
a camera and prod6ce results that as
tonish the human eye and brain.
AT the very front rank of these few
men stands Herbert Brenun the motion
picture genius to whom William Fox, the
big American film producer, has in.
trusted the tremendous job Of making
the Annette Kellermann mllion-dollar
picture at Kingston, jamaica
This picture was begun the middle Of
last August at Kingston. 1t is now much
more than half completed and up to
date the Fox bookkeepors and auditors
have their books to reveal that more than
$4,000 has been paid out in actors sala-
rles and for equipment. This picture will
be finished around the middle OF April,
and by the time the last instalment OF
film is laid down in the Fox offices In
New York its total cost will be In the
neighborhood of s1,l00,O00.
Many details about this picture and
the incidents connected with its produce
tion have been told to the public. There
have been descriptions of the rejuvena-
tion and reconstruction of a large part Of
the Island of Jamaica under William
Foxs own experts direction. There also
have been stories of the gnome city, with
its thousands of child actors In the roles
OF dwarfs.
But thus far there have been no stories
printed about the wonderful Moorish city
which cost $500, 900 of William Fox 8 money
for construction work; of the slave mart
and bazaars with thousands OF men and
women costumed with Oriental opulence.
In the marine scenes, with hundreds of
mermaids in the picture simultaneously,
Herbert Brenon revealed once more his
artistry as a director. For some scenes
these mermaids practiced and rehearsed
for weeks that they might have perfec-
tion and slmultaneousness of stroke.
Scores of these girls were dashed again
and again against Jagged rocky lodges
and made to stick at their tasks till the
camera had recorded just what Director
General Brenon wished recorded.
But the people In these scenes were
the very pick of their kind brought down
from the States" They were the quick
witted, alert and quick-observing Ameri.
can girls from the natatoriums and sands
of our two ocean coasts and our lake
beaches.
The 10000 persons in the slave market
and Moorish city scenes. were of quite
different type. Several thousand of them
were negroes. Other thousands were
Hindus, and still more of them were alert
but unframed native Jamaicans totally
unused to being shot" by the motion
picture camera operators.
Day after day these vast "mobs were
swung through their evolutions. Under
broiling suns they were sent again and
again through their paces the signals for
them to start stop being given bF
Director General Brenon or his assistants
with New York police whistles, such as
are used TO handle the 9th avenue auto
mobile traffic or the crowds at 42d street
and Broadway at 1 o'clock at night, when
the Metropolitan Opera House has turned
its vast audience into the streets to join
the hundred thousand other theatre.
goers just out of the other amusement
places.
When you see this gigantic Kellermann
picture exhibited some time in June and
throughout the summer you will witness
a vast uprising of the slaves and see the
armed troops hold back the maddened
thousands. You will see made-to-order
city of huge pronortions-a city built OF
concrete and structural steel just as reg
ular" cities are buiIt-filled with surging
humanity. tugging swaying. striking and
being struck. And 1t will be worth re.
memberlng at the time that every move.
ment' In this great panorama was made
at the direction of one man-Herbert
Brenon.
You will see a speaker delivering an
infammatory oration from the balconade
OF huge building to an audience of TO-
900 persons. You will see this great
throng worked up gradually into frenzy.
You will with cataclysmic abruptness see
10000 hands upraised as II all were
pulled up at once by invisible strings, ana
your memory will go hurrying back to
this advance description OF the staging
OF this part of the picture. and perhaps
in your brain there will be the sound Of
the policeman's whistle that tells this
mob when to begin action" and when
to stop.