The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-11-23
BY A. J. LIEBLING
Times staff Writer


Copyright. 1892, by the New York World
Telegram Corporstion)
NEW YORK, Nov. $3.50
4 Griffith says, You look like
a bunch of buns hanging around
room. Go out to a cigar store
and look at the ad for Hoffman
House cigarets. That will show
you how it probably looks inside a
swell club"
G. w. Billy Bitter, the king of
cameramen-a king in exile-Was
describing the filming of a society
drama in the biograph studio at
IL East Fourteenth st.
The first man to photograph
Mary Pickford has a curiously
elongated perspective. He was in
at the beginning of a national
form of entertainment, the silent
moving picture. He has survived
it. So to him the thirty-six years
since he filmed candidate William
Mckinley on the lawn at Canton,
O., seem a century.
Yet he is clipper and keen.
Stocky man, with the same shiny
eye that peered into the camera
when Blanche Sweet was Is.
THE picture was THE Bachelors
Return" or something like that,
continued Mr.. Bitter. Owen
Moore was the bachelor and
Arthur johnson was his pal.
Marion Leonard was the bride.
I'VE had one stage and that
meant one set at a time. The
camera men managed the Grapes
and settings. For a home dining
room I would use a round table
with a cloth.
ITO indicate a restaurant
would set the scene with a table,
a cloth and ported fern. I had
never been in a club, so to in
dictate extra grandeur I put in two
ferns.
THE actors wore rented dress
Il suits and none of them
looked comfortable except john
son, who had been in society
play with Jim Jeffries. Griffith
was the director and he knew they
looked wrong, but he had never
been anywhere, either.
eff you make this scene go off
right, boys he said, I'll give you
each $40 for this picture instead
of S. Expense never meant any,
thing to Griffith.
'These fellows were not extras,
remember. They were the stars of
the Biograph Stock Company, and
they would take turns in playing
leads.
There was no jealousy over
feature billing in those days, be-
cause the identity of all mem
berS of the company was kept a
secret.
Actors felt that if their names
got out, they were done in the
profession, and when the days
work was over, they would look
up and down the street and then
sneak.
We'll, the extra SIS popped them
up so johnson led them in a cheer,
'Biograph, Biograph, rah, rah,'
and they waved their glasses and
it looked very heightened and en-
thuSiastic, so Griffith was sure we
could fool the Union League Club.
Then before striking the set I
had to grab the film and run
down the stairs to the dark room
in the basement. There I would
develop it with -the-dead,
that's a quick solution simply to
show up what you've got on the
film.
If it was all right I would yell,
Test o. X A janitor up at the
first landing would relay it. A
carpenter on the second floor
would pick up the cry. Then the
stage crew would start breaking up
the set and putting up wallpaper
with large roses for the domestic
sequence.
ID EFORE we had that COM
ID pany We would just do news
shorts and maybe a dramatiza-
ton of some event like the muir
der Of Stanford White by Harry
Thaw.
I would set up the table with
one potted fern and we would 60
down to the penny weighing ma
chine company on the ground
floor anG kid two clerks into act
ing Thaw and White, and we
would give any hot-looking girl
So to sit at the table with White
and then the other clerk would
come in and fire revolver.
White would fall and you had a
good salable product.
i took that film of the Empire
State Express that was such
a sensation at sHammerstein's
olympic-the one where it seemed
the engine was coming right out
of the screen. Women in the
stage boxes tainted at every per-
torrance. and they weren't
Stooges. either.
THAT old Biograph outfit. Mary
Pickford came to us as a kid of
maybe is and worked for So a
day until she became the Official
Sunbonnet Sue type Of the COM
pany.
The Gish girls were just at
the awkward age, and they did
only bin for the first few wears.