(7) I Tom Harper, 50:50 Talk of Picture

Side 1

William Grisham: (00:04)
Is it running? Yeah. Hello. And we were talking about 24 films, two-reelers, that he had made at the studios. All right. When did, why did you leave the studio or you're going on—

Tom Harper: (00:20)
Well I got the idea that after my experience over there two or three years, I got the idea I wanted to be an actor and so they were moving West and they wanted me to go. They were closing up this studio. 

William Grisham: (00:39)
They closed it in 1919, didn’t they? 

Tom Harper (00:40)
That’s right. They wanted me to go with them out to California. Well, I wasn't a particularly [inaudible[. I was only 18. And, uh, my mother of course didn't think I ought to go and so on. And, but I still wanted to be in the theater business and be an actor so I picked up all my stuff, and I left here and went to New York. And, uh, I knocked around New York for about three years till my uncle stopped me or rather decided I ought to do something else. But I had a lot of fun. I went to all the agents and I had jobs from different ones that, uh, uh, I played Bonneville. I played Proctors 125th Street Theater and, uh, the Steel Pier at, uh, Atlantic city. And, uh, for about a year and a half, two years I had—

William Grisham: (1:43)
Proctor’s was what now? Tell me about it. 

Tom Harper: (1:45)
Proctor’s was a, uh, was a chain of theaters in New York. 

William Grisham: (1:50)
Right. 

Tom Harper: (1:50)
Which were just under the BF Keith and Orpheum Circuit. And of course the object of the, all people in theater business then was to get in an act that would go to the Palace Theater in New York. And, uh, we had almost made it. We had got it far as 125th street, which in those days was very delightful and, uh, was a very…it was uptown, New York. And, uh, uh, the Alhambra Theater was one of the best theaters in New York. And the next week we would get in the Palace. And this guy who had our act, uh, decided that he was gonna try to make more money out of it. And of course they canceled the act. We never did get to the Palace. 

William Grisham: (2:35)
What kind of an act was it anyway? Was it an—

Tom Harper: (2:37)
It was an act, a comedy act. Straight comedy act. Which I played a Western union messenger. And I kept interrupting, [inaudible] making love all the time. And the leading lady was, uh, a woman by the name of Leah Winslow who was at that time

William Grisham: (3:01)
Leah? 

Tom Harper: (3:02)
Leah. L.E.A.H. Winslow. 

William Grisham: (3:05)
Uh-huh. 

Tom Harper: (3:06)
Who was a very prominent and leading lady in Brooklyn Stock in Brooklyn Academy. And we had a lot of fun. And finally, after about a year and a half of that, it's, oh my, of course, my relatives in New York thought it was just terrible. And those days it did. It didn't have too good a name and so on. So they took me out. He was in the brokerage business down at Wall Street. That was how I happened to go down there. And that was what my life was after that. Although, I always, once—

Speaker 3: (3:45)
Did you want cream did you say? 

William Grisham: (3:46)
Just black. 

Tom Harper: (3:47)
Once a ham, always a ham. So of course I've always had a little bit to do with it and amateur theatricals. We had a company out in Glenview many years ago, Francis Knighted. Francis had super experience too.

William Grisham: (4:02)
Great. 

Tom Harper: (4:02)
We built this thing up, out there, and had a lot of fun when we—

Speaker 3: (4:06)
You may have to stir it a little bit ‘cause it’s just—

William Grisham: (4:07)
I will. 

Tom Harper: (4:07)
When we were out there with it—

Speaker 3: (4:09)
Careful of this. [Inaudible]

Tom Harper: (4:14)
But that's about all I can tell you. I had my experience. I had a lot of fun here and—

William Grisham (4:23)
Well, Pop Baker, where did they, where did the directors go up? Do you remember W.S. Van Dyke at all? 

Tom Harper: (4:30)
He went west. 

William Grisham: (4:30)
He was here though. First George had brought him here. 

Tom Harper (4:33)
There was a guy by the name of—begins with a B. Brent?

William Grisham: (04:42)
Brad Braden, Braden. Braden wasn’t it? 

Tom Harper: (4:42)
Braden. 

William Grisham: (4:46)
Braden, yeah. 

Tom Harper: (4:46)
Now he went out west and made, and made several big pictures out there.

William Grisham: (4:53)
And so did W.S. Van Dyke. Van Dyke made a whole lot of—

Speaker 3: (4:56)
Remember him, Tom? 

Tom Harper: (4:57)
Yeah, yeah. Of course all those people all went out there, made a lot of dough out of it for those days. They all did pretty well. 

Speaker 3: (5:06)
Well, they went out West so they could do things outside. Wasn’t that the idea? 

Tom Harper: (5:08)
That’s right. That was the idea of it. Because it collapsed all the studios in the east.

William Grisham: (5:13)
When you went up to New York, Vitagraph had already collapsed had it not? 

Tom Harper: (5:19)
It was just about ready to. I went out to the studio one day just to see what was going on. And I knew two or three people. 

William Grisham: (6:26)
What kind of studio was it compared to [inaudible]? 

Tom Harper: (6:28)
It was an old—it was an old warehousing type of place.

William Grisham: (5:35) 
It was better than, or bigger than, or—

Tom Harper: (5:36)
Or no. No, this was the biggest in the country. Essanay was the finest indoor studio in the country. 

William Grisham: (5:44)
Right. And did you ever get to see the Edison Studio in, where was it, Brooklyn? There were three Edison studios. One was—

Tom Harper: (5:51)
No. I never saw that. That was in Brooklyn. And then I'm trying to think—

William Grisham: (5:55)
Orange. Or was it—

Tom Harper: (5:58)
There was one in New Jersey. 

William Grisham: (5:59)
Yes. East Orange or West Orange, or—

Tom Harper: (6:03)
I'm trying to think of what it was. 

William Grisham: (6:05)
Oh, I can think of them—

Tom Harper: (6:05)
Then the other—there was another big studio in New York—

William Grisham: (6:10)
Biograph? 

Tom Harper: (6:11)
Vitagraph and Biograph. 

William Grisham: (6:12)
That was in a brownstone mansion though wasn’t it, Biograph? Started out. 

Tom Harper: (6:17)
I think you’re right. 

William Grisham: (6:18)
And then there was Universal later on.  

Tom Harper: (6:20)
Universal. That’s where Carl Laemmle started. Yeah. 

William Grisham: (6:23)
But Laemmle really came to here from Wisconsin, from Milwaukee. Did he not? 

Tom Harper: (6:30)
Yeah. And yeah, he came from Wisconsin, came from Milwaukee and then went to New York and that’s where he—

William Grisham: (6:36)
He was a distributor here for a good long while. 

Tom Harper: (6:36)
That’s right. 

William Grisham: (6:39)
Carl Laemmle Exchanges. And then wasn't there a George Kleine here who imported­—

Tom Harper: (6:50)
George Kleine? 

William Grisham: (6:50)
Who had imported a great many films, including [inaudible].

Tom Harper: (6:55)
I don’t remember that name. 

William Grisham: (6:56)
He was the K in Kalem in New York. He was almost a silent partner because he had his offices here. Do you remember Kalem studios? 

Tom Harper: (7:06)
Yeah. 

William Grisham: (7:07)
Where were they? Did you see those in New York 

Tom Harper: (7:09)
Those were in New York? No, I never saw them.  

William Grisham: (7:12)
Well, he was the K. in Kalem, but he operated out of Chicago. Now when, for instance, Beverly Bayne says that they worked, you worked from nine until about five. You had to punch a time clock. 

Tom Harper: (7:27)
That’s right. That’s right. 

William Grisham: (7:27)
And you worked also on Saturdays from about nine until noon. 

Tom Harper (7:30)
That’s right. We were busy. When we were working on a picture, we worked right straight through Saturdays. 

William Grisham: (7:38)
And Sundays. 

Tom Harper: (7:38)
Not Sundays— 

William Grisham: (7:39)
Not Sundays. 

Tom Harper: 
So much, but, uh, got in early, uh, uh, all the way through. And we did that. Uh, inside the studio, we could set up, uh, three or four, uh, sets because it was big, you see. Much bigger than any, than any ever imagined. Now Mage Spoor and Bob Spoor were the managers of the studio. They had charge of all of them. When a director got ready to shoot a picture, he made a thing out of all the sets he was gonna need and everything else. And they would in turn see that the stuff would be made or the carpenter would make up whatever they had and that the painter would paint the stuff and so on. And they were very, uh, very essential to the whole operation. Of course, George K., he, he just, uh, handled the stars and went out and got some more. And so on.

William Grisham: (8:44) 
Do you remember a man by the name of Bouschet or Boucher? 

Tom Harper: (8:47)
Yes, very well. 

William Grisham: (8:49)
He was brought in after who to superintend the whole?

Tom Harper: (8:51)
Well, he was brought in by George K., the superintendent of the whole thing. And of course, like a good many guys brought into things like that, he was very unpopular.

William Grisham: (9:01)
Yes. And when was he brought in about what year do you think? 

Tom Harper: (9:04) 
Well, I would say toward ‘15, 1915, around there. 

William Grisham (9:09)
Yeah. And prior to Bouschet, there was another man that was superintendent who left, did he not, to go to American.

Tom Harper (9:19)
Yeah. And I can’t think of his name. 

William Grisham: (9:21)
It wasn’t Hutchinson. 

Tom Harper: (9:23)
No.

William Grisham: (9:25)
Alright, I'll think of his name. But in other words, there were, in your knowledge, there were only the two superintendents. 

Tom Harper: (9:31)
That’s right. 

William Grisham: (9:31)
And these superintendents, what do they mean when you—what was meant when they, when you say superintendent? They were in charge [inaudible].

Tom Harper (9:39)
They were, they really—

William Grisham: (9:41)
Heads of production? 

Tom Harper: (9:42)
Heads of production is what I would call them. And they had to do with the stars and the getting of the people and the choosing of the directors and things from the scenarios that were made.

William Grisham (9:57)
Do you remember the names of any of the writers, the adaptors, working?

Tom Harper (10:01)
Yeah, we had a fellow by the name of Hal Roach. 

William Grisham: (10:04)
Hal Roach?  

Tom Harper: (10:05)
Joe Roach, I should say. Hal Roach is [inaudible]. And we had another fellow by the name of—

William Grisham: (10:17)
They were the heads of the scenario department. 

Tom Harper: (10:19)
Scenario department, yeah. 

William Grisham: (10:21)
After Louella left. She—Louella said she was fired.

Tom Harper: (10:25)
Well, I don’t recall whether Louella was fired. I always connected Louella more with the publicity. 

William Grisham: (10:31)
The publicity.

Tom Harper: (10:31)
More than anything else. Now, she had—I don't think she did too much or had too much to say with respect to the scenario. 

William Grisham (10:41)
But Roach was the head of the scenario to?

Tom Harper: (10:43)
Joe Roach. And, uh, no, there was another guy that was really the head of it, and I can't think of his name. And—

William Grisham: (10:54)
And they then had to prepare the scripts, the shooting scripts, and your directors would work with them or were the directors more or less handed scripts? 

Tom Harper: (11:03)
In those days, the directors worked with them a lot. They'd outline something that they'd want to do, or they think would make a good picture. And then they'd talk it over with a director or Spoor. And they’d [inaudible]. And then he'd go back and make another copy and they all worked together to try to get something out of these things. 

William Grisham: (11:30) 
I have seen some of these Pop Baker things and they are really well put together.

Tom Harper: (11:34)
Yeah. Now he doesn't—

William Grisham: (11:36)
He was really good. 

Tom Harper: (11:37)
Well, he was an old Broadway producer and did things on the stage. And he knew the business from front to back. 

William Grisham: (11:47)
He was very, very good.  

Tom Harper: (11:48)
And he did most of the George A. pictures. 

William Grisham: (11:52)
Yes. I gathered that. Now when you, for instance, give me the name. If you can remember any of the names of a picture and we'll look, we'll take you through a picture. I just want him to see how, how it worked. You would be called by—who would be in charge of casting, the director or what?

Tom Harper: (12:09)
Well, the director would be in charge of casting the picture. See, they didn't have quite the setup that you've got today in films or TV or anything. The director and the producer—the producer was usually the owner or the guy that puts up the money, which is what you have today. But the director, for all intents and purposes, was that guy that really made the film, hired the actors, controlled the whole thing all over all the way through it. The producer, as far as we were concerned in the old days, was the guy that put up the money. That that was all and in our case, George K. Spoor, who we worked for. Right. And that, oh, he'd step up. I could see George now. He'd come down on the floor every once in a while and see what was going on or was watching some director taking a picture or something like that. And if he saw something he didn’t like way he would hesitate to say something. He was quite a guy and— 

Speaker 3: (13:15)
Was he quite a bit older than Major?

William Grisham: (13:17)
Yes, he was. 

Tom Harper: (13:18)
Oh yes. 

Speaker 3: (13:19)
I figured that because of [inaudible]. 

William Grisham: (13:20)
[Inaudible] don’t you think? Many years older. 

Tom Harper: (13:22)
George K. was quite a bit older. And George K., had a very, very lovely daughter. 

William Grisham: (13:29)
Gertrude. 

Tom Harper: (13:29)
Gertrude, who married a guy who was over at the studio and the camera end of it. What the heck was his name? Then he left there after he married—after he and Gertrude got married. And he left there and he went downtown, and I think in the advertising business. 

William Grisham: (13:49)
Well, she did—did they divorce then because she was married to Gerald General Weart.

Tom Harper: (13:56)
Mhm. Well, then they must have got divorced if she married—

William Grisham: (13:59)
That’s probably what it was. Because she married a general, ultimately married a General Weart and they lived in Washington DC. 

Tom Harper: (14:08)
Yeah. 

William Grisham: (14:09)
Let me ask now, now that it's the director, then you would be called in and—

Tom Harper (14:16)
And given a script. 

William Grisham: (14:18)
Did you get much time to look over your script or? 

Tom Harper: (14:20)
Oh, you actually get maybe a day or two, but we'd do most of it with all of us rehearsing. And we did more joint rehearsing than they do today and taking pictures. 

William Grisham: (14:33)
Did you rehearse very much? Now, let's say you did a two-reeler, would you rehearse very much on each scene and then would you do the take?

Tom Harper: (14:42)
Yes. We would rehearsal it maybe for a half, three quarters of an hour before we took it.

William Grisham: (14:48)
Mhm.

Tom Harper (14:49)
And then of course we, all the outdoor stuff, you know, we shot all over the neighborhood. I mean, we'd go over to this house or that house. And we knew all these—George K. knew most of these people that lived in the neighborhoods, you know. And he'd send them over $25 or at Christmas time he'd give them something, you know? And so we were always, we always had all kinds of locations, any kind of house we wanted.

William Grisham: (15:14)
Did you ever hear the location in Ithaca, New York? Was there a director who lived up there? McRae Webster? Maybe. 

Tom Harper: (15:25)
No, that I know of. 

William Grisham: (15:27)
In one of the Essanay folders that I have, publicity releases, they have—it says Essanay. We call it—this was called the Eastern company. And then there was Essanay, Ithaca, New York. I'm just curious about that. Was that the home of McRae Webster, perhaps?  

Tom Harper: (15:47)
Might could—might have been.  

William Grisham: (15:49)
Yeah. One of the directors at [inaudible]. [Inaudible] remembers making several pictures up there with Bushman. So it might've been McRae Webster. Did he direct most of their films, Harry McRae Webster? 

Tom Harper: (16:01)
Yeah, he did a lot of the—

William Grisham: (16:03)
Would he have directed Graustark, do you think? 

Tom Harper: (16:06)
He did, yeah. He directed Graustark with Bushman and Beverly Bayne and I’m trying to think of some of the others he had. Oh, he did a series of two or three Edgar Allen Poe stories, you know. 

William Grisham: (16:31)
Starring H.B. Waffle. 

Tom Harper: (16:35)
Yeah. And, oh, The Raven was one of the big pictures they did. 

William Grisham: (16:40)
Yeah. 

Tom Harper: (16:41)
Quoth the raven nevermore. 

William Grisham: (16:43)
Tell me, how was that done? Was it kind of a nice—

Tom Harper: (16:46)
Oh yes. We—In those days, we did pictures and they were very particular about a lot of things. 

William Grisham: (16:56)
They were really very good.

Tom Harper: (16:57)
And—

William Grisham: (17:00) 
I saw one in nineteen—one that was done in 1908, ten. Nights in a Bar Room is that right? 

Tom Harper: (17:07)
Yeah. 

William Grisham: (17:08)
Well, I’ll tell you what I saw a clean copy of that. It was not duped. And it was really beautiful photography. 

Tom Harper: (17:12)
I, you know, in those days, George K.—the advertising and the selling of a film to the nickel shows, which is what they were. 

William Grisham: (17:22)
Sure.

Tom Harper: (17:23)
Was done by flyers primarily. They do a picture. They make up a fryer. And they’d shoot these out to all these theaters around telling them when the picture was ready to be shown and how much it would cost and so on and so forth. And that’s [inaudible] one that I was in, but that's a flyer of the way they sold the picture in those days. Now there a picture that I was in. And as you can see Walle Berry was in it. And Charlie Stein was in it. Now Charlie Stein was an ole’ [inaudible].

William Grisham: (18:04)
He played, he played the fat man. 

Tom Harper: (18:06)
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. 

William Grisham: (18:08)
He was awful good. [Inaudible]

Tom Harper: (18:10)
But I thought that you might be interested in seeing that if you hadn't seen one of those. I don't know whether all of us got any of those or not. 

Speaker 3: (18:19)
[Inaudible] little boy. 

Tom Harper: (18:22)
Yeah. But that was the way they sold the pictures in those days. 

Speaker 3: (18:26)
Did they send them around the neighborhoods or just to the theaters. 

Tom Harper: (18:28)
Oh. They send them to all the theaters. No, this is to the theaters so that the exhibitor could see what he was buying.

William Grisham: (18:37)
Well, General Films distributed for Essanay, right? 

Tom Harper: (18:41)
That’s right. 

William Grisham: (18:42)
And they would, would there be posters and then these flyers. 

Tom Harper: (18:44)
Posters and these flyers. 

William Grisham: (18:46)
Right. The big posters. Nobody seems to have any of them. This is beautiful. Would you— do you want this in that book to explain you or not? Because I would be delighted. 

Tom Harper: (18:57)
Alright. You can have it. 

William Grisham: (18:58)
Well, I don't want to take it. I would like—

Tom Harper: (19:00)
Well, you to take it and see that I get it back. 

William Grisham: (19:02)
You'll get it back. Don't worry. 

Tom Harper: (19:04)
You’ll do that. 

William Grisham: (19:04)
Yes. 

Speaker 3: (19:05)
Yes. Just so we get it back. 

Tom Harper: (19:06)
Just so we get it back. 

William Grisham: (19:07)
I think I have other [inaudible]

Tom Harper: (19:08)
Yeah, I think [inaudible]. 

William Grisham: (19:10)
[Inaudible] Do you have other pictures [inaudible]. 

Tom Harper: (19:11)
I think you can run that in the book and that might be very—

William Grisham: (19:16)
I'll put it in the book. 

Tom Harper: (19:16)
Very helpful. 

William Grisham: (19:17)
Yeah, yeah. 

Tom Harper: (19:18)
Now, there's a picture. That happens to be my brother who is now dead. He was younger than I was, and he did one or two pictures over there. But there was a picture of Eddie Arnold. Edward Arnold. 

William Grisham: (19:35)
And this is your brother.

Tom Harper: (19:36)
That’s my brother. 

William Grisham: (19:37)
Who is, who is this actor? Do you remember? 

Tom Harper: (19:39)
He was a Dutchman by the name of Von Turpin or something like that. I can't remember his name, but he’d been over in this country and he made pictures in Germany. 

Speaker 3: (19:56)
Had you left the studio when Bill was there or did Bill go at the same time you did? 

Tom Harper: (20:00)
No. He—I was leaving there at the time—

William Grisham: (20:04)
You have a real Black lady in this film. 

Tom Harper: (20:07)
Yeah.

William Grisham: (20:08)
That's amazing because there are very few of them. And who was that? 

Speaker 3: (20:10)
What’s this? 

Tom Harper: (20:11)
There was that—this here, that you wanted to see is in that picture.

William Grisham: (20:18)
And this is you. Good. 

Tom Harper: (20:19)
Yeah. And here’s [inaudible]. 

William Grisham: (20:20)
Oh, there’s Stein. There’s Charlie Stein.

Tom Harper: (20:20)
Charlie Stein. 

William Grisham: (20:23)
What's the name of this picture? 

Tom Harper: (20:24)
Uh. Presto Willie. 

Speaker 3: (20:27)
No. The name of the movie? 

Tom Harper: (20:28)
Yeah. 

William Grisham: (20:29)
Was that Presto Willie? 

Tom Harper: (20:30)
Yeah. 

Speaker 3: (20:30)
[Inaudible]

William Grisham: (20:31)
Let’s keep that together [inaudible]

Tom Harper: (20:32)
And this is Presto Willie. 

William Grisham: (20:34) 
And that's Presto Willie. And who was the guy there in the wig? 

Tom Harper: (20:39)
That's the guy that was, that’s the guy that was this fella here. 

William Grisham: (20:45)
Okay. 

Speaker 3: (20:45)
Van. Van something. 

Tom Harper: (20:46)
Van. Von. Von Klein or something like that it was. And then here was shooting a scene in a church and they wanted an audience. [Inaudible] So all of them sat. All of them sat in the pews. On the set to be the audience. Now here is the fellow that we've talked about, Dick Baker. [Inaudible] Dick Baker. 

William Grisham: (21:19)
That's Pop Baker. 

Tom Harper: (21:19)
Yeah.

Speaker 3: (21:20)
Which one? 

Tom Harper: (21:21)
Second one [inaudible]. 

Speaker 3: (21:22)
Yeah, this is Tom’s father right here? And this is Baker here. This is Tom’s father. 

Tom Harper: (21:22)
My father was with the Commonwealth Edison Company and had the north side district. So of course the Essanay was the biggest thing that Thomas Edison had in those days. They spent more money with Thomas Edison than with anybody so he was over there a lot looking around, you know, and seeing the lights. 

William Grisham: (21:50)
Fabulous. I'm going to take those. I'll take the notes. 

Tom Harper: (21:52)
Alright. 

William Grisham: (21:53)
So tell me go ahead now. 

Tom Harper: (21:55)
Here was [inaudible] Scott—

William Grisham: (22:00)
Oh, this is the one—

Tom Harper: (22:00)
Who was the leading lady over there. 

William Grisham: (22:06)
I haven't seen her before. That's crazy.

Tom Harper: (22:08)
She was over there for, oh, a couple of years. 

Speaker 3: (22:11)
Whatever happened to her? Did she go West? 

Tom Harper: (22:14)
She went West with him. 

William Grisham: (22:15)
Well, where did they go West because they had—

Tom Harper: (22:17)
They went to Los Angeles and Hollywood.

William Grisham: (22:20)
Well, they still, they didn’t, they closed down though. 

Tom Harper: (22:24)
Now the studio that Franco Belli had—was not located in—

William Grisham: (22:31)
It was not.

Tom Harper: (22:29)
In Hollywood  today. No, it was outside of there. What did you say?

William Grisham: 22:37
Well, I know that W.S. Van Dyke went to Universal, went to Culver City.

Tom Harper: (22:42)
Culver City. That was where they had this stuff located. Now there’s an interesting picture. There's Bushman, Chaplain, and Bronco Billy, Jim Anderson. That was when Jim Anderson brought him here and introduced him, when Spoor raised hell because he spent all his dough to get Chaplain. 

William Grisham: (23:07)
Right. You know, I have the picture that just precedes this where they're all just sort of staring. 

Speaker 3: (23:13)
Oh really? 

William Grisham: (23:14)
Yeah. Isn’t that amazing? 

Tom Harper: (23:17)
There’s a good picture of Beverly Payne. 

William Grisham: (23:33)
My god. She wrote, writes the same way she wrote that. Exactly.

Tom Harper: (23:26)
Here's Ruth Stonehouse. 

William Grisham: (23:39)
Who everybody am I correct? 

Tom Harper: (23:31)
Very much. She was a very fine girl.

William Grisham: (22:33)
Now she goes on. Somebody said that she doesn’t. But I track her down in films later on. She’s, uh— 

Tom Harper: (23:38)
Here Is a picture of Dick Travis, who was a very good leading man. He was also, later directed several pictures. And this guy was an [inaudible] director out there. Calvert. Very good man. 

William Grisham: (24:01)
That's the Calvert that I [inaudible]. He wore [inaudible]. I see him in a picture with [inaudible]. 

Tom Harper: (24:05)
Yeah.

William Grisham: (24:06)
Yeah. Isn't that great? That's fabulous. Now, can you tell me something about this? Because this is most unusual to have a Black woman in films. Hardly ever.

Tom Harper: (24:21)
Well, she of course was blacked up. She was a white girl.

William Grisham: (24:23)
This one was? 

Tom Harper: (24:25)
She's got burnt cork on. 

Speaker 3: (24:27)
Yeah. 

William Grisham: (24:30)
It doesn't look that way. 

Tom Harper: (24:31)
Oh, I'm sure that she had—it may not. I’m sure that I’m right. 

William Grisham: (24:40)
This is you. Yeah. And you're in what, in this? 

Tom Harper: (24:44)
That was—those are all from Presto. Willie. 

William Grisham: (24:46)
‘Anonymous Love’ it says on the back of it. 

Tom Harper: (24:48)
Anonymous love. 

William Grisham: (24:49)
Oh, that's just a joke. Okay. This is—these are all from Presto Willie. 

Tom Harper: (24:53)
All from Presto Willie.

William Grisham: (24:53)
Except this one. 

Tom Harper: (24:55)
That's right. This one I don't remember what that was from.

William Grisham: (24:59)
Yeah.

Tom Harper: (25:00)
But that I showed you. I think that's an interesting picture to show you a picture of Ed Arnold when he was a young fellow.

Speaker 3: (25:07)
Her hands are white. 

William Grisham: (25:09)
That's the best makeup job I think I've ever seen. 

Speaker 3: (25:10)
Isn’t that something? 

William Grisham: (25:12)
Now, let me talk about that, if I may, because I found out the first all-black films were done in Chicago. And do you remember seeing pictures by Ebony. That were distributed in the nickel, in the theaters? Ebony Films of Chicago. It was started by a man by the name of Luther Pollard. And they were supported or backed by the Four-Wheel Drive Company? 

Tom Harper: (25:46)
[Inaudible] Now the Four Wheel Drive Company was in Wisconsin. 

William Grisham: (25:49)
Was within Wisconsin, right. Yeah. 

Speaker 3: (25:52)
Did you want to show him this? This was the lot. 

Tom Harper: (25:54)
Oh yeah. This is the—that’s the lot. Now, this is the back of the lot. And these are the studios here [inaudible]. So you get an idea of how big the studios were. We could set up four or five scenes in there.

William Grisham: (26:10) 
They're still standing. They're wonderful. Yeah, I've been in them.

Tom Harper: (26:13)
[Inaudible] I don't recall, the name sounds familiar to me, but—

William Grisham: (26:21)
Did you have—I have sets of a backlot with houses on it. They looked like permanent houses are set up.

Tom Harper: (26:29)
They were probably built. I don't know of any houses on it of any kind on the lot. 

William Grisham: (26:35) 
What I'm saying is they were probably prop houses but they were—looked like they were well built. Was there enough room for that? Near the Saint Boniface Cemetery. 

Tom Harper: (26:44)
Yeah. Right near the cemetery, 

William Grisham: (26:47)
The cemetery—

Tom Harper: (26:47)
At the back end of the lot. 

William Grisham: (26:49)
Right. And now it's all asphalted over and everything, but it was out in the open then wasn't it? Yeah. When you went into the studios and you'd be cast in one of these and then the director would discuss things with you and then you'd rehearse? 

Tom Harper: (27:08)
Rehearse. And do the inside scenes. And then they'd say, “Well, tomorrow we're gonna go outside and shoot.”

William Grisham: (27:14)
And you’d shoot out of sequence. 

Tom Harper: (27:15)
And then we'd shoot out of sequence, same as they make them now. And we'd all—we had—George Spoor had two European cars, big touring cars. We used these. One was a Rolls Royce and the other was a Loescher made in France. And we used to get these cars, you know, and geez, we'd be gone for all day and go out to [inaudible] Center. 

William Grisham: (27:46)
Mhm. 

Tom Harper: (27:48)
And we'd spend a day out there and the studio would buy us lunch, or they'd take a picnic lunch along. And we'd make—see if it was country stuff, you know, and all that. And we work out all day long, come back and— 

William Grisham: (28:09)
That’s remarkable.

Side 2

William Grisham: (00:01)
1913. And how, did you stay on there for several years? 

Tom Harper: (00:05)
About three years, 

William Grisham: (00:07)
‘Bout three years. Then they closed down, did they not, in about 1918? 

Tom Harper: (00:12)
Well, they closed down, yes. Shortly after that and moved to—moved the whole operation out to California because they had discovered through previous people being out there that they could make pictures out there for about a third of what they cost here. Now, Essanay, of course, had the largest indoor studio and the best indoor studio in the country they were about—

William Grisham: (00:50)
Do you remember what kind of lights there were? Were there Cooper-Hewitt?  

Tom Harper: (00:53)
They were the long klieg light. What we call a klieg light.  

William Grisham: (00:57)
And what about Cooper-Hewitts? They were, it looked like, it looked like fluorescent lights. 

Tom Harper: (1:01)
That's right. They were Cooper-Hewitt lights.

William Grisham: (1:04)
Right. 

Tom Harper: (1:04)
And—

William Grisham: (1:05)
Do you remember who installed those? I have—

Tom Harper: (1:07)
No. 

William Grisham: (1:09)
That Allen Dwan. Was Alan Dwan there when you were there?

Tom Harper: (1:13)
No, not that I, not that I can remember. 

William Grisham: (1:17)
All right. Did you remember, um, and [inedible], I'll just get these questions out of the way then I'd like to ask you questions about yourself. Do you remember the American Film Manufacturing Company? 

Tom Harper: (1:27)
Yes. 

William Grisham: (1:28)
And where were they located?

Tom Harper: (1:31)
Well, they were located out on—

William Grisham: (1:35)
Were they on Broadway? 

Tom Harper: (1:36)
Western Avenue. No, they were out on Western Avenue. 

William Grisham: (1:38)
That was Selig. That was Selig on Western. 

Tom Harper: (1:40)
Oh that’s right. I’m thinking of Selig. 

William Grisham: (1:41)
American was up—wasn't it close to Devon Avenue? 

Tom Harper: (1:44)
That’s right. That’s right. American was up to Devon—up close to Devon. And Selig was out on Western Avenue. 

William Grisham: (1:50)
Western and Irving Park.

Tom Harper: (1:52)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (1:52)
Can you tell me, do you know any of the actors who were at American by any chance? They broke off from Essanay in 1910, but aside from Jay Warren Kerrigan I wondered who was there. 

Tom Harper (2:07)
No, I don't know any those previous to Essanay. 

William Grisham: (2:14) 
Did you ever get out to see the Selig Studio by any chance?

Tom Harper: (2:17)
Yes.

William Grisham: (2: 19)
What was it like? Can you describe it? 

Tom Harper: (2:21)
Well, Selig Studio is a very fine indoor studio. It was not as large as the Essanay, was about half as big as the Essanay studio. Uh, Selig was a very nice man as I remembered him, man, uh, eh, he was, he ran a pretty good place out there. And uh, had some, several pictures that were—

William Grisham: (2:53) 
He did not have a stars though did he that Essanay did? 

Tom Harper: (2:55)
No. George. K Spoor who was the head of Essanay. I was very fortunate in being able and he was a very good administrator and he saw that the thing that would make pictures in those days profitable was to have a star. So he signed up every star that he could get ahold of, of course. 

William Grisham: (3:25)
Tell me where you, was—Bushman had arrived much earlier than you? 

Tom Harper: (3:30) 
Oh yeah. Frank Bushman was there at the time I was there.

William Grisham: (3:35)
And Beverly Bayne. 

Tom Harper: (3:37)
Barely Bayne. And, uh, Frank at, uh, was quite a guy. He had, he had five children by his first wife. And, uh, but that studio and everybody in the studio kept that very [inaudible] because of his, uh, image of a hero and so forth. And he was a big star in those days. And so George K. instructed everybody that they were not to talk about, uh, Frank Bushman's previous life or his children or things of that kind because they didn't want him to know it, you know. 

William Grisham: (4:23)
Right. Um, Bayne had arrived, I've tracked down as early as 1911. Was she there before 1911 that you know of? 

Tom Harper: (4:32)
No, no. I think Beverly came around 1911. And there was a girl and a male. She came in there around in that time. 

William Grisham: (4:43)
And what—

Tom Harper: (4:44)
Ruth Stonehouse.

William Grisham: (4:46)
Ruth Stonehouse came from the north shore didn’t she? 

Tom Harper: (4:48)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (4:59)
Where, do you remember what suburbs she came from?

Tom Harper: (4:52)
It would, it seems to me it was [inaudible] but I’m not sure. 

William Grisham: (4:57)
And that was Ruth Stonehouse. And Ruth Stonehouse played pretty much the same roles as Beverly Bayne. 

Tom Harper: (5:04)
That’s right. They were the leading ladies drive. 

William Grisham: (5:06)
Right. 

Tom Harper: (5:07)
And the leading men, of course, were Frank Bushman. And a fellow by the name of Bryant Washburn. You've probably heard about.

William Grisham: (5:18)
Yes.

Tom Harper: (5:20)
And of course, Wally Beery was there at that time.

William Grisham: (5:23)
Can you tell me about Wally? Wally came to the studio at what time, do you remember?

Tom Harper: (5:29)
Wally came to the Essanay around 1913. 

William Grisham: (5:33)
And who hired him or who had seen him? I understand that Spoor had seen him in a circus and I don't think that's correct.

Tom Harper: (5:40)
No. George K. Spoor saw him in the yard in a vaudeville skit. 

William Grisham: (5:45)
That's what I thought. 

Tom Harper: (5:46)
And hired him to come out here to play comedies. 

William Grisham: (5:54)
Yeah.

Tom Harper: (5:55)
And Wally came on the set, as I remember, somewhere around 1913. 

William Grisham: (6:03)
You were already there though.

Tom Harper: (6:05)
That’s right. And Henry Walthall. 

William Grisham: (6:08)
And Henry Walthall came when, because it had to be after the Birth of, after Birth, Birth of a Nation. 

Tom Harper: (6:12)
Yeah. Henry Walthall there ‘bout 1914 or ‘15, my recollection.

William Grisham: (6:21)
And Ben Turpin was there from the very beginning, was he not? 

Tom Harper: (6:26)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (6:27)
Was he in an Awful Skate? Do you remember that film or hearing about that film in An Awful Skate in which he skates down Clark Street knocking people over?

Tom Harper: (6:37)
No, I don't know remember that one. But I could tell you a very funny one ‘bout Ben you might be interested in. Ben was at a circus clown, an acrobat. And he didn't have much money. And of course in those days they didn't pay an awful lot of money over there at the studio. And Ben came over there and he wasn't working steadily. They didn't, a lot of those people were not what we called on salary. They only were paid $10 a day when they worked. Well, Ben was one of those. And uh, he used to get the extras down in the basement, down in the basement of the studios. There was, where the dressing was, where it was a cement floor, just a cement floor. And Ben used to get a bunch of these guys together and bet ‘em that he could do a flip-flop and land on his back naked.
Well, of course, all these guys thought he was crazy. He couldn't do anything of that kind. He’d break his back. So he'd get all these guys together and they'd put up a pool of five or six dollars, you know, and to see him do this, then he'd take off his clothes, turn the flip flop. And I've seen him do it half a dozen times. Doing a flip flop on that cement floor and land flat on his back. Of course he was a clown. A lot of them didn't know it, you know, or he was really a very funny guy and a very nice guy. He, he didn't have much education and, uh, he knocked around in New York and up Bowery and practice 3rd Avenue, so on. But he was funny. And of course his looks were the greatest assist that he had, those cross eyes, you know. 

William Grisham: (8:32)
Right. Gloria Swanson was there in 1914 as an extra.

Tom Harper: (8:37)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (8:38)
Uh, tell me, how did she arrive there? I have very—

Tom Harper (08:41):
Gloria, Gloria Swanson, to my, to my recollection came there through a man by the name of Dick Baker. Now where Dick Baker got a Gloria, I don't, I don't recall. Dick Baker, Dick Baker was a director. 

William Grisham: (8:58)
He was called Pop Baker, wasn’t he? 

Tom Harper: (8:59)
Yeah, that's right. 

William Grisham: (9:01)
And he was married to whom? 

Tom Harper: (9:02)
He was married to—well, his wife was not in the business, but her son was in the business. Mrs.—

William Grisham: (9:15)
She was not an actress. 

Tom Harper: (9:16)
No, no. But Dick was. 

William Grisham: (9:18)
McRae Webster had a wife who was an actress. 

Tom Harper: (9:21)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (9:22)
Henry or Harry McRae Webster? 

Tom Harper: (9:24)
Henry, uh, Harry Webster.

William Grisham (9:26)
And he had a wife whose name was?

Tom Harper: (9:28)
Yeah. I'm trying to think of what her name was.

William Grisham: (9:30)
We'll get that later. That's okay. Um, but now you tell me about Dick Baker hired, or Pop Baker, hired Gloria Swanson, right?

Tom Harper: (9:39)
That’s right. That's right. And of course I did a lot of work with, that's how I happened to go over there was through Pop Baker. Because Pop Baker lived in the same building that we did. 

William Grisham: (9:53)
Where was that?

Tom Harper: (9:54)
At 1218 Winnemac, which is the street, the side of where our guy, where the studio was. And I had done some work in high school and one thing or another. And Dick and the family were very close.  So Dick asked me one day, or asked my mother and father, if I could come over to the studio. He liked to use me in a picture. So my mother and father agreed it would be alright. So that was how I went into the thing.

William Grisham: (10:30)
Very good. Now, Pop Baker, I was told, um, came, uh, he did the, Wally Beery, did a lot of the comedies. 

Tom Harper: (10:36)
Did the Wally Beery. He did what they called—there was a series called the Sweetie Picture where Wally played a Sweden maid. 

William Grisham: (10:47)
Right. 

Tom Harper: (10:47)
And—

William Grisham: (10:49)
Do you know where any of those, or do you have any knowledge of any of those old films by any chance,  whether they exist?

Tom Harper: (10:55)
No. I don't know whether they would even exist. I don't know where they would be.

William Grisham: (11:02)
He did the Sweetie films and—

Tom Harper: (11:05)
And then he did some other things different types of—

William Grisham: (11:14)
Were they mostly comedies though?

Tom Harper: (11:15)
Yeah. 

William Grisham: (11:16)
Yeah. I have his, where had he gotten in his training? Was it in vaudeville or—

Tom Harper: (11:19)
In vaudeville. 

William Grisham: (11:21)
Uh-huh. And he had in vaudeville. And did he bring a Francis X. Bushman there too? I was told that—

Tom Harper: (11:31)
No, Frank Bushman was there before Wally. 

William Grisham: (11:34)
Alright. And before Baker or had Baker been there before? 

Tom Harper: (11:36)
Frank was there before Baker. 

William Grisham: (11:39)
So maybe—

Tom Harper: (11:40)
Frank was one of George K. Spoor’s first big stars. I mean, he was one of the first ones he hired when he had the studio going.

William Grisham: (11:50)
Um, he had been though in stock—

Tom Harper: (11:53)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (11:54)
[Inaudible] would have been in stock and one of the directors was—Was Webster one of the first directors? 

Tom Harper: (11:59)
Harry Webster was one of the first directors. 

William Grisham: (12:00)
Because he probably brought Bushman there then. 

Tom Harper: (12:05)
That’s right. That’s right. 

William Grisham: (12:06)
Yeah, I would imagine. Um. Did G.M. Anderson, Gilbert Anderson—did he direct anything while you were there?

Tom Harper: (12:12)
Well. 

William Grisham: (12:13)
Or was he already [inaudible]?

Tom Harper: (12:14)
Anderson and Spoor—and that’s where the name comes from, Essanay. Anderson wanted to do westerns. He didn't want anything but westerns. He was typical cowboy Bronco Billy. So he was in California all the time. He'd do his pictures. He’d make his pictures out there, send them, send them to us here and the studio would develop up here and distribute them from this place. But this was the Bronco Billy Anderson series of stock of things that he made out there, which were all those western pictures. And—

William Grisham: (12:57)
Do you remember Victor Patel? 

Tom Harper: (12:59)
Yes.

William Grisham: (13:00)
Now, he started out here, but then he went out to the west.

Tom Harper: (13:03)
He went out there with—with Billy G.M. Anderson.

William Grisham: (13:07)
Were there many who had left then to join Anderson?

Tom Harper: (13:13)
No, not too many. He had his own group out there. [Inaudible] he had, yeah, some of those old guys with him that used to be with Mabel Norman's directory. What the hell is his name? 

William Grisham: (13:34)
You mean Mack Sennett.

Tom Harper: (13:35)
Mack Sennett. He had Chester Conklin for a while out there. And then he had—oh what the hell was his name? He had another cowboy that Hoot Gibson. You remember Hoot Gibson?

William Grisham: (13:52)
Was Hoot Gibson with him at all? 

Tom Harper: (13:53)
Sure. Hoot worked with them. See they all, in those days, Bronco Billy with G.M. Anderson stuff out there were the biggest, one of the biggest in the whole business. See, at that time when he was out there, he was the only one practically there was out there making pictures in California. All the rest of the studios—Vitagraph, Biograph all those outfits—were in New York and New Jersey. 

William Grisham: (14:26)
Right. 

Tom Harper: (14:27)
And he was the guy who not only told his partner, Spoor, that it was cheaper to make pictures out there and all. But of course, all the rest of the industry heard about it, knew about it and looked into it and they find out, what the hell, they could make a picture for a third as much money because they didn't have to use lights and they didn't have to have indoor. And the weather was good most to the time. You didn't have to worry about snow and wintertime. Of course, the pictures in the days were a scream, because you'd get a scene in a living room, for example, because they built the sets out on the—.

William Grisham: (15:07)
Outdoors. 

Tom Harper: (15:07)
Outdoors. You'd get a scene in the living room, say, and there’d be all the goddamn curtains blowing out the windows and [inaudible] but nobody paid any attention to those things in those days. 

William Grisham: (15:20)
Let me ask you—do you ever—did you ever hear the Lubin studios? 

Tom Harper: (15:23)
Yes. 

William Grisham: (15:24)
They were in Philadelphia. 

Tom Harper: (15:25)
They were in Philadelphia.

William Grisham: (15:27)
Right. Alright. Tell me now, what were you—what was the most surprising thing when you went over to the studio for the first time, when you met up with—whom did you meet? 

Tom Harper: (15:37)
Well, I went over—when I went over there, first, one of the first persons I met, or one of the first persons I met was, of course, Gloria Swanson. And a girl by the name of June Walker. Who later, who later went on to star in musical comedy. And for a good many years in New York and Broadway, she was—she had done very well. One of the biggest things she did was Green Grow the Lilacs. And she and I did a show, were gonna do a picture over there together, a couple of kids in a picture where we had to dance and, uh, I didn't know too much about dancing in those days. And, uh, we had a fellow over there by the name of Joe Burke, who was an old vaudeville guy.

William Grisham: (16:37)
What did he do? Was he an actor? 

Tom Harper: (16:39)
Well, he was an actor and a singer and dancer. And so he said, well, “I'll teach you both how to dance.: So every day for four or five weeks, we'd have lessons with him in the morning. And then the afternoon. And June and I, we got—so we could do some of the things and we were all right for the picture. But they were the first two, then of course, Pop Baker who took me over there. And then there was a fellow over there who was a leading man who I was very fond—

Speaker 3: (17:10)
Well, how do you do. 

Tom Harper: (17:12)
Come in. 

Speaker 3: (17:12)
I’m sorry to be so late. 

[Pause in the tape] 

Tom Harper: (17:14)
By the name a Dick Travers, you haven't—

William Grisham: (17:15)
Richard Travers. 

Tom Harper: (17:16)
You have anything? He was a great guy. Dick has—

William Grisham: (17:20)
You were talking about the acting singing, dancing Joe Burke was teaching you. And then Travers comes, right? 

Tom Harper: (17:25)
Then Travers came in and, uh, we did a picture with him called The Mounties or something else. We went up and shot part of this picture and we used to go up to a Nile Center, which was then out in the country. And we’d do a lot of outdoor scenes up there—one thing. And then one time we did a picture, on the first on a book by a guy that lived in Lake Forest, Hobart-Chatfield Taylor. And that we had to have castle seeds in this thing and all kinds of fancy stuff. So he worked it out with Edie Rockefeller McCormick up there who had her estate that she would allow us to come up there and tape this picture on this estate. So we went up there and—

Speaker 3: (18:36)
Where was that? Lake Forest? 

Tom Harper: (18:38)
Lake Forest. And stayed for three or four days and shot this picture up there. And—

William Grisham: (18:43)
Who was the director on that? Do you remember? 

Tom Harper: (18:45)
The director on that was a fellow by the name of Calvert. 

William Grisham: (18:49)
Yes. And when did he come in because I have pictures of him? 

Tom Harper: (18:51)
E.H. Calvert.

Speaker 3: (18:52)
Well, you have a picture of him [inaudible]. 

Tom Harper: (18:53)
Yeah. I may have some pictures here.  

William Grisham: (18:55)
Where did he come from? Where had Calvert come from? 

Tom Harper: (18:57)
He came, [inaudible], all of them came from New York. He came from New York. See, they had heard about Essanay. 

William Grisham: (19:05)
Had they directed for films before? 

Tom Harper: (19:07)
No. No. 

William Grisham: (19:08)
Did they have stock companies? 

Tom Harper: (19:10)
Stock companies. Most of these people were out of stock companies.

William Grisham: (19:14)
All right. And Harry McRae Webster was also out of stock.

Tom Harper: (19:17)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (19:18)
Was it M.A.C.R.A.E.? 

Tom Harper: (19:20)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (19:21)
Webster. Okay. And now I was also told that The Armour Estate was used. McCormick’s? 

Tom Harper: (19:30)
We used The Armour Estate once or twice for other scenes. 

William Grisham: (19:34)
It doesn’t look like a castle, but this McCormick’s place—

Tom Harper: (19:38)
No, McCormick’s, you know, was on the lake, and she had a beautiful place up there. 

Speaker 3: (19:40)
She used to come out there and watch, didn’t she? 

Tom Harper: (19:43)
Yeah.

William Grisham: (19:44)
What was her first name, Edie? 

Tom Harper: (19:45)
Edie Rockefeller McCormick. 

Speaker 3: (19:46)
Edith Rockefeller McCormick. 

William Grisham: (19:47)
Edith Rockefeller McCormick. Yeah. That's right. 

Tom Harper: (19:49)
That’s old John D.’s daughter.

William Grisham: (19:50)
Rockefeller’s. Sure. And you did that, then it was directed by E.H. Calvert. Do you remember any of the other directors who directed you and others there? I know that—

Tom Harper: (20:01)
Well there was a fellow, uh, there was Travers. And there was a fellow by the name of Totten.

William Grisham: (20:08)
Yes. I have that list of—

Tom Harper: (20:09)
Who was a very good director. And I did a picture with him where he took us down to, it was a sea picture, and we spent five or six weeks down at Watch Hill, Rhode Island one year. Did a lot of interesting stuff. But he was an old, an old stock man. All these people were from New York in and around, uh, the city of New York doing, uh, they'd done stock. They'd been on Broadway. They'd done a little bit of everything.

William Grisham: (20:42)
And Spoor was a man who really got in touch with him. 

Tom Harper : (20:44)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (20:45)
So he had a good eye. Totten, any other directors whom you know, that—

Tom Harper: (20:52)
I’m trying to think. 

William Grisham: (20:54)
There was Totten, Calvert, Webster. 

Tom Harper: (20:57)
Baker. Calvert. Webster. 

William Grisham: (20:59)
Baker. 

Tom Harper: (21:01)
And, uh, there was another fellow. 

William Grisham: (21:03)
Barry directed, a few things, did he not? Toward the end. 

Tom Harper: (21:06)
Yeah. Yeah. 

William Grisham: (21:07)
Right. 

Tom Harper: (21:07)
Before he went to California. 

William Grisham: (21:09)
He began directing. Did he go to—

Tom Harper: (21:10)
And then we had, uh, we had, well, uh, Henry Walthall. 

William Grisham: (21:17)
Came in in about at about ’15, you think? 

Tom Harper: (21:19)
That’s right. And then right after him, Spoor signed the big contract—in those days it got terrific publicity all over—of Charlie Chaplin.

William Grisham: (21:33)
And Chaplain came in ’19, the winter of 1914. 

Tom Harper: (21:37)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (21:39)
Did you get to meet him? 

Tom Harper: (21:40)
Yes. 

William Grisham: (21:40)
What— most of the people I've interviewed were very much down on him because he was so aloof, but that doesn't mean anything. 

Tom Harper: (21:47)
Oh no. He wasn't particularly aloof. He—Charlie Chaplin was a typical Englishman. And he was a top money guy by far. Now, Spoor paid him. It was reported that he got $750 a week. And my God in those days, you know, that was just like a $50,000 a week today. 

William Grisham: (22:17)
Of course it is. 

Tom Harper: (22:18)
And Henry Walthall got big money. But, uh, that went all over like wildfire, you know, that he'd been. Charlie was a good guy and  I have a picture of him here.

Speaker 3: (22:34)
Did you show him your pictures? 

Tom Harper: (22:36)
Well, he [inaudible]. 

William Grisham: (22:36)
We’ll look at them and—I just wanted to—Chaplain, however though, was—when he came in, he had not been making very much at the Sennett Studios. And when he came in here, Molly Anderson met him at the train, I understand. Spoor was very unhappy that Bronco Billy signed him up. Is that true?

Tom Harper: (23:00)
That’s true? That's correct. Because he—

William Grisham: (23:01)
[Inaudible] beat the train. 

Tom Harper: (23:04)
He signed, Bronco signed him up. Spoor didn’t know much about him. 

William Grisham: (23:08)
Right. And he was very worried and—

Tom Harper: (23:10)
Very much upset. 

William Grisham: (23:11)
Anderson had gone out of his mind. 

Tom Harper: (23:13)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (23:14)
Now, Spoor later claims that he buys him an overcoat. I understand that Molly bought him an overcoat, not Spoor. So this is—

Tom Harper: (23:20)
Now that, maybe, I don’t—

William Grisham: (23:23)
I'm just saying that he didn't have any money until he came here. 

Tom Harper: (23:25)
No, no. He came off the boat practically, but he had a very wonderful reputation, of course, in England, you see. And Bronco Billy apparently had heard about it through some of these people in, in California. So he was figuring that he'd snare them for George K. Spoor here. 

William Grisham: (23:46)
Now, do you remember the studios on Argyle? There was Studio A, or do they call it one? They called it A, didn’t they?  And Studio B. 

Tom Harper: (23:55)
A and B. 

William Grisham: (23:55)
A was at 1333 and B was really the beginning of 5th Port 1345. That was the later in the larger city. 

Tom Harper: (24:03)
That’s right. They were double. 

William Grisham: (24:05)
A, in the A portion, that was where the laboratory was. Am I correct? 

Tom Harper: (24:08)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (24:09)
Now the laboratory had been on Wells Street prior to that though, had it not? Did you—

Tom Harper: (24:13)
Well, I didn't know too much about the Wells [inaudible] operation. But they started in the picture business. Uh, uh, George K. started in the picture business primarily developing pictures in movie film, you see, and experimenting with all types of movie film and experimenting with cameras. And we had a fella who was the head of the camera department by the name of Harry Zeck. Z.E.

William Grisham: (24:43)
He had been brought in from the east, hadn’t he? 

Tom Harper: (24:45)
That’s right. Harry Zeck. 

William Grisham: (24:47)
What had he worked for? 

Tom Harper: (24:49)
Huh? 

William Grisham: (24:49)
Do you remember? 

Tom Harper: (24:50)
I don't recall what studio Harry worked for, but he developed further. 

William Grisham: (24:54)
How do you spell his last name? Z.E.—

Tom Harper: (24:56)
Z.E.C.K.

William Grisham: (24:57)
C.K. Harry Zeck. Uh-huh. 

Tom Harper: (24:59)
And he developed further the motion picture camera, which later, a lot of the patents and things, were sold to Bell and Howell and developed into the Bell and Howell camera.

William Grisham: (25:16)
Uh, there was also Conrad Luperti there. Do you remember him at all? Conrad Luperti, Zeck, George Seitz—

Tom Harper: (25:25)
You’re talking about—

William Grisham: (25:26)
The technical people. 

Tom Harper: (25:27)
The technical people. There was a, yeah. What was it?

William Grisham: (25:30)
Conrad Luperti was from Bremen, Germany, if I'm not mistaken. 

Tom Harper: (25:33)
That's right. And he had another name. We called him something else. 

William Grisham: (25;38)
Loopy. 

Speaker 3: (25:39)
Loopy?

Tom Harper: (25:40)
Loopy. Loopy. That's it. Then we had a fellow by the name of George Carnell. 

William Grisham: (25:46)
I don't know that.

Tom Harper: (25:47)
Who was—

William Grisham: (25:48)
Carnell? C.A.—

Tom Harper: (25:49)
Yeah. He had charge of the distribution. But George was an old vaudeville man and stage man of all kinds. And he was quite a guy and a great deal of help to—

William Grisham: (26:02)
He was a publicity man to  or was he—

Tom Harper: (26:04)
He was a publicity man. Well, the big publicity we had in those days was Luella. Luella came out, from that she worked fo—

William Grisham: (26:16)
What paper did she work for? 

Tom Harper: (26:17)
Well, I'm trying to think. It was either The American. 

William Grisham: (26:23)
She worked the paper first, didn't she? 

Tom Harper: (26:26)
Yeah. 

William Grisham: (26:26)
And then she came to the Clark Street address. 

Tom Harper: (26:28)
She came up part-time to do some work for George K. Spoor. Still kept her job downtown. 

William Grisham: (26:37)
And she worked at the Clark street address before the—There was a Clark street studio, if I'm not mistaken. 

Tom Harper: (26:43)
That's right.

William Grisham: (26:44)
She worked at there. 

Tom Harper: (26:45)
She did publicity work for them. 

William Grisham: (26:47)
At Clark street. 

Tom Harper: (26:48)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (26:49)
And then the laboratory was really located on Wells Street. 

Tom Harper: (26:53)
Wells and—

William Grisham: (26:54)
Cheney and Wells. Right. 

Tom Harper: (26:55)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (26:56)
And then after that, they moved into the quarters, what in nineteen, probably nine, wasn’t it? Over on—

Tom Harper: (27:04)
Somewhere [inaudible]. 

William Grisham: (27:04)
By 1909 when Studio A was built. 

Tom Harper: (27:07)
Yeah. Because it was pretty new and—

William Grisham: (27:09)
Right. Um, the, um, now the way I have it is, uh, George Spoor came up with the magnascope. It wasn't he. It was a man by the name of Edwin Hill—Edward Hill Amet in Waukegan. And in nine, 1894, they projected, there was one of the first of the wall projections with the magnascope, which was the remake of the kinetoscope using calcium light. And out of this came the magnascope, which was used in vaudeville houses and George would buy or make short strips of film used as chasers in the vaudeville houses. 

Tom Harper: (27:50) 
Before he started and made his money, that’s right.

William Grisham: (27:52)
That's how he then got enough money to start the studio, wasn’t it? 

Tom Harper: (27:54)
Oh, yeah. 

William Grisham: (27:56)
Now did Selig do the same thing pretty much, didn't he? Because he was—

Tom Harper: (27:59)
I think he did. Yes. I never know too much about Selig. 

William Grisham: (28:03)
He had a little office over on Peck Court. Now was Peck Court in a dubious section of the city. They said it was the red light section of a city. Peck Court. It no longer exists. 

Tom Harper: (28:12)
I don’t recall. 

William Grisham: (28:13)
He had a little shop where he sold photographic supplies and so on and strips of films. And I have a note that George even bought from him some films. 

Tom Harper: (28:22)
He might have. I don’t know.

William Grisham: (28:24)
So that, it probably— their careers probably paralleled each other.

Tom Harper: (28:28)
Yeah.

William Grisham: (28:29)
And, um, now he had, let me just go over there for a minute. He had Kathleen Williams. Do you remember a Kathleen Williams? 

Tom Harper: (28:38)
Sure, sure. 

William Grisham: (28:39)
She had very good training in the theater? Did she—

Tom Harper: (28:41)
The Perils of Pauleen was Pearl White and then Kathleen Williams. I’m trying to think of the city. That was the first of the series. The Adventures of Kathleen. 

William Grisham: (28:52) 
That was before Pearl White, wasn't it? 

Tom Harper: (28:54)
Huh? 

William Grisham: (28:54)
The Adventures of Kathleen was before Pearl White. 

Tom Harper: (28:56)
That's right. And then Pearl White followed The Adventures of Kathleen. ‘Cause that was the first, that was the start of the series. 

William Grisham: (29:03)
Right. Now, cliffhanging serials really, now did they, were they made at a Selig Chicago Studio?

Tom Harper: (29:10)
My recollection—

William Grisham: (29:13)
Or were they made—

Tom Harper: (29:15)
[Inaudible] is that the apparels or—

William Grisham: (29:19)
The Adventures of Kathleen. 

Tom Harper: (29:21)
The Adventures of Kathleen was made here, but the Perils of Pauline really made was made by Vitagraph in New York. 

William Grisham: (29:28) 
Pathé in New York. 

Tom Harper: (29:29)
Pathé.

William Grisham: (29:30)
And they were made by George Seitz who was the director. 

Tom Harper: (29:32)
That’s right.

William Grisham: (29:33)
Right. I got a letter from his son, and his grandson is in film. So there are three generations in film. 

Speaker 3: (29:38)
[Inaudible]

William Grisham: (29:40)
Now I just got a letter from him today.

Speaker 3: (29:41)
Would you like something to drink or anything?

William Grisham: (29:43)
Coffee if you have it, but if you don’t have it—

Speaker 3: (29:44)
I’ll make some instant for you. Is that alright? 

William Grisham: (29:46)
Beautiful. 

Speaker 3: (29:46)
You want cream in it or anything? 

William Grisham: (29:47)
No, just black. Thank you very much. 

Tom Harper: (29:49)
You gon’ fix it?

Speaker 3: (29:50)
Coffee is all you want? 

William Grisham: (29:51)
Yes.

Speaker 3: (29:52)
Want any hard liquor? 

William Grisham: (29:53)
No, no thank you.