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Alright, my name is Jack Behrend, that's B-E-H-R-E-N-D, and I came into the film business

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when I got out of the Army in 1953.

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My dad had a small store where he sold used theater equipment to movie theaters,

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and an occasional box of carbons or whatever.

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Could I interrupt? I'm sorry, I'm afraid you've gone too far.

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Is there any way...

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Do you want to see the monitor?

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Yeah, that I'd be able to see the sound of it.

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Yeah, we can move it. Let me...

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I find that there are black bars on this side, so...

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Right.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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Alright, Jack, I'm sorry about that.

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Alright.

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So, could you again give me a thumbnail of who you are and...

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How you... let's say how you've been remembered.

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My name is Jack Behrend, that's B-E-H-R-E-N-D.

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I came into the film business when I got out of the Army in 1953,

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and was pretty active in it for about 50 years.

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How did you get into it?

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Well, my dad had a motion picture theater equipment business,

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mostly used equipment, used seats.

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In those days, most theaters weren't air conditioned yet.

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And so, there was a big active business in taking the seats out of the theaters,

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storing them in cold storage over the winter to kill the bedbugs,

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and putting freshly upholstered seats back in the theaters once a year.

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Every theater had to have a complete change of seating.

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We also sold what they called theater spray, which is where the ushers,

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there were ushers in every theater, would go down the aisles between features

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and spray cans of flit to cover up the smell before theaters were air conditioned.

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We had three kinds, rose, lilac, and lavender.

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And it came by the gallon.

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Did you work for your dad?

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Well, I was about to get out of the Army.

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I was an engineer, or at least that's what my degree said.

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And he made me an offer.

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He had enough money to pay me for six weeks, 75 bucks a week.

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And if I would come with him, he'd make me a full partner.

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And so I knew I'd never have an opportunity like that again.

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And I jumped at it.

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I got very lucky.

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Just when I got out of the Army, a 20th Century Fox released The Robe,

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which was the first film in CinemaScope.

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And so every theater in the country had to put in a new screen, new lenses,

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larger lamp house to get enough light to fill the larger screen, new sound system.

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And so there was a huge opportunity to sell equipment to theaters

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that had really not done anything to improve themselves since the Depression.

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So I jumped on that and over a couple of years did a lot of traveling,

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measuring for new screens, figuring out lenses.

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And it was a pretty good basic education in the way theaters operated.

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After a couple of years, it seemed like there wasn't going to be much more growth

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in the theater business.

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This was 20 years before Multiplexus.

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What year?

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From 1953 until roughly 1970.

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So after about two years, we decided to sell the theater equipment business

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and concentrate on television.

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And we set up a company called Television Equipment Company,

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which concentrated on production equipment, lighting, sound, editing,

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all the kinds of equipment needed for producing films.

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Of course, this was 25 or 30 years before videotape.

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Let's back up a little bit.

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What were some of the theaters that you and your dad serviced?

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And when you went around starting to kind of re-outfit these theaters,

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could you talk about some of the theaters in this region, in the Midwest?

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Yeah, very few of them are left.

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We normally went for independent theaters, not the big circuits.

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Bellabit and Cats were a giant circuit in Chicago.

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And we didn't try to pierce that.

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We mostly concentrated on small circuits and independent theaters.

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So I remember the Clark was always my favorite theater at Clark and Madison.

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Bruce Trends ran that theater.

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And he also ran the Four Star Theater on West Madison Street.

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In fact, the Four Star was the first theater in Chicago

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where I installed the equipment.

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And it was a learning experience.

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It brought me head to head with the Projectionist Union,

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which really determined how a lot of things were done in the city.

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Where was it, Four Star?

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On West Madison Street, in the heart of Skid Row,

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which doesn't exist anymore, of course.

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But there was an area maybe three quarters of a mile long on West Madison Street

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that was one gin joint after another and flop houses

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and movie theaters for people that couldn't afford a flop house.

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The Clark Theater was open 22 hours a day.

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There was another theater, the Astor, that was open 24 hours a day.

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Interesting when you think about the cleaning problem in a theater

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that's open 24 hours a day.

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What was it about the Clarks?

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You said that was your favorite theater.

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Well, Bruce, first of all, it was an old opera house.

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And it had, as I remember, it had two balconies.

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And so the upper balcony, you're looking down at the screen at a steep angle.

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And Bruce Trins was just a brighter than average guy.

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And he evolved a theater that, as I said, was really a sleeping place

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for people that couldn't afford a flop house.

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They would go in there.

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They ran triple features.

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And generally, they ran very old movies.

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It was a third run theater.

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Film distribution was organized, first run, second run, third run, fourth run,

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sometimes fifth run.

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And first run would be the downtown theaters where films would open.

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Second run would be suburban, good suburban theaters.

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Third run, you came back into the city and got into smaller theaters.

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And then fourth run would be smaller theaters in the burbs and outlining city.

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Fifth run would be drive-ins.

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And there was a real strong pecking order.

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Sorry, could I interrupt?

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Are you here to sit the chair, Swiggy?

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No?

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Okay, sorry.

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So you and your dad service primarily the third run?

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Third, fourth and fifth.

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Yeah, some second run.

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So you outfitted some drive-in theaters?

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Yeah, drive-ins were kind of fun.

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And you have to understand the context of where drive-ins fit.

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There was cheap land in the suburbs.

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There was automobiles were available after the war.

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And kids were taking driving lessons in high school.

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And it's important to remember that in the early 50s, cars had,

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what would you call it, couch type seating.

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They didn't have bucket seats.

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And so kids needed a place to park where they would not be harassed.

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And drive-ins were a perfect answer for that.

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So the drive-ins while they were marketed as family places where you could load up a couple

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of kids in the back seat and not have to pay a babysitter,

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what really was happening was that kids were going to drive-ins to make out.

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And it became obvious to anybody running a drive-in

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that it didn't matter what film you were showing.

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They got the same kind of traffic whether it was a first run release or a fifth run release.

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So what they needed was cheap movies to show.

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And so they would take films that had been shown everywhere else, fifth run,

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and they would show those.

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The films they concentrated on were short films so that they could get

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in two shows generally before 11.30.

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A lot of kids had to be home by midnight.

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So they wanted them out of the park by 11.30.

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And they couldn't start showing, of course, until it got dark.

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And in Chicago, that meant about 8.30 in the summertime.

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So you wanted a film that could run in less than 90 minutes.

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And so they would actually take reels of feature and just leave a couple reels out

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so that they could get people out of there.

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And nobody knew the difference.

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They didn't lose continuity at all.

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And then along came people like Herschel Lewis that started making films to play in drive-ins

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that were cheap.

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And that had enough action going on in them.

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So if somebody blundered in there by mistake looking to see a movie,

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they would have some sort of plot line up there that they could follow.

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So there were film producers around here that actually produced films specifically

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for drive-in shows.

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Sure. For that kind of market, yes.

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And they tended to, there were two paths that they followed.

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Plot paths.

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One was action horror and the other one was action girls.

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And some of them probably overlapped.

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But those were the specialties.

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Yeah. Little niche markets.

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And they could make a feature for under $20,000.

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We're talking low budget here.

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So this was the kind of Roger Corman.

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Oh, no.

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Roger Corman did some interesting good stuff.

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Let's not downplay Roger Corman.

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I respect him.

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And a lot of people started with him that did really good stuff later on.

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No. Herschel Lewis.

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Herschel was one of the brighter people I've ever known.

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He had a master's degree from the University of Chicago.

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He was a master bridge player.

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Very bright guy.

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And he figured out this drive-in market.

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And that they needed cheap features and so he knew how to do that.

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He could, the first thing you do, you don't have talent that you have to pay.

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So that was something that Herschel mastered early on.

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The second thing was you get a low shooting ratio where it was common in Hollywood

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to have shooting ratios 25, 30, 40, 50 to 1.

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Herschel would do a 2 to 1.

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Sometimes there'd be flash frames on the screen.

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Made it a little more exciting.

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You could call it lightning.

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Throw in some thunder and who knows.

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No.

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Where did Herschel learn to make films?

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I really don't know.

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My guess is that he probably taught himself.

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He was bright enough to do that.

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Did he use your film equipment?

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Well, yeah, we sold him some film equipment.

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Not a lot.

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Not much.

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I don't know where he got it.

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But knowing how he operated, I don't know where he got it.

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Backing up a little bit to the drive-ins that you were talking about around here,

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do you remember some of the drive-ins around in the Chicago area?

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Well, I lived in Evanston then, and there was one out on Milwaukee, on Waukegan Road at Gulf

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where Avon built a huge plant later on.

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There were probably 20 drive-ins around the city.

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There was one out on Milwaukee Avenue in, well, where would that be?

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That'd probably be in Palatine.

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Not Palatine, no.

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Northwest side.

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But they were all over.

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There were probably 20 in the Chicago area.

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There were probably 4,000 or 5,000 around the country.

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So there was a huge market for these kinds of films.

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All right.

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Where, by the way, was your film equipment house located?

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South Wabash.

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Before I joined my dad, they were at 9th and Wabash.

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And then when I joined them, they had moved to 13th and Wabash.

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And the whole, there was a whole film community there at 13th and Wabash.

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All of the distributors were within a half a block of that corner.

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Fox, Warner Brothers, MGM, Buena Vista, which was a Disney distribution arm, Paramount.

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They were all there.

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And four equipment shops were there.

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What were some of the other equipment shops?

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One was called Abbott Theatre Supply, National Theatre Supply.

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Movie Supply, which was ours.

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And Gardner Theatre Supply.

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Abbott and National were very big organizations.

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National was partly owned by Chase National Bank.

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Rockefeller money behind it.

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What years? Can you give me a...

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Oh, they were, well, they were long established when I came in.

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So they probably started in the early 20s.

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And they were still going strong when I left that neighborhood,

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which was in about 56, 57, something like that.

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And then where'd you go?

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Well, we set up our place on Grand Avenue at St. Clair, block east of Michigan.

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And at that point, we were called Barron's Inc.

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And we were selling all kinds of production equipment.

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Cameras. I sold the first Aeroflexes in the Midwest.

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Probably the first. I sold the second one in the country.

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So I was...

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I fell in love with the Aeroflex when I first saw it.

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And knew that we had to do that.

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And so we had Aeroflexes.

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We had MagnaSync recorders for sound.

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MagnaSync was a 16 millimeter magnetic recorder.

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And it was the first, let me say the first popularly priced professional quality recorder.

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You could argue about how professional the quality was today.

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But at that time, it wasn't bad.

247
00:18:09.300 --> 00:18:16.000
The closest thing to it was a Westrex machine, which probably cost $5,000.

248
00:18:16.200 --> 00:18:17.740
And at that time, that was a lot of money.

249
00:18:19.820 --> 00:18:25.800
MagnaSync field recorder, oh, it was in the neighborhood of $1,500, $2,000.

250
00:18:25.940 --> 00:18:27.380
So it was a lot less money.

251
00:18:28.220 --> 00:18:33.440
And the only way you could shoot sync sound then was to have a 16 millimeter

252
00:18:33.440 --> 00:18:36.360
magnetic recorder that was driven by a sync motor.

253
00:18:38.460 --> 00:18:42.160
And a camera that was driven by a sync motor.

254
00:18:43.520 --> 00:18:44.700
And that was...

255
00:18:44.700 --> 00:18:48.880
And then you use clapstick for a start mark.

256
00:18:49.080 --> 00:18:53.900
And that was the only way sync sound could be shot.

257
00:18:56.200 --> 00:19:00.800
Very cumbersome for shooting in the field where you had to have alternating current.

258
00:19:00.860 --> 00:19:02.020
You couldn't run on batteries.

259
00:19:02.740 --> 00:19:04.960
And so you think about that.

260
00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:11.160
And it was a real restriction in the way any film could be shot.

261
00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:14.380
It was a tougher restriction for documentaries.

262
00:19:18.180 --> 00:19:20.060
Well, okay, so we're talking...

263
00:19:20.060 --> 00:19:26.980
You moved over to that St. Clair area in around 56, 57, somewhere around?

264
00:19:26.980 --> 00:19:29.720
Yeah, and I could be lying by a year or two.

265
00:19:31.320 --> 00:19:33.060
Who were your clients there?

266
00:19:33.080 --> 00:19:37.100
Who were the filmmakers that were around in this area then?

267
00:19:37.640 --> 00:19:39.320
And what types of films were they making?

268
00:19:39.660 --> 00:19:42.580
Well, let's talk about categories, I guess.

269
00:19:43.060 --> 00:19:51.920
The TV news crews, as I said before, videotape was 25 or 30 years away.

270
00:19:52.380 --> 00:19:54.220
And so everything was done on film.

271
00:19:56.200 --> 00:20:01.740
The television stations each had some kind of crews.

272
00:20:02.400 --> 00:20:03.820
A typical crew was four people.

273
00:20:04.800 --> 00:20:07.740
Cameraman, soundman, lighting guy, and a grunt.

274
00:20:10.180 --> 00:20:12.660
Because there was a lot of equipment to be moved.

275
00:20:14.340 --> 00:20:21.820
And so a lot of the stations had more than one crew out, just covering the local news.

276
00:20:23.900 --> 00:20:26.120
Two things that they didn't have.

277
00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:29.580
And it's interesting to think about how they operated.

278
00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:30.980
They didn't have cell phones.

279
00:20:33.100 --> 00:20:34.820
They didn't have walkie-talkies.

280
00:20:36.080 --> 00:20:43.960
There was no possible way to be in immediate contact between a news director, for instance,

281
00:20:44.580 --> 00:20:45.720
and the crews in the field.

282
00:20:45.720 --> 00:20:54.940
So if a plane crashed at Migs Field, which was an active airport then, nobody knew.

283
00:20:55.700 --> 00:21:02.060
Until somebody called into the station to find out what their next assignment was.

284
00:21:02.140 --> 00:21:05.700
And then the station would give them instructions.

285
00:21:06.560 --> 00:21:07.960
All right, so there was news.

286
00:21:08.360 --> 00:21:14.320
There were films being made for the new television industry,

287
00:21:14.940 --> 00:21:16.400
which was brand new.

288
00:21:17.020 --> 00:21:24.280
Our first sale with our new company was to NBC, setting up their television station

289
00:21:24.280 --> 00:21:25.540
in the Merchandise Mart.

290
00:21:30.320 --> 00:21:33.320
They called one day and said, do you guys make house calls?

291
00:21:34.500 --> 00:21:37.320
And said, yeah, come on over and tell us what to do here.

292
00:21:37.380 --> 00:21:41.200
And we went over and they had stacks of films on the floor,

293
00:21:41.400 --> 00:21:44.340
going to the ceiling.

294
00:21:44.520 --> 00:21:48.200
They didn't have shelving to put them on or racks.

295
00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:50.040
They didn't have splicers.

296
00:21:50.040 --> 00:21:51.380
They didn't have rewinds.

297
00:21:51.500 --> 00:21:57.240
They just had films and they would take a can off the stack and throw it in a machine

298
00:21:57.240 --> 00:21:58.240
and put it on the air.

299
00:21:59.200 --> 00:21:59.980
Which station was this?

300
00:22:01.840 --> 00:22:02.240
WMAQ.

301
00:22:04.260 --> 00:22:05.840
And that was the first one in the country.

302
00:22:08.220 --> 00:22:10.360
And it took them a while to get organized.

303
00:22:10.920 --> 00:22:15.400
I'll never forget when they did their first test color,

304
00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:25.240
narrow cast to New York, just to transmit to New York so they could see if they could actually

305
00:22:26.380 --> 00:22:28.320
get a cross-country feed.

306
00:22:30.420 --> 00:22:35.240
The guys in Chicago, this was long before they had a peacock.

307
00:22:36.400 --> 00:22:45.260
They took a bowl of fruit and had a camera looking at it and they painted the banana blue.

308
00:22:46.760 --> 00:22:48.800
And sent that to New York.

309
00:22:49.620 --> 00:22:54.240
Because New York, there was always a competitive thing between New York and Chicago.

310
00:22:54.860 --> 00:22:57.400
And so they thought they'd give the guys in New York some fits.

311
00:22:59.420 --> 00:23:04.660
So that was the first television studio in Chicago?

312
00:23:05.620 --> 00:23:06.900
Yeah, in the country.

313
00:23:07.160 --> 00:23:07.920
In the country.

314
00:23:08.580 --> 00:23:08.580


315
00:23:08.580 --> 00:23:09.260
Was that WMAQ?

316
00:23:09.400 --> 00:23:13.720
No, there may have been some lab kind of studios.

317
00:23:13.840 --> 00:23:20.740
I'm sure that Western Electric Bell Labs may have had a test facility.

318
00:23:20.840 --> 00:23:22.080
RCA certainly did.

319
00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:27.360
So there were all kinds of test facilities.

320
00:23:28.580 --> 00:23:32.740
NBC Chicago was the first commercial studio.

321
00:23:42.320 --> 00:23:44.160
You're talking about content.

322
00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:48.980
One of the aims of this was to create content for television.

323
00:23:48.980 --> 00:23:49.380
Right.

324
00:23:49.380 --> 00:23:50.800
So they had studios.

325
00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:53.320
Do you remember what type of programming?

326
00:23:53.900 --> 00:23:57.740
Could you also throw in dates?

327
00:23:59.140 --> 00:24:00.140
Approximate dates?

328
00:24:00.240 --> 00:24:02.240
Yeah, they have to be very approximate.

329
00:24:03.500 --> 00:24:05.520
We're going back 50, 60 years.

330
00:24:11.300 --> 00:24:13.560
There were a lot of kids shows.

331
00:24:14.980 --> 00:24:24.140
I remember more kids shows on WGN than the other stations.

332
00:24:27.540 --> 00:24:30.540
And I really have trouble with the dates.

333
00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:36.780
There are Kukul, Fran, and Ali is one that everybody remembers that's over 30.

334
00:24:39.040 --> 00:24:40.480
Bozo Circus.

335
00:24:40.480 --> 00:24:46.060
That was on channel, I think that was on ABC, channel seven.

336
00:24:50.420 --> 00:24:54.220
Time for me to do this without just throwing stories in here and there.

337
00:24:56.720 --> 00:25:03.120
The Bozo Circus came out of what is now the, or was then the Daily News Building.

338
00:25:03.400 --> 00:25:05.440
They had a studio on the top floor.

339
00:25:05.440 --> 00:25:10.740
And there was one show they did there where they had elephants.

340
00:25:11.980 --> 00:25:17.280
And it's an interesting thing just to think about getting elephants to the top floor of the Daily

341
00:25:17.280 --> 00:25:17.980
News Building.

342
00:25:19.960 --> 00:25:21.100
Where was the Daily News Building?

343
00:25:22.040 --> 00:25:23.320
On Wacker Drive.

344
00:25:25.440 --> 00:25:30.240
You walk through it to get to what was then the Northwestern Station.

345
00:25:34.080 --> 00:25:47.000
They had a policy where if you wanted to rehearse an act, you had to get approval from the

346
00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:49.900
operating manager of the studios.

347
00:25:50.920 --> 00:25:59.460
And he had a sort of a knack for asking for kickbacks for acts that wanted to rehearse.

348
00:25:59.460 --> 00:26:04.580
If they gave him, well I guess a polite word is bribe.

349
00:26:05.340 --> 00:26:13.420
If you gave him some money, he would slot time for you in the studio that you could work with.

350
00:26:13.880 --> 00:26:17.280
And if you didn't, then you may get to follow the elephants.

351
00:26:18.600 --> 00:26:20.160
And that could get dusty.

352
00:26:22.420 --> 00:26:29.080
There was a small act, a man and woman that did a dance thing and they come down from Milwaukee.

353
00:26:29.460 --> 00:26:36.740
And they didn't know the system so he assigned them the studio where the elephants had just been

354
00:26:36.740 --> 00:26:40.180
to do their dance number for rehearsal.

355
00:26:42.440 --> 00:26:49.820
Some of the other categories of films that were being made, heavy industrial,

356
00:26:52.900 --> 00:26:56.640
many companies knew what business they were in in those days.

357
00:26:56.640 --> 00:27:01.500
And so they didn't mind making films that talked about the corporation.

358
00:27:01.580 --> 00:27:03.140
They called them corporate image films.

359
00:27:04.840 --> 00:27:10.520
And so you had United Airlines making films, Allstate Insurance.

360
00:27:13.300 --> 00:27:18.660
I think the biggest ones around Chicago were International Harvester and Allstate.

361
00:27:19.300 --> 00:27:23.120
Sears Roebuck had their production unit.

362
00:27:26.800 --> 00:27:30.320
Yeah, Montgomery Ward's had theirs.

363
00:27:33.520 --> 00:27:33.840
Standard Oil.

364
00:27:38.120 --> 00:27:43.720
You pick a big company and they almost certainly had a film producer on staff.

365
00:27:44.160 --> 00:27:45.840
Some of them had more than one.

366
00:27:47.060 --> 00:27:49.700
Link Belt had a production unit.

367
00:27:51.080 --> 00:27:53.880
Illinois Central Railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad.

368
00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:03.660
So were there then outside studios and makers that were hired by?

369
00:28:03.660 --> 00:28:08.180
Yeah, there was a whole category of outside studios.

370
00:28:08.540 --> 00:28:12.100
The largest by far was Wilding on Argyle Street.

371
00:28:12.820 --> 00:28:15.680
During the war they had over 800 people on their payroll.

372
00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:26.620
After the war, when they weren't getting government contracts anymore, they had to

373
00:28:26.620 --> 00:28:28.840
mostly, they did a lot of car stuff.

374
00:28:29.300 --> 00:28:31.900
I know Chrysler was one of their major accounts.

375
00:28:35.280 --> 00:28:39.600
Later on, Fred Niles Studio opened up.

376
00:28:39.640 --> 00:28:43.960
There was Dallas Jones, Sarah Studios.

377
00:28:45.660 --> 00:28:47.400
Who were some of the people associated?

378
00:28:48.100 --> 00:28:54.280
Back to Wilding, could you go, how far, do you recall how far back when they first opened?

379
00:28:54.280 --> 00:28:56.800
No, it was before my time.

380
00:28:56.820 --> 00:28:58.020
Before your time, okay.

381
00:28:58.300 --> 00:29:00.500
So that might have been in the 30s.

382
00:29:00.620 --> 00:29:10.840
Well, they took over the old S&A Studios that got famous for Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson.

383
00:29:12.040 --> 00:29:17.700
I think Chaplin shot three films there and those were all two wheelers.

384
00:29:17.860 --> 00:29:19.140
They were not features.

385
00:29:22.740 --> 00:29:30.560
Do you remember any of the people back early, I mean like that, that were associated with Wilding Studios?

386
00:29:30.860 --> 00:29:31.780
I really don't.

387
00:29:32.620 --> 00:29:38.100
The people that I knew at Wilding really were 10 or 15 years later than that.

388
00:29:40.460 --> 00:29:43.060
Some of those people were, do you remember?

389
00:29:45.380 --> 00:29:46.060
Sure.

390
00:29:46.760 --> 00:29:51.700
Frank Hobbs was head of the Studio Mechanics Union for a while.

391
00:29:51.800 --> 00:29:55.500
He was a business agent, but he worked at Wilding before that.

392
00:29:57.900 --> 00:30:00.540
Lutz Hopke, he came much later.

393
00:30:00.660 --> 00:30:01.260
I know he was there.

394
00:30:02.300 --> 00:30:03.940
Lutz was a cameraman.

395
00:30:04.120 --> 00:30:04.700
A cameraman.

396
00:30:04.900 --> 00:30:05.380
Yeah.

397
00:30:07.760 --> 00:30:13.480
When I first knew Lutz, he was partners with Ernie Lucas and Bill O'Connor.

398
00:30:13.480 --> 00:30:20.060
Bill O'Connor was talent on both radio and television.

399
00:30:21.640 --> 00:30:25.320
Ernie Lucas was a director and Lutz was a cameraman.

400
00:30:28.180 --> 00:30:31.560
They set up a small production company with the three of them.

401
00:30:33.660 --> 00:30:38.200
Bill O'Connor dropped out and Ernie and Lutz went their separate ways.

402
00:30:39.420 --> 00:30:42.000
They were very active for a while.

403
00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:43.620
Making corporate films?

404
00:30:44.080 --> 00:30:44.080


405
00:30:45.320 --> 00:30:48.460
What everybody did was look for clients.

406
00:30:48.540 --> 00:30:49.880
That was always the hard thing.

407
00:30:49.940 --> 00:30:51.980
You get the money and somebody will make the movie.

408
00:30:52.980 --> 00:30:54.540
Getting the money is the hard part.

409
00:30:55.220 --> 00:30:57.160
I believe that hasn't changed.

410
00:30:59.820 --> 00:31:04.740
It was hard then, it's hard now, and I think it'll continue to be hard.

411
00:31:05.940 --> 00:31:08.800
But there were hundreds of small producers.

412
00:31:09.600 --> 00:31:12.560
The big dividing line was whether it's union or non-union.

413
00:31:13.600 --> 00:31:19.420
Wilding was union, Fred Niles was union, Sarah was union, Dallas Jones.

414
00:31:21.700 --> 00:31:23.980
I think Vogue Wright was a union shop.

415
00:31:24.440 --> 00:31:26.620
Where were Dallas Jones and Vogue Wright?

416
00:31:26.820 --> 00:31:28.620
They were all on the north side.

417
00:31:28.760 --> 00:31:30.580
All of the studios were north side.

418
00:31:31.920 --> 00:31:34.560
Wilding was on Argyle.

419
00:31:35.260 --> 00:31:36.660
Fred Niles was west.

420
00:31:40.500 --> 00:31:43.160
West Washington Street at Morgan.

421
00:31:43.400 --> 00:31:46.160
It's now Harpo Studios.

422
00:31:50.200 --> 00:31:58.500
Dallas Jones was around Division Street on the north side.

423
00:31:59.940 --> 00:32:01.460
Vogue Wright was east.

424
00:32:01.460 --> 00:32:03.600
They were on East Ohio Street.

425
00:32:03.680 --> 00:32:07.400
I may be missing this a block one way or another.

426
00:32:08.800 --> 00:32:12.600
If you can't improve on a story, you don't have any right to tell it.

427
00:32:14.620 --> 00:32:15.180
Who else?

428
00:32:15.400 --> 00:32:19.840
Sarah was on Ontario at about State Street.

429
00:32:23.580 --> 00:32:26.160
They all had niches that were...

430
00:32:30.580 --> 00:32:33.480
Each studio had really its own niche.

431
00:32:33.860 --> 00:32:37.100
Wilding went for larger productions.

432
00:32:37.960 --> 00:32:43.900
When they went on location, they had three semi-trailer trucks that pulled out of the studio.

433
00:32:45.040 --> 00:32:46.680
One was just full of cable.

434
00:32:46.860 --> 00:32:49.060
One was a motor generator set.

435
00:32:50.780 --> 00:32:51.900
It took a lot of light.

436
00:32:52.040 --> 00:32:55.480
In those days, the ASA rating for film was 10.

437
00:32:56.600 --> 00:32:59.680
It took an enormous amount of light to shoot a movie.

438
00:33:00.340 --> 00:33:06.680
They would have probably a thousand kilowatt generator.

439
00:33:07.100 --> 00:33:12.220
To get enough power to turn the lights on.

440
00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:20.660
You couldn't go into an industrial building or an office and expect to be able to plug in and get enough light.

441
00:33:21.280 --> 00:33:23.180
You had to bring your generator with you.

442
00:33:25.540 --> 00:33:34.560
The camera was in a blimp, which was a soundproof housing to keep the noise of the camera out of the microphone.

443
00:33:35.280 --> 00:33:41.880
Cameras were noisy and it took a lot of soundproofing to dampen out that noise.

444
00:33:44.200 --> 00:33:48.080
You had a recorder that was itself noisy.

445
00:33:48.700 --> 00:33:51.020
16 millimeter recorders were not quiet.

446
00:33:54.580 --> 00:34:00.220
The recorder had to be kept in a different room from the studio where they were shooting

447
00:34:00.220 --> 00:34:02.440
or from the area where they were shooting.

448
00:34:02.440 --> 00:34:07.240
It was a tricky operation and it needed a lot of people.

449
00:34:08.140 --> 00:34:13.400
It was not unusual to have 20 people go out on a shoot without talent.

450
00:34:14.040 --> 00:34:20.640
Just your electricians and gaffers and crew for setting up.

451
00:34:21.780 --> 00:34:28.380
You had the big studios, Wilding and later Fred Niles, that did that style of production.

452
00:34:29.340 --> 00:34:31.440
Sarah specialized in commercials.

453
00:34:35.120 --> 00:34:38.460
Almost everything they shot was within their own studio.

454
00:34:39.040 --> 00:34:42.920
They did very little location shooting, comparatively.

455
00:34:44.880 --> 00:34:49.360
Vogue did some of each, but most of their stuff was shot in their studio.

456
00:34:53.740 --> 00:34:55.980
They were doing a lot of commercial work.

457
00:34:56.820 --> 00:35:00.500
Was this out of agencies out of Chicago?

458
00:35:00.900 --> 00:35:00.900


459
00:35:01.200 --> 00:35:07.500
This of course was feeding the television, which had an enormous appetite for commercials.

460
00:35:08.620 --> 00:35:11.460
All those commercials had to be created and shot.

461
00:35:12.240 --> 00:35:13.320
Most of them were shot here.

462
00:35:13.320 --> 00:35:17.200
There were a lot of agencies here and there were a lot of clients here.

463
00:35:18.220 --> 00:35:21.680
You'll always find a lot of agencies where there are a lot of clients.

464
00:35:23.640 --> 00:35:28.740
That was the upper range of studios.

465
00:35:29.060 --> 00:35:32.600
Then from there you went to non-union studios.

466
00:35:33.120 --> 00:35:36.900
There were a lot of good size.

467
00:35:37.980 --> 00:35:41.420
Good size, I guess I've got to put that in perspective.

468
00:35:42.080 --> 00:35:45.720
Not good size compared with Hollywood or New York.

469
00:35:46.440 --> 00:35:53.340
But good size for Chicago, where you'd have eight, ten people working in a place to make films.

470
00:35:54.080 --> 00:35:56.200
I think of pilot productions in Evanston.

471
00:36:05.620 --> 00:36:07.160
I'm having trouble with...

472
00:36:08.400 --> 00:36:12.620
Well, was Dallas Jones, was that a union house?

473
00:36:12.740 --> 00:36:13.460
Yeah.

474
00:36:14.100 --> 00:36:15.280
It was fairly good size.

475
00:36:15.340 --> 00:36:16.820
There were probably 20 people working there.

476
00:36:20.620 --> 00:36:22.800
We're talking about 16 millimeter.

477
00:36:23.100 --> 00:36:25.380
Except commercials were 35 at that?

478
00:36:26.320 --> 00:36:32.640
Yes, they were and it depended on the nature of the beast.

479
00:36:34.000 --> 00:36:37.340
Who was doing the educational films?

480
00:36:37.600 --> 00:36:40.140
There were two big studios.

481
00:36:41.240 --> 00:36:45.800
Encyclopedia Britannica Films was the top quality.

482
00:36:46.400 --> 00:36:50.060
Then there was Coronet Films in Glenview that did...

483
00:36:52.200 --> 00:36:54.940
They did good films and there were a lot of good people there.

484
00:36:58.480 --> 00:37:04.460
Their films seemed to be to me more didactic than the films that Encyclopedia Britannica made.

485
00:37:07.570 --> 00:37:12.050
Britannica used both inside and outside producers to do their films.

486
00:37:12.930 --> 00:37:16.810
For instance, they did many films that today I guess you'd call them travelogues.

487
00:37:17.710 --> 00:37:20.930
But they were how people live in Spain or whatever.

488
00:37:21.810 --> 00:37:27.670
They would send an outside producer to do those kinds of films.

489
00:37:30.970 --> 00:37:32.890
They operated in Wilmette.

490
00:37:32.890 --> 00:37:40.950
They had what used to be the Wilmette Theater was taken over as to be a studio.

491
00:37:48.310 --> 00:37:52.830
I've got something twisted and I'm trying to untwist it in my head.

492
00:37:54.730 --> 00:38:01.870
There were over 50 film labs in Chicago at that time and Coburn Labs was one of the larger ones.

493
00:38:01.870 --> 00:38:05.910
It was I think the only lab that also did production.

494
00:38:07.250 --> 00:38:11.970
There was a time when Coburn took over the Wilmette Theater as their studio.

495
00:38:13.690 --> 00:38:16.110
That was operated by Coburn Lab.

496
00:38:21.110 --> 00:38:24.270
John Coburn operated that.

497
00:38:27.290 --> 00:38:29.810
I'm trying to remember which came first.

498
00:38:30.670 --> 00:38:38.890
Whether Encyclopedia Britannica ran that studio and then it was taken over by Coburn or the other way around.

499
00:38:39.210 --> 00:38:40.210
I don't remember.

500
00:38:40.710 --> 00:38:44.370
Anyway, those were the two large educational producers.

501
00:38:44.950 --> 00:38:49.310
Then there were maybe 20 small producers.

502
00:38:50.110 --> 00:38:56.730
Mostly a single person or a team of two people that would shoot educational films.

503
00:38:56.750 --> 00:39:00.750
Usually under contract to Encyclopedia Britannica.

504
00:39:03.470 --> 00:39:04.730
A few.

505
00:39:06.150 --> 00:39:09.670
There was a guy named Maury Frank in Elkhart, Indiana.

506
00:39:10.730 --> 00:39:14.870
His brother Bill Frank was on television.

507
00:39:14.870 --> 00:39:18.950
He did mostly sports.

508
00:39:24.130 --> 00:39:24.790
Oh boy.

509
00:39:28.030 --> 00:39:29.190
It'll come.

510
00:39:30.930 --> 00:39:36.190
How about the documentary?

511
00:39:38.870 --> 00:39:41.470
Let's say we're in the late 50s.

512
00:39:41.470 --> 00:39:42.030
Yeah.

513
00:39:43.270 --> 00:39:45.250
That was a big time for documentaries.

514
00:39:45.350 --> 00:39:46.790
Mostly industrial docs.

515
00:39:47.950 --> 00:39:50.030
Gordon Weisenborn did a lot of those.

516
00:39:51.590 --> 00:39:54.830
His wife Selma wrote many of the scripts.

517
00:39:56.430 --> 00:39:58.950
Oh, could have been any industrial company.

518
00:40:01.150 --> 00:40:09.510
I remember one film that Gordy made for Michael Reese Hospital.

519
00:40:09.510 --> 00:40:14.110
I think of those kinds of films as industrial.

520
00:40:14.950 --> 00:40:16.770
It's just a different kind of industry.

521
00:40:19.750 --> 00:40:27.670
Gordy had a rheumatic fever when he was young and created heart problems.

522
00:40:27.850 --> 00:40:32.330
One day he had what they called a rheumatic stroke,

523
00:40:33.690 --> 00:40:39.130
which was really a heart valve that was creating problems.

524
00:40:39.250 --> 00:40:42.570
He passed out and woke up in Michael Reese Hospital.

525
00:40:45.590 --> 00:40:50.410
His wife was a nurse as well as a very good writer.

526
00:40:51.330 --> 00:40:59.330
She noticed that the pills, the medication that they had brought to him,

527
00:40:59.330 --> 00:41:02.430
were the opposite of what he should have been taking.

528
00:41:02.590 --> 00:41:07.670
In other words, after a stroke they did not want blood clots,

529
00:41:07.770 --> 00:41:12.010
so they would give medication to thin out the blood.

530
00:41:12.590 --> 00:41:15.530
And instead of that, they were giving him a medication to thicken the blood.

531
00:41:16.390 --> 00:41:18.750
She figured if he took those, it would kill him.

532
00:41:21.710 --> 00:41:24.610
She called a doctor, got that straightened out.

533
00:41:25.130 --> 00:41:28.410
When Gordy came out of his coma and heard about this,

534
00:41:28.410 --> 00:41:32.390
he went into a rage, which Gordy was famous for.

535
00:41:33.470 --> 00:41:37.850
And went to the head of nursing at Michael Reese and asked them,

536
00:41:38.530 --> 00:41:42.090
how dare they hire people that are this stupid?

537
00:41:48.110 --> 00:41:53.550
The head of nursing said, well, we're sorry, we're trying to hire bright girls,

538
00:41:53.570 --> 00:41:57.470
but they all want to be legal secretaries these days.

539
00:41:58.190 --> 00:42:03.290
He said, well, what is your budget for increasing the IQ of your nursing staff?

540
00:42:05.590 --> 00:42:07.770
That made him take a step back.

541
00:42:08.250 --> 00:42:11.230
He walked out of the hospital with an $80,000 contract

542
00:42:11.230 --> 00:42:14.550
to increase the IQ of the nursing staff.

543
00:42:15.610 --> 00:42:21.850
And made a film, Andy Costikian was the cameraman, called A Cap for Kathy.

544
00:42:21.850 --> 00:42:26.230
And it was how a girl from a farm in southern Indiana

545
00:42:26.810 --> 00:42:31.130
came to Chicago and went through their nursing school and got a nursing cap.

546
00:42:34.170 --> 00:42:37.290
Just at the beginning of that story, I thought you were done.

547
00:42:37.410 --> 00:42:39.810
It's just the beginning of that story, we heard the truck backing up.

548
00:42:40.710 --> 00:42:44.470
Yeah, okay, thanks.

549
00:42:46.490 --> 00:42:50.170
That, in a way, that was a settlement.

550
00:42:51.850 --> 00:42:54.810
Oh yeah, sure, sure.

551
00:42:55.570 --> 00:42:57.830
It was, yeah, it's blackmail money.

552
00:43:00.510 --> 00:43:01.870
Yeah, it's a wonderful film.

553
00:43:02.110 --> 00:43:07.210
Yeah, we don't have that at CFA, but it has been requested.

554
00:43:08.910 --> 00:43:10.250
And Andy Costikian.

555
00:43:10.410 --> 00:43:11.390
He's the cameraman.

556
00:43:13.950 --> 00:43:18.110
Andy and Gordy made a lot of really good films together.

557
00:43:18.110 --> 00:43:20.010
How about Life on the Miss...

558
00:43:20.010 --> 00:43:21.750
People Along the Mississippi.

559
00:43:21.790 --> 00:43:23.710
Yeah, talk to me a little bit about that film.

560
00:43:24.370 --> 00:43:25.590
We do have that film.

561
00:43:25.710 --> 00:43:27.070
Gordy was the cameraman on that.

562
00:43:28.910 --> 00:43:30.750
Could you repeat the title of it?

563
00:43:30.810 --> 00:43:32.250
People Along the Mississippi.

564
00:43:32.750 --> 00:43:34.990
It was made for Encyclopedia Britannica.

565
00:43:35.530 --> 00:43:37.310
At that time, Gordy was a staff...

566
00:43:39.770 --> 00:43:40.850
What do I call him?

567
00:43:41.190 --> 00:43:42.410
Filmmaker, I guess.

568
00:43:42.750 --> 00:43:44.270
Because he would do a number of things.

569
00:43:44.270 --> 00:43:48.210
He directed, he operated the camera sometimes.

570
00:43:49.570 --> 00:43:52.070
He wrote, he edited.

571
00:43:53.250 --> 00:43:55.590
Very versatile guy.

572
00:43:56.970 --> 00:44:02.230
And he and Andy were both at Encyclopedia Britannica.

573
00:44:02.390 --> 00:44:07.410
Many of the filmmakers around Chicago really got their start there.

574
00:44:07.590 --> 00:44:13.550
And what you need to remember is that there was no Columbia College then.

575
00:44:14.530 --> 00:44:15.670
For film.

576
00:44:17.790 --> 00:44:20.470
There was no place to learn the craft.

577
00:44:22.150 --> 00:44:24.910
The unions had an apprentice system that worked pretty well.

578
00:44:26.990 --> 00:44:28.170
For them.

579
00:44:30.230 --> 00:44:36.330
Meaning that how to get to be an apprentice within the union structure,

580
00:44:36.990 --> 00:44:38.090
there was only one way.

581
00:44:38.250 --> 00:44:40.910
And that is if your father was a union member.

582
00:44:42.650 --> 00:44:52.350
There was no opportunity for people unrelated to get into the business at all.

583
00:44:53.830 --> 00:44:58.570
And so you realize that what you're dealing with here is a system,

584
00:44:59.450 --> 00:45:01.750
if you want to call it white supremacist, okay.

585
00:45:02.350 --> 00:45:05.610
But you didn't find people of color at all.

586
00:45:06.330 --> 00:45:12.410
And a very narrow range of people coming into the business.

587
00:45:14.590 --> 00:45:18.930
It was a good system for people to learn the craft.

588
00:45:19.090 --> 00:45:25.450
It was a terrible system to broaden out the craft so that new kinds of people could come into it.

589
00:45:28.110 --> 00:45:33.930
And so I think Columbia College, if it hadn't been there,

590
00:45:33.930 --> 00:45:43.330
it would have had to be invented by somebody because the whole film world was expanding.

591
00:45:45.730 --> 00:45:55.170
And the unions really saw it as a necessity to keep the labor pool small.

592
00:45:55.490 --> 00:45:57.370
That's how you get rates up.

593
00:45:57.610 --> 00:46:02.610
You can't charge a lot for your work if there's a lot of people competing for it.

594
00:46:04.610 --> 00:46:06.810
So Andy was union, right?

595
00:46:07.390 --> 00:46:10.230
Yeah. Not when he was at EB. EB was not a union shop.

596
00:46:11.490 --> 00:46:16.250
But he decided to leave EB and join the union.

597
00:46:16.710 --> 00:46:21.250
Can you tell me a little bit about that movie that Andy and Gordon, people on Mississippi?

598
00:46:21.570 --> 00:46:24.670
Andy didn't do that. Gordon did it with John Barnes.

599
00:46:25.610 --> 00:46:29.290
And John Barnes was, I think he directed it.

600
00:46:31.430 --> 00:46:37.310
They set out with a Cine Special, which is a camera that Kodak made,

601
00:46:38.350 --> 00:46:45.310
essentially for the semi-pro market, 100-foot rolls of film.

602
00:46:46.330 --> 00:46:53.050
I think they made a 200-foot magazine so you could put a 200 roll of film on it.

603
00:46:53.770 --> 00:46:57.790
And that means you could shoot up to five minutes of film.

604
00:46:59.190 --> 00:47:00.530
Before you had to reload.

605
00:47:01.390 --> 00:47:03.090
It was a very noisy camera.

606
00:47:03.550 --> 00:47:05.850
It was spring-wound, no motor.

607
00:47:08.490 --> 00:47:10.370
My memory isn't that good.

608
00:47:10.670 --> 00:47:14.070
Seems to me you could shoot 13 feet of film on one spring wind.

609
00:47:15.670 --> 00:47:18.510
And so you're limited how long a take you could make.

610
00:47:19.770 --> 00:47:23.690
If you're shooting something that takes time to happen,

611
00:47:24.970 --> 00:47:31.430
with the idea of cutting into it on the editing table, very difficult.

612
00:47:32.410 --> 00:47:34.930
So you would tend to not do that kind of a shot.

613
00:47:35.310 --> 00:47:38.370
I'm talking about if you want a shot of a train coming around a curve.

614
00:47:39.470 --> 00:47:41.310
No, you wouldn't do that with a Cine Special.

615
00:47:42.370 --> 00:47:47.450
So the choice of camera limited you a lot to the kinds of filming you could do.

616
00:47:47.450 --> 00:47:49.750
One story about that film.

617
00:47:51.770 --> 00:47:58.390
Somehow Gordy was loading the film and he noticed that the pressure plate had fallen out of the camera.

618
00:47:58.990 --> 00:48:00.050
And was lost.

619
00:48:01.190 --> 00:48:09.310
And the pressure plate is what holds the film in a nice plane so that you get a sharp image.

620
00:48:09.310 --> 00:48:19.370
So they were in a farm in Arkansas or someplace and there was no hope of getting a pressure plate or getting another camera.

621
00:48:19.570 --> 00:48:21.150
So they just went ahead and kept shooting.

622
00:48:21.530 --> 00:48:23.150
And the film all turned out perfect.

623
00:48:24.390 --> 00:48:27.150
And nobody can understand why.

624
00:48:29.890 --> 00:48:32.170
They were out for a long time shooting that film.

625
00:48:32.270 --> 00:48:33.950
I'm going to say six or eight weeks.

626
00:48:35.590 --> 00:48:37.230
Just the two of them.

627
00:48:38.090 --> 00:48:39.570
Was it along the river?

628
00:48:39.790 --> 00:48:40.830
It was along the river.

629
00:48:40.910 --> 00:48:42.010
It was a story line.

630
00:48:42.430 --> 00:48:46.010
It's an old story and there have been many variations of it.

631
00:48:47.170 --> 00:48:51.210
An Indian kid up in Minnesota puts a boat in the water.

632
00:48:51.790 --> 00:48:54.710
A little model of a sailboat.

633
00:48:55.530 --> 00:48:56.890
And it floats down the river.

634
00:48:56.970 --> 00:48:58.070
And you follow the boat.

635
00:48:59.710 --> 00:49:01.630
Until it goes out into the gulf.

636
00:49:01.630 --> 00:49:09.330
And so it's just a mechanism for finding your way down the river.

637
00:49:09.650 --> 00:49:11.910
And who the people are that you meet along the way.

638
00:49:12.470 --> 00:49:22.050
There was one shot in the film sequence of a farm kid in I believe in Mississippi.

639
00:49:22.890 --> 00:49:25.710
Who has a good friend who's a black kid.

640
00:49:25.710 --> 00:49:32.470
And they are very close friends.

641
00:49:33.790 --> 00:49:36.750
And then they have to go to school.

642
00:49:37.230 --> 00:49:38.810
And they're segregated schools.

643
00:49:40.170 --> 00:49:43.190
And so they go their separate ways.

644
00:49:43.410 --> 00:49:50.090
And it shows what tearing the kids apart did to them psychologically.

645
00:49:50.090 --> 00:50:06.250
And that film was put into the film collection of the U.S. Office of Information or something like that.

646
00:50:06.690 --> 00:50:14.410
But it was a system of film libraries that the government ran all over the world.

647
00:50:15.190 --> 00:50:17.050
In connection with the consulates.

648
00:50:17.050 --> 00:50:23.650
And it was the most popular film that they had.

649
00:50:23.790 --> 00:50:31.110
Because it wasn't just telling about how America is more wonderful than any other place.

650
00:50:31.810 --> 00:50:36.490
It really pointed out problems that we had.

651
00:50:43.710 --> 00:50:47.850
Other films, other documentaries that were being made.

652
00:50:52.150 --> 00:50:53.090
Howard Auk.

653
00:50:53.350 --> 00:50:55.790
What do you remember about him and Ed Bland?

654
00:50:56.570 --> 00:50:59.550
Well Howard Auk was sort of a wild man.

655
00:51:00.070 --> 00:51:03.090
He started a nightclub in Chicago called the Gate of Horn.

656
00:51:03.910 --> 00:51:05.770
And he was very much into...

657
00:51:05.770 --> 00:51:07.810
I think it was the bear was his.

658
00:51:07.930 --> 00:51:08.430
Oh the bear?

659
00:51:08.710 --> 00:51:09.430
Yeah the bear.

660
00:51:09.610 --> 00:51:10.530
Okay thank you.

661
00:51:13.030 --> 00:51:16.270
He was very avant-garde.

662
00:51:17.030 --> 00:51:18.950
Light years ahead of his time.

663
00:51:19.750 --> 00:51:22.330
He was into drugs before other people were.

664
00:51:24.490 --> 00:51:26.090
And very creative guy.

665
00:51:27.830 --> 00:51:30.630
Just creative in every sense of the word.

666
00:51:32.490 --> 00:51:33.710
I liked him a lot.

667
00:51:33.710 --> 00:51:41.370
He had no tolerance for mainstream folks.

668
00:51:42.010 --> 00:51:43.310
He just didn't.

669
00:51:46.970 --> 00:51:51.070
His cousin by the way was Bruce Trins that I mentioned before.

670
00:51:51.390 --> 00:51:52.670
He ran the Clark Theater.

671
00:51:57.250 --> 00:52:00.290
They didn't have a lot to say to each other.

672
00:52:01.330 --> 00:52:03.970
Howard liked to go to the Clark and watch movies.

673
00:52:04.310 --> 00:52:08.030
It was the best place in town to do that.

674
00:52:12.070 --> 00:52:14.530
Do I remember correctly that Howard...

675
00:52:14.530 --> 00:52:18.010
He worked on some corporate films.

676
00:52:18.470 --> 00:52:20.210
Yeah sort of kicking and screaming.

677
00:52:20.850 --> 00:52:21.850
He didn't like it.

678
00:52:22.610 --> 00:52:25.790
To him it was sort of prostituting himself.

679
00:52:27.950 --> 00:52:29.930
And it's interesting how that worked.

680
00:52:29.930 --> 00:52:39.450
Andy Kostikian was probably one of the major players in corporate films and commercials.

681
00:52:40.990 --> 00:52:43.450
He would not do a cigarette commercial.

682
00:52:43.810 --> 00:52:45.210
He absolutely refused.

683
00:52:46.470 --> 00:52:48.350
And lost a lot of money.

684
00:52:50.290 --> 00:52:55.310
Because cigarettes paid the bills for a lot of the early stuff that was done.

685
00:52:55.310 --> 00:53:01.310
So you're actually talking about Andy and that story.

686
00:53:02.210 --> 00:53:16.430
Was there starting to become a certain amount of social kind of regard in terms of making films at that time?

687
00:53:16.930 --> 00:53:23.230
Because you were a little bit cynical earlier about first you get the money then you'll decide how you make the film.

688
00:53:23.230 --> 00:53:26.070
Yeah you can't make the film without the money.

689
00:53:27.150 --> 00:53:28.430
That's just real.

690
00:53:29.510 --> 00:53:32.170
Unless you work the way Herschel Lewis did.

691
00:53:32.690 --> 00:53:36.150
Where you make the film and then forget to pay people.

692
00:53:38.890 --> 00:53:42.570
That is a way to make a film without getting the money.

693
00:53:47.350 --> 00:53:48.470
Not necessarily...

694
00:53:48.470 --> 00:53:50.410
Let's say I was in the business.

695
00:53:50.410 --> 00:53:53.490
I needed to get paid for equipment and stuff.

696
00:53:53.870 --> 00:53:59.490
And that was not my favorite way of funding the production.

697
00:54:01.510 --> 00:54:03.570
So Herschel would hire the handicap literally.

698
00:54:04.870 --> 00:54:10.910
He would get people that couldn't speak to run errands.

699
00:54:10.910 --> 00:54:17.330
So that if you got into a discussion with them about where's the money they couldn't answer you.

700
00:54:20.370 --> 00:54:22.790
Yeah Herschel was good at that.

701
00:54:23.910 --> 00:54:25.930
So what is this then you're talking about?

702
00:54:26.390 --> 00:54:31.710
Then you are talking about kind of Howard and Andy within a same kind of thought.

703
00:54:33.230 --> 00:54:35.750
I'd be willing to bet that they never worked together.

704
00:54:36.090 --> 00:54:37.990
They were two different kinds of people.

705
00:54:38.470 --> 00:54:44.510
But was there a certain social consciousness that maybe was starting...

706
00:54:44.510 --> 00:54:48.730
That cigarette thing is definitely an epic.

707
00:54:48.790 --> 00:54:49.630
Sure it is.

708
00:54:51.190 --> 00:54:52.490
I'd put it this way.

709
00:54:53.510 --> 00:54:57.450
The process of film production, first of all it's very collaborative.

710
00:55:00.850 --> 00:55:03.490
And you tend to get bright people doing it.

711
00:55:04.290 --> 00:55:08.050
I don't say that they're brighter than other people.

712
00:55:08.050 --> 00:55:14.450
But you get people that read a lot.

713
00:55:16.910 --> 00:55:19.930
Gordy and I would have lunch together a couple times a week.

714
00:55:20.910 --> 00:55:28.490
And we would get into all kinds of conversations that you just don't hear much around now.

715
00:55:32.070 --> 00:55:35.770
He read everything that Kant wrote.

716
00:55:35.770 --> 00:55:38.490
He read everything that Freud wrote.

717
00:55:38.750 --> 00:55:40.090
He read everything that...

718
00:55:43.650 --> 00:55:44.670
I don't know.

719
00:55:44.930 --> 00:55:46.470
He was just well read.

720
00:55:49.650 --> 00:55:56.090
I think there's...

721
00:55:57.150 --> 00:56:00.190
I just think of people that I've known in the film business.

722
00:56:00.610 --> 00:56:01.630
They're a bright bunch.

723
00:56:01.630 --> 00:56:03.350
I just remembered.

724
00:56:04.150 --> 00:56:14.650
Michael Birch is the producer that did educational films under contract from Encyclopedia Britannica.

725
00:56:16.370 --> 00:56:22.330
Michael Birch and his friend Dodi Folley worked with him.

726
00:56:23.170 --> 00:56:27.710
And he later ended up at Leo Burnett as a producer.

727
00:56:34.610 --> 00:56:39.910
I mention Michael Birch because I'm thinking of bright people that I knew in the business.

728
00:56:40.110 --> 00:56:41.330
And he certainly was one.

729
00:56:41.690 --> 00:56:44.310
Mort Goldschall is another, and Millie.

730
00:56:45.750 --> 00:56:50.750
Mort went through the School of Design at what is now IIT.

731
00:56:51.630 --> 00:56:53.950
And he worked with Maholi Nagi.

732
00:56:55.230 --> 00:56:56.310
Or as a nudge.

733
00:56:56.510 --> 00:56:58.970
I never have known how to say that.

734
00:56:58.970 --> 00:57:05.490
But he came out of the Bauhaus and started the Institute of Design in Chicago.

735
00:57:06.430 --> 00:57:15.370
And Mort went through that program and had a lot of industrial clients that he made films for.

736
00:57:15.590 --> 00:57:23.570
Champion Paper was one beautiful film that he made for them called Imagination Ten.

737
00:57:24.470 --> 00:57:25.890
Just a wonderful film.

738
00:57:26.070 --> 00:57:27.530
We have that.

739
00:57:27.530 --> 00:57:29.310
From the Goldschall collection.

740
00:57:30.870 --> 00:57:33.970
What are some of the other ones at the Goldschall that you recall?

741
00:57:34.130 --> 00:57:38.890
Are there any other particular titles that you recall that you thought were?

742
00:57:40.910 --> 00:57:47.330
Well, first of all, Mort and Millie, they're both filmmakers and did entirely different kinds of things.

743
00:57:49.190 --> 00:57:54.010
Mort did corporate films.

744
00:57:54.270 --> 00:57:56.170
He did films for corporations.

745
00:57:56.170 --> 00:58:03.810
And I'm having trouble remembering titles.

746
00:58:05.450 --> 00:58:07.510
Millie did personal art films.

747
00:58:08.370 --> 00:58:10.110
And that was another whole category.

748
00:58:11.170 --> 00:58:16.890
And I would say Millie, Helen Morrison that did dance films.

749
00:58:18.570 --> 00:58:22.610
She had a friend, Sybil Shearer, that was a wonderful dancer.

750
00:58:22.610 --> 00:58:26.610
Helen recorded her dance.

751
00:58:27.510 --> 00:58:28.870
And I would say that's an art.

752
00:58:28.990 --> 00:58:32.430
I would put that in the category of art films.

753
00:58:32.910 --> 00:58:34.550
Could you tell me more about Helen Morrison?

754
00:58:35.950 --> 00:58:37.730
Helen had a studio.

755
00:58:38.550 --> 00:58:41.350
Well, actually it was their studio.

756
00:58:41.630 --> 00:58:45.010
Sybil used it for dance and Helen used it for photography.

757
00:58:45.770 --> 00:58:47.990
And she was a wonderful still photographer.

758
00:58:47.990 --> 00:58:59.730
And then somehow got into film as a better way of documenting Sybil's dance.

759
00:59:01.110 --> 00:59:02.310
And she just had...

760
00:59:03.230 --> 00:59:09.170
And I worked with her in developing a camera to be able to do that.

761
00:59:09.210 --> 00:59:16.310
What she needed was a camera that had the sound on film, sound on film, S-O-F.

762
00:59:16.310 --> 00:59:22.370
And that was very unusual at that time to be able to record sound in the camera.

763
00:59:23.090 --> 00:59:34.150
And so there was a camera that the newsreel people used, Oricon, that could record optical sound within the camera.

764
00:59:34.150 --> 00:59:51.590
And what we did was use an Oricon and put a big magazine on it so that she could record up to a half an hour of film without stopping to reload.

765
00:59:52.270 --> 00:59:58.730
And she wanted to be able to do that so that Sybil could do whatever her dance required.

766
00:59:58.730 --> 01:00:06.210
And so just adapting a big magazine to a conventional camera was a big deal.

767
01:00:07.170 --> 01:00:12.950
And it's kind of funny because later on we did some things that were very interesting.

768
01:00:13.870 --> 01:00:14.350
Anyway...

769
01:00:14.350 --> 01:00:15.790
What do you mean we...

770
01:00:15.790 --> 01:00:17.190
My company.

771
01:00:18.370 --> 01:00:32.270
We build a film, we build a camera for Fred Niles to use at the New York World's Fair to do a 360-degree film that they made for the Port Authority in New York.

772
01:00:34.590 --> 01:00:37.630
And so that was just a fun project.

773
01:00:37.630 --> 01:00:51.970
So what we did was lash, as I remember, nine cameras together to look in 360 degrees and do it so that you didn't see the dividing line between images.

774
01:00:53.050 --> 01:00:54.490
It was kind of tricky.

775
01:00:57.910 --> 01:01:00.850
And I went on a lot of the shoot with that.

776
01:01:00.850 --> 01:01:10.150
So I have fond memories of flying under the George Washington Bridge, for instance, where we hung the camera from a helicopter.

777
01:01:12.650 --> 01:01:13.690
That was...

778
01:01:13.690 --> 01:01:16.250
I can't imagine a better way to make a living.

779
01:01:20.550 --> 01:01:22.590
Thank you. Did we miss anything?

780
01:01:23.970 --> 01:01:25.770
How do you mean, like, sound-wise?

781
01:01:26.050 --> 01:01:26.910
No, tape-wise.

782
01:01:26.970 --> 01:01:28.790
Tape-wise? No, we're still rolling.

783
01:01:28.790 --> 01:01:29.650
Okay, cool.

784
01:01:30.750 --> 01:01:33.150
How are you doing? Do you want some water, some more coffee?

785
01:01:33.330 --> 01:01:35.210
I guess some coffee wouldn't hurt.

786
01:01:35.810 --> 01:01:37.130
Do you guys want anything?

787
01:01:37.590 --> 01:01:38.170
Two and a half.

788
01:01:38.850 --> 01:01:39.450
Are you sure?

789
01:01:39.730 --> 01:01:42.030
One of my tonsils is dusty. Yeah, black.