Siakel #1, Siakel #2
Abstract
William F. Grisham interviews Jaroslav "Jerry" Siakel, a Slovakian-American cinematographer and projectionist who worked with Rothacker Film Company, Essanay Studios, and Selig Polyscope Company. In this outtake, Grisham and Siakel discuss the distinct filmmaking practices in Slovakia and the United States, namely Chicago. Siakel also describes the emerging filmmaking practices in Chicago during the silent era, including the influence of animation on film processing.
Log
Side 1
William Grisham: (00:02)
Okay, should be okay now. All right. Why don't we—
Jerry Siakel: (00:05)
[Inaudible] your questions?
William Grisham: (00:06)
All right. I just, I'll tell you what I—why don't I just hold it like this? You want to come a little forward?
Jerry Siakel: (00:12)
So I don't know. We'll cut and make a test pretty soon.
Jerry Siakel: (00:15)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (00:16)
Alright. You, you came to the United States after you had talked to your brother. You’d been in correspondence with your brother who was employed at the time you came at what place?
Jerry Siakel: (00:28)
At Schustek.
William Grisham: (00:28)
At Schustek.
Jerry Siakel: (00:28)
No, no, pardon me. At Selig.
William Grisham: (00:30)
And tell me, what was his job? Can you describe his job at Selig? Did he write to you about that? And so on.
Jerry Siakel: (00:35)
Yes. He was working partly in the machine shop building, the cameras and printers, which are very much like cameras with cinematograph movement. Plus, he was in charge of a printing department, which was giving Selig a headache because of all that static electricity. Main reason for that was that film wasn't as fine, as well refined as it is today. It didn't lay flat. Therefore going through the printer with negative, it had to be held down with pressure block, and pressure block was exactly the thing that caused all the friction and gave him all the headaches. Finally, after many and many experiments, Dan designed something that a printer. A girl that was printing film could watch the negative go through and at the same time control the thing so that would be no problem in whatever it was that that they had in there. Okay, you can sign—
William Grisham: (01:51)
All right. Now you, he wrote to you then about his work and what did you want to do? Did you want to, you were living in Slovakia.
Jerry Siakel: (02:00)
Yes. Yes.
William Grisham: (02:01)
And tell me about your home, your home, where you were living and why you came to this country.
Jerry Siakel: (02:10)
Well, that's a long story. I'm not going to go into that. It was necessary for me because I couldn't get education there. To go to Germany or Bohemia or somewhere else to get education, we couldn't afford that. And the local government didn't like our family very well. So we were what they call politically unreliable. And therefore my brother was pushed out. My sister was thrown out of high school, and I had no chance to go to a high school. They just didn't want us to get any education. And the only thing—
William Grisham: (02:47)
Was this because you had different politics, is that—
Jerry Siakel: (02:51)
That’s right. Because we were Slovaks, see.
William Grisham: (02:53)
Right.
Jerry Siakel: (02:54)
Instead of [inaudible].
William Grisham: (02:55)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (02:55)
And that was our biggest problem. But my parents’ background has been that way for many years. And everybody knew about it. And, but my father wouldn't give up. He just fought. And he worked for that new government. That is the new representation in Budapest. That's what they were working for. So when my brother said, “Oh, Rod, I'm going to come to visit you, and I'm going to show you something. I'm going to show you how we make these so-called living pictures in America.” And that's exactly what he did. By that time, when he came here in 1912, he brought with him a skeleton projector, which had a cinematograph movement in it. And he brought in some film, couple condensers, and that's all he brought with him. And when we were thinking about light, he said, don't worry about light, we’ll use your usual bicycle lamp. And that's exactly what we did. We used carbide lamb and we showed local people what really happens that you change pictures gradually. Yeah. That each picture is a little different. And because they moved through the projector so fast, it becomes an illusion that the things are moving. So that's what they call living pictures. The movies were—
William Grisham: (04:26)
This was 1912, when he visited?
Jerry Siakel: (04:27)
1912 when he came in there, yes.
William Grisham: (04:29)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (04:30)
Yes. And at that time, or prior to that, he already had some sort of a understanding with Schustek that they are to make a camera man out of me. But Schustek told Dan, “Before you bring him here, get him a job in a photo studio so he can learn something about photography.” And that's exactly what my brother did. He asked Mr. Sanders of Sanders and Gross, two Germans that had a studio in Milwaukee. [inaudible] and Chicago. I know that he knew him for some time.
William Grisham: (05:05)
S.A.U.N? S.A.N.D.E.R.S?
Jerry Siakel: (05:08)
S.A.N.D.E.R.S. Sanders and Gross.
William Grisham: (05:12)
Uh-huh. G.R.O.S.S.
Jerry Siakel: (05:13)
S.S. That's right. And Mr. Sanderson, “Yes. Then I'll do that. I'll give him a job.” So I have a job there and that's where I had the basic, basic training.
William Grisham: (05:26)
And what year was that? You came—
Jerry Siakel: (05:27)
That was in 1912. In November of 1912.
William Grisham: (05:30)
You came to this country then in 1912, in the winter of 1912 and worked there. How long did you work there and [inaudible]?
Jerry Siakel: (05:35)
About year and a half.
William Grisham: (05:37)
Uh-huh. And how did you feel? Can you describe your feelings as a young man? You came to Chicago. What was it like? What was Chicago like?
Jerry Siakel: (05:46)
Well, it was nice because it was different for me, but it was also unfriendly. We had different nationalities in a different area and they didn't like greenhorns. They had all kinds of, they have all kinds of names for us and that wasn't very pleasant. But then they had to put up with that. Everybody did. So in about a year and a half, I learned a little bit about photography, and I ventured into a photographic studio, foolishly, with somebody else, which folded up very soon. Then gradually Dan took me over to Selig.
William Grisham: (06:27)
Was Dan's first name? His full name.
Jerry Siakel: (06:30)
They call him [inaudible] Daniel Yan [inaudible]. Or Yan Daniel [inaudible].
William Grisham: (06:37)
Daniel was his first name. Everybody called him Dan, Dan there. Right.
Jerry Siakel: (06:40)
Dan was known all over Chicago, just like my name, Jerry Siakel, become known in this business for many years. And he took me over to Selig, and he talked to Gus Selig who was a manager of their studio over there [inaudible]
William Grisham: (06:58)
Was Gus the brother?
Jerry Siakel: (07:01)
The brother of Selig, yes.
William Grisham: (07:01)
He was the manager, right.
Jerry Siakel: (07:02)
That’s right.
William Grisham: (07:03)
At the time. This is what, in what year now? About 1915 or ‘14, or what year?
Jerry Siakel: (07:08)
Now, let me tell you, I don't know the year exactly, but let me tell you what happened at Selig. My first job was in a shipping room for opening boxes and putting the labels on the cans that were going out and so on. Then the film that came from Kodak was taken over to perforating room. My second job was in a perforating room. I worked there for a little while and during that time that I was in the perforating room, there was a— naturally perforating room is noisy and so as the printing room next door to it.
William Grisham: (07:43)
Did you use your own perforator, Mr. Schustek’s perforator or whose was it?
Jerry Siakel: (07:41)
I don't know who designed it, but it was the perforator that punched two hell holes instead of four holes. However, they had to Bell and Howell perforators already in a separate room where negatives was being perforated—
William Grisham: (08:00)
At four, four
Jerry Siakel: (08:01)
Four frames for him. Now you understand negative perforation is different from positive?
William Grisham: (08:05)
Tell us about that.
Jerry Siakel: (08:06)
Well, the reason for that is because when the film is processed, there is certain shrinkage. Therefore the holes from shrunk negative have to match the holes of positive when they go through the training room no matter what kind of printing, printing, printing equipment. So I don't know the year when I was there, but I remember this and you can verify this sometime. While I was [inaudible] and working in a perforating room, there was a big commotion. I don't know what happened. I asked a man, an electrician that was in charge. “Mr. So-and-so what's wrong?” And he told me there was a big disaster. And I said, “What did, what does it mean?” And my English was very limited at time too. He says, “A boat capsized with electricians." I said, “Electricians, well, I didn't know anything about that either.” But later on, the camera we were coming in with film, bringing negatives, and it was rush-rush for the Selig-Hurst weekly to go out. So there was somebody there in the department asking, “Going into, go and help the people in the title room.” Where we were taking the cards as they were printed on Gordon Press and dust them with silver and then put them before camera and make titles, you know?
William Grisham: (09:40)
Alright. Tell me about this. You said Gordon Press?
Jerry Siakel: (09:42)
Yes, ordinary Gordon Press, you know, that's fed by individual card was fed in and ordinary ink was applied—
William Grisham: (09:51)
Yes,
Jerry Siakel: (09:51)
To the card. And then it was dusted with silver or aluminum dust, whatever.
William Grisham: (09:57)
To what, what for? Why was it—
Jerry Siakel: (09:58)
To give white lettering. See, that's the one that we photographed and choose, already choose the camera. And there was so much, such a demand for those negatives and all that necessary material that had to go into these weeklies. So one man said to me, “Why don't you try your hand on cranking?” And I stayed and he was surprised that I would crank any certain speed and crank steady. And, and he said to me, “Where the hell did you learn this?” I said, “Well, I've been practicing at home.” “At home?” I said, “Yes, my brother brought one of these Selig projectors home and they operated same way by hand. They run the same speed.” And that's what Dan told me: “Keep on practicing. Someday you’ll be cranking a camera.” Well, that got me started in projection then. Then later on, I got into a inspection room where they had half a dozen or more projectors going continuously inspecting for defect, positive inspection. That in between time, sometime myself, sometime and other projection is in the inspection room—
William Grisham: (11:18)
Go ahead.
Jerry Siakel: (11:19)
Was asked to go into the projection room where they had meetings, where they were projecting negatives.
William Grisham: (11:29)
Did they always look at the Russia's, the dailies in negative form?
Jerry Siakel: (11:35)
Now, I'm not positive that they always did that, but that's what I saw, the negatives being projected. That's what I projected, negatives.
William Grisham: (11:42)
And you could read them then after a while.
Jerry Siakel: (11:44)
That’s right. You get so familiar with that. But what was most interesting is after they finished the scene, and they talked about the scene, and they talked about “this is no good” and “this is no good” and “we'll cut this out” or “we got to change the scene” and so on. So I was all ears, and it was kind of educational procedure for me. But I had a picture of that. That's the only other picture I have of Selig, any projection.
William Grisham: (12:11)
Marvelous.
Jerry Siakel: (12:12)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (12:13)
That is excellent description of all of this. And then, may I ask you now a few questions?
Jerry Siakel: (12:18)
Go ahead.
William Grisham: (12:20)
And where did you live in Chicago? Did you live with the, your Czech community or your, or rather the Slovakian community?
Jerry Siakel: (12:26)
Yes.
William Grisham: (12:26)
Where, where was that? What neighborhood was that?
Jerry Siakel: (12: 28)
Well, it was around Milwaukee and Chicago [inaudible]. And, you know, there was a athletic organization there that had their own building, which is still standing there called, well, its name doesn’t make any difference.
William Grisham: (12:40)
Yes it does if you remember the name.
Jerry Siakel: (12:43)
It's [inaudible] Slavia. It was an independent kind of an organization. Everybody could belong to that. So later on we got Serbs and we got Pols and whoever was in the neighborhood and wanted practice in athletics because [inaudible]l is something like German Turner—
William Grisham: (13:02)
Turner Association.
Jerry Siakel: (13:02)
That’s right.
William Grisham: (13:03)
Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (13:03)
Same thing. Yeah. There—then they had little stage there and they had few plays and so on. And that's where I got to know a Schustek a little bit better because Schustek kind of looked after me too, just like my brother. They kept on pushing.
William Grisham: (13:21)
How much older was he then, can you estimate, than you were about?
Jerry Siakel: (13:26)
My brother?
William Grisham: (13:27)
No, Schustek.
Jerry Siakel: (13:28)
I don't know.
William Grisham: (13:29)
How much older was your brother than you?
Jerry Siakel: (13:31)
Ten years.
William Grisham: (13:31)
Ten years older.
Jerry Siakel: (13:32)
He was born in January, and I was born in January ten years later.
William Grisham: (13:36)
Interesting.
Jerry Siakel: (13:39)
My brother had education. See, he not only the mechanical education, which he got in Budapest—
William Grisham: (13:49)
Budapest, yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (13:50)
Budapest. Which must've, must have been very good because in a night school that he went to, they gave him a first prize after four years of study. He brought those things home. He was, he had training, some kind of a training in instrument or not. I did not understand mechanics at that time, and I couldn't tell you just what he was doing, but he was able to join Selig. And if I understand it correctly, they were repairing optical things too.
William Grisham: (14:26)
Yes.
Jerry Siakel: (14:27)
And my brother talked about Pet Court. That's— I didn't know what that was, but then I know it was a—
William Grisham: (14:35)
He had worked at Pet Court, at Pet Court.
Jerry Siakel: (14:37)
It was an alley somewhere downtown. And he went with Selig and he stayed with Selig until Selig closed down, yeah.
William Grisham: (14:46)
Very good. Now, Selig, did you stay with Selig until the studio was closed? Or how did you go somewhere else?
Jerry Siakel: (14:52)
I—no. In 1917, the war was on.
William Grisham: (14:57)
Yes.
Jerry Siakel: (14:58)
And Selig was already moving to California, moving quite fast. I think most of the plant was already closed. But my brother, Selig had contract to build that processing outfit for government.
William Grisham: (15: 15)
Could you tell us about that?
Jerry Siakel: (15: 17)
Well, I got a picture of that to show you.
William Grisham: (15:19)
Was this a continuous printer?
Jerry Siakel: (15:22)
A continuous processing outfit.
William Grisham: (15:23)
Processing.
Jerry Siakel: (15:24)
Yeah. Developing and washing and drying. I don't know what they were going to do about printing, probably process the [inaudible]. That, those things were new to me at that time.
William Grisham: (15:35)
Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (15:37)
So I, while I was still at, brother was at Selig, I was still at Selig. My brother said to a man, an engineer from Washington that, “My little brother is going to be drafted. And if you want to put him, try to get him into photographic division. “ And he said yes.
William Grisham: (15:59)
Of the Army, of the Army.
Jerry Siakel: (16:00)
Of the Army. And they did that.
William Grisham: (16:02)
Great.
Jerry Siakel: (16:02)
They assigned me to it—
William Grisham: (16:04)
And you went where? Where did you go?
Jerry Siakel: (16:05)
I went to—
William Grisham: (16:06)
Cornell?
Jerry Siakel: (16:06)
Cornell, yeah. But first I spent six weeks with an infantry, two weeks with signal corps. Then I don't know how many weeks on Bedloe Island in New York waiting to get the group of people together. And when they got, I think a hundred of us, maybe not that many, then they shipped us to Cornell University where they already had a section ready for us. Part of Rockefeller Hall was assigned to Army.
William Grisham: (16:32)
How long were you there at Cornell?
Jerry Siakel: (16:34)
Just to finish the course and then few weeks to teach new recruits that come in there.
William Grisham: (16:41)
So you were a teacher there then?
Jerry Siakel: (16:44)
Well, that's not teaching. They’re just showing [inaudible] There’s nothing to teaching
William Grisham: (16:48)
I see.
Jerry Siakel: (16:49)
No, there were, that’s where I met a man about whom I'm going to tell you quite a bit. A fellow that was with ENSCO company, fellow by name Thompson, and was a very good chemist that I later was in contact with when we were trying to develop a direct positive or direct negative. But I have to show you letters on that.
William Grisham: (17:13)
Did he develop a continuous printer called the Spore-Thompson?
Jerry Siakel: (17:18)
Oh no, no.
William Grisham: (17:18)
That was not the same Thompson.
Jerry Siakel: (17:19)
No, no. This fellow was a troubleshooter for ENSCO Company. He wasn’t [inaudible].
William Grisham: (17:22)
I see. Alright.
Jerry Siakel: (17:26)
No, I don't know who developed that. But after I got back from service, then I went to, well, Schustek, again, was working on—
William Grisham: (17:36)
Was he still with Selig, Mr. Schustek?
Jerry Siakel: (17:38)
No, he has his own shop.
William Grisham: (17:39)
Alright. Tell me about that. What was it called? The Schustek what?
Jerry Siakel: (17:42)
I don't know what he called it, sir. All I knew is that once in a while we would go and visit Schustek. Now he had about half a dozen machinists working for him. And one of the man is still working, is still living. He's in a Bohemian old people's home. And I was trying to get in touch with him to tell me something about Selig. Dan worked there and also fellow by name Lavati work there that designed and patented a new viewfinder for motion picture cameras. I'll tell you about that later.
William Grisham: (18:18)
Was a reflexive viewfinder.
Jerry Siakel: (18:20)
That’s right.
William Grisham: (18:20)
Interesting, yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (18:21)
That's being used today on all cameras, yeah.
William Grisham: (18:26)
Alright. Then you, now tell me, at Selig were there a number of Germans working for him and Bohemians and—
Jerry Siakel: (18:35)
Not that many Bohemian.
William Grisham: (18:36)
But Germans?
Jerry Siakel: (18:37)
Germans, yeah.
William Grisham: (18:37)
A great number of Germans.
Jerry Siakel: (18:38)
Germans and Swedes.
William Grisham: (18:40)
Did you ever hear of the Schiller Theater in Chicago, a German theater at all?
Jerry Siakel: (18:44)
No, I didn’t.
William Grisham: (18:46)
Did you ever go to any of the storefront nickelodeons?
Jerry Siakel: (18:51)
Yes, yes.
William Grisham: (18:51)
how were they run? Can you describe them?
Jerry Siakel: (18:53)
[Inaudible]. That was the—I remember that while at Selig, someone was already working on talking pictures where they had that contract with phonograph and so on. And Dan took me to McVickers Theater, where they had one part of a Waterville program where they showed those movies and also talkies. Later Dan got into the talking pictures [inaudible] quite extensively.
William Grisham: (19:25)
Then did you—after Selig, where did you go after Selig’s then?
Jerry Siakel: (19:31)
After Selig I went to service. After service, I went to Rothacker Film Company.
William Grisham: (19:39)
And where was it located at the time?
Jerry Siakel: (19:41)
Rothacker Film?
William Grisham: (19:42)
There were two locations. One was on Erie Street.
Jerry Siakel: (19: 45)
That's Industrial Motion Pictures. That was not the same Rothacker that I work on. You see, Rothacker, [inaudible] and Rothacker started as an industrial movies, which were also advertising movies, right? Then there was, this is kind of interesting because it has some connection with Ordinary Motion Pictures. Some is purely an advertising shorts-like. Rothacker had a department that he called Dealer Services Department. And a fellow by name Dewey was in charge of it. They made shorts for motion, picture theaters at twenty-five foot, fifty feet, hundred feet.
William Grisham: (20:32)
Advertising shorts?
Jerry Siakel: (20:33)
Advertising shorts, which were stock stories. And they attached titles or names of advertisers to the end. Well, that'd become kind of monotonous to many people. They had dealers all over United States. They brought us in 10, 15, 20 of these things, and they use them over and over again. Then it becomes kind of monotonous to attach those titles to the shorts. So one man from Oklahoma approached Rothacker, or rather Dewey, if he would kind of work in the advertiser's name right into the scene. And Dewey thought, well, we'll have to ask somebody that'll design something like that. So they approached Schustek and Schustek, he always was willing to listen. So he said, “Well, we'll work up something.” So he built a special printer, which we could stop on a frame and start naturally. When we were printing these shorts, we were printing them slowly. They didn't go through like Bell and Howell and so on. They were not that important. They were not that good either.
But he designed a printer, probably thirty-six or maybe four feet long. Large condensers, light inside, and a slight carrier similar to that in there. But with the lens, I'd have to kind of make a sketch of that thing, how the thing worked. But after the scene was, while the scene was being printed, we could stop on a frame, insert the slide, throw it out of focus, and then, with a knob, bring it gradually into focus. So we brought in a title into focus. That required kind of tricky operation and Schustek told Rothacker or Dewey, Schustek was asked, “Where are you gonna get a man to run this thing?” And Schustek said, “Try Jerry Siakel. Jerry Siakel, he knows a little bit about photography.” So I went to Schustek and I worked on that printer. Then I went into the production of these little shorts with Dewey, still him in charge because he was selling and advertising, I think, under Rothacker’s name.
William Grisham: (23:03)
Now that place was in one of the Rothacker buildings or what?
Jerry Siakel: (23:06)
That was where, today, SV is located. That's the Rothacker [inaudible] SV’s at Southport and Diversey. It’s there today.
William Grisham: (23:19)
Southport and Diversey. Yeah. Alright. The other Rothacker plant was at Erie, on Erie Street, right?
Jerry Siakel: (23:23)
Yes, that was, no, that was, that was in—Rothacker was known as Industrial Motion Pictures.
William Grisham: (23:29)
Right.
Jerry Siakel: (23:30)
And Rothacker owned that. But then he married into a family. His father-in-law was an undertaker and he had quite a bit of money, and I guess he helped his son in law to build that factory that’s standing there today, rather than studio. It was already a studio. It had [inaudible] lights. It had all the modern facilities.
William Grisham: (23:53)
And they also printed the Chaplin films there, some of the Chaplains—
Jerry Siakel: (23:55)
No, not Rothacker. Rothacker—
William Grisham: (23:57)
I have it. I have a news item. It says—
Jerry Siakel: (23:58)
Well maybe they did [inaudible].
William Grisham: (23:59)
Yeah. For First National. They did it for First National. Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (24:02)
Oh, well for First National. Yes, because you see, that's what, that's what happened after a while. They—
William Grisham: (24:10)
Became—
Jerry Siakel: (24:13)
Rothacker become part of First National, I guess, because they produced Lost World together.
William Grisham: (24:20)
Well, the First National chose him because he had such a fine laboratory.
Jerry Siakel: (24:24)
Yes.
William Grisham: (24:24)
On Erie Street. Then he went off to found one of the great plants in Los Angeles actually. Rothacker, you know, was responsible for, at least some of his people were responsible for, what do you call them? Anyway, let's go on. I've got that in my notes.
Jerry Siakel: (24:50)
Well, I never knew Rothacker under that name on Erie street. I only knew Rothacker on Diversey Parkway. But I knew that he was, at one time, on Erie because my brother had something to do with some kind of a machinery.
William Grisham: (25:09)
So this is in the late teens that you're with Rothacker then, is that right? How, what was the year? Because it was certainly before 1921, wasn’t it?
Jerry Siakel: (25:16)
Now let me explain it to you this way. Uh, in 1920, Rothacker was talking about phasing out this short film production, because it was not paying enough, not enough profit in it. And second, it was a nuisance to run these short films when we had such an enormous demand for—
William Grisham: (25:46)
Industrial?
Jerry Siakel: (25:47)
No, full features for First National. So I knew that I was going to be let out, then something else happened. Schustek was building twenty-eight millimeter printer that would take thirty-five millimeter negative and convert them into a non-slow burning film, twenty-eight millimeter film. He made that, he built that for Victor Animatograph Company or—
William Grisham : (26:15)
Victor Animatograph.
Jerry Siakel: (26:16)
From Davenport, Iowa. And when he got it done, Mr. Victor, I got to know Mr. Victor pretty well. He was a very fine man. Mr. Victor asked Mr. Schustek, “We’ve got to have a man to run this” and Mr. Schustek said, “Well, I know one guy, young lad by the name of Jerry Siakel. Why don't you approach him?” And he did. And I went to work for him. I went to work at Essanay and they did have that processing unit at that time because it—
William Grisham: (26:53)
Do you mean Essanay, E.S.S.A.N.A.Y? Or S and A? There were two. Was it Essanay over on Argyle?
Jerry Siakel: (27:02)
Yeah, on Argyle.
William Grisham: (27:02)
You went to work for Essanay on Argyle.
Jerry Siakel: (27:04)
Yes, that’s right. [Inaudible].
William Grisham: (27:05)
They were doing the Victor machine? They were doing—
Jerry Siakel: (27:08)
I didn't work for Essanay. I worked for the Essanay lab, but I was paid by Victor. And he had contracted with Essanay to take some of these movies that he has to turn them into non-theatrical used twenty-eight millimeter films.
William Grisham: (27:28)
Terrific. That's great.
Jerry Siakel: (27:29)
But he was not the only, that was not the only object of Victor's. He also want to get into motion picture work because Victor had a large library, bigger than Macintosh at that time. And he also produced, he also built motion pictures In Davenport with a beater movement. You know what beater movement is?
William Grisham: (27:56)
Yeah. I do know. One of the first, in fact, the first camera and movie projector had beater movements.
Jerry Siakel: (28:02)
Yeah, well that's what he built. Of course, those things aren’t good, you know.
William Grisham: (28:06)
No, because your frame line.
Jerry Siakel: (28:07)
No, not only that, but it's not steady. You can’t—
William Grisham: (28:09)
Right. It chatters.
Jerry Siakel: (28:11)
Chatters, yeah.
William Grisham: (28:11)
Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (28:12)
Anyhow, Victor wanted to get into that kind of a business. And I worked there. I don't know how long. All I remember is that I have two union paid cards because I had to join the union at Essanay. I never belonged to your union before, but I did then. Then this organization in 1920 started to talk about this Tatra film that I finally got to connect, that I got connected to.
William Grisham: (28:49)
How do you spell that?
Jerry Siakel: (28:50)
T.A.T.R.A.
William Grisham: (28:54)
Tatra film.
Jerry Siakel: (28:55)
Tatra film.
William Grisham: (28:56)
Yeah. Tatra.
Jerry Siakel: (28:57)
That's a name of a mountain in Czechoslovakia. And they were talking about making film. But in the meantime, even while at Rothacker, I was making documentaries about what was going on in Chicago. Schustek was one that arranged for that. I hired Rothacker cameraman. I had to rent a camera from Rothacker, and I hired cameraman. And we got this and whatever we needed, and we made documentary for Bohemians, documentary for Czech.
William Grisham: (29:35)
This was through Rothacker then? No?
Jerry Siakel: (29:37)
No, that was our political connection.
William Grisham: (29:41)
Very good.
Jerry Siakel: (29:42)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (29:43)
Very good.
Jerry Siakel: (29:43)
And that's where I met my wife too. Had one of those affairs. That's where I photographed Messianic Jew, and I photograph Kelly.
Side 2
William Grisham: (00:06)
All right. Would you tell us about, now, the films that you were making? ‘Cause we lost some of that. The films that you were making Kelly and so on. It was a documentary.
Jerry Siakel: (00:15)
Documentary.
William Grisham: (00:16)
And you were making them for whom now?
Jerry Siakel: (00:18)
There were political, not political, but organization of Czechoslovakia and Chicago, that gave all kinds of entertainment and try to raise money for a new republic. That was the purpose of all of this, and also to have a record of what was going on. So I picked, picked up that is, I got some actresses. See, I belong to a [inaudible] organization.
William Grisham: (00:54)
I was wondering, cause you directed that film so, so beautifully, but you had some dramatic training, a good deal of dramatic training, had you not? Had you been in the theater at all or done any theatrical work here?
Jerry Siakel: (01:05)
Yes, I did.
William Grisham: (01:06)
Tell me about that ‘cause that’s really very important.
Jerry Siakel: (01:08)
Well, I really don't know what to say about that. Maybe later on I'll tell you about it, anyhow. But what we did is we took a good looking girl from the [inaudible] organization and photograph her with Colonel so-and-so. And, you know, we tried to get a little life into that, a little action. Otherwise you just can stand there and stare in the camera.
William Grisham: (01:31)
Right.
Jerry Siakel: (01:32)
So that's the way we were doing things. So that was with my documentary. Well, I went to Czechoslovakia to make a long film, which I was hesitating because I never made a long film before. And I talked to my brother about that. They're asking me to make [inaudible]. I never made a long film. And he said, don't worry about that. A long film is easier to make than a short film. And I said, well, and the scenario somebody's got to write a scenario. Now that depends on the scenario a whole lot, just like a blueprint in your shop, depends on a good blueprint and you produce a good machine. He says, well, that's very important.
William Grisham: (02:22)
Now, where had you learned that? Had you learned that at Selig, that a script was a good blueprint?
Jerry Siakel: (02:26)
Oh, yes. Sure, sure, sure. Many times some of those fellows were criticizing. It's written that way, you know, and that—
William Grisham: (02:36)
Aha.
Jerry Siakel: (02:37)
It’s awfully—I can't even explain to you just what was going on in there. But then said, if it's well written, it's easy to do. If it's long, it'd be easy to shorten it or to lengthen it. And it helped a lot to feel that way because the hesitation which I had in the beginning, I kinda lost. But then we had help there too. We, we had a leading man that had a theater experience and motion picture experience. So very often I would turn to him with suggestion.
William Grisham: (03:13)
Now he was from what theater?
Jerry Siakel: (03:15)
From Praha. His father owned a theater in Praha. He was one of those [inaudible].
William Grisham: (03:25)
And he'd been in films before.
Jerry Siakel: (03:27)
Yes, he had. Yes, he had. He, he was on contract with a motion picture company in Praha, and we went to the company and asked them would they loan Pištěk. And they said, “Yes, we'll pay him so-and-so many dollars.” And they release him and then—
William Grisham: (03:44)
Tell me was he—had then since this was the first feature—he had been only in one-reelers or short films.
Jerry Siakel: (03:51)
No. He was in a longer stories. But what kinds of stories, I don't know. All I know is that he mentioned going to Berlin or going to—
William Grisham: (04:02)
But Slovakia, in Slovakia, they had not come up with a feature yet.
Jerry Siakel: (04:05)
In Slovakia, there was no such a thing, but in Bohemia, which is in Praha, it had already had a, an old brewery turned into a motion picture studio and motion picture lab. And that was one of the saddest thing. My brother came with all their equipment. We carried out on cameras, our own film, everything. We went, we went to Europe with everything that we needed for film. And Vigor introduced to this AB film company. And my brother went down there and he looked at that basement in that old brewery and that's where they were developing and printing films. That's where they were doing all that work, how different it was, how crude it was in comparison to what we had here in Chicago. So, but we managed to produce a film. I managed to put the two negatives together. We actually had two cameras, two grinding containers.
William Grisham: (05:09)
Alright. Which ones were they now? What were they, Selig standard camera?
Jerry Siakel: (05:12)
Yeah. Selig Standard and Pathé.
William Grisham: (05:15)
And Pathé.
Jerry Siakel: (05:15)
Pathé was left in Europe. And—
William Grisham: (05:18)
Was it a Pathé Portable or a Pathé Studio?
Jerry Siakel: (05:21)
PathéStudio. It was used throughout the—
William Grisham: (05:25)
You were there in the summertime.
Jerry Siakel: (05:27)
Yes, yeah.
William Grisham: (05:27)
Because the Pathécameras were subjected to—
Jerry Siakel: (05:33)
Yeah, they were made out of wood.
William Grisham: (05:34)
Static. Static.
Jerry Siakel: (05:37)
That’s, that's something that Dan had been able to overcome at Selig. Sunday, I'm going to show you that little thing, because that was a small invention, not an invention, a small—
William Grisham: (05:51)
Do you know what year that would have been? Because, would it have been before 1920?
Jerry Siakel: (05:56)
Oh yes. Yes.
William Grisham: (05:57)
Maybe four years before 1920?
Jerry Siakel: (05:58)
Oh yes. Yeah, at least that.
William Grisham: (06:00)
Well then it was one of the first anti-static devices. And what was that then? What was the anti-static device?
Jerry Siakel: (06:05)
Yeah, a little plate or a little unit that was pressing on negative or other positive.
William Grisham: (06:13)
Yes.
Jerry Siakel: (06:13)
And the reason why they had to have a pressure block, today we have a nice and flat film, you know, there's—
William Grisham: (06:21)
It doesn’t curl up.
Jerry Siakel: (06:21)
It doesn’t curl up. Those days it had to be kept together, you know, and it had to have that pressure block. And no one seemed to think of anything else but a glass block or a Ruby glass so you could look through and so on. Everybody who was there, until later on, Bell and Howell came along with automatic changing of, of lights. First of all, you’ll have to realize that the [inaudible] printers, [inaudible] Selig printers were all cinematograph movement. We're all aligned just like projector. And that's the kind our unit then brought to Europe [inaudible] and we left it there.
William Grisham: (07:07)
How many feet of film could they produce?
Jerry Siakel: (07:09)
I really don't know. I have no idea.
William Grisham: (07:12)
In other words, in what lengths?
Jerry Siakel: (07:13)
Well, they were always four-hundred feet.
William Grisham: (07:15)
Four-hundred—
Jerry Siakel: (07:16)
Everything was—
William Grisham: (07:17)
Continuous? They could develop continuously four-hundred feet.
Jerry Siakel: (07:20)
The printers would take up to four-hundred feet and the tanks would take up to four=hundred feet. That stayed as a standard even through Rothacker. Rothacker, all, he never had—Rothacker never had an automatic processing machine like Essanay did.
William Grisham: (07:38)
Yes, because Essanay could print one-thousand foot lengths.
Jerry Siakel: (07:40)
Yep. Yes they could. And they also processed our twenty-eight millimeter film at Essanay. That’s how I happened to see their, their film there, [inaudible] thing, which I didn't know anything about at that time, what they were doing. That was sort of a hush-hush anyhow.
William Grisham: (08:00)
Well, it was also an incorrect theory because it didn't work.
Jerry Siakel: (08:03)
It didn’t work.
William Grisham: (08:04)
Yeah. And that was—
Jerry Siakel: (08:10)
I really don't know. All I remember is that it had a double image.
William Grisham: (08:15)
Well, it would alternate the image, and the, from Parallax, one point of view to the other end. And it didn’t work at all. Alright.
Jerry Siakel: (08:29)
Now. That, did anyone in that material that you have on Selig mentioned [inaudible] any other way than that he worked for him?
William Grisham: (08:39)
No, just that he was, they had to depend upon him because he was their local resident genius, really.
Jerry Siakel: (08:47)
Right.
William Grisham: (08:48)
Yeah. Yeah. And alright you worked down at Rothacker and so on. And then what did you do then after the—well, we were talking about the European—your shoot in Slovakia.
Jerry Siakel: (09:03)
While at Rothacker Film Company, I also worked—see there wasn't so much of this, short stuff sold then. I worked on a longer commercials with Rothacker, with other camera men, other directors. And then also tests were being made on the new, uh, animation or Lost World. Fellow by the name of O'Brien was at Rothacker. Rothacker, they had some kind of an understanding with First National and they going to try to produce The Lost World. So Dan was taken into this and Dan was the one that had to design skeletons for all these animals and then build them and together with O’Brien, worked out a system of animals being able to open jaw and even spit out blood and things like that. All of those things they worked out together. And my part again was to make some tests of animation, animating these moving because later on they were worked in with living actors.
William Grisham: (10:21)
They were matted in. How were they worked in? Were they miniatures that were matted in or how was that done?
Jerry Siakel: (10:27)
The miniatures were this long, you know, depending on the [inaudible] but how the rest of it was done in Hollywood.
William Grisham: (10:34)
Done with optical printers then, was it not? Were optical printers used or a matte process?
Jerry Siakel: (10:38)
No, I don’t believe so. It may have been done by masking part of the—
William Grisham: (10:45)
Matte, yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (10:46)
Matte, yeah.
William Grisham: (10:46)
Right.
Jerry Siakel: (10:47)
In printing. I really don't know how it was done. All I know about that part is that I made tests there. That's what I got my little experience in.
William Grisham: (10:56)
Did you shoot them frame by frame?
Jerry Siakel: (10:58)
Frame by frame.
William Grisham: (10:59)
Did you know a person by the name of Howard Moss who was a model animator in Chicago.
Jerry Siakel: (11:04)
No.
William Grisham: (11:05)
Because he was—
Jerry Siakel: (11:06)
That could be—
William Grisham: (11:07)
He was one of the great model animators of the day, bout 1916, ‘17, ‘18, ’19.
Jerry Siakel: (11:15)
In the department of animation in Praha gave me a book, The History of Animation. They have everything everybody mentioned, and they traced the—
William Grisham: (11:28)
Look up Howard Moss, will you, and see if he's in there. ‘Cause Moss is one of the great, was one of the great animators, and he's hardly ever mentioned. I, uh, one of his films was donated to the Art Institute and they have it. They have—it's called Cracked Ice. And—
Jerry Siakel: (11:45)
Are you speaking about drawings? Are you speaking about it models?
William Grisham: (11:48)
No, I'm thinking about model animation.
Jerry Siakel: (11:49)
Model animation.
William Grisham: (11:50)
The same as that you are dealing with. Yeah. Right. Okay. Now is, well, you haven't been thorough at all about any of this. Your feelings when you came to this country, did you feel at all lost, you know? How did you, you took the Overland trip by train of course to Chicago, but did your brother come with you, is that it?
Jerry Siakel: (12:15)
Yes. [Inaudible]
William Grisham: (12:16)
You came back with your brother. So you felt much better about that.
Jerry Siakel: (12:19)
We came in second class, too. He had money by that time. He was well-paid over there. That's why he was able to. Besides that my brother took me to Budapest for a whole week. You see, we lived about six or eight hours by train from Budapest. And he introduced me to many people there, which didn't mean anything to me because—
William Grisham: (12:44)
Whom he had known when he was a student.
Jerry Siakel: (12:45)
That’s right. And he treated so many people that he had met. See in Budapest, we had an uncle there that had a large wine wholesale house besides having a Tavern and restaurant. So these people were all invited by Dan and then treated everybody and talked about United States and talked about that in Chicago you get nine glasses of beer for five cents. And those fellows couldn’t understand it. So he had to get a jug of some kind to show them just how much a pail of beer is. So, but that's the kind of [inaudible].
William Grisham: (13:31)
Well, you said you were going to say a little bit about your theater. Now the theater was a really a community theater.
Jerry Siakel: (13:39)
That’s right. It was a sort of a cooperative outfit. We all chipped in so much money to start it. There were all kinds—
William Grisham: (13:47)
Did you speak, now, your language or—
Jerry Siakel: (13:49)
Yes, Slovak language.
William Grisham: (13:50)
Slovak languages, yes. Okay.
Jerry Siakel: (13:52)
Now the Bohemian had that kind of a theater before us. See, my wife was born in that Bohemian neighborhood and we hired one of the [inaudible] member of this theater group to go with us to Europe, [inaudible] part of priest
William Grisham: (14:09)
Of the Priest.
Jerry Siakel: (14:11)
Anyhow, we were told we had to have at least one Bohemian.
William Grisham: (14:15)
Of course.
Jerry Siakel: (14:18)
Well, anyhow. There were all kinds of little theatrical groups and singing societies throughout Chicago, mainly connected with church. But no one had an organization where anybody could belong to. So in our organization, we had socialists whom they called unbelievers. Then we had Lutherans, Catholics. And we had Serbians. And so we had so many different members of this organization.
William Grisham: (14:51)
But you spoke what language in the theater?
Jerry Siakel: (14:53)
Slovak.
William Grisham: (14:53)
Slovak all within the, in the theater. Okay. And all of your people knew Slovak?
Jerry Siakel: (14:58)
Those were all very few born in here. Most of them were people like myself.
William Grisham: (15:04)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (15:06)
But it was actually started by a socialist organization because they had more guts to go out with, for the, after those things then [inaudible]. Gradually, it grew up into that big, big [inaudible]. There must have been couple of hundred members in there. And they gave at least dozen plays a year, and they traveled also to different cities. All of that is in a souvenir book, which I have which I'll show you.
William Grisham: (15:35)
Fine.
Jerry Siakel: (15:36)
And.
William Grisham: (15:37)
All right. I, your—how did you learn production? Because I looked at the set of that house that you used and you, you use the H-stand then. Or it was an H stand being used, that is for your shot through the window. Were H-stands being used? Because you had figured out some rather complicated action.
Jerry Siakel: (16:01)
Now that, we’ve done that at Selig, you know.
William Grisham: (16:03)
You had done all of that at Selig. Yeah. Because it was quite complicated. And you then, then those things had been shot on the, out on the lots in the back.
Jerry Siakel: (16:10)
Yeah, that’s right.
William Grisham: (16:11)
Yeah. How big was that lot? Because I went over there to what was, what's left of the studio, and there's a whole school back there. What, was it a big lot?
Jerry Siakel: (16:22)
Well, it was, it was so big that it had a little pool, a little lake there too. That's where my, when we were. working on a civil war picture of some kind. And there is not a member. This is because—
William Grisham: (16:38)
Called The Crisis.
Jerry Siakel: (16:39)
Well, whatever It was, I don’t know. But I remember one of the man, fellow by the name of Fossett. George Fossett. I think I'd like to see some of those things. He was one of those fellows that was nice to me when he handed me a roll of film and said, please. I'm sorry to say, but those things stick in your mind more than anything else, when people treat you like you're somebody.
William Grisham: (17:05)
Absolutely, don't they?
Jerry Siakel: (17:06)
And a fellow by the name H. B. Warner. I would like to know if he was a member of Selig, because he lived, he died not fifteen, twenty years ago. H.B. Warner was a [inaudible].
William Grisham: (17:20)
Yes. H.B. Warner. One of his last films was Lost Horizon, directed by Frank Capra.
Jerry Siakel: (17:26)
Alright.
William Grisham: (17:27)
And was H.B. Warner in that film? [Inaudible].
Jerry Siakel: (17:31)
H.B. Warner was working with at Selig on something, not in his civil war story. I don't know that, sir. But I remember him. Yes, because I projected negative for him.
William Grisham: (17:44)
Very good. Did you know Kathlyn Williams? You saw—
Jerry Siakel: (17:48)
Oh yes. That was one of the first leading ladies my brother introduced me to. And my brother told me that I should behave like I do, like they do in Europe. If a lady offers me her hand, I should kiss her. He said, if she doesn't offer it, I should just bow. I got all that information beforehand. You're going to meet all kinds of people. He says, nice and lousy. And some will ignore you. Some will call you a honky, but don't pay no attention to that. We're used to that now. So it wasn't pleasant there. You know, when I was worked at the—
William Grisham: (18:24)
Did the Germans, were the Germans nasty? [Inaudible]
Jerry Siakel: (18:28)
Most of them not. They were more or less afraid of them.
William Grisham: (18:30)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (18:31)
But the man in perforate in charge of perforating room, fellow by the name of Fritz. I don't know his last name. He wasn't nice to me at all. And he used to throw orders at me. And I didn't like that. I talked to Dan. I said that man is, he’s kind of funny. So Dan talked to him, he says, Fritz, my brother is not in here to take your job. So he's going to go right through on to the other places.
William Grisham: (18:59)
[phone ringing] You better get that.
[Break in tape]
William Grisham:
Tell me how many people were working there? Can you estimate in the technical and not in the acting, were there as many as a hundred you think?
Jerry Siakel: (19:09)
Oh, at least.
William Grisham: (19:10)
At least 200. Yeah. And most of them were, had been, uh, native-born Germans. Is that correct you would say? Or were they just from the German community here?
Jerry Siakel: (19:21)
Well, there were some, there was a Norwegian that was very proud of his heritage because—and man in charge of a machine shop after Schustek left was fellow by the name Johnson. And he was also proud of his heritage and they got into each other's hair sometime talking about, they don't like each other. That I could understand because we also didn't like [inaudible] but then Sweden—
William Grisham: (19:50)
Always, always at each other's neck.
Jerry Siakel: (19:53)
And there were two Bohemians there, one Slovak. And if that was in the shop. Throughout the plant, it were—it was mainly people that live not far away from there.
William Grisham: (20:07)
So there were a lot of Germans because—
Jerry Siakel: (20:09)
A lot of Germans. There was a German neighborhood.
William Grisham: (20:10)
They lived near there. I remember that the neighborhood. Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (20:12)
And I remember that on one occasion, maybe a couple occasions, the [indexable] closed the shop almost, and all of us were asked to go out on Western Avenue there or across the street into that. During that civil war picture I remember that real well. We were all going there to play part of a mob. And, uh, sometime it happened more often in summer. Seldom in winter. Selig didn't go out in winter. It wasn't very pleasant.
William Grisham: (20:43)
No, it was horrible. Tell me, Colin Campbell. Do you remember the name Colin Campbell?. He was one of Selig’s great directors. I just was wondering if—
Jerry Siakel: (20:57)
I probably saw him [inaudible].
William Grisham: (20:59)
He was the one that directed the civil war—
Jerry Siakel: (21:01)
Oh, that might've been him.
William Grisham: (21:03)
Yeah. And also he directed The Spoilers. Do you remember the name?
Jerry Siakel: (21:08)
That’s the very one. Yeah, that. I was more interested in that than any other picture.
William Grisham: (21:14)
That was made though on the west coast, but it was developed back here. Right?
Jerry Siakel: (21:17)
And scenes were made in here too.
William Grisham: (21:20)
That's what I wanted to know. Tell me about that.
Jerry Siakel: (21:21)
Well, they fight inside in with a [inaudible].
William Grisham: (21:26)
Dustin Farnum.
Jerry Siakel: (21:28)
Dustin Farnum, yes. And Tom Santschi.
William Grisham: (21:32)
Santschi. Yeah. Who, who had worked there as a handyman for a while before he became an actor.
Jerry Siakel: (21:35)
Yes, that's right. That, they staged that fight in, in, at Selig there.
William Grisham: (21:43)
In Chicago.
Jerry Siakel: (21:43)
In Chicago, yes. And how I happened to be present when they were—
William Grisham: (21:51)
You saw the fight?
Jerry Siakel: (21:52)
Well, part of it, you see.
William Grisham: (21:53)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (21:54)
But there was something else. During that fight, there was a sack of gold involved in there, that was to be hidden from somebody. I don't know this story. I saw the film. I remember the story. But I remember that one man threw that sack of gold into a pot belly stove, which was not lit, of course. And the gold sack went down and trip the ash, what'd you call it, went down into the ashes. And that was something very important because it had something to do with this story. What it had to do with story, I don't know. But then had the problem of the, devising something whereby that ash or, or that the grade—
William Grisham: (22:45)
The grade. Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (22:47)
Would flip and show it, show that thing falling down. And that took long time to figure that out. But that's why Dan called me to some of those scenes. Also another one. During that civil war picture, they had a little lake there in the yard and there were two model boats built there.
William Grisham: (23:09)
They were models though. They were not big ones. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (23:14)
And they were shooting at each other and then had had problem of devising releasing [inaudible] talcum which was shot out of the thing. How they did it, how he did it, I don't know. But a few years back when we were in California, we went to Universal Studio and they have that kind of a scene that they put on for—
William Grisham: (23:39)
Now they shot those in Hollywood later on in slow motion. Did you use slow motion in your model scenes at all to give it more of a lifelike quality? Or did you shoot it straight at sixteen frames per second?
Jerry Siakel: (23:52)
No, we use slow motion and fast motion too in scenes.
William Grisham: (23:57)
So in other words, for the model scenes, you thought, you think you used slow motion perhaps?
Jerry Siakel: (24:02)
For the model scenes that I photographed, we used all one-to-one.
William Grisham: (24:06)
One-to-one. Right. Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (24:08)
But the fast motion and slow motions we used when we were making comedies.
William Grisham: (24:15)
Yes.
Jerry Siakel: (24:16)
That was very important.
William Grisham: (24:18)
Right. What about your, the lighting in the studio? Do you, do you remember what the kinds of lights, the Cooper, did they use Cooper-Hewitts?
Jerry Siakel: (24:22)
Cooper-Hewitt lights.
William Grisham: (24:25)
And those and then what others? Regular arc lights?
Jerry Siakel: (24:28)
Arc lights were used to. We used arc lights even—
William Grisham: (24:33)
They hurt the actor's eyes because initially they weren't covered. And so the dust, the carbon dust got in their eyes.
Jerry Siakel: (24:40)
Yes. And Cooper-Hewitt lights were not very practical for, because of the sensitivity of the—
William Grisham: (24:48)
The film.
Jerry Siakel: (24:49)
Microfilm. Yes. So we used yellow powder for shirts and faces and gloves and everything to subdue the glare.
William Grisham: (25:00)
What about—how did that red show up on monochrome film? As black?
Jerry Siakel: (25:05)
Yeah [inaudible].
William Grisham: (25:06)
It showed up as black, didn't it really? Red, so that they had to avoid red. Did you ever hear of a film called The Landing of, the Coming of Columbus that was done by Selig in about 1911? Uh-huh. Did you know any directors, other than the, Colin Campbell. Did you know any of the —Otis Turner? Did you ever hear of Otis Turner?
Jerry Siakel: (25:28)
I can't tell you that. If I was introduced to him, I remember very few people. Only those that Dan introduced me to.
William Grisham: (25:36)
He did introduce you to Kathlyn Williams?
Jerry Siakel: (25:39)
He did. She was one of the leading ladies.
William Grisham: (25:44)
She was from Butte, Montana.
Jerry Siakel: (25:49)
Dan introduced me to some people that he had. He was kind of interested, that he, he thought I had to—
William Grisham: (26:01)
Remember Tom Mix? Did Tom Mix come to the studio?
Jerry Siakel: (26:03)
Oh, yes, see that's something that I don't understand at all. I don't know anything about Tom Mix.
William Grisham: (26:09)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (26:10)
But I've read that somewhere in a publication that he was at Selig. I didn't know that he was.
William Grisham: (26:19)
But he shot out in Arizona. So there's no would be no reason unless Selig wanted him back in Chicago for something, you know. They shot out in, first of all in, in, in Colorado and then in Arizona. But he was a, they had a, Selig had a ranch there and that's where they shot. So there would be no reason for it. Did you ever hear of Bosworth?
Jerry Siakel: (26:40)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (26:41)
Can you tell me anything about him? 'Cause he hated Chicago. He said they would always send damaged stock to them. Uh, and sometimes even non-perforated stock.
Jerry Siakel: (26:53)
I don't understand.
William Grisham: (26:55)
That was before your time there though.
Jerry Siakel: (26:56)
That could be.
William Grisham: (26:57)
It was years before your time.
Jerry Siakel: (26:59)
See, when, when Dan and I were coming to Chicago, we stopped in New York. Seelig asked Dan to stop in New York to go to such and such a studio on Coney island. I don't know who was on Coney island, but we took a subway from Manhattan to Coney island. And Dan took me into this place and asked me to sit in the office and wait for him while he met somebody there. I think the man's name was Chanir as Frenchman, a chemist that later came to Selig. And Dan and Chanir worked together on solving many problems. Chanir was in charge of lab.
William Grisham: (27:47)
Had he come from Pathé United States?
Jerry Siakel: (27:49)
I don't know.
William Grisham: (27:50)
Might've have been Pathé. Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (27:51)
I don’t even know the name of the firm that that was on Coney island. But I—Dan never told me that. But Dan seemed to know him and they become very good friends. When Chanir wanted a device to measure the squareness of film. There are many, many ways of measuring the right perforation and division and so on. And when Chanir wanted all of those things he turned to Dan. And Dan, “Such and such perforate is out of square. Such and such perforate is short” in thousand or something like that. Dan had to go into the perforating room and make the adjustments and so on. [Inaudible]
William Grisham: (00:02)
Okay, should be okay now. All right. Why don't we—
Jerry Siakel: (00:05)
[Inaudible] your questions?
William Grisham: (00:06)
All right. I just, I'll tell you what I—why don't I just hold it like this? You want to come a little forward?
Jerry Siakel: (00:12)
So I don't know. We'll cut and make a test pretty soon.
Jerry Siakel: (00:15)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (00:16)
Alright. You, you came to the United States after you had talked to your brother. You’d been in correspondence with your brother who was employed at the time you came at what place?
Jerry Siakel: (00:28)
At Schustek.
William Grisham: (00:28)
At Schustek.
Jerry Siakel: (00:28)
No, no, pardon me. At Selig.
William Grisham: (00:30)
And tell me, what was his job? Can you describe his job at Selig? Did he write to you about that? And so on.
Jerry Siakel: (00:35)
Yes. He was working partly in the machine shop building, the cameras and printers, which are very much like cameras with cinematograph movement. Plus, he was in charge of a printing department, which was giving Selig a headache because of all that static electricity. Main reason for that was that film wasn't as fine, as well refined as it is today. It didn't lay flat. Therefore going through the printer with negative, it had to be held down with pressure block, and pressure block was exactly the thing that caused all the friction and gave him all the headaches. Finally, after many and many experiments, Dan designed something that a printer. A girl that was printing film could watch the negative go through and at the same time control the thing so that would be no problem in whatever it was that that they had in there. Okay, you can sign—
William Grisham: (01:51)
All right. Now you, he wrote to you then about his work and what did you want to do? Did you want to, you were living in Slovakia.
Jerry Siakel: (02:00)
Yes. Yes.
William Grisham: (02:01)
And tell me about your home, your home, where you were living and why you came to this country.
Jerry Siakel: (02:10)
Well, that's a long story. I'm not going to go into that. It was necessary for me because I couldn't get education there. To go to Germany or Bohemia or somewhere else to get education, we couldn't afford that. And the local government didn't like our family very well. So we were what they call politically unreliable. And therefore my brother was pushed out. My sister was thrown out of high school, and I had no chance to go to a high school. They just didn't want us to get any education. And the only thing—
William Grisham: (02:47)
Was this because you had different politics, is that—
Jerry Siakel: (02:51)
That’s right. Because we were Slovaks, see.
William Grisham: (02:53)
Right.
Jerry Siakel: (02:54)
Instead of [inaudible].
William Grisham: (02:55)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (02:55)
And that was our biggest problem. But my parents’ background has been that way for many years. And everybody knew about it. And, but my father wouldn't give up. He just fought. And he worked for that new government. That is the new representation in Budapest. That's what they were working for. So when my brother said, “Oh, Rod, I'm going to come to visit you, and I'm going to show you something. I'm going to show you how we make these so-called living pictures in America.” And that's exactly what he did. By that time, when he came here in 1912, he brought with him a skeleton projector, which had a cinematograph movement in it. And he brought in some film, couple condensers, and that's all he brought with him. And when we were thinking about light, he said, don't worry about light, we’ll use your usual bicycle lamp. And that's exactly what we did. We used carbide lamb and we showed local people what really happens that you change pictures gradually. Yeah. That each picture is a little different. And because they moved through the projector so fast, it becomes an illusion that the things are moving. So that's what they call living pictures. The movies were—
William Grisham: (04:26)
This was 1912, when he visited?
Jerry Siakel: (04:27)
1912 when he came in there, yes.
William Grisham: (04:29)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (04:30)
Yes. And at that time, or prior to that, he already had some sort of a understanding with Schustek that they are to make a camera man out of me. But Schustek told Dan, “Before you bring him here, get him a job in a photo studio so he can learn something about photography.” And that's exactly what my brother did. He asked Mr. Sanders of Sanders and Gross, two Germans that had a studio in Milwaukee. [inaudible] and Chicago. I know that he knew him for some time.
William Grisham: (05:05)
S.A.U.N? S.A.N.D.E.R.S?
Jerry Siakel: (05:08)
S.A.N.D.E.R.S. Sanders and Gross.
William Grisham: (05:12)
Uh-huh. G.R.O.S.S.
Jerry Siakel: (05:13)
S.S. That's right. And Mr. Sanderson, “Yes. Then I'll do that. I'll give him a job.” So I have a job there and that's where I had the basic, basic training.
William Grisham: (05:26)
And what year was that? You came—
Jerry Siakel: (05:27)
That was in 1912. In November of 1912.
William Grisham: (05:30)
You came to this country then in 1912, in the winter of 1912 and worked there. How long did you work there and [inaudible]?
Jerry Siakel: (05:35)
About year and a half.
William Grisham: (05:37)
Uh-huh. And how did you feel? Can you describe your feelings as a young man? You came to Chicago. What was it like? What was Chicago like?
Jerry Siakel: (05:46)
Well, it was nice because it was different for me, but it was also unfriendly. We had different nationalities in a different area and they didn't like greenhorns. They had all kinds of, they have all kinds of names for us and that wasn't very pleasant. But then they had to put up with that. Everybody did. So in about a year and a half, I learned a little bit about photography, and I ventured into a photographic studio, foolishly, with somebody else, which folded up very soon. Then gradually Dan took me over to Selig.
William Grisham: (06:27)
Was Dan's first name? His full name.
Jerry Siakel: (06:30)
They call him [inaudible] Daniel Yan [inaudible]. Or Yan Daniel [inaudible].
William Grisham: (06:37)
Daniel was his first name. Everybody called him Dan, Dan there. Right.
Jerry Siakel: (06:40)
Dan was known all over Chicago, just like my name, Jerry Siakel, become known in this business for many years. And he took me over to Selig, and he talked to Gus Selig who was a manager of their studio over there [inaudible]
William Grisham: (06:58)
Was Gus the brother?
Jerry Siakel: (07:01)
The brother of Selig, yes.
William Grisham: (07:01)
He was the manager, right.
Jerry Siakel: (07:02)
That’s right.
William Grisham: (07:03)
At the time. This is what, in what year now? About 1915 or ‘14, or what year?
Jerry Siakel: (07:08)
Now, let me tell you, I don't know the year exactly, but let me tell you what happened at Selig. My first job was in a shipping room for opening boxes and putting the labels on the cans that were going out and so on. Then the film that came from Kodak was taken over to perforating room. My second job was in a perforating room. I worked there for a little while and during that time that I was in the perforating room, there was a— naturally perforating room is noisy and so as the printing room next door to it.
William Grisham: (07:43)
Did you use your own perforator, Mr. Schustek’s perforator or whose was it?
Jerry Siakel: (07:41)
I don't know who designed it, but it was the perforator that punched two hell holes instead of four holes. However, they had to Bell and Howell perforators already in a separate room where negatives was being perforated—
William Grisham: (08:00)
At four, four
Jerry Siakel: (08:01)
Four frames for him. Now you understand negative perforation is different from positive?
William Grisham: (08:05)
Tell us about that.
Jerry Siakel: (08:06)
Well, the reason for that is because when the film is processed, there is certain shrinkage. Therefore the holes from shrunk negative have to match the holes of positive when they go through the training room no matter what kind of printing, printing, printing equipment. So I don't know the year when I was there, but I remember this and you can verify this sometime. While I was [inaudible] and working in a perforating room, there was a big commotion. I don't know what happened. I asked a man, an electrician that was in charge. “Mr. So-and-so what's wrong?” And he told me there was a big disaster. And I said, “What did, what does it mean?” And my English was very limited at time too. He says, “A boat capsized with electricians." I said, “Electricians, well, I didn't know anything about that either.” But later on, the camera we were coming in with film, bringing negatives, and it was rush-rush for the Selig-Hurst weekly to go out. So there was somebody there in the department asking, “Going into, go and help the people in the title room.” Where we were taking the cards as they were printed on Gordon Press and dust them with silver and then put them before camera and make titles, you know?
William Grisham: (09:40)
Alright. Tell me about this. You said Gordon Press?
Jerry Siakel: (09:42)
Yes, ordinary Gordon Press, you know, that's fed by individual card was fed in and ordinary ink was applied—
William Grisham: (09:51)
Yes,
Jerry Siakel: (09:51)
To the card. And then it was dusted with silver or aluminum dust, whatever.
William Grisham: (09:57)
To what, what for? Why was it—
Jerry Siakel: (09:58)
To give white lettering. See, that's the one that we photographed and choose, already choose the camera. And there was so much, such a demand for those negatives and all that necessary material that had to go into these weeklies. So one man said to me, “Why don't you try your hand on cranking?” And I stayed and he was surprised that I would crank any certain speed and crank steady. And, and he said to me, “Where the hell did you learn this?” I said, “Well, I've been practicing at home.” “At home?” I said, “Yes, my brother brought one of these Selig projectors home and they operated same way by hand. They run the same speed.” And that's what Dan told me: “Keep on practicing. Someday you’ll be cranking a camera.” Well, that got me started in projection then. Then later on, I got into a inspection room where they had half a dozen or more projectors going continuously inspecting for defect, positive inspection. That in between time, sometime myself, sometime and other projection is in the inspection room—
William Grisham: (11:18)
Go ahead.
Jerry Siakel: (11:19)
Was asked to go into the projection room where they had meetings, where they were projecting negatives.
William Grisham: (11:29)
Did they always look at the Russia's, the dailies in negative form?
Jerry Siakel: (11:35)
Now, I'm not positive that they always did that, but that's what I saw, the negatives being projected. That's what I projected, negatives.
William Grisham: (11:42)
And you could read them then after a while.
Jerry Siakel: (11:44)
That’s right. You get so familiar with that. But what was most interesting is after they finished the scene, and they talked about the scene, and they talked about “this is no good” and “this is no good” and “we'll cut this out” or “we got to change the scene” and so on. So I was all ears, and it was kind of educational procedure for me. But I had a picture of that. That's the only other picture I have of Selig, any projection.
William Grisham: (12:11)
Marvelous.
Jerry Siakel: (12:12)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (12:13)
That is excellent description of all of this. And then, may I ask you now a few questions?
Jerry Siakel: (12:18)
Go ahead.
William Grisham: (12:20)
And where did you live in Chicago? Did you live with the, your Czech community or your, or rather the Slovakian community?
Jerry Siakel: (12:26)
Yes.
William Grisham: (12:26)
Where, where was that? What neighborhood was that?
Jerry Siakel: (12: 28)
Well, it was around Milwaukee and Chicago [inaudible]. And, you know, there was a athletic organization there that had their own building, which is still standing there called, well, its name doesn’t make any difference.
William Grisham: (12:40)
Yes it does if you remember the name.
Jerry Siakel: (12:43)
It's [inaudible] Slavia. It was an independent kind of an organization. Everybody could belong to that. So later on we got Serbs and we got Pols and whoever was in the neighborhood and wanted practice in athletics because [inaudible]l is something like German Turner—
William Grisham: (13:02)
Turner Association.
Jerry Siakel: (13:02)
That’s right.
William Grisham: (13:03)
Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (13:03)
Same thing. Yeah. There—then they had little stage there and they had few plays and so on. And that's where I got to know a Schustek a little bit better because Schustek kind of looked after me too, just like my brother. They kept on pushing.
William Grisham: (13:21)
How much older was he then, can you estimate, than you were about?
Jerry Siakel: (13:26)
My brother?
William Grisham: (13:27)
No, Schustek.
Jerry Siakel: (13:28)
I don't know.
William Grisham: (13:29)
How much older was your brother than you?
Jerry Siakel: (13:31)
Ten years.
William Grisham: (13:31)
Ten years older.
Jerry Siakel: (13:32)
He was born in January, and I was born in January ten years later.
William Grisham: (13:36)
Interesting.
Jerry Siakel: (13:39)
My brother had education. See, he not only the mechanical education, which he got in Budapest—
William Grisham: (13:49)
Budapest, yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (13:50)
Budapest. Which must've, must have been very good because in a night school that he went to, they gave him a first prize after four years of study. He brought those things home. He was, he had training, some kind of a training in instrument or not. I did not understand mechanics at that time, and I couldn't tell you just what he was doing, but he was able to join Selig. And if I understand it correctly, they were repairing optical things too.
William Grisham: (14:26)
Yes.
Jerry Siakel: (14:27)
And my brother talked about Pet Court. That's— I didn't know what that was, but then I know it was a—
William Grisham: (14:35)
He had worked at Pet Court, at Pet Court.
Jerry Siakel: (14:37)
It was an alley somewhere downtown. And he went with Selig and he stayed with Selig until Selig closed down, yeah.
William Grisham: (14:46)
Very good. Now, Selig, did you stay with Selig until the studio was closed? Or how did you go somewhere else?
Jerry Siakel: (14:52)
I—no. In 1917, the war was on.
William Grisham: (14:57)
Yes.
Jerry Siakel: (14:58)
And Selig was already moving to California, moving quite fast. I think most of the plant was already closed. But my brother, Selig had contract to build that processing outfit for government.
William Grisham: (15: 15)
Could you tell us about that?
Jerry Siakel: (15: 17)
Well, I got a picture of that to show you.
William Grisham: (15:19)
Was this a continuous printer?
Jerry Siakel: (15:22)
A continuous processing outfit.
William Grisham: (15:23)
Processing.
Jerry Siakel: (15:24)
Yeah. Developing and washing and drying. I don't know what they were going to do about printing, probably process the [inaudible]. That, those things were new to me at that time.
William Grisham: (15:35)
Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (15:37)
So I, while I was still at, brother was at Selig, I was still at Selig. My brother said to a man, an engineer from Washington that, “My little brother is going to be drafted. And if you want to put him, try to get him into photographic division. “ And he said yes.
William Grisham: (15:59)
Of the Army, of the Army.
Jerry Siakel: (16:00)
Of the Army. And they did that.
William Grisham: (16:02)
Great.
Jerry Siakel: (16:02)
They assigned me to it—
William Grisham: (16:04)
And you went where? Where did you go?
Jerry Siakel: (16:05)
I went to—
William Grisham: (16:06)
Cornell?
Jerry Siakel: (16:06)
Cornell, yeah. But first I spent six weeks with an infantry, two weeks with signal corps. Then I don't know how many weeks on Bedloe Island in New York waiting to get the group of people together. And when they got, I think a hundred of us, maybe not that many, then they shipped us to Cornell University where they already had a section ready for us. Part of Rockefeller Hall was assigned to Army.
William Grisham: (16:32)
How long were you there at Cornell?
Jerry Siakel: (16:34)
Just to finish the course and then few weeks to teach new recruits that come in there.
William Grisham: (16:41)
So you were a teacher there then?
Jerry Siakel: (16:44)
Well, that's not teaching. They’re just showing [inaudible] There’s nothing to teaching
William Grisham: (16:48)
I see.
Jerry Siakel: (16:49)
No, there were, that’s where I met a man about whom I'm going to tell you quite a bit. A fellow that was with ENSCO company, fellow by name Thompson, and was a very good chemist that I later was in contact with when we were trying to develop a direct positive or direct negative. But I have to show you letters on that.
William Grisham: (17:13)
Did he develop a continuous printer called the Spore-Thompson?
Jerry Siakel: (17:18)
Oh no, no.
William Grisham: (17:18)
That was not the same Thompson.
Jerry Siakel: (17:19)
No, no. This fellow was a troubleshooter for ENSCO Company. He wasn’t [inaudible].
William Grisham: (17:22)
I see. Alright.
Jerry Siakel: (17:26)
No, I don't know who developed that. But after I got back from service, then I went to, well, Schustek, again, was working on—
William Grisham: (17:36)
Was he still with Selig, Mr. Schustek?
Jerry Siakel: (17:38)
No, he has his own shop.
William Grisham: (17:39)
Alright. Tell me about that. What was it called? The Schustek what?
Jerry Siakel: (17:42)
I don't know what he called it, sir. All I knew is that once in a while we would go and visit Schustek. Now he had about half a dozen machinists working for him. And one of the man is still working, is still living. He's in a Bohemian old people's home. And I was trying to get in touch with him to tell me something about Selig. Dan worked there and also fellow by name Lavati work there that designed and patented a new viewfinder for motion picture cameras. I'll tell you about that later.
William Grisham: (18:18)
Was a reflexive viewfinder.
Jerry Siakel: (18:20)
That’s right.
William Grisham: (18:20)
Interesting, yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (18:21)
That's being used today on all cameras, yeah.
William Grisham: (18:26)
Alright. Then you, now tell me, at Selig were there a number of Germans working for him and Bohemians and—
Jerry Siakel: (18:35)
Not that many Bohemian.
William Grisham: (18:36)
But Germans?
Jerry Siakel: (18:37)
Germans, yeah.
William Grisham: (18:37)
A great number of Germans.
Jerry Siakel: (18:38)
Germans and Swedes.
William Grisham: (18:40)
Did you ever hear of the Schiller Theater in Chicago, a German theater at all?
Jerry Siakel: (18:44)
No, I didn’t.
William Grisham: (18:46)
Did you ever go to any of the storefront nickelodeons?
Jerry Siakel: (18:51)
Yes, yes.
William Grisham: (18:51)
how were they run? Can you describe them?
Jerry Siakel: (18:53)
[Inaudible]. That was the—I remember that while at Selig, someone was already working on talking pictures where they had that contract with phonograph and so on. And Dan took me to McVickers Theater, where they had one part of a Waterville program where they showed those movies and also talkies. Later Dan got into the talking pictures [inaudible] quite extensively.
William Grisham: (19:25)
Then did you—after Selig, where did you go after Selig’s then?
Jerry Siakel: (19:31)
After Selig I went to service. After service, I went to Rothacker Film Company.
William Grisham: (19:39)
And where was it located at the time?
Jerry Siakel: (19:41)
Rothacker Film?
William Grisham: (19:42)
There were two locations. One was on Erie Street.
Jerry Siakel: (19: 45)
That's Industrial Motion Pictures. That was not the same Rothacker that I work on. You see, Rothacker, [inaudible] and Rothacker started as an industrial movies, which were also advertising movies, right? Then there was, this is kind of interesting because it has some connection with Ordinary Motion Pictures. Some is purely an advertising shorts-like. Rothacker had a department that he called Dealer Services Department. And a fellow by name Dewey was in charge of it. They made shorts for motion, picture theaters at twenty-five foot, fifty feet, hundred feet.
William Grisham: (20:32)
Advertising shorts?
Jerry Siakel: (20:33)
Advertising shorts, which were stock stories. And they attached titles or names of advertisers to the end. Well, that'd become kind of monotonous to many people. They had dealers all over United States. They brought us in 10, 15, 20 of these things, and they use them over and over again. Then it becomes kind of monotonous to attach those titles to the shorts. So one man from Oklahoma approached Rothacker, or rather Dewey, if he would kind of work in the advertiser's name right into the scene. And Dewey thought, well, we'll have to ask somebody that'll design something like that. So they approached Schustek and Schustek, he always was willing to listen. So he said, “Well, we'll work up something.” So he built a special printer, which we could stop on a frame and start naturally. When we were printing these shorts, we were printing them slowly. They didn't go through like Bell and Howell and so on. They were not that important. They were not that good either.
But he designed a printer, probably thirty-six or maybe four feet long. Large condensers, light inside, and a slight carrier similar to that in there. But with the lens, I'd have to kind of make a sketch of that thing, how the thing worked. But after the scene was, while the scene was being printed, we could stop on a frame, insert the slide, throw it out of focus, and then, with a knob, bring it gradually into focus. So we brought in a title into focus. That required kind of tricky operation and Schustek told Rothacker or Dewey, Schustek was asked, “Where are you gonna get a man to run this thing?” And Schustek said, “Try Jerry Siakel. Jerry Siakel, he knows a little bit about photography.” So I went to Schustek and I worked on that printer. Then I went into the production of these little shorts with Dewey, still him in charge because he was selling and advertising, I think, under Rothacker’s name.
William Grisham: (23:03)
Now that place was in one of the Rothacker buildings or what?
Jerry Siakel: (23:06)
That was where, today, SV is located. That's the Rothacker [inaudible] SV’s at Southport and Diversey. It’s there today.
William Grisham: (23:19)
Southport and Diversey. Yeah. Alright. The other Rothacker plant was at Erie, on Erie Street, right?
Jerry Siakel: (23:23)
Yes, that was, no, that was, that was in—Rothacker was known as Industrial Motion Pictures.
William Grisham: (23:29)
Right.
Jerry Siakel: (23:30)
And Rothacker owned that. But then he married into a family. His father-in-law was an undertaker and he had quite a bit of money, and I guess he helped his son in law to build that factory that’s standing there today, rather than studio. It was already a studio. It had [inaudible] lights. It had all the modern facilities.
William Grisham: (23:53)
And they also printed the Chaplin films there, some of the Chaplains—
Jerry Siakel: (23:55)
No, not Rothacker. Rothacker—
William Grisham: (23:57)
I have it. I have a news item. It says—
Jerry Siakel: (23:58)
Well maybe they did [inaudible].
William Grisham: (23:59)
Yeah. For First National. They did it for First National. Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (24:02)
Oh, well for First National. Yes, because you see, that's what, that's what happened after a while. They—
William Grisham: (24:10)
Became—
Jerry Siakel: (24:13)
Rothacker become part of First National, I guess, because they produced Lost World together.
William Grisham: (24:20)
Well, the First National chose him because he had such a fine laboratory.
Jerry Siakel: (24:24)
Yes.
William Grisham: (24:24)
On Erie Street. Then he went off to found one of the great plants in Los Angeles actually. Rothacker, you know, was responsible for, at least some of his people were responsible for, what do you call them? Anyway, let's go on. I've got that in my notes.
Jerry Siakel: (24:50)
Well, I never knew Rothacker under that name on Erie street. I only knew Rothacker on Diversey Parkway. But I knew that he was, at one time, on Erie because my brother had something to do with some kind of a machinery.
William Grisham: (25:09)
So this is in the late teens that you're with Rothacker then, is that right? How, what was the year? Because it was certainly before 1921, wasn’t it?
Jerry Siakel: (25:16)
Now let me explain it to you this way. Uh, in 1920, Rothacker was talking about phasing out this short film production, because it was not paying enough, not enough profit in it. And second, it was a nuisance to run these short films when we had such an enormous demand for—
William Grisham: (25:46)
Industrial?
Jerry Siakel: (25:47)
No, full features for First National. So I knew that I was going to be let out, then something else happened. Schustek was building twenty-eight millimeter printer that would take thirty-five millimeter negative and convert them into a non-slow burning film, twenty-eight millimeter film. He made that, he built that for Victor Animatograph Company or—
William Grisham : (26:15)
Victor Animatograph.
Jerry Siakel: (26:16)
From Davenport, Iowa. And when he got it done, Mr. Victor, I got to know Mr. Victor pretty well. He was a very fine man. Mr. Victor asked Mr. Schustek, “We’ve got to have a man to run this” and Mr. Schustek said, “Well, I know one guy, young lad by the name of Jerry Siakel. Why don't you approach him?” And he did. And I went to work for him. I went to work at Essanay and they did have that processing unit at that time because it—
William Grisham: (26:53)
Do you mean Essanay, E.S.S.A.N.A.Y? Or S and A? There were two. Was it Essanay over on Argyle?
Jerry Siakel: (27:02)
Yeah, on Argyle.
William Grisham: (27:02)
You went to work for Essanay on Argyle.
Jerry Siakel: (27:04)
Yes, that’s right. [Inaudible].
William Grisham: (27:05)
They were doing the Victor machine? They were doing—
Jerry Siakel: (27:08)
I didn't work for Essanay. I worked for the Essanay lab, but I was paid by Victor. And he had contracted with Essanay to take some of these movies that he has to turn them into non-theatrical used twenty-eight millimeter films.
William Grisham: (27:28)
Terrific. That's great.
Jerry Siakel: (27:29)
But he was not the only, that was not the only object of Victor's. He also want to get into motion picture work because Victor had a large library, bigger than Macintosh at that time. And he also produced, he also built motion pictures In Davenport with a beater movement. You know what beater movement is?
William Grisham: (27:56)
Yeah. I do know. One of the first, in fact, the first camera and movie projector had beater movements.
Jerry Siakel: (28:02)
Yeah, well that's what he built. Of course, those things aren’t good, you know.
William Grisham: (28:06)
No, because your frame line.
Jerry Siakel: (28:07)
No, not only that, but it's not steady. You can’t—
William Grisham: (28:09)
Right. It chatters.
Jerry Siakel: (28:11)
Chatters, yeah.
William Grisham: (28:11)
Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (28:12)
Anyhow, Victor wanted to get into that kind of a business. And I worked there. I don't know how long. All I remember is that I have two union paid cards because I had to join the union at Essanay. I never belonged to your union before, but I did then. Then this organization in 1920 started to talk about this Tatra film that I finally got to connect, that I got connected to.
William Grisham: (28:49)
How do you spell that?
Jerry Siakel: (28:50)
T.A.T.R.A.
William Grisham: (28:54)
Tatra film.
Jerry Siakel: (28:55)
Tatra film.
William Grisham: (28:56)
Yeah. Tatra.
Jerry Siakel: (28:57)
That's a name of a mountain in Czechoslovakia. And they were talking about making film. But in the meantime, even while at Rothacker, I was making documentaries about what was going on in Chicago. Schustek was one that arranged for that. I hired Rothacker cameraman. I had to rent a camera from Rothacker, and I hired cameraman. And we got this and whatever we needed, and we made documentary for Bohemians, documentary for Czech.
William Grisham: (29:35)
This was through Rothacker then? No?
Jerry Siakel: (29:37)
No, that was our political connection.
William Grisham: (29:41)
Very good.
Jerry Siakel: (29:42)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (29:43)
Very good.
Jerry Siakel: (29:43)
And that's where I met my wife too. Had one of those affairs. That's where I photographed Messianic Jew, and I photograph Kelly.
Side 2
William Grisham: (00:06)
All right. Would you tell us about, now, the films that you were making? ‘Cause we lost some of that. The films that you were making Kelly and so on. It was a documentary.
Jerry Siakel: (00:15)
Documentary.
William Grisham: (00:16)
And you were making them for whom now?
Jerry Siakel: (00:18)
There were political, not political, but organization of Czechoslovakia and Chicago, that gave all kinds of entertainment and try to raise money for a new republic. That was the purpose of all of this, and also to have a record of what was going on. So I picked, picked up that is, I got some actresses. See, I belong to a [inaudible] organization.
William Grisham: (00:54)
I was wondering, cause you directed that film so, so beautifully, but you had some dramatic training, a good deal of dramatic training, had you not? Had you been in the theater at all or done any theatrical work here?
Jerry Siakel: (01:05)
Yes, I did.
William Grisham: (01:06)
Tell me about that ‘cause that’s really very important.
Jerry Siakel: (01:08)
Well, I really don't know what to say about that. Maybe later on I'll tell you about it, anyhow. But what we did is we took a good looking girl from the [inaudible] organization and photograph her with Colonel so-and-so. And, you know, we tried to get a little life into that, a little action. Otherwise you just can stand there and stare in the camera.
William Grisham: (01:31)
Right.
Jerry Siakel: (01:32)
So that's the way we were doing things. So that was with my documentary. Well, I went to Czechoslovakia to make a long film, which I was hesitating because I never made a long film before. And I talked to my brother about that. They're asking me to make [inaudible]. I never made a long film. And he said, don't worry about that. A long film is easier to make than a short film. And I said, well, and the scenario somebody's got to write a scenario. Now that depends on the scenario a whole lot, just like a blueprint in your shop, depends on a good blueprint and you produce a good machine. He says, well, that's very important.
William Grisham: (02:22)
Now, where had you learned that? Had you learned that at Selig, that a script was a good blueprint?
Jerry Siakel: (02:26)
Oh, yes. Sure, sure, sure. Many times some of those fellows were criticizing. It's written that way, you know, and that—
William Grisham: (02:36)
Aha.
Jerry Siakel: (02:37)
It’s awfully—I can't even explain to you just what was going on in there. But then said, if it's well written, it's easy to do. If it's long, it'd be easy to shorten it or to lengthen it. And it helped a lot to feel that way because the hesitation which I had in the beginning, I kinda lost. But then we had help there too. We, we had a leading man that had a theater experience and motion picture experience. So very often I would turn to him with suggestion.
William Grisham: (03:13)
Now he was from what theater?
Jerry Siakel: (03:15)
From Praha. His father owned a theater in Praha. He was one of those [inaudible].
William Grisham: (03:25)
And he'd been in films before.
Jerry Siakel: (03:27)
Yes, he had. Yes, he had. He, he was on contract with a motion picture company in Praha, and we went to the company and asked them would they loan Pištěk. And they said, “Yes, we'll pay him so-and-so many dollars.” And they release him and then—
William Grisham: (03:44)
Tell me was he—had then since this was the first feature—he had been only in one-reelers or short films.
Jerry Siakel: (03:51)
No. He was in a longer stories. But what kinds of stories, I don't know. All I know is that he mentioned going to Berlin or going to—
William Grisham: (04:02)
But Slovakia, in Slovakia, they had not come up with a feature yet.
Jerry Siakel: (04:05)
In Slovakia, there was no such a thing, but in Bohemia, which is in Praha, it had already had a, an old brewery turned into a motion picture studio and motion picture lab. And that was one of the saddest thing. My brother came with all their equipment. We carried out on cameras, our own film, everything. We went, we went to Europe with everything that we needed for film. And Vigor introduced to this AB film company. And my brother went down there and he looked at that basement in that old brewery and that's where they were developing and printing films. That's where they were doing all that work, how different it was, how crude it was in comparison to what we had here in Chicago. So, but we managed to produce a film. I managed to put the two negatives together. We actually had two cameras, two grinding containers.
William Grisham: (05:09)
Alright. Which ones were they now? What were they, Selig standard camera?
Jerry Siakel: (05:12)
Yeah. Selig Standard and Pathé.
William Grisham: (05:15)
And Pathé.
Jerry Siakel: (05:15)
Pathé was left in Europe. And—
William Grisham: (05:18)
Was it a Pathé Portable or a Pathé Studio?
Jerry Siakel: (05:21)
PathéStudio. It was used throughout the—
William Grisham: (05:25)
You were there in the summertime.
Jerry Siakel: (05:27)
Yes, yeah.
William Grisham: (05:27)
Because the Pathécameras were subjected to—
Jerry Siakel: (05:33)
Yeah, they were made out of wood.
William Grisham: (05:34)
Static. Static.
Jerry Siakel: (05:37)
That’s, that's something that Dan had been able to overcome at Selig. Sunday, I'm going to show you that little thing, because that was a small invention, not an invention, a small—
William Grisham: (05:51)
Do you know what year that would have been? Because, would it have been before 1920?
Jerry Siakel: (05:56)
Oh yes. Yes.
William Grisham: (05:57)
Maybe four years before 1920?
Jerry Siakel: (05:58)
Oh yes. Yeah, at least that.
William Grisham: (06:00)
Well then it was one of the first anti-static devices. And what was that then? What was the anti-static device?
Jerry Siakel: (06:05)
Yeah, a little plate or a little unit that was pressing on negative or other positive.
William Grisham: (06:13)
Yes.
Jerry Siakel: (06:13)
And the reason why they had to have a pressure block, today we have a nice and flat film, you know, there's—
William Grisham: (06:21)
It doesn’t curl up.
Jerry Siakel: (06:21)
It doesn’t curl up. Those days it had to be kept together, you know, and it had to have that pressure block. And no one seemed to think of anything else but a glass block or a Ruby glass so you could look through and so on. Everybody who was there, until later on, Bell and Howell came along with automatic changing of, of lights. First of all, you’ll have to realize that the [inaudible] printers, [inaudible] Selig printers were all cinematograph movement. We're all aligned just like projector. And that's the kind our unit then brought to Europe [inaudible] and we left it there.
William Grisham: (07:07)
How many feet of film could they produce?
Jerry Siakel: (07:09)
I really don't know. I have no idea.
William Grisham: (07:12)
In other words, in what lengths?
Jerry Siakel: (07:13)
Well, they were always four-hundred feet.
William Grisham: (07:15)
Four-hundred—
Jerry Siakel: (07:16)
Everything was—
William Grisham: (07:17)
Continuous? They could develop continuously four-hundred feet.
Jerry Siakel: (07:20)
The printers would take up to four-hundred feet and the tanks would take up to four=hundred feet. That stayed as a standard even through Rothacker. Rothacker, all, he never had—Rothacker never had an automatic processing machine like Essanay did.
William Grisham: (07:38)
Yes, because Essanay could print one-thousand foot lengths.
Jerry Siakel: (07:40)
Yep. Yes they could. And they also processed our twenty-eight millimeter film at Essanay. That’s how I happened to see their, their film there, [inaudible] thing, which I didn't know anything about at that time, what they were doing. That was sort of a hush-hush anyhow.
William Grisham: (08:00)
Well, it was also an incorrect theory because it didn't work.
Jerry Siakel: (08:03)
It didn’t work.
William Grisham: (08:04)
Yeah. And that was—
Jerry Siakel: (08:10)
I really don't know. All I remember is that it had a double image.
William Grisham: (08:15)
Well, it would alternate the image, and the, from Parallax, one point of view to the other end. And it didn’t work at all. Alright.
Jerry Siakel: (08:29)
Now. That, did anyone in that material that you have on Selig mentioned [inaudible] any other way than that he worked for him?
William Grisham: (08:39)
No, just that he was, they had to depend upon him because he was their local resident genius, really.
Jerry Siakel: (08:47)
Right.
William Grisham: (08:48)
Yeah. Yeah. And alright you worked down at Rothacker and so on. And then what did you do then after the—well, we were talking about the European—your shoot in Slovakia.
Jerry Siakel: (09:03)
While at Rothacker Film Company, I also worked—see there wasn't so much of this, short stuff sold then. I worked on a longer commercials with Rothacker, with other camera men, other directors. And then also tests were being made on the new, uh, animation or Lost World. Fellow by the name of O'Brien was at Rothacker. Rothacker, they had some kind of an understanding with First National and they going to try to produce The Lost World. So Dan was taken into this and Dan was the one that had to design skeletons for all these animals and then build them and together with O’Brien, worked out a system of animals being able to open jaw and even spit out blood and things like that. All of those things they worked out together. And my part again was to make some tests of animation, animating these moving because later on they were worked in with living actors.
William Grisham: (10:21)
They were matted in. How were they worked in? Were they miniatures that were matted in or how was that done?
Jerry Siakel: (10:27)
The miniatures were this long, you know, depending on the [inaudible] but how the rest of it was done in Hollywood.
William Grisham: (10:34)
Done with optical printers then, was it not? Were optical printers used or a matte process?
Jerry Siakel: (10:38)
No, I don’t believe so. It may have been done by masking part of the—
William Grisham: (10:45)
Matte, yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (10:46)
Matte, yeah.
William Grisham: (10:46)
Right.
Jerry Siakel: (10:47)
In printing. I really don't know how it was done. All I know about that part is that I made tests there. That's what I got my little experience in.
William Grisham: (10:56)
Did you shoot them frame by frame?
Jerry Siakel: (10:58)
Frame by frame.
William Grisham: (10:59)
Did you know a person by the name of Howard Moss who was a model animator in Chicago.
Jerry Siakel: (11:04)
No.
William Grisham: (11:05)
Because he was—
Jerry Siakel: (11:06)
That could be—
William Grisham: (11:07)
He was one of the great model animators of the day, bout 1916, ‘17, ‘18, ’19.
Jerry Siakel: (11:15)
In the department of animation in Praha gave me a book, The History of Animation. They have everything everybody mentioned, and they traced the—
William Grisham: (11:28)
Look up Howard Moss, will you, and see if he's in there. ‘Cause Moss is one of the great, was one of the great animators, and he's hardly ever mentioned. I, uh, one of his films was donated to the Art Institute and they have it. They have—it's called Cracked Ice. And—
Jerry Siakel: (11:45)
Are you speaking about drawings? Are you speaking about it models?
William Grisham: (11:48)
No, I'm thinking about model animation.
Jerry Siakel: (11:49)
Model animation.
William Grisham: (11:50)
The same as that you are dealing with. Yeah. Right. Okay. Now is, well, you haven't been thorough at all about any of this. Your feelings when you came to this country, did you feel at all lost, you know? How did you, you took the Overland trip by train of course to Chicago, but did your brother come with you, is that it?
Jerry Siakel: (12:15)
Yes. [Inaudible]
William Grisham: (12:16)
You came back with your brother. So you felt much better about that.
Jerry Siakel: (12:19)
We came in second class, too. He had money by that time. He was well-paid over there. That's why he was able to. Besides that my brother took me to Budapest for a whole week. You see, we lived about six or eight hours by train from Budapest. And he introduced me to many people there, which didn't mean anything to me because—
William Grisham: (12:44)
Whom he had known when he was a student.
Jerry Siakel: (12:45)
That’s right. And he treated so many people that he had met. See in Budapest, we had an uncle there that had a large wine wholesale house besides having a Tavern and restaurant. So these people were all invited by Dan and then treated everybody and talked about United States and talked about that in Chicago you get nine glasses of beer for five cents. And those fellows couldn’t understand it. So he had to get a jug of some kind to show them just how much a pail of beer is. So, but that's the kind of [inaudible].
William Grisham: (13:31)
Well, you said you were going to say a little bit about your theater. Now the theater was a really a community theater.
Jerry Siakel: (13:39)
That’s right. It was a sort of a cooperative outfit. We all chipped in so much money to start it. There were all kinds—
William Grisham: (13:47)
Did you speak, now, your language or—
Jerry Siakel: (13:49)
Yes, Slovak language.
William Grisham: (13:50)
Slovak languages, yes. Okay.
Jerry Siakel: (13:52)
Now the Bohemian had that kind of a theater before us. See, my wife was born in that Bohemian neighborhood and we hired one of the [inaudible] member of this theater group to go with us to Europe, [inaudible] part of priest
William Grisham: (14:09)
Of the Priest.
Jerry Siakel: (14:11)
Anyhow, we were told we had to have at least one Bohemian.
William Grisham: (14:15)
Of course.
Jerry Siakel: (14:18)
Well, anyhow. There were all kinds of little theatrical groups and singing societies throughout Chicago, mainly connected with church. But no one had an organization where anybody could belong to. So in our organization, we had socialists whom they called unbelievers. Then we had Lutherans, Catholics. And we had Serbians. And so we had so many different members of this organization.
William Grisham: (14:51)
But you spoke what language in the theater?
Jerry Siakel: (14:53)
Slovak.
William Grisham: (14:53)
Slovak all within the, in the theater. Okay. And all of your people knew Slovak?
Jerry Siakel: (14:58)
Those were all very few born in here. Most of them were people like myself.
William Grisham: (15:04)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (15:06)
But it was actually started by a socialist organization because they had more guts to go out with, for the, after those things then [inaudible]. Gradually, it grew up into that big, big [inaudible]. There must have been couple of hundred members in there. And they gave at least dozen plays a year, and they traveled also to different cities. All of that is in a souvenir book, which I have which I'll show you.
William Grisham: (15:35)
Fine.
Jerry Siakel: (15:36)
And.
William Grisham: (15:37)
All right. I, your—how did you learn production? Because I looked at the set of that house that you used and you, you use the H-stand then. Or it was an H stand being used, that is for your shot through the window. Were H-stands being used? Because you had figured out some rather complicated action.
Jerry Siakel: (16:01)
Now that, we’ve done that at Selig, you know.
William Grisham: (16:03)
You had done all of that at Selig. Yeah. Because it was quite complicated. And you then, then those things had been shot on the, out on the lots in the back.
Jerry Siakel: (16:10)
Yeah, that’s right.
William Grisham: (16:11)
Yeah. How big was that lot? Because I went over there to what was, what's left of the studio, and there's a whole school back there. What, was it a big lot?
Jerry Siakel: (16:22)
Well, it was, it was so big that it had a little pool, a little lake there too. That's where my, when we were. working on a civil war picture of some kind. And there is not a member. This is because—
William Grisham: (16:38)
Called The Crisis.
Jerry Siakel: (16:39)
Well, whatever It was, I don’t know. But I remember one of the man, fellow by the name of Fossett. George Fossett. I think I'd like to see some of those things. He was one of those fellows that was nice to me when he handed me a roll of film and said, please. I'm sorry to say, but those things stick in your mind more than anything else, when people treat you like you're somebody.
William Grisham: (17:05)
Absolutely, don't they?
Jerry Siakel: (17:06)
And a fellow by the name H. B. Warner. I would like to know if he was a member of Selig, because he lived, he died not fifteen, twenty years ago. H.B. Warner was a [inaudible].
William Grisham: (17:20)
Yes. H.B. Warner. One of his last films was Lost Horizon, directed by Frank Capra.
Jerry Siakel: (17:26)
Alright.
William Grisham: (17:27)
And was H.B. Warner in that film? [Inaudible].
Jerry Siakel: (17:31)
H.B. Warner was working with at Selig on something, not in his civil war story. I don't know that, sir. But I remember him. Yes, because I projected negative for him.
William Grisham: (17:44)
Very good. Did you know Kathlyn Williams? You saw—
Jerry Siakel: (17:48)
Oh yes. That was one of the first leading ladies my brother introduced me to. And my brother told me that I should behave like I do, like they do in Europe. If a lady offers me her hand, I should kiss her. He said, if she doesn't offer it, I should just bow. I got all that information beforehand. You're going to meet all kinds of people. He says, nice and lousy. And some will ignore you. Some will call you a honky, but don't pay no attention to that. We're used to that now. So it wasn't pleasant there. You know, when I was worked at the—
William Grisham: (18:24)
Did the Germans, were the Germans nasty? [Inaudible]
Jerry Siakel: (18:28)
Most of them not. They were more or less afraid of them.
William Grisham: (18:30)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (18:31)
But the man in perforate in charge of perforating room, fellow by the name of Fritz. I don't know his last name. He wasn't nice to me at all. And he used to throw orders at me. And I didn't like that. I talked to Dan. I said that man is, he’s kind of funny. So Dan talked to him, he says, Fritz, my brother is not in here to take your job. So he's going to go right through on to the other places.
William Grisham: (18:59)
[phone ringing] You better get that.
[Break in tape]
William Grisham:
Tell me how many people were working there? Can you estimate in the technical and not in the acting, were there as many as a hundred you think?
Jerry Siakel: (19:09)
Oh, at least.
William Grisham: (19:10)
At least 200. Yeah. And most of them were, had been, uh, native-born Germans. Is that correct you would say? Or were they just from the German community here?
Jerry Siakel: (19:21)
Well, there were some, there was a Norwegian that was very proud of his heritage because—and man in charge of a machine shop after Schustek left was fellow by the name Johnson. And he was also proud of his heritage and they got into each other's hair sometime talking about, they don't like each other. That I could understand because we also didn't like [inaudible] but then Sweden—
William Grisham: (19:50)
Always, always at each other's neck.
Jerry Siakel: (19:53)
And there were two Bohemians there, one Slovak. And if that was in the shop. Throughout the plant, it were—it was mainly people that live not far away from there.
William Grisham: (20:07)
So there were a lot of Germans because—
Jerry Siakel: (20:09)
A lot of Germans. There was a German neighborhood.
William Grisham: (20:10)
They lived near there. I remember that the neighborhood. Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (20:12)
And I remember that on one occasion, maybe a couple occasions, the [indexable] closed the shop almost, and all of us were asked to go out on Western Avenue there or across the street into that. During that civil war picture I remember that real well. We were all going there to play part of a mob. And, uh, sometime it happened more often in summer. Seldom in winter. Selig didn't go out in winter. It wasn't very pleasant.
William Grisham: (20:43)
No, it was horrible. Tell me, Colin Campbell. Do you remember the name Colin Campbell?. He was one of Selig’s great directors. I just was wondering if—
Jerry Siakel: (20:57)
I probably saw him [inaudible].
William Grisham: (20:59)
He was the one that directed the civil war—
Jerry Siakel: (21:01)
Oh, that might've been him.
William Grisham: (21:03)
Yeah. And also he directed The Spoilers. Do you remember the name?
Jerry Siakel: (21:08)
That’s the very one. Yeah, that. I was more interested in that than any other picture.
William Grisham: (21:14)
That was made though on the west coast, but it was developed back here. Right?
Jerry Siakel: (21:17)
And scenes were made in here too.
William Grisham: (21:20)
That's what I wanted to know. Tell me about that.
Jerry Siakel: (21:21)
Well, they fight inside in with a [inaudible].
William Grisham: (21:26)
Dustin Farnum.
Jerry Siakel: (21:28)
Dustin Farnum, yes. And Tom Santschi.
William Grisham: (21:32)
Santschi. Yeah. Who, who had worked there as a handyman for a while before he became an actor.
Jerry Siakel: (21:35)
Yes, that's right. That, they staged that fight in, in, at Selig there.
William Grisham: (21:43)
In Chicago.
Jerry Siakel: (21:43)
In Chicago, yes. And how I happened to be present when they were—
William Grisham: (21:51)
You saw the fight?
Jerry Siakel: (21:52)
Well, part of it, you see.
William Grisham: (21:53)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (21:54)
But there was something else. During that fight, there was a sack of gold involved in there, that was to be hidden from somebody. I don't know this story. I saw the film. I remember the story. But I remember that one man threw that sack of gold into a pot belly stove, which was not lit, of course. And the gold sack went down and trip the ash, what'd you call it, went down into the ashes. And that was something very important because it had something to do with this story. What it had to do with story, I don't know. But then had the problem of the, devising something whereby that ash or, or that the grade—
William Grisham: (22:45)
The grade. Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (22:47)
Would flip and show it, show that thing falling down. And that took long time to figure that out. But that's why Dan called me to some of those scenes. Also another one. During that civil war picture, they had a little lake there in the yard and there were two model boats built there.
William Grisham: (23:09)
They were models though. They were not big ones. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (23:14)
And they were shooting at each other and then had had problem of devising releasing [inaudible] talcum which was shot out of the thing. How they did it, how he did it, I don't know. But a few years back when we were in California, we went to Universal Studio and they have that kind of a scene that they put on for—
William Grisham: (23:39)
Now they shot those in Hollywood later on in slow motion. Did you use slow motion in your model scenes at all to give it more of a lifelike quality? Or did you shoot it straight at sixteen frames per second?
Jerry Siakel: (23:52)
No, we use slow motion and fast motion too in scenes.
William Grisham: (23:57)
So in other words, for the model scenes, you thought, you think you used slow motion perhaps?
Jerry Siakel: (24:02)
For the model scenes that I photographed, we used all one-to-one.
William Grisham: (24:06)
One-to-one. Right. Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (24:08)
But the fast motion and slow motions we used when we were making comedies.
William Grisham: (24:15)
Yes.
Jerry Siakel: (24:16)
That was very important.
William Grisham: (24:18)
Right. What about your, the lighting in the studio? Do you, do you remember what the kinds of lights, the Cooper, did they use Cooper-Hewitts?
Jerry Siakel: (24:22)
Cooper-Hewitt lights.
William Grisham: (24:25)
And those and then what others? Regular arc lights?
Jerry Siakel: (24:28)
Arc lights were used to. We used arc lights even—
William Grisham: (24:33)
They hurt the actor's eyes because initially they weren't covered. And so the dust, the carbon dust got in their eyes.
Jerry Siakel: (24:40)
Yes. And Cooper-Hewitt lights were not very practical for, because of the sensitivity of the—
William Grisham: (24:48)
The film.
Jerry Siakel: (24:49)
Microfilm. Yes. So we used yellow powder for shirts and faces and gloves and everything to subdue the glare.
William Grisham: (25:00)
What about—how did that red show up on monochrome film? As black?
Jerry Siakel: (25:05)
Yeah [inaudible].
William Grisham: (25:06)
It showed up as black, didn't it really? Red, so that they had to avoid red. Did you ever hear of a film called The Landing of, the Coming of Columbus that was done by Selig in about 1911? Uh-huh. Did you know any directors, other than the, Colin Campbell. Did you know any of the —Otis Turner? Did you ever hear of Otis Turner?
Jerry Siakel: (25:28)
I can't tell you that. If I was introduced to him, I remember very few people. Only those that Dan introduced me to.
William Grisham: (25:36)
He did introduce you to Kathlyn Williams?
Jerry Siakel: (25:39)
He did. She was one of the leading ladies.
William Grisham: (25:44)
She was from Butte, Montana.
Jerry Siakel: (25:49)
Dan introduced me to some people that he had. He was kind of interested, that he, he thought I had to—
William Grisham: (26:01)
Remember Tom Mix? Did Tom Mix come to the studio?
Jerry Siakel: (26:03)
Oh, yes, see that's something that I don't understand at all. I don't know anything about Tom Mix.
William Grisham: (26:09)
Uh-huh.
Jerry Siakel: (26:10)
But I've read that somewhere in a publication that he was at Selig. I didn't know that he was.
William Grisham: (26:19)
But he shot out in Arizona. So there's no would be no reason unless Selig wanted him back in Chicago for something, you know. They shot out in, first of all in, in, in Colorado and then in Arizona. But he was a, they had a, Selig had a ranch there and that's where they shot. So there would be no reason for it. Did you ever hear of Bosworth?
Jerry Siakel: (26:40)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (26:41)
Can you tell me anything about him? 'Cause he hated Chicago. He said they would always send damaged stock to them. Uh, and sometimes even non-perforated stock.
Jerry Siakel: (26:53)
I don't understand.
William Grisham: (26:55)
That was before your time there though.
Jerry Siakel: (26:56)
That could be.
William Grisham: (26:57)
It was years before your time.
Jerry Siakel: (26:59)
See, when, when Dan and I were coming to Chicago, we stopped in New York. Seelig asked Dan to stop in New York to go to such and such a studio on Coney island. I don't know who was on Coney island, but we took a subway from Manhattan to Coney island. And Dan took me into this place and asked me to sit in the office and wait for him while he met somebody there. I think the man's name was Chanir as Frenchman, a chemist that later came to Selig. And Dan and Chanir worked together on solving many problems. Chanir was in charge of lab.
William Grisham: (27:47)
Had he come from Pathé United States?
Jerry Siakel: (27:49)
I don't know.
William Grisham: (27:50)
Might've have been Pathé. Yeah.
Jerry Siakel: (27:51)
I don’t even know the name of the firm that that was on Coney island. But I—Dan never told me that. But Dan seemed to know him and they become very good friends. When Chanir wanted a device to measure the squareness of film. There are many, many ways of measuring the right perforation and division and so on. And when Chanir wanted all of those things he turned to Dan. And Dan, “Such and such perforate is out of square. Such and such perforate is short” in thousand or something like that. Dan had to go into the perforating room and make the adjustments and so on. [Inaudible]
Language Of Materials
English
Reel/Tape Number
1/1
Has Been Digitized?
Yes
Format/Extent
Cassette Tape ➜ C60
Genre
Form
Subject
Motion picture industry
History
Motion picture film
Motion picture projectors
Emigration and immigration
Motion picture production & direction
Animation (Cinematography)
History
Motion picture film
Motion picture projectors
Emigration and immigration
Motion picture production & direction
Animation (Cinematography)
Related Places
Participants And Performers
Grisham, William Franklin (is interviewer)
Siakel, Jaroslav "Jerry" (is interviewee)
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