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

on...

Hello? And we were talking about 24 films, two reelers, that he had made at the studios.

Alright, why did you leave the studio? Well, I got the idea that after experience over there two or three years, I got the idea that I wanted to be an actor.

So they were moving west and they wanted me to go...

They were closing up the studio.

They closed it in 1919, didn't they? That's right.

They wanted me to go with them out to California.

Well, I wasn't particularly interested.

I was only 18.

And my mother, of course, didn't think I ought to go and so on.

But I still wanted to be in the theater business and be an actor, so I picked up all my stuff and I left here and went to New York.

And I knocked around New York for about three years until my uncle stopped me or rather decided I ought to do something else.

But I had a lot of fun.

I had jobs from different ones.

I played Vaudeville.

I played Procter's, 125th Street Theater, and the Steel Pier at Atlantic City.

And for about a year and a half, two years, I had...

Procter's was what now? Tell me about it.

Procter's was a chain of theaters in New York, which were just under the B .F.

Keith and Orpheum Circuit.

And of course, the object of all people in theater business then was to get in an act that would go to the Palace Theater in New York.

And we had almost made it.

We had gotten as far as 125th Street, which in those days was very delightful.

It was uptown New York, and the Alhambra Theater was one of the best theaters in New York.

And the next week we went down to Palace, and this guy who had our act decided that he was going to try to make more money out of it.

And of course, they canceled the act, and we never did get to the Palace.

What kind of an act was it anyway? It was an act, a comedy act, a straight comedy act, in which I played a Western Union messenger, and I kept interrupting these two making love all the time, and the leading lady was a woman by the name of Leah Winslow, who was at that time a very...

Leah, L -E -A -H, Winslow, who was a very prominent and leading lady in Brooklyn Stock, in Brooklyn Academy.

And we had a lot of fun, and finally after about a year and a half of that, it's all my...of course my relatives in New York thought it was just terrible in those days.

It didn't have too good a name, and so on.

So they took me out.

He was in the brokerage business down on Wall Street, and that was how I happened to get out there, and that was what my life was after that, although I always...

You know, once I...

Once a ham, always a ham.

So of course I've always had a little bit to do with it in amateur theatricals.

We had a company out in Glenview many years ago, Francis and I did.

Francis and I had some experience too.

We built this thing up out there and had a lot of fun when we...

when we were out there with it.

Careful of this.

That's about all I can tell you.

I had my experience.

I had a lot of fun here.

Well, Pop Baker, where did the directors go? Do you remember W .S.

Van Dyke at all? He was here though at first.

George had brought him here.

There was a guy by the name of...

B.

Braden.

Now he went out west and made several big pictures out there.

And so did W .S.

Van Dyke.

Now of course all those people all went out there, made a lot of dough out of it there for those days.

They all did pretty well.

That's right.

That was the idea.

Of course it collapsed all the studios in the east.

When you went up to New York, the Vitagraph had already collapsed, had it not? It was just about ready to.

I went out to the studio one day just to see what was going on.

I knew two or three people.

What kind of a studio was it compared with...

It was an old warehousing type of place.

It was better than or bigger than or...

Oh no, this was the biggest in the country.

Yes, and it was the best, finest indoor studio in the country.

Did you ever get to see the Edison studio in...

Was it Brooklyn? There were three Edison studios.

No, I never saw that.

That was in Brooklyn and then I'm trying to think...

Orange.

There was one in New Jersey.

Yes, East Orange or West Orange? I'm trying to think of what it was.

There was another big studio in New York.

The big studio in New York was Vitagraph and Biograph.

That was in a brownstone mansion, wasn't it? Biograph? I think you're right.

And then there was Universal later on.

Universal, that's where Carl Lemley started.

But Lemley really came here from Milwaukee, did he not? Yeah.

He came from Wisconsin, came from Milwaukee, and then went to New York.

But he was a distributor here for a good long while.

That's right.

Carl Lemley exchanges.

And then wasn't there a George Kleine here who imported...

Who imported a great many films, including Quovates.

I don't remember that name.

He was the Kay and Calum in New York.

Only he was almost a silent partner because he had his offices here.

Do you remember Calum Studios at all? Yeah.

Where were they? Did you see those in New York? Those were in New York.

No, I never saw them.

He was the Kay and Calum, but he operated out of Chicago.

Now, when, for instance, Beverly Bain says that you worked from nine until about five, you had to punch a time clock.

That's right.

You worked also on Saturdays from about nine until noon.

Right.

We were busy when we were working on a picture.

We'd work right straight through Saturdays.

Not Sundays so much, but generally all the way through.

And we could, in that inside studio, we could set up three or four sets because it was big, you see.

It was much bigger than any you've ever imagined.

Now, Mages Spore and Bob Spore were the managers of the studio.

They had charge of all of them.

When a director got ready to shoot a picture, he made a thing out of all the sets he was going to need and everything else.

And they would in turn see that the stuff would be made or the carpenter would make up whatever they had and the painter would paint the stuff and so on.

They were very, very essential to the whole operation.

Of course, George Kay, he just handled the stars and went out and got some more and so on.

Do you remember a man by the name of Boucher? Yes, very well.

He was brought in after who? To a superintendent the whole thing.

Well, he was brought in by George Kay to superintendent the whole thing.

And of course, like a good many guys brought into things like that, he was very unpopular.

Yes.

And when was he brought in? About what year? Well, I would say toward 15, 1915.

And prior to Boucher, there was another man who was superintendent who left, did he not, to go to American? Yeah, and I can't think of his name.

It wasn't Hutchinson.

No.

Alright, I'll think of his name.

But in other words, in your knowledge, there were only the two superintendents then.

And these superintendents, what do they mean, what was meant when you say superintendent? Well, they were, they really...

Heads of production? Heads of production is what I would call them.

And they had a lot to do with the stars and the getting of the people and the choosing of the directors and things from the scenarios that were made.

Do you remember the names of any of the writers, the adapters working? We had a fellow by the name of Hal Roach.

Hal Roach? Or Joe Roach, I should say.

Hal Roach is healed.

Joe Roach.

And we had another fellow by the name of...

They were the heads of the scenario department.

After Luella left.

Luella said she was fired.

Well, I don't recall whether Luella was fired.

Of course, Luella, I always connected Luella more with the publicity than anything else.

I don't think she did too much or had too much to say with respect to the scenarios.

But Roach was the head of the scenario department? No, there was another guy that was really the head of it and I can't think of his name.

And they then had to prepare the scripts, the shooting scripts.

The directors would work with them or were the directors more or less hand in scripts? In those days, the directors worked with them a lot.

They'd outline something that they'd want to do or they'd think would make a good picture and then they'd talk it over with the director or spore and they'd enlarge on it and then he'd go back and make another copy and they all worked together to try to get something out of these things.

I have seen some of these Pop Baker things and they are really well put together.

He was pretty good.

Well, he was an old Broadway producer and did things on stage and he knew the business from the back.

He was very, very good.

And he did most of the George A.

pictures.

Yes, I gathered that.

Now, when you, for instance, give me the name, if you can remember any of the names of the pictures and we'll take you through a picture.

I just wanted to see how it worked.

You would be called by, who would be in charge of casting, the director or what? Well, the director would be in charge of casting the pictures.

See, they didn't have quite the set up that you've got today in films or TV.

The director and the producer.

The producer was usually the owner or the guy that puts up the money, which is what you have today.

But the director, for all intensive purposes, was the guy that really made the film, hired the actors, controlled the whole thing all the way through.

The producer, as far as we were concerned in the old days, was the guy that put up the money.

That was all, and in our case, George Case -Borah, who we worked for.

But, oh, he'd step up, I can see George now.

He'd come down on the floor every once in a while and see what was going on.

He was watching some director taking a picture or something like that.

And if he saw something he didn't like, well, he would hesitate to say something.

He was quite a guy.

Was he quite a bit older than Major? Yes, he was.

Oh, yes.

I figured that would be a lot of fun.

George K.

was quite a bit older.

And George K.

had a very lovely daughter.

Gertrude.

Gertrude, who married a guy who was over at the studio and in the camera end of it.

What the heck was his name? And he left there.

After he and Gertrude got married, he left there and he went downtown in the, I think, in the advertising business.

Oh, I'm trying to think of everything.

Well, she did the divorce then, because she was married to General Wirt.

Well, then they must have got divorced.

That's probably where it was.

Because she married a general, ultimately married a General Wirt.

And they lived in Washington, D .C.

Let me ask now, now that it's the director, then you would be called in and...

And given a script? Did you get much time to look over your script? Oh, yes.

We'd get maybe a day or two, but we'd do most of it with all of us rehearsing.

And when we did more joint rehearsing than they do today in taking pictures.

Did you rehearse very much? Now, let's say you did a two -reeler, would you rehearse very much on each scene? And then would you do the take? Yes, we would rehearse it maybe for a half, three calls in an hour before we took it.

And then of course all the outdoor stuff, you know, we shot all over the neighborhood.

I mean, we'd go over to this house and that house, and we knew all these things.

George K.

knew most of these people that lived in the neighborhood, you know, and he sent them over 25 hours or at Christmas time he'd give them something, you know.

So we were always, we always had all kinds of locations, any kind of house we wanted.

Did you ever hear of a location in Ithaca, New York? Was there a director who lived up there? McRae Webster maybe? No, not that I know of.

In one of the SNA folders that I have, publicity releases, it says SNA, we called, this was called the Eastern Company, and then there was SNA Ithaca, New York.

I'm just curious about that.

Was that the home of McRae Webster perhaps? Might have been.

One of the directors at any rate, and Bain remembers making several pictures up there with Bushman, so it might have been McRae Webster.

Did he direct most of their films? Harry McRae Webster.

Yeah, he did a lot of the...

Would he have directed Grouse Stark, do you think? He did, yeah, he directed Grouse Stark with Bushman and Beverly Bain.

And I'm trying to think of some of the others he had.

Oh, he did a series of two or three Edgar Allan Poe stories, you know.

Starring H .B.

Waffle.

Yeah.

Oh, The Raven was one of the big pictures that they did.

Quote The Raven evermore.

Tell me, how was that done? Was it kind of a nice...

Oh, yes.

We, in those days, they did pictures and they were very particular about a lot of things.

No, they were, they were really very good.

I saw one, one that was done in 1908, ten nights in a bar room, is that how I write? Well, tell you what, I saw a clean copy of that, it was not Duke.

It was really beautiful photography.

Now, you know, in those days, George Kay, the advertising and the selling of a film to the Nickel shows, which is what they were, was done by flyers primarily.

They'd do a picture, they'd make up a fryer, and they'd shoot these out to all these theaters around, telling them when the picture was ready to be shown and how much it would cost and so on and so forth.

And that's the one that I was in.

But that's a flyer of the way they sold a picture in those days.

Now, there's a picture that I was in.

And as you can see, Wally Berry was in it.

And Charlie Stein was in it.

Now, Charlie Stein is an old hoover in Broadville.

He played the Fat Man.

He was awful good.

I ain't seen him.

But I thought that you might be interested in seeing that if you hadn't seen one of those.

I don't know whether Olive has got any of those or not.

Sounds a little boy.

But that was the way they sold the pictures in those days.

Did they send them to around the neighborhood or just to the theaters? Oh, they sent them to all the theaters.

No, this is to the theaters, you see, so that the exhibitor could see what he was buying.

Well, General Films distributed four S &A, right? That's right.

And they would be posters and then these flyers.

Posters and these flyers.

Right, the big posters.

Nobody seems to have any of those.

This is beautiful.

Would you want this in that book to explain you or not? Because I would be delighted.

You can have it.

Well, I don't want to take it.

I would like to.

Well, you take it and see that I get it back.

You'll get it back.

Don't worry.

Will you do that? Yes.

Just so we get it back.

I think I have other pictures of you too.

Do you have other pictures of yourself? I think you can run that in the book.

And that might be very helpful.

Now there's a picture.

That happens to be my brother who is now dead.

He was younger than I was.

And he did one or two pictures over there.

There's a picture of Eddie Arnold.

Edward Arnold.

And this is your brother.

Who is this actor? Do you remember? He was a Dutchman by the name of von Turpen or something like that.

I can't remember his name.

But he'd been over in this country.

And he made pictures in Germany.

Tom, had you left the studio when Bill was there? Or did Bill go at the same time you did? No, I was living there at the time.

You have a real black lady in this film.

Yeah.

That's amazing because there are very few of them.

Who was that? Of this here, that's one of the scenes in that picture.

And this is you.

Good.

And here's the nice one.

Well there's Stein.

There's Charlie Stein.

What's the name of this picture? Presto Willie.

The name of the movie? Is that Presto Willie? And this is Presto Willie.

And who is the guy there on the wig? That's the guy that was this fella here.

Van.

Van.

Van.

Van Klein or something like that it was.

And then here was a, they were shooting a scene in a church and they wanted an audience.

At some point.

So all of them sat in all of them sat in the pews on the set scene to be the audience.

Now here is the fella that we've talked about, Dick Baker.

That's Pop Baker.

Which one Tom? This is Tom's father right here.

This is Tom's father.

My father was with the Commonwealth Edison Company.

It had the north side district.

So of course the S &A was the biggest thing that Commonwealth Edison had in those days.

They spent more money with Commonwealth Edison than anybody.

So he was over there a lot looking around, you know, and seeing the lights.

Fabulous.

I'll take the notes on that.

Go ahead now.

There was Betty Scott.

Who was the leading lady over there? I haven't seen her before.

That's great.

She was over there for a couple of years.

Well where did they go west? They went to Los Angeles.

Hollywood.

Now the studio that Dr.

Billy had was not located in Hollywood today.

No, it was outside of there.

What did you say? Well I know that W .S.

Van Dyke went to Culver City.

Culver City.

That was where they had this stuff located.

Now there's an interesting picture.

There's Bushman, Chaplin, and Brunco Billy, G .M.

Anderson.

That was when G .M.

Anderson brought him here and introduced him when Spore raised hell because these men always don't get Chaplin.

You know I have the picture that just precedes this where they're all just sort of staring.

Oh really? Yeah.

That's a good picture of Beverly Payne.

My God, she writes the same way she wrote then.

Exactly.

And here's Ruth Stonehouse.

Who everybody liked.

Very much.

She was a very fine girl.

Now she goes on.

Somebody said that she doesn't but I track her down and film her on.

Here is a picture of Dick Travis who was a very good leading man.

He was also later directed several pictures.

And this guy was an old actor but a director out there.

Calvert.

Very good man.

That's the Calvert that I know.

He wore patees.

I see him in a picture with patees.

Yeah.

Isn't that great? Fabulous.

Now can you tell me something about this because this is most unusual to have a black woman in films.

Hardly ever did they.

Well she of course was blacked up.

She was a white gal.

This one was? Oh yes.

She's got Brunco kind.

It doesn't look that way.

I'm sure she had I'm sure that I'm right.

This is you and you're in what? In this.

That's right.

They're all from Presto Willie.

Anonymous Love it says on the back of it.

Anonymous Love.

Oh that's just a joke.

These are all from Presto Willie.

All from Presto Willie.

Except this one.

That's right.

This one I don't remember what that was from.

But I showed you I think that's an interesting picture to show you a picture of Ed Arnold when he was a young fellow.

Her hands are white.

That's the best makeup job I've ever seen.

Now let me talk about that if I may because I found out that the first all black films were done in Chicago and do you remember seeing pictures by Ebony that were distributed in the theaters of Ebony Films of Chicago.

It was started by a man by the name of Luther Pollard.

And they were supported or backed by the four wheel drive company.

Now the four wheel drive company was in Wisconsin.

It was in Wisconsin right.

Didn't you want to show them this? This was the lot.

Oh yeah.

This is the, that's the lot.

Now this is the back of the lot and these are the studios here.

So you can get an idea how big the studios were.

We could set up four or five scenes in there.

Oh they're still standing.

They're wonderful.

Yeah I've been in them.

I don't recall that the name sounds familiar to me.

But did you have, I have sets of the back lot with houses on it.

They look like permanent houses are set up.

Oh they were probably built.

I don't know of any houses on it of any kind on the lot.

What I'm saying is they were probably prop houses but they looked like they were well built.

Was there enough room for that near the St.

Boniface Cemetery? Yeah right near the cemetery.

Right in the cemetery.

So at the back end of the lot.

Right and now it's all asphalted over and everything but it wasn't out in the open then wasn't it? Yeah.

When you went into the studios and you'd be cast in one of these and then the director would discuss things with you and then you'd rehearse.

Rehearse.

Do the inside scenes and then they'd say well tomorrow we're going to go outside and shoot.

And you'd shoot out of sequence.

And then we'd shoot out of sequence things.

They'd make them now and we'd all, we had George Spurce had two European cars.

Big touring cars.

We used these.

One was a Rolls Royce and the other was a Lozier made in French.

And we used to get these cars you know and jeez we'd be gone for all day and go out to downtown center.

And we'd spend a day out there and the studio would buy us lunch or they'd take a picnic lunch along and we'd make scenes.

It was country stuff you know and all that and we'd work out all day long.

Come back and it's remarkable.

Thank you.

In 1913, and how did you stay on there for several years? About three years.

About three years.

Then they closed down, did they not, in about 19...

Well, they closed down, yes, shortly after that, and moved the whole operation out to people being out there, that they could make pictures out there for about a third of what they cost here.

Now, S &A, of course, had the largest indoor studio and the best indoor studio in the country.

There were about...

Do you remember what kind of lights there were? Were there Cooper, Hewitt? There were the long Klieg light, what we call the Klieg light.

And what about Cooper, Hewitt? They looked like fluorescent lights.

That's right.

They were Cooper, Hewitt lights.

And...

Do you remember who installed those? I have...

No.

That Alan Dwan, was Alan Dwan there when you were there? He was the man who installed those.

No, not that I can remember.

All right.

Did you remember...

I'll just get these questions out of the way, then I'd like to ask you questions about yourself.

Do you remember the American Film Manufacturing Company? Yes.

Where were they located? Well, they were located out on...

Were they on Broadway? Western Avenue.

No, they were out on Western Avenue.

That was Seelig on Western Avenue.

Oh, that's right.

I'm thinking of Seelig.

American was up...

Wasn't it close to Devon Avenue? That's right.

That's right.

American was up to Devon, up close to Devon, and Seelig was out on Western Avenue.

Western Irving Park, wasn't it? That's right.

Can you tell me...

Do you know any of the actors who were at American by any chance? They broke off from S &A in 1910, but aside from Jay Warren Kerrigan, I'm wondering who was there.

No, I don't know any of those previous two S &As.

Did you ever get out to see the Seelig studio by any chance? Yes, yes.

And what was it like? Can you describe it? Well, Seelig studio is a very fine indoor studio.

It was not as large as the S &A.

It was about half as big as the S &A studio.

Seelig was a very nice man, as I remembered him.

He ran a pretty good place out there.

And had several pictures that were...

He did not have the stars, though, did he, that S &A did? No, George K.

Spoor, who was the head of S &A, was very fortunate in being able, and was a very good administrator.

And he saw that the thing that would make pictures in those days profitable was to have a star.

So he signed up every star that he could get a hold of, of course.

Tell me, Bushman had arrived much earlier than you.

Oh, yeah.

Frank Bushman was there at the time I was there.

And Beverly Bain? And Beverly Bain and Frank was quite a guy.

He had five children by his first wife.

But the studio, and everybody in the studio, kept that very sub rosa because of his image of a hero and so forth, and he was a big star in those days.

And so George K.

instructed everybody that they were not to talk about Frank Bushman's previous life or his children or things of that kind because they didn't want him to know it, you know.

Bain had arrived, I've tracked down, as early as 1911.

Was she there before 1911 that you know of? No, no.

I think Beverly came around 1911 and there was a girl in the mail.

She came in there around in that time.

Ruth Stonehouse.

Ruth Stonehouse came from the North Shore, didn't she? That's right.

Do you remember what suburb she came from? It seems to me it was Wilmette.

That's what I heard.

And that was Ruth Stonehouse.

Ruth Stonehouse played pretty much the same roles as Beverly Bain, didn't she? That's right.

They were the leading ladies.

And the leading men of course were Frank Bushman and a fellow by the name of Bryant Washburn, who you've probably heard about.

Yes.

And of course Wally Berry was there at that time.

Can you tell me about Wally? Wally came to the studio at what time? Do you remember? Wally came to the SNA around 1913.

And who hired him or who had seen him? I understand that Spore had seen him in a circus and I don't think that's correct.

No, George K.

Spore saw him in New York in a vaudeville skit.

That's what I thought.

And hired him to come out here to play comedies.

And Wally came on the set, as I remember, somewhere around 1930.

You were already there though.

That's right.

And Henry Waltoll? And Henry Waltoll came when? Because it had to be after the birth of the man.

Henry Waltoll came there about 1914 or 15, my recollection.

And Ben Turpin was there from the very beginning, was he not? That's right.

Was he in an awful skate? Do you remember that film or hearing about that film? An awful skate in which he skates down Clark Street knocking people over.

No, I don't remember that one, but I can tell you a very funny one about Ben.

You might be interested in.

Ben was a circus clown, an acrobat.

And he didn't have much money.

And of course in those days they didn't pay an awful lot of money over there at the studio and Ben came over there and he wasn't working steadily.

They didn't, a lot of those people were not what we called on salary.

They only were paid $10 a day when they worked.

Well Ben was one of those and he used to get the extras down in the basement, down in the basement of the studio over there where the dressingers were, was a cement floor, just a cement floor.

And Ben used to get a bunch of these guys together and bet them that he could do a flip -flop and land on his back naked.

Well of course all these guys thought he was crazy, he couldn't do anything of that kind, he'd break his back.

So he'd get all these guys together and they'd put up a pool of five or six dollars, you know, to see him do this thing.

He'd take off his clothes, turn a flip -flop, and I've seen him do it a half a dozen times, turn a flip -flop on that cement floor and land flat on his back.

Of course he was a clown, a lot of them didn't know it, you know.

And he was really a very funny guy and a very nice guy.

He didn't have much education and he knocked around in New York and up Bowery and practiced Third Avenue and so on, but he was funny.

And of course his looks were the greatest asset that he had, the cross -eyed, you know.

Gloria Swanson was there in 1914 as an extra.

That's right.

Tell me, how did she arrive there? Well, Gloria Swanson, to my recollection, came there through a man by the name of Dick Baker.

Now, where Dick Baker got Gloria, I don't recall, but Dick Baker was a director.

He was called Pop Baker, wasn't he? Yeah, that's right.

And he was married to whom? He was married to, well, his wife was not in the business, but her son was in the business.

Mrs.

She was not an actress? No, but Dick was.

McGray -Webster had a wife who was an actress.

That's right.

Henry or Harry McGray -Webster? Harry Webster.

And he had a wife whose name was? Yeah, and I'm trying to think of what her name was.

We'll get that later, that's okay.

But now you tell me about Dick Baker hired, or Pop Baker hired Gloria Swanson.

That's right, that's right.

And of course I did a lot of work with, that's how I happened to go over there was through Pop Baker because Pop Baker lived in the same building that we did.

Where was that? At 1218 Winamac, which is the street, the site of where our guy, where the studio was.

And I had done some work in high school, one thing or another, and Dick and the families were very close, so Dick asked me one day, or asked my mother and father if I could come over to the studio, he'd like to use me in a picture.

So my mother and father agreed, it would be alright, so that was how I went into the thing.

Very good.

Now Pop Baker, I was told, he did the Wally Berry, he did a lot of the comedy.

He did the Wally Berry stuff, he did what they called, there was a series called the Sweedy Pictures where Wally played a Swede maid.

Do you have any knowledge of any of those old films by any chance, whether they exist? No, I don't know whether they would even exist, I don't know where they would be.

He did the Sweedy films and...

And he did some other things, different types of...

Were they mostly comedies though? Yeah.

Where had he gotten his training, was it in Vaudeville? In Vaudeville.

Uh huh, and he had, in Vaudeville, and did he bring Francis X Bushman there too? I was told that...

No, Frank Bushman was there before Wally.

Alright, before Baker too, or had Baker been there before? Frank was there before Baker.

Frank was one of George K.

Spore's first big stars.

I mean he was one of the first ones he hired when he had the studio going good.

He had been though in stock, Bushman had been in stock, and one of the directors was, Webster was one of the first directors.

Harry Webster was one of the first directors.

He probably brought Bushman there.

That's right.

I would imagine.

Did GM Anderson, Gilbert Anderson, did he direct anything while you were there? Or was he already on the show? Anderson and Spore, that's where the name comes from, SNA.

Anderson wanted to do Westerns.

He didn't want anything but Westerns.

He was a typical cowboy, a Bronco Billy.

So he was in California all the time.

He'd do his pictures, he'd make his pictures out there, send them to us here, and the studio would develop them here and distribute them from this place.

But this was the Bronco Billy Anderson series of things that he made out there, which were all those Western pictures.

Do you remember Victor Potel? Yes.

He started out here, but then he went out to the West.

Went out there with GM Anderson.

Were there many who had left then to join Anderson? No, not too many.

He had his own group out there.

He had some of those old guys with him that used to be with Mabel Norman's director.

What the hell was his name? You mean Max Sinnet? Max Sinnet.

He had Chester Conklin with him for a while out there.

Then he had another cowboy, Hoot Gibson.

Do you remember Hoot Gibson? Was Hoot Gibson with him at all? Sure.

Hoot worked with him.

In those days, Bronco Billy, with the GM Anderson stuff out there, was one of the biggest in the whole business.

At that time, when he was out there, he was the only one practically that was out there making pictures in California.

All the rest of the studios, Vitagraph, Biograph, all those outfits were in New York and New Jersey.

He was the guy who not only sold his partner's board, but it was cheaper to make pictures out there.

Of course, all the rest of the industry heard about it and knew about it and looked into it and they found out what the hell.

They could make a picture for a third as much money as they didn't have to use lights and they didn't have to have indoor.

The weather was good most of the time.

They didn't have to worry about snow in wintertime.

Of course, the pictures in those days were a scream because you'd get a scene in a living home, for example.

Of course, they built these sets out outdoors and you'd get a scene in a living room, say, and here'd be all the goddamn curtains blown out the windows and everything else.

But nobody paid any attention to those things in those days.

Let me ask you, did you ever hear of the Lubin Studios? Yes.

They were in Philadelphia.

They were in Philadelphia.

All right, tell me now, what was the most surprising thing when you went over to the studio for the first time? When you met up, who did you meet? Well, when I went over there first, one of the first persons I met was, of course, Gloria Swanson and a girl by the name of June Walker who later went on to star in musical comedy.

And for a good many years in New York and Broadway, she had done very well.

One of the biggest things she did was Green Grow the Lilacs.

And she and I did a show.

We were going to do a picture over there together, a couple of kids in a picture, where we had to dance.

And I didn't know too much about dancing in those days.

And we had a fellow over there by the name of Joe Burke who was an old, vaudeville guy.

What did he do? Was he an actor? Well, he was an actor and a singer and a dancer.

And so he said, well, I'll teach you both how to dance.

So every day for four or five weeks, we'd have lessons with him in the morning and in the afternoon.

And June and I, we got so we could do some of the things and we were all right for the picture.

But they were the first two.

Then, of course, Pop Baker who took me over there.

And then there was a fellow over there who was a leading man who I was very fond of.

Come in.

What's the name of Dick Travers? Richard Travers.

Do you have anything? He was a great guy, Dick has.

You were talking about the acting, singing, dancing.

Joe Burke was.

Yeah.

And then Travers comes in.

And Travers came in and we did a picture with him called the Mounties or something.

We went up and shot part of this picture.

And we used to go up to Nile Center, which was then out in the country.

And we drew a lot of outdoor scenes up there.

And then one time we did a picture on the first, on a book by a guy that lived in Lake Forest, Hobart Chatfield Taylor.

And we had to have castle scenes in this thing and all kinds of fancy stuff.

So he worked it out with Edie Rockfellow McCormick up there who had their estate that she would allow us to come up there and take this picture on this estate.

So we went up there.

What was that, Lake Forest? Lake Forest.

And stayed for three or four days and shot this picture up there.

Who was the director on that, do you remember? The director on that was a fellow by the name of Calvert.

Yes, and when did he come in? Because I have pictures of him.

E .H.

Calvert.

Well, you have a picture of him too.

Yeah, I have some pictures.

Where did he come from? Where did Calvert come from? He came, all of them came from New York.

He came from New York.

See, they had heard about SNA.

And they directed for films before.

No, no.

Stock companies? Stock company.

Most of these people were out of stock companies.

All right.

And Harry McRae Webster was also out of stock.

That's right.

Is it M -A -C -R -A -E? That's right.

Webster, okay.

And no, I was also told that the armor estate was used.

McCormick's, what is the armor estate? It was used, the armor estate, once or twice for other...

It doesn't look like a castle, but this McCormick place.

McCormick, you know, was on the lake.

She had a beautiful place up there.

She used to come out and watch the things.

What was her first name? Edie? Edie Rockefeller McCormick.

Edie Rockefeller, yeah, that's right.

That's old John Dee's daughter, you know.

And you did that, and it was directed by E .H.

Calvert.

Do you remember any of the other directors who directed you and others there? Well, there was a fellow, there was Travers, and there was a fellow by the name of Totten, who was a very good director.

And I did a picture with him where he took us down to the sea picture.

And we spent five or six weeks down at Watch Hill, Rhode Island, one year.

A lot of interesting stuff.

But he was an old stockman.

All these people were from New York, in and around the city of New York.

They'd done stock, they'd been on Broadway, they'd done a little bit of everything.

And Spore was the man who really got in touch with them.

That's right.

So he had a good eye.

Totten, any other directors whom you know? Well, I'm trying to think.

There was Totten, Calvert, Webster, Baker.

And there was another fellow.

Berry directed a few things, did he not, toward the end? Yeah, yeah.

Before he went to California.

He began directing.

Did he go to...

And then we had, well, Henry Walto.

Came in at about fifteen, you think.

That's right.

And then right after him, Spore signed the big contract.

In those days, it got terrific publicity all over of Charlie Chaplin.

And Chaplin came in in the winter of 1914.

That's right.

Did you get to meet him? Yes.

Most of the people I've interviewed were very much down on him because he was so aloof.

But that doesn't mean anything at all.

Oh, no.

He wasn't particularly aloof.

Charlie Chaplin was a typical Englishman.

And he was a top money guy by far.

Now, Spore paid him, it was reported, that he got $750 a week.

And my God, in those days, you know, that was just like $50 ,000 a week today.

Of course it is.

And Henry Walto got big money.

But that went all over like wildfire, you know.

But Charlie was a good guy, and I have a picture of him here.

Did you show him your picture? Well, he was doing some other...

I just wanted to...

Chaplin, however, though, was...

When he came in, he had not been making very much at Senate Studios.

And when he came in here, Molly Anderson met him at the train, I understand.

But Spore was very unhappy that Bronco Billy signed him up.

Is that...

That's correct.

Because he didn't...

He didn't meet the train.

He signed...

Bronco Billy signed him up.

Right.

But Spore didn't know much about it.

And he was very worried.

Very much upset.

That Anderson had gone out of his mind.

That's right.

Now Spore later claims that he buys him an overcoat.

I understand that Molly bought him an overcoat, not Spore.

So this is...

Well, that may be it.

Right.

I'm just saying that he didn't have any money until he came here.

No.

No.

He came off the boat practically.

But he had a very wonderful reputation, of course, in England, you see.

And Bronco Billy apparently had heard about it through some of these people in California.

So he was figuring that he'd snare them for George K.

Spore here.

Now, do you remember the studios on Argyle? There was Studio A, or did they call it One? They called it A, didn't they? And Studio B.

A was in 1333.

And B was really beginning of 1345.

That was the later and the larger studio.

That's right.

They were double.

In the A portion, that was where the laboratory was, am I correct? That's right.

Now the laboratory had been on Well Street prior to that, though, had it not? Well, I didn't know too much about the Well Street operation, but they started in the picture business.

George K.

started in the picture business, primarily developing pictures in movie film, you see.

And experimenting with all types of movie film and experimenting with cameras.

And we had a fellow who was the head of the camera department by the name of Harry Zeck.

He had been brought in from the East, hadn't he? That's right.

Harry Zeck brought in.

What's the studio from where he worked for? Do you remember? I don't recall what studio Harry worked for, but he developed further.

How do you spell his last name? Z -E -C -K.

Harry Zeck, uh -huh.

And he developed further the motion picture camera, which later, a lot of the patents and things were sold to Bell and Howell and developed into the Bell and Howell camera.

There was also Conrad Luperty there.

Do you remember him at all? Conrad Luperty, Zeck, George Seitz.

You're talking about? The technical people.

The technical people.

There was a, yeah, what was it? Conrad Luperty was from Bremen, Germany, if I'm not mistaken.

That's right.

And he had another name.

We called him something else.

Loopy.

Loopy.

Loopy.

That's it.

Then we had a fellow by the name of George Carnell.

I don't know that.

Who was a? Carnell? Yeah.

He had charge of distribution.

George was an old, uh, vaudeville man and stage man of all kinds, and he was quite a guy and a great deal of help to George.

He was a publicity man, too? He was a publicity man.

Well, the big publicity we had in those days was Louella.

See, Louella came out from the, she worked for, uh...

What paper did she work for? Well, I'm trying to think.

It was either the American...

She worked for paper first, didn't she? Yeah.

And then she came to the Clark Street address.

She came out part -time to, uh, do some work for George K.

Bush.

Still kept her job downtown.

And she worked at the Clark Street address before the, um...

There was a Clark Street studio, if I'm not mistaken.

That's right.

She worked there.

She did publicity work for that.

At Clark Street.

That's right.

And then the laboratory was really located on Wells Street.

Wells and...

Eustanian Wells, right? That's right.

And then after that, they moved into the quarters, what, in 19...

Probably 9, wasn't it, over on...

Somewhere around, yeah.

...by 1909 when Studio A was built.

Yeah, because it was pretty new and...

Right.

Um, the, um...

George K.

Bush, who was a professor at the time, came up with a magnoscope.

He wasn't he.

It was a man by the name of, um...

Edwin Hill...

Edward Hill Amet in Waukegan.

And in 1894, they projected...

There was one of the first of the wall projections with the magnoscope, which was a remake of the Kinetoscope, using calcium light.

And, um...

Out of this came the magnoscope, which was used in vaudeville houses, and George would buy or make short strips of film, used as chasers in the vaudeville houses.

And that's where he started and made his money.

That's right.

And that's how he then got enough money to start the studio, wasn't it? Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Now, did Seeley do the same thing pretty much, didn't he? Because he was...

I think he did, yes.

I never knew too much about Seeley.

He had a little office over on Peck Court.

Now, was Peck Court in a dubious section of the city? They said it was the red light section of the city.

Peck Court, it no longer exists.

Yeah, I don't recall.

He had a little shop where he sold photographic supplies and so on, and then strips of film.

And I have a note that George even bought from him some film.

Oh, he might have, I don't know.

So that it probably...

Their careers probably paralleled each other.

And, um...

Now, he had...

Let me just go over there for a minute.

He had, um...

Kathleen Williams.

Do you remember Kathleen Williams? Sure, sure.

She had very good training in the theater, didn't she? The Pearls of Pauline with Pearl White.

And Kathleen Williams, I'm trying to think of the series.

That was the first of the series, The Adventures of Kathleen.

That was before Pearl White, wasn't it? The Adventures of Kathleen was before Pearl White.

That's right.

And Pearl White followed The Adventures of Kathleen.

Because that was the start of the series.

Right, the cliffhanging serials, really.

Now, were they made at Sea League Chicago Studio? My recollection, Bill, is that The Pearls of...

or The Adventures of Kathleen was made here.

But The Pearls of Pauline was made by Vitagraph in New York.

Pathé.

Pathé.

And they were made by George Seitz, who was director.

That's right.

I got a letter from his son, and his grandson is in film, so they're three generations in film.

I just got a letter from him today.

Would you like something to drink or anything? Coffee if you have it, but if you don't have it...

I'll make some instant for you.

Is that all right? Do you want cream in it or anything? Just black.

Thank you very much.

You don't fix it? Coffee is all you want? You want any hard liquor? No, no, thank you.