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About The Oregon statesman. (Salem, Or.) 1916-1980 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 10, 1920)
THE ORECiOX STATESMAN: SATURDAY. JAM ART 10, 1920. 1m ro) HERBBFLT COREY 1 1 NsV Bxr Herbert Corey Noted War Correspondent Switches From French. Front to Movie Front How Filmland Taught him to Pet A Million Dollars Corey Reveals JHowMuchRealMcm .Tin's Is to be an article about the motion-picture industry in the United Mates. There 1 The text ha been read. The target, so' to speak, has been pinned on the wall. A park; has been pro vided in which 1 can mobilize my ideas, because I know that only by an effort can' I keep my mind on the real subject of this writing. The mo ment the .pressure is relaxed. I shall begin to talk about money. And I shall deal in enormous figures. Ten hours after I began the work of inquiry;! had a stub of soft pencil and was writing huge sums on the tablecloth- There is an intoxication, a glamour, a sort of necromancy about the bus ness. A million becomes domesticated. and your can pet it. Smaller sumsare kept in the barn. , " The money Is" real, too. Or most of the money is'reaL Only the coin , dtttons ieem( absurd and romantic. I you can imagine ' a gigantic Monte Carlo in which all the. players are constantly winning, and, in which, by ' iome upheaval of natural law. the house is winning too; you can get an idea of the motion-picture business as 1 it seems ' to one who looks on from Jthe outside. Perhaps the gambling simile. is not a good. one. Think, then, of a farmer whose' crops grow pas , cionatety through sun and frost and rain and dry weather, and are always sold for increasing prices. Think of a perpetual bull market Think !lof mines from which fDu take the raw pold with a spoon. Thinlc of buc!iefs full of diamonds , - J Before I ret r down to the real tell ing of this story, it may be welljj to offer presumitive evidence that I jam lane. ..heri the reader reads that four .'-persons in the moving-picture business are each beitw paid salanes 'approxi mating one and one-quarter million dollars y that actresses unknown to the stage spend U,uuu tor dresses in a season ; that an attractive title has been thought worth Jj.OOO; that one of the great stars thinks flO.ttHJ a fair price for an idea around which he can build comedy ; that a chain of theatres was recently capitalized at $15,000.000 J Well, the reader is apt to suspect that there is something wrong some where. But these things, and more, are true. The explanation is that there .are 14,000 moving-picture thea tres in the United States. Really, there are about 17,000 according to fairly reliable estimates, but many of these are "store shows" which can hardly be classed as theatres. It is a conserva tive estimate to say that the film thea tres will average 700 seats each, and one of the most unexcitable distrib utors told me that each theatre will be filled twice a day for 225 days in the year. Very well, then. Fourteen thousand theatres of 700; seats filled twice daily for 325 days gives a total of 6.370,- 000,000 . paid admissions - annually. Every ticket of admission was sold for ten cents. If only ten cents were paid the canals would have fooled the grandfather of all the gondoliers ex cept that it happened to be winter time, and the night beore the picture was to have been taken, the canals were frozen over. Companies were carted all over the country. Expen sive properties were purchased. One man bought the entire contents of a bankrupt restaurant, from fish studies to tapestries. If the original idea proved worth less, the directors were given ccrte blanche to keep mulling away before the camera until some marketable thing was produced. Sometimes the result bore not the slightest resem blance to the raw material furnished the master of ceremonies. One hear the most astonndin? things and discovers that they are true. A pretty girl worked on a Los An geles "lot" for ten dollars a day as an extra woman. A studio needed a wo man to do a particular bit, and found for each -seat, the total would be the4that she filmed welL So it was decided impressive sum of $637,000,000. Such figures explain film prosperity. More people go to see motion-pictures than are interested in any other form of sport or amusement. Think of it! Baseball, tennis, gol f, catboating. all dwindle into insignificance when com pared to 6.000,000.000 paid admissions. No wonder that ten film theatres are being built for one of the other sort. and that they are usually handsomer and more commodious, rive hundred thousand persons are emploved direct ly or indirectly in the motion-picture industry, rifty thousand; work on the Western Coast in the production end alone. One million dollars is spent weekly in productions. But the totals of today are infantile compared to what the motion-picture met believe will be the sum tomorrow. A few years ago the film sought chiefly to register motion. 'Then it responded to the urge for magnifi cence. A gaping public became ac quainted with huge temples and pre historic cities of plaster. ; So great was the return from a gen uinely successful production when the foreign rentals Were included, thai the directors lost all caution. Money was expended in the most reckless fashion. One producer had canals' du? near New lone lor filming a Venetian scene, i Th; ! idea was an excellent one, and to make her a star. Her contract called for $150 weeklv for the first six months, rising to $500 at the end, of the second year. After the second picture she demanded $500 at once and $1,000 weekly at the year's end. A "type hired a taxicab to hurry him to the lot on which a picture was being - - " . :.j s a s i m "shbt," Ordinarily r-pes ride on street t cars, for the best of them are rarely paid more than fifteen dollars a day. The United States senatorial type can bo had in Quantities at ten dollars for the day's work. But this type was I fSs late and feared to lose tns job. A rf ' ' tt2V ra w iinir -n im trmr wnmw mm b r i iip iiimii . -hj- c a . a a . j t "You're just the type I want!" he shouted. Tome witn met EventuallT the chauffeur consented to run his cab back to the garage and walk on in a scene as a type of some thing or other, lie was not a bit flus tered about it. It had been carefully explained to him that he need neither. think nor act The director does all that for the movie people. He tells each when to enter, what to do, how to do it and where. In order that the characters should not forget his in structions he repeats them through a megaphone daring the progress of a scene. The chauffeur filmed well There fore he is now being paid $400 weekly, though his heart is said to be with his taxicab. A bartender made a few dol lars one day shaking up cocktails be fore the camera. His features came out with cameo clearness, and he fol- FUms mast be historically cor rect 5,000 for this Vikincr ship used only- 3 minutes lowed the director's orders with the careful obedience of a good child. That made him a film actor. Now he can depend on an income of $15,000 a year. A freckle-faced kid appeared in one picture recently in a type part. He was supposed to be just a kid just hanging around. But he was self possessed, engaging, impudent, and had a really extraordinary equipment of freckles. His weekly salary is now about equivalent to the monthly sum paid his father as cashier of a small town bank. These salaries are paid because they are subject to the operation of the Herbert Corey after a long and popular career at a newspaper feature writer became one of the most brilliant correspondents of the war. Upon his return to America he looked around for a big story to write and found motion pictures, which overnight had changed from a show business into a great manufacturing industry. As a result of a long and careful investigation of the movies Mr. Corey dis covered that the men of whom the public rarely hears the directors were the men who make or mar the pictures; that the stars wnose names are on everybody's lips were mosffof them but puppets and that the directors pulled the strings. - And there being not more than ten high class directors in America, it throws a light upon why so many movies are mediocre. Among the best are Allan Dwan and D. W. Griffith. Dwan is of the new school; Griffith of the old. Dwan went t the studios with a University degree and a specialized train ing in literature. Griffith knocked about as a second rate actor drifted into the movies in their pioneer, days and mastered the art; as did Dwan. Both have produced stupendous successes. Today there is p race between them for mastery. Who will win? the university man cr the ex-actor? In studio-land Dwan is known as the king of "action" directors. Before he had his own producing company when the movie magnates wanted galloping stories produced, they sent for Dwan. He is the Richard Harding Davis, the Harold MacGrath, the George Barr McCutcheon, the J?ck London, of the screen. "Action!" bawled Dwan one day last spring when he was filming "Soldiers of Fortune," and six hundred charging horsemen thundered down a hill at him six hundred riders at $ia a day, $7,200 for one scene. In his investigation Herbert Corey found a score of such incidents where the "sky was the limit" to get jest one scene right. ? f'.,,. ...-, . , mJi-ommA lT " faction directors. Allan Dwanjdna cf action directors. or derma a batch or bandits Shot' w. camera. Would you die for 7 a day y inexorable law of supply and demand. One would think that the woods would be full of actors who can act r"r fectly well before a camera. But the effort of the performer is far from being purely mechanical a mere re action to megaihoned demands. If he is called upon to register grief or love or happiness, he mut register ex actly, or the screen knows him no more. Up to this time, net a great deal of attention has been paid to the rights of the author. It is true that large sums have been paid for the picture rights to well-known plays and stories. but the money was really paid for the advertising the properties had received. The picture people for the most part had a singular indifference to the feel ings of an author. Time after time an author parted with the picture rights in all good humor, only to learn that an autocratic director dif fered with him as to the manner in which the stry should be treated. All directors believe firmlv in the' virtues of a happy ending. It is thought to have a most benevolent effect upon the box-office. As one result pf the managerial at titude, some authors preferred to fore go the money to V gained by selling screen riehts. Others sold the rights and carefnllv avoided seemnr the pic tured results. They knew their uly heroine in a story in which the whole point was that the heroine was ugly would swish through in a Paquin gown, and languidly lift a perfect arra against a background of velvet to call attention to a claisic profile. Alo. authors were not always treated with loving care by the producers. There is an historic instance of one author who wound up $40,000 out of pocket. He .does not know precisely how. r.ut the combination of big stars was followed by a combination of little stars, and so producers were set a tjiinking. It was ob.ious that authors could not combine of themselves first because authrr conkl neer agree, and secondly because there is no form of organization ccpious enough to take in.rll who write for the pictures. But producers might combine groups of authors. That has been done. The important fact underlying this grou4nj of authors is that the pro ducers have come to the ' conclusion that the story is as important, almost, as the -star. In this, they are follow ing the example of the legitimate sage. Not many years ago emphasis was placed upon the name of the star in theatrical advertiir.g. Today far more is placed unn the excellence of the story. One of the mwt successful of the picture majmae holds that the star is becoming increasingly unim "No. more the genial popping of this "champagne cork." ,-' "Just so. But wa can still have the melodious detonation of (he ex ploding, automobile tire.--Cleveland Leader. a, "MY HONOLULU GIRL" r 1 ' - - - - - - .---.--t 1 I 118 "- a I.- - 1 ft &m i . . ,.,. ' Ni in J 'i ' " . . . . J lull - , . . MM , lV ' - - I I III the bettermen of the. organization i during the coming year adopted. Following the business meeting a banquet was held at the Gail hotel at which the city council and several business men were invited. After the dinner the assembly was favored with addresses by members of the council and the department. Later in the evening the depart ment and the guests enjoyed the ho? pitality of J. C. I glow, manager of the Majestic theatre, at a show given in their honor. SMILING BILL PARSONS In THEY'RE OFF A' Fun Trip Through Coney Island NOW SHOWING You May Find It In Stocking Cincinnati authority says your troublesome corns just loosen and fall off THRIFT PROGRAM IS WORKED OUT Committees Plan Details of Various Days of Week of Jan. 17 to 24 Some of the Genuine Native .Hawaiian with the Musieal Corned v. My Honolulu Oirl," (Jraml Opera House, Monday, January I'Zt YE LIBERTY When Norman Friedenwald con ceived the idea of the great jnusical comedy success, "My Honolulu Girl," "which comes to the Grand Opera bouse. Monday, January 12. he vowed he would have the pretti est, most nimble and graceful and the "peppiest" chorus in the-United States, and Bt age experts concede that he has won. The chorus with "My Honolulu Girl" is known from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico and some of them are drawing salaries equal to those paid stars several ALWAYS COOD MOST i 1 1 ii i Vauc38v511B Nl". , -..-:-.: '.:'--: lit 'i?.:-:.t TIMES GREAT T0DAY-i-T0M0RR0W jj V. THEATO BIG NEW SHOW SUNDAY Details for fourf of the featured days of thrift week which is to be held in Salem January 17 to 24, were worked out at meetings of four com mittees in the Commercial club rooms yesterday. The plans are practically complete for Bank day. January 17; Own Your Own Home day. January 20; Home Industry day January 22. and Pay Your Bills day January 24. The directors of the Business mens leaeue who comoose the Pay Your I Bills day committee are headed by WilliamVGahlsdorf as chairman. Jack Walker is chairman of the home In dustries day committee, S. B. Elliott of the bank day committee and John H. Scott of the committee on Own Your Own Home day the silent hours of the night, the penalty of death is beinc carried into effect in several dark novks in this city. The manner In which Mr. Rat and "The Pupil." by Welgle. under tho direction of Mrs. M. C. Flndley. Har old Humbert will teach "Youth and the Cliurch School" from his manu script, now beinr published. "Ad- others of his ilk will be sent Into the j ministration of the Sunday School irom "organization and Administra tion, of the Church School.' by Wal ter S. Athern. will be taught by John W. Todd. Sore corns, bard corns, soft corns or corns between the toes just loosen in their sockets and fall off the next day if you will apply directly upon the corn a few drops of a drug called freezone, says a Cincinnati authority. of tne chairmen of the several com you merely put a drop or two ormlttees and jamM Klvln. T. E. Mc thls freezone on the tender, touchy lrmiiP nd J F. Hutchason. The great beyond Is strictly humane. In truth, the deed Is done by self elec trocution. The fatal device Is the tunning In vention of a Salem man. His nam is W. A. Colgar. The machine I simple yet efficient. 4 A wire attached to the electric light wire, carries the current to a metal plate, located beside a ' gar bage barrel or hidden at any other point frequented by rodents. When Mr. Rat or Mr. Moure steps onto this mysterious metallic ma chine be receives an electric shock that finishes him instantly. One of the"ke patent devices sent' nine rat to their death In one night In a lo cal business room. Mr. Colgar says that his machine will electrocute more riles in a min ute than can be disposed of In any other way. When the unsanitary riy's besmirched feet touch the elec trically charged plate he receives the full force of the current. Death fol lows with out the twitch of a muscle'. Mr. coigar is preparing to ooen a A starts Sunday IN "THE MAN BENEATH" lue Bmr.-i tumiuH.n, "'" factory In thl city to supvly the ac tive demand for his ingenious rodent seasons ago. These glrla are pos sessed of remarkable voices and they have been schooled In danclnz by Signor Arcallt. an Italian dancer of note. In the interpolation of Hawai ian music, the native dances have been taught by "Babe" Lopez, who heads the Hawaiian dancers Mr Friedenwald recently imported. The scenes in "My Honolulu Girl" are laid in Honolulu and in Hilo- where the famous volcano KU auea is ever rumbling, ready to belch forth death-dealing lava and rushing fire. In order that the scenic vest ure be absolutely correct, Mr. Fried enwald sent artists to the islands to study' the riowers. the foliage, the valleys, the natives and the moun tains. It was a case of going after local color and the various scenes presented in the show clearlv dem onstrate the sagacity of the producer .Yon Can't Foo the Motheis. No one remedy would stand as a ead for so many years as has Foley's Hon ey and Tar If it could not be depend ed upotf to relieve coughs, colds and croup. It heals and soothes, eases hoarseness, stops that coughing that strains the whole bodv and break colds and coughs. Children like it. Contains no opiates. J. C. Perry. corn today and Instantly, the corn stops hurting, then tomorrow some time you may find the old tortuous pest somewhere In your stocking. naving iauen on entirety wunoui a particle of soreness, pain or irrita tion. The skin surrounding will be as healthy, pink and smooth as the . palm of your hand . A quarter ounce of freezone is suf ficient to rid one's feet of every corn and callus, and any druggist wifl charge but a few cents for it. It is ! a compound made of ether. , thrift program is being fostered by the Y.M.C.A. throughout the United States. Mrs. Nancy Amanda Norton, ,86, Passes Away at Turner MICE WILL DIE BY ELECTRICITY Salem Man Has Ingenious De vice to Eliminate House hold Pests Mrs. Nancv Amanda N.jilrn died! Ssaiem is to become a rat.ess. yesterday afternoon at he home o'jmouseless and flyless city. her daughter. Mrs. Anna M. Husbey Sentence of death has been passed electrocutor. Orders from other cit ies have already been received. SUNDAY SCHOOL WORK TO STARTii YE LIBERTY Enrollment Cards Are Distrib- H uted for Training Classes in Salem Enrollment of students who are to take the course of 10 week in Sun day school training at the Salem pub lic library beginning January 19. has begun. Cards carrying lists of at Turner. The body is at the Kig-n all the sleek, prowling rodents. ' the Ftudies that will be taken up aee Clyde Gibbs Elected Head of Dallas Fire Department DALLAS. Or.. Jan. 8. (Special to The Statesman The Dallas fire de partment at Us annual meeting Tues day night elected the following offi cers to Berve for the ensuing year: President, Clyde tijbbs; secretary. uscar tins; treasurer. Fred B. West. don company and will be em Sun-1 The house fly. that contamlnator or day to Woodlands. Calif., for burial ; human food, must also suffer the the was 86 years old n1 la surived i same penalty. From this unwritten by two daughters, Mrs. Husbey. -n't j order there is no appeal. Mrs. F. A. Campbell of Herkeley-! The grim work will be done by Calif. electrocution. In fact, even now In PURLOINING OF PANTS TROVES CHILLY ERROR OWNER MAKES WEARER REMOVE STOLEN GARMENT GRAND OPERA HOUSE MONDAY JANUARY y 12 J Supremely Satisfying WASHINGTON SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE INVOLVED A certain Washington junior high school student it's a boy of course wished most ardently Thursday that he was like the fortunate Brian O'Lynn of the old song who when "he had no pants for to wear, he got a sheep skin and he made him a pair." A week ago a fellow student was in the Y.M.C.A. gymnasium clad In B I Many important -matters relative to J his athletic "clothing and had left his i the work of the department were tak- other clothes, a part of which was a icu ?v uu ujscussea ana pians xoripalr o I army breeches, In the dress- ing room. He came out of the gym and the breeches were gone. He "laid for the guy who got them." Thursday be found him In the yard of the Washington junior high school Without further ado the real own er of the breeches compelled the wearer of them to hand them over. After proper persuasion the wearer did so and was left by the owner to find haven, or at least another pair of pants, as best he might. And It was a cold day, too. -,'. . ' being distributed in the schools and at other places ali over the county. Persons who wish to take the course or to learn more about it may do so by conferring with Mrs. F. A. Elliott. i 470 North Church street, or by tele-j phoning her. Her number if 1505. One change that has been made is, inn Mrs. 3i. c Kind ley will take the work tuat formerly was taken by W. D. Walters. Studies will take place every Monday night over e. period of 10 weeks. The programs will be dif ferent each time, and at the first assemble T. E. McCroskey, manager of the Salem Commercial cinb. will demonstrate "chalk talk." The schedule as arranged follows: tn the first period, from 7:30 to 8:15 p. m. "Teaching the Value of the Old Testament." by Harold Hum bert will be taught by Mr. Humbert. "The Life of Christ." by Barclay, will be taught by Mrs. C. A. Parks and "The Principles of , Teaching," will be taught from "Learning and reachlng."Snyder and White, by Professor J. T. Matthews. . The second neriod 8t1S tn n m.. wiil be devoted to stndv of "The I .Religion Nurture ot Children," fromC few ilrnlYiU Mr Onsmn '1: (ftim 0 - PRICES $1.30 to sOe risM tax Hftm on Kale Satur day at Opera House Drag Store 3
