Del Lord is Satire Shark (1923) 🇺🇸

Casting an eye over the field of comedy directors, it is quite noticeable that for the most part, they are all young men and the majority of them under thirty years of age. Also, it seems rather a coincidence that many of them have jumped right over the apprentice stage and landed directly into the director’s chair.

Of this number of present-day directors of popular comedy pictures, men who have never served as assistant directors or cameramen, we point to Del Lord, under contract with the greatest producer of them all, Mack Sennett

Del Lord is a product of Canada, claiming Hamilton, Ont., as his natal city. He is one of those who when very young took Horace Greely’s advice 10 young men and journeyed westward, finally landing in Los Angeles back in 1914, when moving pictures were taking the city by storm.

Del’s first job was as stunt man and comedy-cop, for the Comedy King. Being a daring individual, it fell to his lot to be chauffeur for the Sennett comedy cops, for it needed a man actor with nerves of steel to guide that now well-known police patrol.

Del continued with the Sennett comedies for a couple of years, before going with the William Fox Company. From a slap-stick comedian he jumped to a full-fledged director with the latter, for whom he personally wrote and directed about twenty successful two-reelers. After this engagement, followed a contract with the Educational Pictures, for which concern he directed about fifteen fun films.

About six months ago, Del Lord returned to the scene of his first moving picture activities, the Mack Sennett Studios, where he has successfully directed five comedy specials, two with Ben Turpin as his star, and three with the all-star troupe.

A good line on the type of humor Del Lord injects into his pictures can be had by witnessing such stories as “The Dare Devil,” and “Ten Dollars or Ten Days,” with Ben Turpin, or “Down to the Sea in Shoes,” and “One Cylinder Love,” both of which are portrayed by the all-star Sennett companies.

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Players, directors, assistant directors, cameramen and property men are in a state of chronic breathlessness at the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City. Visitors from other studios watch with amazement and unbelief as members of the various Roach producing units go by on the run. Rival producers declare it’s just another unnatural phenomenon of the screen.

The feverish activity started a few weeks ago when Hal Roach announced a bonus plan by which the director, assistant director, cameraman and property man divide a substantial cash sum on every picture kept within certain financial limits. The stars don’t participate but they are hustled from one scene into another by enthusiastic production staffs. The result, according to Mr. Roach, is that his Pathé-comedies are being made quicker, better and cheaper, with mutual advantages to all concerned, and that more money will be available for motion picture production under this system.

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It is quite the ordinary thing for visitors at motion picture studios to stand around and admire the artists and their costumes.

But when the actors stand around and admire the visitors and envy their professions and covet their uniforms it is quite out of the ordinary.

That’s what occurred recently at the Hollywood studios when Commander William Winton Galbraith, executive officer of the U. S. S. Maryland and assistant naval intelligence director, arrived at the studio in company with Lieut. Col. John Colt Beaumont of the U. S. Marine Corps.

The distinguished officers were the guests of the J. K. McDonald company which is producing “Misunderstood,” for First National distribution.

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Big things are being predicted for George Hackathorne by those who have seen his superb portrayals in “Human Wreckage” and Merry-Go-Round. At the present time he is playing one of the principal roles in “The Turmoil” which Hobart Henley is directing at Universal.

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Madge Tyrone, New York newspaperwoman, is writing continuity for “Snake Bite,” a recent popular novel. Edwin Carewe, now en route for Algiers to film “A Son of the Sahara,” is to produce it on his return.

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James Morrison is en route home to Hollywood after a two weeks visit with relatives and friends of Mattoon, Ill.

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After fifteen weeks of continuous work, Helene Chadwick is to take a few weeks’ vacation before starting her next production for Goldwyn.

Miss Chadwick has just completed her leading role in “Why Men Leave Home,” for Louis B. Mayer, which followed her characterization of the feminine lead in “Law Against Law,” a Rupert Hughes picture for Goldwyn.

During the past three months, Miss Chadwick has had but five days off and has worked fifteen hours a day on a number of occasions. She will spend her vacation with her mother in Northern California.

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Apfel Writing of Cinema

Because he is so often requested to relate to his non-professional friends the history and mechanics of the motion picture industry, Oscar Apfel, one of the real pioneer directors of the art — or business — has in mind the writing of a little booklet on this subject which he will distribute when published as a Christmas gift.

The booklet will be bound in limp leather binding and the name of the individual to whom it is given will be tooled on the cover.

Apfel is now compiling data for the gift book which will tell of the inception and progress of the cinema in detail. It will be profusely illustrated with photographs of the various Hollywood studios of tennbsp;years ago and today and with portrait studies of prominent actors, actresses and directors of both periods.

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The boat built by the “Our Gang” kids of the Hal Roach Studios for their new pirate picture was formally christened and launched at Wilmington, with little Mary Kornman, their pirate queen, doing the christening with a bottle of catsup. The boat glided nicely down the ways into the Pacific and sank so fast that the camera hardly had time to catch the action. That was all in the story Mark Goldaine is directing, but a big wave from the wake of a passing vessel swept the camera off its raft, and sent it to join the pirate ship. This wasn’t in the story. A professional diver salvaged the camera which is again functioning as usual.

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Lillian Rich has earned the title of “The busiest leading lady in Hollywood.”

After completing the leading feminine role in Strongheart’s latest film, “The Love Master,” she commenced with Jack Hoxie in “Wyoming.”

With but one day of rest, she was again put to work in the current Hoxie production, “Hard Rock,” which is now being made at Universal.

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John H. Richardson recently completed the heavy role in Laurence Trimble’s forthcoming Strongheart feature entitled “The Love Master.”

Collection: Camera! Magazine, October 1923 (Camera! News Section)