Fritz Wagner — A General for a Day (1914) 🇺🇸

Fritz Wagner, Pathé cameraman in Mexico, commands President Huerta’s army for the Weekly.

Huerta’s army reached New York, Sunday, March 22 — 3,000 feet of it, measured for Pathé’s Weekly — and with it came a tale of how Fritz Wagner, the man who turned the camera crank, became for the space of a day “General” Wagner, Commander-in-chief of the Federal forces in Mexico City. Also came a cablegram to Pathé from the perspiring Fritz, reading as follows: —

“Still in hospital with over-cranked arm. Better send somebody else.”

With the film came a letter explaining Fritz’s disability — that rarest of ills to which only motion picture camera men are heir, partial paralysis of the right wing due to an overdose of turning the camera crank.

Before Wagner joined the staff of motion picture camera men on Pathé’s Weekly, he had never commanded an army, nor issued orders to anyone except the waiters in the beer gardens back in Berlin. But Fritz hankered for adventure, and adventure suited to his liking seemed to lie across the seas. So he loaded his rapid-fire camera, bought a villainous-looking automatic revolver, and sailed for New York and eventually for Mexico, with orders from Pathé’s Weekly to take Huerta and his army, dead or alive — preferably half shot.

Armed with formidable letters of introduction to President  Huerta, and reinforced by the camera and the gun, Fritz invaded Mexico City. He found Huerta, who invited him into his private office and placed Mexico at his disposal.

“Back in the United States the people say you are going to lose your job, Herr Werther,” began Fritz, nervously fingering this automatic in his pocket.

“They don’t think you have got any army already.”

Huerta snorted — then smiled. “I have thousands men — good men, ah! such brave fellows — here in Mexico City, Senor Wagner.” he said. “Villa, what has he? Bah! Robbers, yes?”

“They say your army is a — a load of the junk, a piece of cheese. Herr Werther. They say —"

But Huerta turned away and pressed a button on his desk.

“Let me misunderstand you right, Herr Werther,” Fritz exclaimed hastily, one eye on the button the other on the door.

“Maybe, yes, you have 20,000 good men, but—” and he shrugged his shoulders.

“You wish to see them for Pathé. Senor Wagner and you shall.” replied Huerta. “You shall take the moving photo of them, yes? And ‘show them to that Senor Wilson at Washington! Ah!” Then, to the attendant who answered his ring on the buzzer: “Get out the army. Parade it past the door. And you, Senor Wagner, shall make the moving photos as it passes.”

So the army came out and paraded past the palace — foot-soldiers, horse-soldiers, artillery and even the fire department, a long line of many marching troops; paraded for an hour past the palace door with Fritz standing in the doorway and Huerta at his elbow. In ten minutes Fritz was perspiring. He had twice as much as he could use and the parade had hardly started. So he stopped turning, mopped his forehead and asked for a glass of beer.

“Later, my dear Senor Wagner,” replied Huerta. “but now you must make those moving photos move; so please turn the machine.”

Fritz turned again — miles and miles of the army marched past — Fritz’s arm smarted and burned and flamed. Once he stopped again and looked back at his smiling host. A little knot of scowling guards, each with a modern rifle in his hands, had gathered behind him in the doorway. Fritz fairly snapped at the camera and made it spin.

After a while the last soldier filed past, the march ended and Fritz fell into a chair. “Some army. Herr Werther,” he gasped and then, with the light of a new-born thought in his eye, “but can they fight?”

“Oh, yes, Senor Wagner; but you shall see. To you, Senor Wagner. I give my army for the rest of the day. without siesta. You shall make it do as you choose for the little moving photos. For you, it shoots, it charges, it lies down, it plays dead, yes? But you must keep it busy, Senor Wagner, and send back to that Senor Wilson those moving photos. For him I make you General Wagner today.”

So Fritz was escorted by the scowling guards with the ugly rifles to the city line and there found awaiting him the Huerta army.

“It is too much, already,” gasped Fritz. “Here you” — addressing a dignified general on horseback — “make ‘em go way.”

Finally Fritz sent the army home — except a regiment each of cavalry and infantry. With his right arm swollen and aching, he would have sent these home, too, but the guard would have none of it.

Through the short, parched grass all afternoon those regiments marched and countermarched before the camera. They charged and retreated, dismounted and mounted again, forded a stream and climbed the hills, played dead and stalked an invisible foe — maneuvred as never before, till the Pathé cameraman’s arm was twice its natural size and his noble heart was breaking all the speed laws in the Republic.

Then came night and General Wagner became once more plain Herr Wagner. But the lust for adventure that had burned under his vest was satisfied. The nurses say he turned the crank all night. However that may be, a Huerta emissary took his film to Vera Cruz and saw it safely aboard a vessel while the nurses tied cooling bandages about Fritz’s oversped arm.

Collection: Moving Picture World, May 1914

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see also Claire Whitney (1914)