William Selig — Col. Seligs Stories of Movie Life (1923) 🇺🇸
You can't make motion pictures for a quarter of a century without accumulating a store of human interest experiences that make a reporter or a by-the-day seamstress look like an Alice-Sit-By-the-Fire. Colonel Selig has been turning out photoplays since the early feudal period of 1896, and his anecdotes are as good as his pictures.
Reminiscences of any kind are not unlike boarding house hash.
You remember, of course, the literary boarder who fixed his eyes upon the hash and asked his neighbor to please pass the Review of Reviews.
But even hash, well spiced, is palatable. And my quarter of a century in the fascinating game of motion pictures has been highly seasoned with ludicrous — and tragic — experience.
I am going to tell you most about the humorous incidents, however, for time has dulled a bit the poignancy of my little tragedies, and I find the laughable experiences stand out most in my memory.
Made His Own Camera
Such a time as we had, back in '95, when we were struggling with our camera and projection machines! The camera that I first made... the forerunner of the machine now in use at our Los Angeles studio, by the way... was worked out under the stairway of my home in Chicago. It was inspired by Edison's little kinetoscope, of course.
We had dreadful times with our film, too. The film had to be perforated by hand in those days, and it had a hideous habit of shrinking, so that the perforations would not fit the projection machine. We tried all sorts of experiments, including treating it before it was used in the camera or perforated, on the same principle that cloth is sometimes shrunk before being made up.
However, all that is technical and not highly interesting to the layman.
The first real picture I ever made was taken out in front of my house. The next one was "shot" over in the Chicago stock-yards. I sold both of them and actually made money on them, so I joyously gave up my previous occupation, which was, among other things, managing a minstrel show, and went into the business of making pictures in earnest.
Famous Names in Early Casts
On April 1, 1896, we opened up the Selig studio in Chicago at 43 Peck Court. In that studio some of the most important pioneering work in motion pictures was done, and some of the famous actors and actresses today got their start on my lot.
Kathlyn Williams, Harold Lockwood, Eugenie Besserer, Fred Huntley and a score or more of others, destined to become famous, appeared in our early pictures. We had the original all-star casts, too.
For instance, in "The Coming of Columbus," one of our most ambitious early efforts, Myrtle Stedman, Kathlyn Williams and Harold Lockwood had important parts. For making this picture I received a silver medal, from the Pope, an honor which I cherish as one of my pleasantest memories.
Tom Mix was another star of today who started his screen career with us. Selig pictures first made his rough-riding, wild-west films popular. The first horse Tom ever rode in pictures is still at our studio zoo, pensioned after faithful service, living out his last days peacefully in pleasant pastures. Tom loved that horse.
Bill Farnum in The Spoilers
Big Bill Farnum was a great favorite around the studio in the old days. Of course you remember "The Spoilers." It was the first really big motion picture, and Bill scored an enormous hit in it. From then on, for a good many years, Bill enjoyed an enormous vogue. His beautiful physique and great bulk fascinated the flappers somewhat as Valentino's polished manners do today. And just as the producers play up Valentino's beautiful manners, so did we play up Farnum's strength, giving him strong-man, red-blooded roles, until a newspaper bard, J. P. McEvoy, immortalized Bill's prowess in verse, a bit of which I will give here:
Camera Was Cruel to Kathlyn Williams
Kathhlyn Williams was one of our most charming leading ladies. The photographs reproduced here do not do her beauty justice. The art of make-up in those days was distinctly not so good, and she seems older then than she does now. She came to us from a successful stage career. Miss Williams was featured in the first serial, The Adventures of Kathlyn," which made an enormous success, and precipitated a deluge of serial pictures.
Bessie Eyton, now leading lady with the Morosco stock company in Los Angeles, had important roles in many of our early pictures. Bessie was at one time the wife of Charles Eyton, now general manager of Famous Players-Lasky corporation, and husband of Kathlyn Williams.
I always think of Wallace Reid as the nice kid who used to play around our lot, His father, Hal Reid, used to write scenarios for us (we'd call them continuities now), and Wally, fascinated as all youngsters are by a studio, was always under foot. We used to give him small bits and atmosphere to do. He did them well, too. He was such a handsome youngster.
We were a training school for directors as well as stars, in the old days. Al Green, now a Avell-known wielder of a directorial megaphone, played extra parts with us.
Remember Tom Santschi, he of the lovely curling pompadour? He was one of our stand-bys when we needed a sterling actor, a handsome face as well. Back in 1907, Mabel Taliaferro was one of our players, too.
No Huge Salaries Then
I am often asked if we had as much temperament in our actors in the old days as we do now. Well, an actor is an actor always, and something has to be conceded to genius, but it is my personal opinion that the morale of pictures was better in the old days.
There wasn't so much money lying around loose, for one thing. A salary of $100 a week was a mighty large and handsome wage, and only a few featured players got it. William Farnum got more than that for The Spoilers; we paid him not by the week, however, but with a lump sum for the whole picture.
Dobbin's Scaffolding
There have been a good many chuckles during my years of picture-making. I remember one picture for which we needed a horse, a very emaciated, bony horse. We found one, the daddy of all bony equines. A visitor to the studio took one look at old Dobbin and asked his handler, "Gettin' in a new horse?"
"Aw, wottcher givin' us?" asked the stable-boy sensitively.
"I see you've got the frame-work up already," said the visitor.
This tale has gone the rounds so often that its origin in our studio has probably been forgotten.
Why Directors Go Wrong
Just to show the unexpected problems that pop up in a studio, I want to tell about an impasse that occurred some time ago in another studio, not mine. The casting director was told to secure five priests and forty choir-boys for an elaborate cathedral scene. I believe a royal wedding was to be filmed. For the sake of realism he was told he must get the real thing; no "hams" dressed up in vestments at $7.50 a day would do.
Well, the priests and choir-boys were persuaded to assist. The set, a beautiful thing, was ready, the actors were on the set and everything was ready to shoot, when it was discovered that the. choir-boys weren't all the same brand. Twenty of them had been secured from an Episcopal church and twenty from a Roman Catholic church. The Episcopal songsters refused to sing the Catholic chants and the Catholic boys refused to sing the Episcopal chants. I believe the director flipped a coin and the Episcopal boys lost, so they were marched off the set and the scene was "shot" with a half-portion choir, triumphantly warbling their own beloved chants.
One of the most difficult things we pioneers in pictures had to do was to educate the public into taking their films in other than tabloid doses. The first pictures were only about 25 feet long. When we lengthened them to 50 and finally to 100 the exhibitors protested. People get tired of looking at them, they said.
Finally, we made a picture that was of tremendous length, 1000 feet! We sent a print to London and our salesman wrote back that he could sell twice as many 500-foot films as he could 1000-footers.
"Sell the 1000-footers," I wrote back. "We get paid by the foot anyway."
Little by little the public got used to the longer films, until an audience ceased to be outraged when the theater manager put off on them a five-reel picture and a two-reel comedy, instead of the regular diet of six one-reel pictures.
How Mob Scenes Were Faked
It was pretty hard to get good actors to work in pictures in those days. The actors from the "legitimate" looked down on the films, and we didn't have the money to offer them the fabulous salaries that might have persuaded them to "prostitute their art." We got a good many vaudeville stars, however.
For mob scenes in the old days, when a big crowd was needed, it was a common practice to march the same men back and forth before the camera. Fifty men could thus impersonate a huge army, and the custodian of the studio bank-roll was saved much mental anguish.
The famous zoo that we maintain at our Lincoln Park establishment came about partly by accident. We needed a lot of animals for a picture, "The Adventures of Kathlyn," which, you remember, had its setting in the jungles of India. We had so much difficulty in renting animals that we finally purchased what we needed for the picture, and kept them right on the lot in case of future use. We made a good many animal pictures after that, and little by little we added new animals until now our zoo is quite a showplace in Southern California.
The Game Was Simpler Then
Making pictures was a much simpler business back in the early days. The sets were very simple and inexpensive, and the audience was willing to use a bit of imagination. In those days when it was so thrilling just to see a picture move, there were no blasé and keen-eyed critics waiting to howl a protest when a young lady in a tailored suit passed through a doorway and appeared on the other side in negligee.
Cutting a picture was simple, too. Film was too expensive to be used lavishly, and we "shot" no more than we expected to use. Nowadays, in a big film thousands of feet of costly film are thrown out, in the cutting room, often a hundred times as much film as was used in a whole motion picture in 1907 or 1908.
Being Funny Under Difficulties
We made a good many comedies, short-reelers, when pictures were just striking their stride. Just plain slap-stick, with some funny costumes, some good "gags" and of course, some kind of a chase. They sold well, too, for we never had the difficulty in making our audience giggle that Edwin Stevens that splendid actor, encountered in the person of a grouchy German vaudeville manager, when he made up mind to go into vaudeville.
The manager was very busy and was low in his mind.
"Vell," he growled, "vat you vant, hay?"
"I would like to go into vaudeville," said Stevens meekly.
“Vat do you do? Vat is your line?"
"I am a comedian. sir, I —"
"A komiker, was?" The manager scowled blackly. "Vel, make me laugh!"
Editor's Note: The second installment of Colonel Seller's fascinating reminiscence will be published in the May Screenland, out April 1. Watch for it.
Kathlyn Williams and the lamented Harold Lockwood, who fell a victim to the influenza epidemic in 1918. Lockwood and Miss Williams were featured together in many of the early Selig releases.
Bill Farnum's beautiful physique intrigued the flappers of a decade ago as Valentino's polished manners do now. Colonel Selig played up Farnum's great build by giving him red-blooded, he-man roles, like his greatest part in The Spoilers.
Herbert Rawlinson's dimples were first displayed to screen advantage in the early Selig pictures.
A dear old familiar scene from a photoplay of an ancient vintage. The hard-hearted landlord is foreclosing the mortgage on the old homestead, and Edythe Chapman and Charles Ogle are about to be turned out on the street leading over the hills to the poorhouse, doubtless.
Courtesy: Famous Players-Lasky
The art of make-up in the old days was very different from what it is today, so that an actress looked much older than she really was. Kathlyn Williams is in the act of handing back Harold Lockwood's ring.
An early photograph of Mary Pickford.
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Notes of the Players
New Movie Papa
Richard Barthelmess is the latest Papa on record in movie-land. His wife, known professionally as Mary Hay, became a mother in New York just a few days ago. The little one has a rocky road ahead in order to attain the heights of its parents, but then again look at the start it has on other kids. Time will tell.
"Riches to Rags"
Marion Davies goes from riches to rags when she jumps from When Knighthood Was in Flower to "Adam and Eva," her new picture. In the former, as Mary Tudor, her gowns were a gorgeous combination of gold and brocade while in Adam and Eva as "Eva," her wardrobe consists almost entirely of ginghams. All of which proves she can look nice in either.
Wanda Hawley Asks Divorce
Wanda Hawley has filed application for a divorce from M. Hawley, charging that he consumed so much of his time entertaining at the Hawley bungalow, that he could find no time to follow his chosen profession as automobile mechanic. This came as somewhat of a surprise as the Hawley's have been married for some time and were supposed, from all indications to be very happy. Also, with their occupations being so different, it was impossible for much friction there but things must of clashed elsewhere as the divorce has been filed and after all it is results that count.
Pickford-Miller to Co-Star
Jack Pickford is so tired of being 2,000 miles away from his wife, who is Marilyn Miller, star of Sally now running on the legit in Chicago, that he has asked the managerial boss of the Pickford family, his mother, to get a story co-starring him and wifie on the screen. "Ma" Pickford has promised to do her best and judging from past performances it ought to be a — well let's wait and see the picture.
Collection: Screenland Magazine, April 1923