At Georgia and Girard Streets, Los Angeles, a ten-minute ride from the
center of the city, on a two-and-a-quarter-acre plot adjoining some
car barns, the carpenters were building our grand studio. An open air
studio--no artificial lighting--we could get all the light effects we
desired from the sun--and could begin to work as early as 8:30 and
continue until late in the afternoon. We had not yet reached the stage
where we felt that Mr. Electric Lamp could compete with the sun.
How joyful we were when we first beheld the new studio! The stage was
of nice smooth boards and seemed almost big enough for two companies
to work at the same time. The muslin light diffusers were operated on
an overhead trolley system. There was even a telephone on the stage.
The studio was then indeed the last word in modern equipment.
An elongated one-story building contained the office, projection room,
rehearsal room, for nights and rainy days, and two large dressing-rooms
for the men. In order to save wear and tear on the women’s clothes,
they were given the two dressing-rooms in the rear of the building
which opened directly onto the stage.
To tell the world how secure our position--how prosperous
financially--at the street entrance to our studio there now waited
through the day one, and often two big, black seven-passenger touring
cars--rented by the month, at six hundred dollars per. Now between sets
in the studio we could dash out in the car and grab an exterior.
In our dressing-rooms we had make-up tables, mirrors, lockers, and
running water. And oil stoves to keep us warm. For in the early
mornings, before the sun had reached our room, it was a shivery place.
Our cold cream and grease paints would be quite as stiff as our fingers.
So now, with the new studio, a larger company, and our knowledge of the
surrounding country, there was nothing to it but that we must get right
on the job and do better and bigger pictures.
* * * * *
With the one exception already noted we had neglected the sea the year
before, and as yet we had attempted nothing important that had to do
with “Ol’ davil Sea,” as Eugene O’Neil calls it. The sea was trickier
than the mountains, and more expensive if one needed boats and things.
But this year we would go to it right, with a massive production of
Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden”--a second production of the poem that had
written history for us in our screen beginnings.
The first time we had taken most of it in the studio, with only one
or two simple shots of the sea. Now we would do something g-r-a-n-d.
“Enoch Arden” was such good movie stuff, and Mr. Griffith was wondering
how he could get it all into one thousand feet of film.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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