Ham’s breakfast disposed of, we would rush to the ferry, seek our nook
in the boat, and enjoy a short laze before reaching the Jersey side.
At one of the little inns along the Hudson we rented a couple of rooms
where we made up and dressed. Soon would appear old man Brown and his
son, each driving a two-seated buggy. And according to what scenes
we were slated for, we would be told to pile in, and off we would be
driven to “location.”
“Old Man Brown” was a garrulous, good-natured Irishman who regaled us
with tales of prominent persons who, in his younger days, had been his
patrons. How proud he was to tell of Lillian Russell’s weekly visit to
her daughter Dorothy who was attending a convent school up the Hudson!
Speaking of “Old Man Brown” brings to mind “Hughie.” Hughie’s job was
to drive the express wagon which transported costumes, properties,
cameras, and tripods. In the studio, on the night preceding a day in
the country, each actor packed his costume and make-up box and got
it ready for Hughie. For sometimes in the early morning darkness of
4 A. M. Hughie would have to whip up his horses in front of 11 East
Fourteenth Street so as to be on the spot in Jersey when the actors
arrived via their speedier locomotion.
Arrived on location, Johnny Mahr and Bobbie Harron would climb the
wagon, get out the costumes, and bring them to the actor. And if your
particular bundle did not arrive in double-quick time and you were in
the first or second scene, out you dashed and did a mad scramble on
to the wagon where you frantically searched. Suppose it had been left
behind!
Hughie had a tough time of it trucking by two horsepower when winter
came along. So I was very happy some few years later, when calling on
Mr. Hugh Ford at the Famous Players’ old studio in West Fifty-sixth
Street, N. Y., now torn down, to find Hughie there with a comfortable
job “on the door.”
* * * * *
David Griffith was always overly fastidious about “location.” His
feeling for charming landscapes and his use of them in the movies was
a significant factor in the success of his early pictures. So we had
a “location” woman, Gene Gauntier, who dug up “locations” and wrote
scenarios for the princely wage of twenty-five dollars weekly. Miss
Gauntier will be eternally remembered as the discoverer of Shadyside.
Shades of Shadyside! with never a tree, a spot of green grass, or a
clinging vine; only sand, rocks, and quarries from which the baked heat
oozed unmercifully.
Miss Gauntier’s aptitude along the location line, however, did
not satisfy her soaring ambition, so she left Biograph for Kalem.
Under Sidney Olcott’s direction, she played _Mary_ in his important
production “From the Manger to the Cross,” and was the heroine of some
charming Irish stories he produced in Ireland.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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