Volume I: Narrative History

Chapter 2 (1909 Into the Film Industry): Additional Reminiscences

In 1917, Edwin Thanhouser, by then the producer of hundreds of films, reminisced about the beginnings of his motion picture endeavor. Note

In November of 1909 the walls of our first New Rochelle studio were up and waiting for the glass for the skylight. We experienced a long delay in the delivery of this glass, just as we had a long delay in obtaining anything connected with building a studio. Everything had to be made. There were no stocks of cameras, perforators, printers or lamps available, or any of the necessities of moving picture making. Our failure to get glass to cover our roof did not deter us, however, from taking pictures. Winter was coming on early, but our enthusiasm was not to be chilled. Though we had a roofless winter studio, we decided to start our picture career. A big stove, with a few screen lean-tos for dressing rooms, were to make it possible. It was necessary each morning to shovel the snow off of our stage before beginning to work.

I remember well Christmas Day of that year when the studio was all buried in snow. The happy idea occurred to me to use the snow by changing the location of our story to "In Siberia." It wasn't long before our stove and the sun melted our scenery completely and another change in script was necessary. The scene shifted suddenly to "Later - A Warmer Clime."

Our company was exceptional, for we had an established scenario department to start in with. This was a novelty in that the other Independent companies depended upon the morning's mail and the immediate inspiration of the director for a scenario. I remember asking Mr. [Lloyd] Lonergan to write me a moving picture scenario after I had outlined to him what my ideas were and what the requirements should be. The result was a script called The Mad Hermit. There were plots and counterplots enough in this one-reel subject to make up any 12-reel melodrama of today. It started out with a stunt - a runaway horse pulling a buggy containing a man, a woman and a baby. As the horse galloped madly by, the mother saw a white-haired, long-bearded hermit cross the road. It was quite natural for the mother to throw her child in the hermit's arms to save its life.

Of course, we used a fake baby. We rehearsed the scene so diligently that a dummy was all worn out by the time it was ready, and when the scene was finally taken and the supposed child was thrown from the carriage the sawdust broke loose and turned into a veritable snowstorm effect. At any rate, it looked like a snowstorm on the screen, and we changed the title to correspond.... Dickens' David Copperfield in three reels followed not long after, and this had to be put out one reel at a time, so that it took three weeks to get out the three-reel subject. Note

Early in the moving picture business I made a statement that the time was coming when one moving picture would provide a whole evening's entertainment. I was ridiculed for this, and that was only seven or eight years ago. The Vicar of Wakefield was one of our subjects produced in the early days in one reel. We are now about to market this same subject in eight reels, featuring Frederick Warde. The eight-reel subject just completed marks the most ambitious production the Thanhouser Film Corporation has thus far attempted. Note

I suppose every producer who entered the film business had certain ideals as to the needs of the art. My pet ideas were always that we must have good actors, and that there should be some repose in the characterizations instead of the proverbial jumpy, quick action. The idea in the early days was that motion pictures should have as much motion as possible - never mind the acting.

In one of our early productions, Pocahontas by name, Note we tried to dissolve for the first time, and although it jumped and shook and shivered, we received telegrams from all over the country and columns of praise. It was commented upon everywhere....

One of our early pictures, a comedy, had in its principal feminine role a leading woman with a real "erratic temperament." She seemed hopeless, such were her eccentricities of temper. In one scene we employed a live monkey. When this temperamental leading woman attempted to pick up the monkey it bit her in the finger, and from that moment she was a changed being, a sweet-tempered, amiable and almost angelic actress.

Most of the early manufacturers will remember the universal practice of placing the company's trademark on every scene, whether exterior or interior, that they made. It was with pride that we put a big "T. Co." in a king's palace, on Juliet's tomb, in a slum scene or in a fashionable drawing room, or on our exteriors. Location never embarrassed us. We, together with other manufacturers, put the largest sized trademark we dared in the most conspicuous place in every set.

We put Uncle Tom's Cabin on one reel and offered it at the same time that a rival manufacturer was putting it out in two. I remember a bit shamefacedly that I advertised: "You can see the whole thing in one reel - why buy two?" Note

It was not unnatural that exchange men in the early days were totally mistrustful of the ability of a would-be manufacturer to make pictures. "You say you can and are going to, but show us," was the invariable answer to your prospectus of what you intended to do as a manufacturer. They would buy one picture and at the same time give an almost certain opinion that this was the last good picture we could make. There was no stability in the business, and many of us would not look more than 30 days ahead for the permanency of our business life.