My Two Years in the Movies

ELSIE FERGUSON

Progress of a Star From Biograph to Biography

THERE is something very strange about me. The more I read the Sunday supplements, the more I am convinced of it. I seem to be the only living moving actress who, as a child, did not dream of becoming a movie star. In every interview with every famous film actress, it is always brought out that her one dream, her great hope, her childhood's ambition was to become a moving picture star. She never thought of anything else; every act was directed towards that glorious end. And, finally, by tremendous perseverance, she got her wish and became an idol of the film lovers.

Now, curiously enough, I was never like that. I never dreamed of becoming a motion picture actress. I can't even remember having had visions of motion pictures before they were invented, as was the case with so many other actresses. But then, you see, I was never at all precocious. I never, even as a child of four— while wearing a white dress and a string of amber beads—foresaw what a great career the moving picture screen would offer to actresses in the spoken drama.

At the time when moving pictures were first being introduced to the public I never took them at all seriously. I was only interested in the spoken drama.

I REMEMBER dictinctly the first picture play I ever saw. It must have been about eight years ago. I was on tour, that season, in "Primrose," and we had settled down in Chicago for a long run. One of the young women in the company suggested that I accompany her to a moving picture theatre one afternoon, just for a lark. I remember that the price of admission in those happy days was five cents! The feature film was one of those Wild West dramas that used up many yards of celluloid in portraying frantic chases over such Wild Western mountains as those in the neighborhood of Fort Lee, New Jersey, and ended with a thrilling capture of the villain by the handsome hero in the low cut shirt. It was, I remember, one of the old Biograph films. The heroine, a typical cow-boy girl of the old school, wore a wig, and during the most exciting scene her curls became loosened, and threatened to fall off her head at any moment.

The producers had not learned, then, to cut the film. Everything that was photographed, whether it was good or not, was used in the finished picture. They produced only one-reel dramas, in those days, and I have been told that a whole photoplay was sometimes made in a day! But that, of course, was before we had large producing companies.

My young companion on this my first adventure in a movie theatre was greatly excited over the performance, and declared that she was going to leave the legitimate drama and devote all her efforts to becoming a motion picture actress. I laughed at the idea, then, and told her that I should never consider movies seriously! Naturally, she left the stage, married and had five beautiful children. That was one bright dream that went astray—while I, on the other hand, now take the motion picture industry very seriously indeed and act in movies with the greatest interest and delight. And I once considered them a huge joke!

MY first experience before the motion picture camera was more terrible than anything I have ever known. Never, even on an opening night of a new play, have I been so frightened. I actually wept from fright, while they turned the crank of the camera. Yes, I wept then, and, ever since that fatal day, it seems that I have been asked to weep before the camera on the slightest provocation—sometimes on no provocation at all.

The name of my first picture was "Barbary Sheep." Robert Hichens, the author of the novel, must surely remember it as vividly as I do. The story was filmed in 1917, in the Fort Lee studios of the Famous Players, though the scenery and the atmosphere were most convincingly Oriental. Maurice Tourneur was the director. Even now, I shudder when I recall the shock that I received when he instructed me to dress for bed and appear in my nightgown! Can you imagine an actress making her debut in a nightgown? I dressed for the part—if you can call it dressing—and came down to the studio wrapped in my fur coat. When the lights were ready and the camera in place, I crawled between the ghastly yellow sheets on the bed—yellow is used instead of white in motion picture photography. There, as I was instructed, I registered drowsiness. Everything was going quite smoothly, until I suddenly saw a strange man, clad in pajamas, deliberately entering my room. I sat bolt upright and shrieked.

However, the director assured me that, though somewhat informal, the stranger's entrance was quite correct—as it was written in the 'script. The man, Lumsden Hare, was playing the part of my husband, who was going to gaze at me while I slept.

IT would save a moving picture actress a great deal of nervous strain, if she were only told ahead of time what was going to happen in each scene.

Many ridiculous situations occur, in all movies, while the scenes are being made. For instance, during the making of "Barbary Sheep," I was, in one scene, standing on a balcony. Because I was a novice, someone had thoughtfully painted the word "here," on the floor, to show me exactly where I should stand. It seemed particularly strange to me, because, on the dramatic stage, it does not in the least matter whether an actor stands on any special spot during a scene. In motion pictures, however, everything is gauged from the camera's point of view. Of course, I have now grown used to the narrow floor space allowed me, and can instinctively feel the allotted amount of room that the camera gives me.

WHEN I was standing on my balcony, the director shouted, through a megaphone, from below, "You are gazing off into the desert; you are drinking in a wonderful mirage, with a thrill of ecstasy." I was really gazing into another set from my high point of vantage. A murder scene was being filmed there and a sheriff was breaking down a door to save a girl in duress vile, when I received my signal to gaze out into the heart of the Sahara. I assumed a languid expression, such as one uses on these occasions, and, midst shot and shell I stuck to my post—or rather balcony—and drank in the beauty of the desert mirage. Somewhere, over my head, a fan was turned on, upon which I immediately knew that I was being chilled by the cool night breezes of the desert. I drew my scarf about my shoulders.

The director was much pleased with the effect, and another scene was staged from the balcony. I was told to look down and behold my lover below. I think I must have registered surprise rather than joy when I did look down —right at an enormous paint barrel, in the place where Lumsden Hare, as my lover, was supposed to be standing. Never did Juliet speak to her Romeo more passionately than I did to that paint barrel. I even threw it a rose, which landed nicely in the middle of it.

Two days later, a scene was taken of my supposed lover standing in the exact spot where the barrel had stood. He gazed up rapturously at the empty balcony from which I had so languorously leaned two days before.

I HAVE learned many things in the movies that will be of great benefit to me, if I ever decide to lead a rural life. For instance, I have learned how to peel potatoes and to fryfish. I even know how to weed the garden and raise potatoes, if necessary, and as for fishing —well, I've been so successful at that sport, that even a Santa Catalina fisherman would die of envy if he could see the remarkable specimens of fish which I have taken from artificial lakes in the studio on 57th Street. In "Heart of the Wilds," I learned how to clean lamp chimneys and scrub floors. In "A Doll's House," I was instructed in the duties of child rearing. I have rocked many stage children to sleep, and tucked them into studio cradles. In "Under the Greenwood Tree," I had rather a perilous experience while, swimming. The water in the studio tank—in which I had to disport myself—was as cold as ice, and I was unconscious when they finally rescued me.

And as for committing murders—well, I think I am a past master of the art. I have learned, thoroughly. the intricate details of murdering gentlemen, whether by poisoning, strangling, shooting, or stabbing. In one of my recent pictures, "The Witness for the Defense," I was obliged to shoot Warner Oland, who played the role of my husband. When I saw him lying dead at my feet, I almost believed that I had killed him. No one knows the terrible sensation it gives one to kill a human being—in a moving picture studio. Of course, our property revolvers are always'loaded with blank cartridges, but it is the action of pulling the trigger, and hearing the noise, that frightens one so. Speaking as an expert on the subject of murder, I would rather employ the method of poison, than that of stabbing, shooting, or strangling. It is, by far, a less painful task for the murderess. The very sight of a gun or knife makes my blood run cold.

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THE life of a motion picture star is not one long pavement of roses. The weary hours of waiting around the studio for sets to be erected and lights to be adjusted are quite enough to take the thrill out of it, but the journeys to what are called "location points" are really the most nerve-racking ordeals that anyone could experience. It is frequently necessary to go long distances, in order to secure the proper settings.

The movies are no respecters of persons or of comfort. During the making of "A Doll's House," which was arranged into scenario form by Charles Wayne, and filmed in 1918, I nearly perished in the cold, as many of the exterior scenes were taken in weather several degrees below zero, on a lonely stretch of snow-clad location.

In the scene of "The Lie," in which I had to wear an evening gown, I could easily see my breath when I spoke in the unheated studio; and on another occasion in "The Danger Mark," I wore a white powdered wig and fancy "period" costume with the temperature lingering at 103 in the shade! It is not an unusual thing to be obliged to work until two in the morning in order to finish a scene, and, as I always seem unable to eat during emotional acting, I sustain myself by drinking black coffee.

Very often it is necessary to take one scene over five or six times, and all scenes are usually taken three times, to make sure of getting the desired results. It is often necessary to make certain scenes over, even after the whole picture has been completed, because of some little defect in the lighting. This necessitates rebuilding the interior scenes that have been taken down in the meantime, or journeying out again to some distant location point. No expense is spared to make the productions as nearly perfect as it is possible to be.

If the public knew how much it costs to erect the interior sets in the studios, and how much time and patience it requires for everyone in the cast to perfect details in acting and dressing, I believe they would appreciate the finished picture even more than they do now.

Of course, it is necessary to build all the interior settings for the pictures in the studio. The sets include enormous banquet halls, drawing rooms, staircases,—even houses; and all the hammering and banging of building them goes on during the acting of other scenes in the same studio. When the director is ready to photograph a scene, his assistant rings a bell, or blows a whistle, and all pounding is stopped for a moment. Sometimes a carpenter will stop with his hammer poised in mid-air, and the instant he hears the second whistle, he hits the nail and resumes his work for another few minutes. While making "The Song of Songs," we worked right through the luncheon hour on one emotional scene. I had been very hilarious all morning in the studio over a few touches of light drama that we were working up for another picture, and, naturally, it was extremely difficult for me to change immediately into a drab, gloomy person.

Well, I was doing my best, and as I gazed out of the supposed apartment house window—which was really nothing but a wall built in the studio—my eyes suddenly lit upon a scene that would have provoked a Sphinx to laughter. There, on a beautifully carved and decorated antique bed, its canopy draped with royal velvet, lay a ragged and overalled property man, fast asleep! His tattered overalls and worn shoes seemed so incongruous in that regal bed, that it was quite too much for me, and I promptly developed hysterics — real ones in this case. The camera caught it all, even as I turned to my lover with the tears simply streaming from my eyes, and my shoulders shaken with sobs. The director realized that it was more than pretense, but the audience must have believed that it was only a bit of emotional acting. I received many letters about that burst of emotion, when the picture was shown.

Not only do I receive letters from enthusiastic movie admirers but I get, as most stars do, an average of two or three hundred letters a week, requesting everything of me from photographs to trips to Europe. I also receive many proposals of marriage, invitations to dinners, letters from relatives of whom I never heard, and heart confidences from persons who wish my advice on subjects that concern their extremely private lives. Many young women have claimed me for their cousin, and one elderly woman once insisted that I was her long-lost daughter. These letters are sometimes amusing, occasionally pathetic—but always interesting.

THE problem of dress is a most serious one for a moving picture actress. She must be very careful about choosing clothes for the films. The lights used in the studio are very strong; in fact, they are so strong that it is not unusual to become temporarily blinded by them. Sometimes one buys a certain frock that takes a charming shade in the studio, and then, if one uses the same frock again in an exterior scene, it will register black. I purchased a light tan costume for a certain scene in "His Parisian Wife," hoping that it would register light, and when the picture was shown, I looked as If I were in mourning. Some silver slippers will photograph light while another pair of silver slippers will seem almost black. It is risky to toy with silver or pure gold shades under the lights. I never use pure white either, but rely on cream shades. Rose and pale yellows are also very good. It is often necessary to order two costumes, exactly alike, because in strenuous scenes, one's gown may be ruined beyond repair.

Two years have gone by since I entered the movies, and I feel that it has been a wonderful experience for me. Some people have asked me if I miss playing before an audience. Yes, I do. I miss the inspiration, I miss the applause, I miss the atmosphere of the theatre, and I miss the wide sweep of the stage to move about on. Yet, I wouldn't miss the delight and thrill of the movies for anything. It is all so topsy-turvy, so exciting and so changeable that I am never bored for a moment. I expect soon to return to the legitimate stage, but I shall certainly go back again to the screen.

Despite the demands that the moving pictures make on my strength, time, and patience, I find it more than worth it.

I, who once laughed at the moving pictures, am now a movie fan!