Thrown away, because of the ignorance of a producer, or the vanity of a director, or the wilfulness of a star. And, sometimes, thrown away because of situations that could never be foreseen and are undoubtedly caused by the malignance of Satan himself. Any director will swear to the last statement.
A certain street in Hollywood has cost the Fox studio thousands of dollars. The Fox studio rambles along on either side of Western Avenue—the dramatic lot on one side and the comedy lot on the other. Every day, lumber and "props" and lights have to be carted across the street, laboriously engineered over the heavy flow of traffic. When the studio was built; Western Avenue was a little-frequented street. Nobody foresaw that it would become the artery of traffic that it now is. Nobody foresaw that so much time—and time is money in picture-making—would be wasted, just in crossing that street.
Fox has purchased 450 acres of land out in Westwood, midway between Hollywood and the ocean, for a new
studio. The Fox heads figure that it is cheaper for them to buy new land and move their huge plant, than to continue carting materials over expensive Western Avenue. And the new studio will not be separated by any public thoroughfare!
The studio will have, its own private lake and its own railroad track. It is tired of paying from $50 to $100 an hour to the railroads, for the privilege of using their trains for a few shots. Now some retired, decrepit engineer will, run one ancient locomotive up and down a studio track and enjoy the comfort of his pension days.
Another glimpse of the old city of Bagdad as
Doug Fairbanks has re-created it.
Real Jewels for Atmosphere
The passion for realism has carried many a director to lengths that gave his producer acute agony in the region of the pocket nerve. Consider the director who hired some $400,000 worth of diamonds from Tiffany for a ball-room scene at an exorbitant rental, when the five-and-ten cent store variety screen exactly as well.
Consider, too, the directors who "write in" location trips in the quest for pleasure.
Locations cost money. To move a whole company of actors, technical people and live stock counts up tremendously. One shudders to contemplate the cost of the location trips entailed in The Covered Wagon—but in that case the cost was certainly justified by the results.
More and more, however, directors are passing up locations in favor of studio sets—or rather, the cost experts are doing it for them. Studio carpenters and "prop" men are becoming so clever that they can manufacture a desert that looks more like a desert than the
From this platform Cecil de Mille has been directing 2500 players. You will note him in goggles and veils as protection against flying sand. (For the scenes were shot on the 300 square miles of barren dunes in North California. This cost $30,000 a day.)
Sahara does. In fact, not so long ago, a director out on location in Arizona wired his boss, "Coming home tomorrow. Better western atmosphere on the back lot."
Cont'd on page 82
