"OH Mr. Gallagher, oh Mr. Gallagher,
Do you like to work in pictures here all day?"
"Well, I think I'll like it fine,
for I'm swinging right in line,
And I feel I'm getting Better Day by Day."
"Oh Mr. Shean, oh Mr. Shean,
You're a star, yourself, if you know what we mean;
And if Gallagher's half as good
You'll be where we said you would."
"In the ash can, Mr. Gallagher?"
"In the Astor, Mr. Shean!"
For years Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean worked side by side or doing a "single" in vaudeville. If we remember correctly they once told us that their average wage in those times was $40 a week. Now they must be making 100 times as much as that for not only have screen magnates realized their worth but they have drawn a token of appreciation from a newspaper magnate, also, in the form of a nice weekly stipend for allowing the story of their lives to be published or something like that. "Sweet are the uses of"—prosperity, with apologies to Mr. Shakespeare.
Mr. Shean and Mr. Gallagher have been "shooting" their first screen comedy on top of a New York skyscraper. The skyline of the metropolis will be the real thing in the way of background.
Working Atop a Skyscraper
Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean are nice, friendly people who seem as pleased as children over the good fortune which has come to them. We found them up on top of this skyscraper, and the director, the camera man, the assistant camera man and the assistant director all rushed forward with the caution, "Don't tell anyone where we are working, it's an absolute secret."
"But why must you work on top of the—of a building like this? Couldn't you take these scenes in a studio?"
"That's the idea, you see," replied Mr. Gallagher.
"We are the world's greatest detectives," added Mr. Shean.
"And our office is supposed to be in a secret place high up in the clouds," said Mr. Gallagher.
"As it really is," added Harriette Underbill. For we were puffing from the last climb up two flights of stairs and one flight of ladder. The elevator dumps you out at the twenty-sixth floor and that's two floors below the roof. The office of the world's greatest detectives is built up still higher and is reached by a secret ladder. We do not care much for climbing and there would be even more room at the top than there is reputed to be now, if everybody was like us. We do not care much for mornings, either, and anyone who elects to be interviewed by us before 1 p. m. must take the consequences.
"You see by staging our office scenes up on top of the—a skyscraper, we get the whole of New York for a back drop," said Mr. Shean.
"But don't you know that in that way you are taking all the joy out of the life of the property man?" we said severely. "He loves to furnish painted drops showing the Singer Building and Trinity Church and he has a passion for designing Brooklyn Bridges a yard long and Leviathans which may be wrecked in a bath tub full of rocks and breakers."
(Continued on Page 98)
