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Show ; Doubles in the Movies 1 i I I ' I J By Frederic J. Ilajkin. -t f N:V YORK. Aug. IS. Doubles are a se:.s:::ve su'i'.-p-.-t ;a the movio br.iiu'a. No wed trained movie vers m hkt-s tt talk about them. er-pee:.i!!y ;he stars, who prefer to ha e tlie pub! ic behove that all of the reckless escapades 0:1 tho screen I are jier formed by them. But the doubles dou-bles iht'mselves are not so anxious to remain a secret. They have ad of the usual theatrical pride in their work, and they consider that it requires just as much skill to Jump off a precipice artistically, ar-tistically, as it docs to portray a great emotional part. Bo this as it may, a certain amount of vanity on their part is undeniably justified, jus-tified, for many of thorn are trained specialists spe-cialists of superior skdl and eon race. There are doubles who are acrobats and travel from one moving picture company to another, substituting for the stars in tlie dangerous crises. There are doubles who are dancers and are employed by the day to help out tho star in her dancing scenes. Some doubles are placed under contract the same as other players, and some aro employed to support certain stars year hy year. But tho vast majority ma-jority of doubles are simply extra people, peo-ple, usually badly paid, who are called In by the clay to face certain emergencies which the star would rather avoid. Not long ngo, for example, a picture was being made which contained a children's chil-dren's mud fight. The star, who was supposed to bo the principal childish antagonist, an-tagonist, did not like the idea of having herself splattered with mud, so the director di-rector simply summoned an extra girl, j who was about the same height and gen- ; eral build, and had her receive the mud. i Dressed in the same kind of clothes, nnd with her face smeared with the brown liquid, she was easily mistaken for the star, and the audience never knew the difference. In another case a star, who was acting act-ing the part of an Indian princess scantily scant-ily clad, became so badly sunburned that she refused to go on with the picture. To keep the picture from being held up. the director hunted frantically through the crowd of waiting "extras" and found a girl who resembled the star sufficiently to take her part in all distant scenes. When the film was finished the close-tips close-tips of the star and the distant pictures of the extra girl were so cleverly combined com-bined that even some of the people In the studio were unable to detect the substitution. substi-tution. Furthermore, this particular double dou-ble did her work so well that she was ; taken out of the extra class and given a contract. This, of course. Is the way most of the doubling acts are filmed first the j close-up of the star, then the distant pic-j pic-j ture of the double. In a recent western I picture, for instance, the star was play- lng the role of a girl of the prairies whose I chief recreation was taming wild horses. I In one scene, however, in escaping from j her pursuers, headed by the villain, she ! was supposed to be thrown from her I horse after jumping over a precipice. A 1 double who was an expert rider and In-i In-i cidentally a man was employed to do the ! precipice stunt. In the finished picture i the deception was cleverly concealed by 1 showing first a series of several close-ups close-ups of the star spurring her horse forward for-ward in an effort to escape her pursuers, then a darkened picture of the double jumping the precipice and falling off the 1 horse, and finally a close-up of the star ; lying unconscious on the ground. The use of the dummy in moving pictures pic-tures is now very rare, even in the most dangerous escapades, such as going over a cliff in an automobile or falling out of a twelfth-story window, because It is difficult to deceive a movie audience on this point. They almost always recognize recog-nize a dummy. Heence the demand for what are known as daredevil doubles Is tremendous. Yet it Is interesting to discover dis-cover that there is always a ready sup-; sup-; ply of men at hand who are willing to risk Iheir lives for twenty or thirty dollars. dol-lars. If a man is hurt while performing a dangerous stunt the company takes care of him paying all his expenses. Nearly every moving picture company has its special staff doctor now to look after just such emergencies. "This is the day of realism in the movies," said the business manager of a large motion picture company the other day, "and we can't get away with murder mur-der the way we used to. It has got to look like murder. When we show a fire It has to be a real fire the public won't stand for smoke-pots any more. And when we show a picture of wounded men falling off the parapets of a castle they have to be real m en hot d u mmles. Of course, we have nets below to catch them, out of the range of the camera, but the men are taking a risk. It is useless to pretend that they are not." In making one picture recently this company actually did burn up an entire residence and barn. When the flames had become sufficiently lively, the star was supposed to come out on a third story balcony and bo rescued at the crucial cru-cial moment by a couple of daring firemen. fire-men. Needless to say, the star was never near the flames, but was back in the city studio safely acting in another scene while this thrilling episode was taking place. It was a man who donned her negligee and allowed himself to be carried off, unconscious, by the firemen. Another company, not long ago, even went eo far as to burn up an excursion excur-sion steamer to satisfy the public's demand de-mand for realism. In this case 400 doubles dou-bles were required, at least 100 of whom had to be expert swimmers and divers, and George R. White, the theatrical agent who supplies most of the companies with doubles, was at his wits' end to secure all of them, altlwugh he finally succeeded. This picture was one of the most realistic realis-tic that has yet been produced. It showed a man standing on a lower deck, smoking smok-ing a cigarette near a pile of tangled rope. In an absent-minded moment he drops his cigarette stub on the rope, to which kerosene had been applied a few minutes before, and thus the fire starts. On the boat Is the usual excursion crowd of men, women and children, ignorant of the horrible disaster awaiting them. Then, as the flames break out, comes the panic, in which the one hundred doubles who know how to dive, jump off the ton dec); and other places within focus of the camera. ca-mera. Boats outside the range of the camera are waiting to receive the others, all of whom get safely away before the steamer fiinks. But, of course, the public pub-lic did not know this and part of it which saw the picture is stilly trying to figure the thing Tn justice to the stars, it must be said that many of them are quite willing to take any moderate risk called for In the scenario, hut the companies won't permit them to do so. For, if a star commanding command-ing a salary of $o00 a day. and this is not an unusual amount, 13 hurt. It means thousands of dollars loss to the company, while it is waiting for her to recover. Thus, even men stars are carefully guarded from danger in the movies, even being denied the privilege of part ieioat-ing ieioat-ing in a fiqht. This is not true of all of them, but in many cases' doubles are substituted sub-stituted In fiirht scenes. Usually, a lamp is knocked over ns an excuse for darkening darken-ing tho room, and from then on tho audience au-dience is able to romprehf-ml only dimlv that a fight is taking place until' a brilliant bril-liant close-up of the hero is flashed on the screen, showing him to be in a becomingly be-comingly disheveled state that was carefully care-fully prepared In his dressing room. Some stars are able to provide their own thrills, yet the movies nearly lost a valuable performer when Houdini recently re-cently attempted to drop from one airplane air-plane to another for the movie camera out on the Pacific coast. The propellers of the two planes became entangled and thev dropped from an altitude' of iVn feet. Fortunately, they managed to brenk loose within a couple of hundred feet from t he ground, so t hat no lives w pre lost and a ea mora man, in a th ird a!r-pla a!r-pla lie. wn s a ble to take pictures n' the hole thing. But not all of the double'; in (tie movies mo-vies have to take risks. Sometimes they arc. not required to do anything more dif-?:'!' dif-?:'!' t t ha n to ha vc t heir hacks photo-gra photo-gra nhed in plot u res where the hi ar is playing a double role, "f got J50 a day for doubling for a star who pla yed her own sister a short timo ago " explained a young brunette double the other day. "You see, it is possible, by double photography, pho-tography, for a star to do everything but embrace herself, so every time an embrace em-brace occurred I had to be introduced into the picture. The audience won't be able to tell because all you can see is my back and that Is dressed the same way as her'a in the role of her sister. Another speciea of doubling which is both safe and remunerative was recently done by the premier dancer of the Metropolitan Metro-politan Opera company, who doubled In some dance scene's at the rate of $75 per day. |