It Wasn’t Easy — Thanhouser history, chapter 2

During the start-up period Thanhouser’s inexperience in the motion picture field led to some problems, as Edwin Thanhouser recalled years later¹

One day it had been necessary to make a picture of an automobile plunging through a brick wall. This was a new problem, and neither Thanhouser nor James Cruze² knew exactly how to handle it. Finally, Cruze informed Thanhouser he’d just pile up some bricks and drive through them. This he did. “Why he didn’t kill himself, I’ll never know,” stated Thanhouser. “Using simulated or rubber bricks, we discovered, was the proper procedure.”

Speaking of problems reminded Mr. Thanhouser that his company was the first to burn down a real house. They bought one that was about to be moved, put lace curtains in it, and fixed it up to look like a very presentable residence. Then they set fire to it and made some excellent pictures…

Lamps were a source of endless worry³ Delays, delays, and more delays occurred until things seemed impossible. Machinery to perforate the films added yet another problem to his ever-increasing responsibilities. In addition, threatened lawsuits appeared with alarming frequency.⁴ One could scarcely say that Thanhouser had a dull moment…

Thanhouser recognized the importance of a written scenario. Despite the fact that the other producers “made annotations on their cuffs, if they had any,” he used a legitimate scenario “with all the trimmings” for his first production. The scenario was written by Lloyd Lonergan, a newspaper man, and Mrs. Thanhouser. Mrs. Thanhouser, he explained, had written several plays and had been in close contact with the theatre. She won fame during her childhood for her roles in Little Lord Fauntleroy and Bootles’ Baby. “It was a rather lamentable affair,” he continued. “It included everything from murder through robbery and a love story. Its title was The Mad Hermit, and it had enough material for 15 plots.”⁵

A group of approximately 20 people, including a cameraman⁶ from the Edison Company and a director⁷ taken from one of Thanhouser’s theatrical companies, made The Mad Hermit. It took about two weeks’ time… Even then the audience was demanding realistic productions. In one of the scenes in the picture it was necessary to throw a baby from its carriage into the arms of a member of the cast. “We used a dummy,” Thanhouser said, “and the audience reacted violently to the crude deception.”

Many times the sources for the plots were fires, such as when the railroad ties were ablaze⁸—“That made a good picture”—and peculiar automobile accidents. In each case, however, a scenario was always developed around the particular incident, before additional shooting was done.

Since there was no established market for pictures at this time, Thanhouser and his associates compiled a list of names of those people whom they thought might be interested in buying their pictures. Prints at this time were sold outright to an exchange man who in turn sold them to the theatres…

The second venture…was titled The Actor’s Children.⁹ The next and most successful of those made until then was Jane Eyre. From the first its appeal seemed to be established, and Thanhouser received more orders for it than he could fill.

The following quotations are from the previously cited June 13, 1938 article in The Standard-Star, New Rochelle, New York. Numerous other recollections by Edwin Thanhouser appeared in trade and general papers over a period of time. One such article, not quoted here, appeared in Louis Reeves Harrison’s “Studio Saunterings” column in The Moving Picture World, July 13, 1912, and stated that Thanhouser had become interested in motion pictures about five years earlier, when a fellow actor, formerly a member of his theatrical stock company, told him of his success in films. ↩
James Cruze joined the Thanhouser Company in 1911. ↩
Certain of these were of the high-intensity carbon arc variety and presented a fire hazard. In addition, banks of Cooper-Hewitt vapor lamps were used, which reduced the problem, but many safety measures still had to be taken. ↩
These were in two main categories: harassment from the Trust and its various members, particularly Edison; and threatened suits from Thanhouser’s practice of filming stories and popular literature without compensating the authors or their publishers, in an era in which rights were not sharply defined. ↩
This film, the first made by Thanhouser, was not released until August 9, 1910, by which time many others had been released. ↩
Blair Smith. ↩
Barry O’Neil. ↩
The Railroad Builder, released May 9, 1911. ↩
This was the second film made but the first Thanhouser film to be released, on March 15, 1910. ↩

Footnotes