Volume III: Biographies Volume III: Biographies
Thanhouser Career Synopsis: Clarence Dull worked in several capacities for Thanhouser circa 1910-1916.
Biographical Notes: Clarence Dull was a Thanhouser employee by autumn 1910. He attended the Thanhouser outing held for employees and friends on September 7, 1912. In 1913 he was a property master for Thanhouser. He was a stage director and studio manager during the 1914-1916 period. He was dismissed by the studio in early 1916 during a period when the outlook for the future of the company was unfavorable. By that time he had worked there for nearly seven years. New Rochelle directories listed his occupation in 1911 as a clerk and his home address as 19 Rhodes Street. In 1915 and 1916 he was listed as a director and lived at 35 Lawn Avenue. Harry C. Dull and Mary Dull, widow of Charles Dull, lived at the same address.
A 1914 Sketch: The New Rochelle Pioneer, January 9, 1915, told of his activities at the studio: "'Where's Clarence?' That query is shot forth at the Thanhouser studio about nth times a day by about steen people who need the Studio Manager. 'Where's Clarence?' has become a classic at the big movie plant, because Clarence is always around but seldom seen by the man who's looking for him, and, unlike the leopard, Clarence is continually changing his spots.
"The reason for the query is generally due to the fact that a director wants to know where an interior set is, or, wanting an interior set wants to give Clarence Dull, the brains of the studio force, about eight minutes to erect it. To all of which Clarence responds, but not always within the eight minutes of time.
"Clarence is a Hoosier, for he was born at Shelbyville, Indiana, and is of German descent. He's five feet eight inches in height and weighs 145 pounds. He was educated in Kansas City, the 'Show Me' state, so, it's no wonder that Clarence drifted into the 'Show' business. (This is not a pun). Through Dull's brown eyes some of the most beautiful interior sets that ever graced a screen have come. He is acknowledged to be first in his class as an interior decorator, and Thanhouser's interiors are always beautiful. He began with the Thanhouser Company in 1910, and soon became head of the staging force because he had an artistic conception of interior decorating, and now Clarence passes upon all scripts that are to be produced at the local studio. He takes a scenario and reads it through, visualizing the different scenes and equipping the set with everything that it is possible to need in staging the picture. The script might read - 'Sitting Room' - and Mr. Dull has to conceive just what furniture goes into that set by the presumed wealth of the characters that play in the story; where doors and entrances go; where windows are to be set; what the coverings, curtains, portieres, etc., must be, and whether there's a telephone, safe, or what not needed in the equipment. After he has 'doped' all this out he can go to bed, which is generally long after the town has gone to sleep.
"Just now there are eight directors working at the studio. There are seldom less than six interior, and more often eight interior sets to a single reel of 1,000 feet, and these sets must be erected and 'struck' so as not to affect the work of other directors. In summer when the sun keeps the sky clear the work is not so hard, because the directors got out-of-doors at the first opportunity, and many of the stories are written so as to be entirely outside the studio, but in winter, when the light of day is uncertain, the interior work is heavier, and Clarence and his crew must work harder.
"Mr. Dull is single, and he's a 'bug' on baseball. His greatest ambition is to put up the biggest set on record, and as the Thanhouser Corporation is becoming known as the world's greatest producers of moving pictures, he may yet attain his wish. Certainly he's equipped to accomplish it, because he has erected capacity sets at the studio during the filming of The Million Dollar Mystery and Zudora.
"Mr. Dull is well known in New Rochelle, is a member of Huguenot Lodge, No. 46, F. & A.M. and is well liked at the studio. He lives on North Avenue and loves the city as a place of residence. Recently queried about the future of motion pictures he said that no one knew what the future held in store, because the art had made such wonderful strides since the 'King of Directors,' David W. Griffith, began to stage dramas, but it was his personal opinion that with all the world as its stage the art would make as much headway in the future as it has in the past and that bigger stories, bigger sets and more beautiful creations were to come within a year."
A 1916 Sketch: The following appeared in Motion Picture Mail, April 29, 1916: "'I want a battleship, Clarence,' said the director of the Thanhouser studios, leafing over a scenario. 'Can we get one by tomorrow morning?' 'What time?' inquired the stage manager, penciling diagrams on a block of paper. 'Say 10 o'clock?' 'All right; let's see your specifications.'
"A few strokes of the stage manager's pencil and the ground plan of a forward deck was laid out. All that night the carpenters pounded away under the glare of arc lamps. At 9 in the morning the painters were blackening the papier-maché guns. At 10 a troupe of movie actors were dancing under the grim looking 12-inch guns at an officers' ball on the deck.
"It takes the government three years to build a battleship, but this genie, Clarence Dull, can build one overnight. A quiet little man, this genie! One talking to him would think him totally ignorant of the wonders he is doing. It is all in the day's work for him. 'What's that? Do we ever have any trouble getting properties for our scenic effects?' said Mr. Dull in an interview the other day. 'Why, yes; it's all more or less trouble, but nothing to talk about. If we can't rent them or buy them, we make them. You know, we have complete carpenter and machine shops here, and it's no trouble at all.'
"He never seemed to realize that the man who plans these things the carpenters make so offhandedly must be a genius. It never occurred to him that a man who can design anything from a Greek garden to a desk filled with secret drawers is anything out of the ordinary. For him it's all in the day's work. Some time ago the Thanhouser company produced a picture laid in Monte Carlo. Mr. Thanhouser was in Europe at the time, and made a special trip to Monaco to get data for the settings. From pictures this genie recreated the Casino and the great gambling halls in exact detail. An American roulette table would not suffice. A special French table and set of furniture had to be constructed. All this was done in the brief space of a day or two. [For the film Innocence at Monte Carlo, released June 27, 1915]
"'Anachronisms are the things we have to watch out for most,' said Mr. Dull, 'for nothing makes a stage manager look more foolish than to have a scene laid in 1860 in front of a Southern plantation house with tall white columns, and between the columns leave a modern electric light fixture. I once saw an Egyptian scene where a group of slaves were building a pyramid. They were mixing mortar and dressing stone, and in the foreground was a bag marked 'Portland cement.' Another scene depicted the burning of Rome, and a company of Roman soldiers had formed themselves into a fire brigade; but instead of using vessels of copper or brass, they were carrying water in modern papier-maché pails.
"'It's so easy to avoid such blunders. We once converted a colonial house that Washington used as headquarters into a Belgian peasant's cottage by putting a thatch roof on over the shingles and building a high farmyard fence to hide a gas tank. Only the fire plug in front of the house remained to mar the picture, and that was disposed of by inverting a nail keg over it.'
"A stage manager is a busy man. We were continually interrupted. Carpenters, dressmakers and electricians broke in to ask advice and receive directions. A gang of men engaged in setting up the interior of a Japanese temple ran out of materials for wall decorations and came trooping in in a body.
"'Aren't there any more prayer rugs?' asked the genie. 'No prints? No parasols? Then what is there? We have to use that set right off. Only skirts and kimonos? Well, why don't you use them?' And off he rushed to supervise the hanging of skirts and kimonos for wall decorations.
"'Yes,' said Mr. Dull, when he came back, 'this Greek garden set was used in The Million Dollar Mystery. The ideas? Why, you see, I have to poke around in the libraries so much that I don't remember just where I ran across it. How long did it take? Well, I guess about two or three days. You see....' The telephone bell interrupted him. 'Yes, the stokehole of a liner. Torpedoed? All right; I get you!'
"He hung up the receiver. 'Won't you excuse me a minute?' he said, 'I have to see the carpenters.' And off he went."
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Copyright © 1995 Q. David Bowers. All Rights Reserved.