/ a n u ary 18, 1923
MUSICAL COURIER
6
MY SUMMER IN THE MOVIES
By Henry F. Gilbert
Copyrighted, 1923, by The Musical Courier Company.
watching the operations. Beside me was the director with his megaphone. Next to him was the camera man, and a little farther away an immense aeroplane propeller ready to be set whirling furiously at a moment’s notice. A small party of men and a girl were supposed to be leaving the ship hurriedly. The lifeboat hung in its usual place on the davits. When all was ready the director shouted “Turn on the rain!” At once the vessel was to be but dimly seen as it was enveloped in a very heavy rain. Then he shouted, “Turn on the wind!” and the aeroplane propeller was immediately set to buzzing, with the result that the ship was apparently struggling in the very midst of a tornado of wind and rain. Where I sat it was calm and serene, but twenty-five feet away the weather was terrific. Then the director shouted, “Lower away!” and “Camera!” Meanwhile the people on board began to scramble into the lifeboat as if their lives really depended upon it, while two men began to loosen the ropes by which the lifeboat was held up to the davits. Suddenly one of the davits became loose and turned bottom up, letting the lifeboat, with its human freight, fall with a mighty splash into the sea. This was an unforeseen accident and I fully expected to see about three persons drowned. The lifeboat sank, apparently, completely out of sight; but when the waves and spray subsided there it was, surprisingly enough, still afloat but nearly full of water and with its human occupants baling for their lives; in earnest this time. A couple of the men were working frantically with oars to get the boat clear of the ship, and all turned out right at last. As nearly as I could judge there was no particular excitement or emotion aroused in anybody but myself. What subsequently amused me in this business was the way the moving picture people looked at it. I heard on all sides nothing but congratulations on what a fine, marketable thrill chance had given them; played right into their hands, as it were. Apparently they never for a moment lost the box office attitude of mind.
Going About the Music
My first step toward making the musical accompaniment was׳ to assemble a working library—a grand selection of orchestral publications issued by the principal American publishing houses. For you must know that these accompaniments to moving picture shows are not usually originally composed scores, but compilations—mere pasticcios—made up from fragments of all kinds of already com-
AContinued on page 46)
HENRY F. GILBERT is a serious musician, one of the foremost and best known composers in America. He has written many works in large form which have been played by all the leading orchestras. His ballet, The Dance in the Place Congo, was a success at the Metropolitan Opera a few seasons ago. Dr. Adolf Weissman, of Berlin, in his new book, Die Musik in der Weltkrise, says of him: “Henry F. Gilbert is the man who has collected ‘nigger music’ and has recoined it in most American fashion. There is in him a primal originality. And even the so-called cultured musician cannot but admit its stimulating power.” Those who read the extremely interesting article that follows will realize that Gilbert has both “primal originality” and “stimulating power.” He writes with the same vigor that is evident in much of his music. The MUSICAL COURIER presents this article because it is both instructive and constructive, especially in Mr. Gilbert’s suggestion as to a new form of moving picture art, outlined in the concluding paragraphs; but it does not always feel as badly about present day movies as Mr. Gilbert appears to.—The Editor.]
had a rough, cobbled-up room on the second floor of the loft-like structure on the State Pier. Its one window looked out upon the harbor and shipping of the town. In fact, I was but a few feet from the water. Near by, at the end of the next wharf, lay the oldest whaling ship afloat. Over her I used occasionally to ramble, poking my nose into the captain’s pantry, the hold and the fo’c’stle, or sailors’ quarters. It was difficult to believe that white men should ever have been willing to live in this fo’c’stle. Most any self-respecting dog would have refused. Into my window floated many sailor’s songs and waterside sounds. I lived indeed in the very atmosphere which the title of the picture suggests: Down to the Sea in Ships׳.
Storms to Order
When I arrived in New Bedford, some of the last scenes in the picture were just being made up and photographed. I saw one of them taken, and shall never forget the tragic-comic effect of the “business.” About' twenty-five feet from the wharf, out in the harbor, lay an old whaling ship. Up high, among the masts and spars of this ship, a complicated framework of gas pipes had been rigged. These gas pipes were punctured with small holes at regular intervals, so that when they were flooded with water an artificial rainstorm at once took place. It was a calm and pleasant summer evening. I sat on the edge of the wharf
WHALING DAYS IN NEW BEDFORD.
Scene from the moving picture, Down to the Sea in Ships, for which Henry F. Gilbert, author of the accompanying article prepared, the musical score. Although the gentleman standing on the edge of the wharf and watching the loading of thè great cask with anxious eye looks like Mr. Gilbert, he states that it is not he; also that the casks, being empty and intended merely to bring back whale oil, would not cause him a moment’s anxiety.
AST summer (the summer of 1922) I was offered and accepted a commission to furnish the musical accompaniment to a moving picture film. It came about in this wise.
Some time ago it was noted by a certain moving picture director and originator, that dramatic stories having their locale in foreign countries did not go so well with the movie public as those stories in which the scene is laid in America; which tell of home folks and their doings amid somewhat familiar surroundings. The reason for this is obvious when one, considers the comparatively low-brow quality of these movie audiences. What they want is thrills, not art, and they can be stirred more easily by that which has some sort of relation to their own lives, than by that which is remote from their experience, no matter how interesting—per se—is the latter.
So this director, in casting about for a thoroughly American story (one which should not only celebrate the doings of Americans, but be, if possible, in all its■ happenings inherently native to America), bethought himself of the picturesque old whaling days; of the quasi heroic and wild, rough times on the old whale ships which sailed from New Bedford, that quaint, last-century, seaport town on the shores of Buzzards Bay, around which many of the traditions of whaling and the ancient and fish-like smells still linger. A moving picture scenario which had been written by a descendant of one of the old whaling families—containing, to be sure, the usual amount of love and sentiment, but still celebrating in robust fashion the heroic deeds of the old whalers—was offered to and purchased by him. The State Pier at New Bedford, a large wharf with a super-structure of offices, storerooms, etc., was given to him for a working studio and here he set to work. The story tells of a rich and stern old whaling master, a Quaker; of his daughter and her rival lovers; of the plot of one lover to foil the other; of his being drugged, shanghaied and taken perforce on a whaling cruise; of his adventures on the whaling cruise including the harpooning of a whale, and of his final return to New Bedford through storm and stress, just in time to prevent the marriage (decreed by the old father against the girl’s will) of his׳ old sweetheart to his unscrupulous and plotting rival.
The scenes in New Bedford were comparatively easy of realization. But how to realize in pictures the chase and capture of the whale? The story of how the whale was hunted and captured is a wonderful story. I hope it will be told in full some day. But I am not the one and this is not the place to do it. Suffice to say, that after consultation with several of the ancient sea captains of New Bedford, the director chartered a ship, placed one of the old sea captains in charge of the expedition, shipped a crew, including his leading man and several other of his moving picture actors, and set sail for the Caribbean Sea; that being the place, where, according to a consensus of opinion, he was most liable to find whales at that particular season. The leading man was taught with great care the art of throwing the harpoon. Once arrived at the Caribbean Sea they went on a regular whale hunt—dangerous and exciting. There we.re storms, overturned boats, sharks in abundance and other dangers; yet they captured eleven whales, all told, and got good pictures of all the proceedings, for the camera man followed them around in a small power-boat, grinding away faithfully, even when his heart was in his mouth. Wonderful to relate, after these ticklish adventures, all hands got back to New Bedford safely.
Shortly after the whaling trip, the necessary musical accompaniment to the picture began to claim the attention of the director and his associates. And this was where I came into the game. Last year (i. e. 1921) I had composed a large part of the music for the Pilgrim Tercentenary Pageant held at Plymouth, Mass. The music attracted some attention—made quite a hit in the vernacular— and its fame travelled from Plymouth even as far as New Bedford. It was largely owing to this, and to the fact that the picture was definitely a New England picture and I a native of New England—as well as a composer—that I was asked to design the musical accompaniment.
So I was engaged and took up my abode in New Bedford for the summer. For a working studio I