Clermont State Historic Site

Today we present another article written by Reginald Rex McVitty, our correspondent from the past. Unfortunatley, this clipping did not have a date associated with it, so I don’t know the vintage. Nevertheless enjoy Rex and Honoria’s brush with fame.

My wife and I went to the movies, one night some time ago, and witnessed a near perfect piece of writing and direction in the thrill or suspense field, by a writer who now makes his home in Sarasota.

                I was not only emotionally rung out but felt after the show like a bit of string that had been well chewed.

                The movies have come a long way since the days when as a lad in Ireland, we had them once a year as a Sunday School Treat. At that time a sheet was stretched across a bamboo frame and set up in the rear of the hall. The pictures, produced by Biograph or Essaney were usually of the cowboy versus Indian type, and of course were most exciting. Of course we were less sophisticated. The Indians chased the cowboys, or vice versa with vim and vigor. Sometimes the tempo of the pursuit would seem to slow down. This was caused by the chap who was turning the handle of the projector, getting tired. Everything speeded up when his relief took over.

                Glamerous rather than practical projects have been of interest to me, and one time I hovered on the outer edge of the movies. I was associated with a chap who had a contract with several of the stars of that time to make cut out paper dolls of them with costumes from their better known roles. This was before the day of the super public relations and personal press representatives and the stars of that day were more than glad to make public appearances at the big New York stores to help in the sale of these cut outs.

                I remember the thrill of taking Mae Murray and Dagmar Godowski in a taxi to Bloomingdales, not to mention walking with Tom Mix, in full cowboy regalia up Fifth Avenue.

                Before the days of the Mickey Mouse Cartoon, I went to call on a gent named Walt Disney who had a small studio on 4^th Avenue New York. We had heard that he was starting in the cartoon field and we were anxious to have a short film taken of our dolls in action, in color if possible, but color was a long way in the future at that time.

                Then a number of years later I met a man in New York named Lee De Forrest.

                He was an inventor and needed some capital to market his latest invention so he invited a group, including myself, to come to his studio on upper Broadway to have a look. He seated us in a small projection room and turned off the lights. When he projector started whirring and a picture took shape on the screen, it was a group of British soldiers seated around a camp fire. Suddenly to my amazement, one of the soldiers got to his feet and sang the Road to Mandalay.

                This was first introduction to the new talking pictures. Up to then there had been no talk about it and no public showing so I was one of the first to see this revolutionary invention. At that time I learned that Warner Bros. were experimenting with Vitaphone which when I saw and heard it seemed superior to De Forrest’s Phonofilm but how wrong I was because the Vitaphone died a natural death and De Forrest’s Phonofilm became the basic invention of the talking picture, and I had counseled my friends to wait and see before investing. See one of the early Phonofilms Here     

When I became an American citizen, I wanted to see what I had gotten for my money so we got in our car in Sarasota and drove clear across the continent to California. When we reached Hollywood, I had somewhere in the back of my mind the idea that it would be nice to meet some of the present crop of movie stars like Hedy La Mar or Dolores Del Rio and I had a friend, an Irish lad, who was a splendid polo player and had come to American with an international team and Darryl Zanuck had made him one of the vice presidents of Twentieth Century Fox. However when we arrived in Hollywood, he was elsewhere. None of these stars had their telephones listed and I was about ready to give up when another friend from the Hudson Valley arranged matters so we got an invitation to visit Warner Bros. Studio. They couldn’t have been nicer to us, even gave us a luncheon on the lot when all the directors and stars who were making a picture that day. You can imagine my feelings with my mind on Heddy and Dolores to be introduced to the Dead End Kids and later Jimmy Cagney and they told me that America was the land of opportunity—Nuff Sed.