Hundreds Seek Job in Films With Fox Company to be on Location Near Reno

By JACK BELL

In remembrances of squatting in a dugout, busy with all the annoyances of policing one's self, has nothing on H. C. Updegraff, business manager of the Fox motion picture outfit, when it comes to being here, there and yonder. There is not a minute of the day and night when he is free from callers. He is the original minute man when it comes to handling the hundreds that apply to him for jobs in the coming masterpiece that will be filmed at Dodge, Nevada. Applications for the main cast, for feature positions, and all the hundred and one parts that will be portrayed have been anxiously sought, in person, by messenger and mail, not to mention the ring, jangling telephone that peals almost incessantly in his suite at the Golden.

It is a revelation to see this trained man handle applicants - smilingly direct, in query, a soft word of dismissal, a bit of encouragement. The laborer that asks for a job on the construction crew is treated in the same courteous manner as the society person who has been bitten by the lure of the shadow story that is in the making. It's all very wonderful to the uninitiated to watch the satisfied expressions of the applicants as they depart from their one minute conference with a knowledge that their appeals have been given honest consideration.

"I have already booked quite a number for the big picture," said Mr. Updegraff. "I have a very busy time of it, the business is continuous. Already I have secured a few perfect models of young ladies for the dance hall scene. Of course, they will dress in short skirts, and will be replicas of the life that all old-time westerners are familiar with in the boom days of long ago, on the frontier.

"Hi West, who put across the Pony Express through Nevada has been signed up. The real employment of the hundreds that will be needed in the picture will be hired as we go along.

"Mr. Ford, casting director, will start the picture in the Los Angeles studio on December 26. He will then accompany a small portion of the players to Reno, arriving here on December 29. The members comprising the balance of the cast, the big crowd will leave Los Angeles in time to arrive here January 3. The Al G. Barnes circus train, with sleepers, dining car, kitchen car and chefs, porters and attendants will be installed at Dodge to take care of the regular cast.

"We expect to be here from January 3 until along about the first of March. As is our custom we will have one grand holiday for the public. The entire community - matter of fact, all of Nevada will be invited to a barbecue that will be served free of charge. On this gala day our guests will watch the screen creation of one of the most intensely inteesting, historical pictures ever filmed in this country. The folks will have an opportunity to meet most of the stars of the first filament of picturedom. They will have the pleasure of talking to their favorites of movies. It will be a day that will go down in Nevada history, as educational, showing the wonders of seeing first hand the actual taking of a thrilling moving picture.