Frauenthal

Chapter 41
The Frauenthal

THE FRAUENTHAL. Ah! My one and only thoroughly pleasant theatre experience! I think it was in 1999 that I first attended the annual Buster Keaton celebration in Muskegon, Michigan. The previous few years, all the shows had been 16mm, and now everybody was thrilled that this year, for the first time, the highlight would be 35mm. Patty Tobias gleefully explained to me that the Frauenthal next door had just been upgraded. I was mortified. “Do you know what ‘upgraded’ means?” She didn’t. “It means ‘widescreen-only’!” Patty got a look of dread horror on her face. Immediately, she introduced me to the manager of the Frauenthal, Tom Harryman, who happily said, “Yes, we’re going to have some framing problems.” Yikes!

If memory serves, that was a Thursday. The 35mm show would be on Saturday. That gave us only one day to FedEx in some lenses and apertures from Detroit. We went to his office to make a call, but just as he was about to pick up the receiver, he had a thought. “Wait a minute. When I went through the booth, I saw all kinds of old things in there, and I think I saw some lenses.” We dashed to the booth, went to the storage room off to the side and opened a dented, dusty, grimy free-standing metal cabinet. It was loaded with ancient stuff. Probably half a minute later, he handed me a small, oily, greasy box and asked, “Do you need these?” Inside were old apertures, including, I think, MovieTone and Academy. Hooray! Tom had to attend to other things, and so, in a panic, I dug through every bit of that cabinet, starting on the top shelf and working my way down. Right near the bottom I found a box, and inside were two lenses that must have been there since the theatre was built in 1929, and they were probably antiquated even then. They were really tiny. The average lens has a diameter of 2.78", and many of the more modern lenses have a diameter of 4". These were a little less than 2.78", and they had metal shims wrapped around them so that they could fit into a 1929 projector. Wow. I had never seen anything like that before. There were some spare 4" lens collars lying around, and I felt peculiar putting tiny lenses with shims into those larger collars. That’s TWO adapters around each lens. Would they still be aligned? Would we be able to get focus? Miracle of miracles: perfect focus!

Bill Bodell was the projectionist, and he was the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet. He told me that this job made him nervous. He was a stagehand, not a projectionist. He didn’t have a good grasp of the machines. He showed me some problems. The image was travel ghosting. There was too much noise. There was a shadow obstructing the image when Projector #2 was on screen. There were plenty of other problems, too, and I can no longer remember what they were. He didn’t know what to do. Fortunately, the problems were not electrical or electronic, and they all were concentrated in the picture heads. That limited the complications, because, more often than not, the picture head is the easiest component to service. Even more fortunately, they were Simplex XL, the picture head with which I was most familiar. A marvelous coincidence! My heavens, had those been Ballantyne or Bauer or something, I would have been at an extreme disadvantage. I fixed what I could, and that is why I missed almost every moment of the three-day conference. As for the shadow, the problem was that the fire shutter was not lifting completely, but only half-way. I don’t remember what caused that problem, but I knew we would need to order some new parts. In the meantime, I told him that I would simply remove the fire shutter from that machine altogether. The machine would still run just fine, and the show would be just fine, and I promised him that I would install a replacement next time I could get to town. He trusted me.

I timed the shutters as best I could, but without a pair of binoculars, I couldn’t be sure that I got it exactly right. Then it was time to inspect the film prints. I remember that we had The Navigator, but I do not remember which short film we got. I do remember that I was disappointed that they had music tracks on them, which meant that the left side was lopped off. The cropping was horribly noticeable, and there was even a shot in which Buster was entirely deleted from the left side of the image. Dreadful. Also, they were poorly made prints, and I don’t think they were real black-and-white, but rather chromogenic black-and-white, which consists of a black dye and can be developed in a color lab. (See also “Black-and-white C-41.”) Chromogenic black-and-white can look lovely when it is original, but when it is used to copy true black-and-white film, the result is sickly.

No speed controls, unfortunately, but that was okay. Buster was perfectly content for any of his silent movies to be run at 24 frames per second, and, besides, from Sherlock Jr. in 1924 all the way through Steamboat Bill, Jr. in 1928, Buster had always wanted them run at 24fps and designed them for that speed. In at least some of them, he included instructions to projectionists to run the films at 11 minutes per 1,000', which is an old-fashioned way of saying 24fps. So there.

HISTORY LESSON. In the beginnings, there were all sorts of speeds, but by the early 1900’s, camera speed began to settle on 60'/min, or 16fps, certainly by 1908. Yet not too many camera operators held to that in any strict fashion, and if you run early films, you will discover that the taking speeds were all over the place.

The usual projection speed, certainly by 1908, was 70'/min, and you will wonder why. I do not have an answer, but I do have an observation. Greatly to my surprise, I discovered that running a 60'/min film at 60'/min simply looked bizarre. Though the action was right, it looked slow, and I couldn’t understand why. Further, there was a strobe effect, which was especially noticeable in faster actions. Turn the knob up to 70'/min, and the action, though slightly speeded, looked more normal, the motions were significantly smoother, and the strobe effect was gone. Æsthetically, it was far more pleasing and acceptable at 70'/min.

If you wish to test my observation for yourself, do not do so on a flatbed, do not do so on video, do not do so on an editing machine, do not do so in 16mm, do not do so in 8mm, do not do so with an incandescent light source. The effect is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT on different equipment and on smaller screens. If you wish to test my observation, do so in 35mm with a carbon-arc or xenon light source on a large screen. Chances are that when you turn the speed-control knob back and forth until you find a result that looks “right,” you will discover, on closer observation, that it is actually running a bit faster than it was filmed. I don’t understand that effect. It’s an optical illusion of some sort.

Though 70'/min (18⅔fps) was the usual projection speed, many films were cranked in the camera at speeds much lower than 60'/min (16fps), even lower than 30'/min. By about the mid-1910’s, many cinemas purchased motors to drive the projector heads as well as motors to drive the carbon feeds. Prior to that, the projectionist had to spend the entire day cranking the film with one hand and feeding both the negative and positive carbon rods every few seconds and constantly making other adjustments to ensure that the burn was even. The new motors were a godsend. As far as cranking a projector, it’s pretty interesting. On the projectors I played with, at less than 60'/min (16fps), the fire shutter drops. At more than 70'/min (18⅔fps), the machine wobbles violently. Yet what I played with was not the full range of machinery. I just purchased Frank Herbert Richardson’s Motion Picture Handbook for Managers and Operators (NYC: Moving Picture World, 1910). I have long had a collection of the editions from 1912, 1915, 1927, 1935, and 1947 and I learned a great deal from them. I was missing 1910 and 1923. Darn! For years, I attempted to locate the 1910 first edition, without luck. Well, now I have very own copy, in beautiful condition. Not only that, but it is now available online for free! When we turn to page 103 we discover some startling information — and some startling opinions, as well:

The matter of speed is of much importance, but no rule can be laid down governing it. Speed must be left entirely to the discretion of the operator, except that with inflammable film forty feet per minute is as slow as is safe, with ordinary light. Theoretically, the machine speed should be the same as that of the camera which took the picture being projected, but in practice this is often far from true. The camera man grinds out a set speed, supposed to be sixty feet per minute, though often he varies widely from the mark. The actors act the scene as seems best to them, but ofttimes when the scene is projected it is discovered they have misjudged the speed of action necessary for best effect. Right here is where a really good operator who closely watches such details becomes of great value, helping out the scenes amazingly merely by changing speed on different scenes. Take, as an example, Pathé’s “Faker’s Dream.” If run straight through at camera speed the film is dull and of comparatively little effect. Where the actors are moving about their speed is too great and while on the various amusement devices of the park the speed is altogether too slow. But by running about a fifty foot speed in the first instance and close to seventy-five in the other, the film creates much laughter, but it is necessary to change speed radically many times on this film. Another example is “A Ride for a Life,” by Edison, I believe. If run at normal speed while the auto ride is on, the “Ride for a Life” develops into a howling farce, but if speeded up just as fast as you can run, it is excellent, but as the ride is cut three or four times in its length by other scenes, you have to slow down for each of them or the farce would be reversed. As an example the other way, we all know that the slower the Passion Play is run the more impressive it is. Forty feet per minute is best for it. The only rule for speed, except in starting the machine, which should always be done slowly, is, “Watch your subject and be governed entirely by its action.” Twenty-five minutes is the extreme limit of time for 1,000 feet of film. Fifteen to twenty minutes is ordinary time for most subjects.

MY GLOSS ON A GLOSS ON A GLOSS: Actually, it was The Fakir’s Dream by Segundo de Chomón, originally entitled Rêve de Chin-Ko-Ka, from 1908. I do not know if the film exists anymore. It was probably not Edison’s A Ride for a Life; it was probably D.W. Griffith’s The Drive for a Life, and, again, I do not know if the film still exists. Unless the films turn up, we shall not be able to test Richardson’s claims. As for The Passion Play, heaven only knows. It was filmed countless times. Klaw & Erlanger had the rights to a full-length feature version (5,000 feet) way back in 1897. In that same year, the Lumière brothers created a one-reel version. Edison released a one-reel version, which may have been the Lumière or may have been snippets from the Klaw & Erlanger. There must have been scores of other versions, probably a few every year. Here’s one from 1903, for instance.

Zo, despite what modern self-proclaimed authorities proclaim, hand-cranked projectors offered a narrow range of speeds, up to just above 18fps, and that is all. There are those who log onto online chat groups to rage against, for instance, the DVD editions of the Charlie Chaplin Keystone films having been speed corrected to 18fps rather than 24fps, but the people who do that are not familiar with the equipment that was available in 1914. I can assure you that those films were NOT TO HAVE BEEN projected at 24fps back in 1914. Serge and David’s choice of 18fps was authentic.

Now, greatly to my surprise, I make another discovery. I just pulled out my two copies of the 1912 edition from storage, and I was deeply startled to read the following passage. I am certain I read it decades ago (heck, I flagged the page!), but I have NO memory of it at all. Here it is (p. 321):

...it is no unusual thing, especially in the nickel houses, also sometimes in theaters of the better class, to see a 900-foot film run through in ten minutes, which means 90 feet per minute, or a geneva speed of 24 per second. Such speed is an outrage upon the exchange owning the film, upon the projection mechanism, and upon the audience, since the action on the screen becomes merely a series of jumping-jack antics.

It is interesting that, in his random example, he chose 24fps, not 23fps or 25fps, and that makes me think that 24fps had already become common by 1912, and that truly was an outrage upon the audience, since films back then simply were not designed to be shown at such a high speed. To run a film at such a high speed, of course, required a drive motor. A hand crank would not suffice for such a stunt.

You are asking: Why did camera operators undercrank films? Good question! You’re thinking! Film length was determined by contract. Exhibitors had contracts with distributors, which in turn had contracts with studios. Such a contract could stipulate, for example, that the Indolent Mumblebird Studio supply a new product each month, no less than 800' in length and no more than 1,000'. That made it tricky for the filmmakers, who would conjure up a story, visualize it, time it, and agree that they had a story that would take, say, 36 minutes to tell. But with a maximum length of 1,000', they needed to do some arithmetic. 1,000' at 70'/min is 14 minutes. So the filmmakers needed to cram 36 minutes into 14. If they cranked the camera at 27'/minute rather than the usual 60', they’d probably be able to squeeze everything in.

Another reason to undercrank? Nighttime scenes! Film then was orthochromatic and it was rather slow, probably the fastest being equivalent to maybe modern ASA 50? I’m not sure. What I do know for sure is that dark images simply did not register well. Look at the opening shots of Fatty at Coney Island. Those images would not have exposed at 60'/min (16fps). By the 1920’s, when film was slightly more sensitive, cameramen used various tricks to fake it.

To understand the rest of the story, you first need to understand that most cinemas in those days were what later came to be called “grind houses,” so called because the machines’ gears never stopped grinding. The house lights did not come on, which was a pity, because people in the audience never got so much as a glimpse of the breathtaking architecture and design, which makes us wonder why anybody bothered with attractive architecture and design. The screen was almost never empty. Between reels, there were glass-lantern slides on screen. Patrons purchased tickets whenever they happened to arrive and they entered in mid-show. When they got to the moment they recognized from the time they entered, they left: “This is where we came in.” I guess that cinema managers considered intermissions between programs a waste of time and money. There were exceptions, of course.

Projection speeds, officially established as no less than 60'/min and no more than 70'/min, were actually a mess, especially after the introduction of drive motors. For matinées, which had few customers, some cinema managers wanted to drag the shows out so that the auditorium would not seem quite so empty. They instructed the projectionists to run the film at maybe 40'/min, which was a fire/explosion risk, and which compelled the projectionists to find ways to defeat the fire shutter. (Victor Milner, for instance, held the fire shutter up with rubber bands.) For the evening shows, which had fairly full houses, it was a good idea to cram in an extra show so that more customers could cycle through. That is why managers instructed their projectionists to run everything through at maybe 80'/min, or maybe even a bit faster.

Actually, Kevin Brownlow tells me that, beginning with The Squaw Man in 1914, Paramount Pictures were consistently designed for projection at 80'/min. That surprised me. Really. That surprised me. I have yet to find anything hinting at such in contemporary articles or books, but I’m sure he’s right. So, let’s research The Squaw Man. It was originally six reels holding 1,800m (obviously a rounded number), or 5,905' (including Part Titles), give or take. The version on YouTube is about 5,800' (minus Part Titles). Not an exact match, but probably not a serious mismatch, since so many variables are unaccounted for. The version on YouTube is stretched by simple duplication of every other video frame to make 30 video rasters per second. So, unless there is a piece of the equation that I do not understand, the film is speed corrected to 20fps, or 75'/min, which is a tiny bit slower than what Paramount/Publix instructed. It’s fast, but not unreasonably so, and so I assume it’s about right. Well, make a monkey out of me. Okay. I surrender. By February 1914, 80'/min was a common projection speed at the deluxe houses.

Some projectors, but by no means all, had speed indicators. The few I have seen provided two readings: feet per minute, and, more commonly used, minutes per 1,000 feet. Not a single one that I know about indicated frames per second. Camera operators and projectionists usually did not talk in terms of frames per second. For reference, this is how the three formulations aligned, more or less:

16 minutes for 1,000 feet is about 62½ feet/min (16⅔ frames/sec)
15 minutes for 1,000 feet is about 66⅔ feet/min (17¾ frames/sec)
14 minutes for 1,000 feet is about 71½ feet/min (19 frames/sec)
13 minutes for 1,000 feet is about 77 feet/min (20½ frames/sec)
12 minutes for 1,000 feet is about 83⅓ feet/min (22¼ frames/sec)
11 minutes for 1,000 feet is about 91 feet/min (24¼ frames/sec)

or (approximations):

60' per minute is about 16⅔ minutes per 1,000' (16 frames/sec)
65' per minute is about 15½ minutes per 1,000' (17⅓ frames/sec)
70' per minute is about 14¼ minutes per 1,000' (18⅔ frames/sec)
75' per minute is about 13⅓ minutes per 1,000' (20 frames/sec)
80' per minute is about 12½ minutes per 1,000' (21⅓ frames/sec)
85' per minute is about 11¾ minutes per 1,000' (22⅔ frames/sec)
90' per minute is about 11⅒ minutes per 1,000' (24 frames/sec)

There is no point in being more exact than this, really, there isn’t, since so much was simply eyeballed and since speed controls and indicators were no more than ballpark.

From the beginnings, the image on screen was quite dim. Carbon-arc lamps were low-intensity and many cinemas preferred 1,000W incandescent lamps. Simplex invented the “Sun-Light,” the first high-intensity rotating-positive carbon-arc lamphouse. It gave a brilliant white light, noticeably superior to the dim yellow light that audiences had seen previously. The Capitol in Manhattan, New York, was the first to install the new prototype “Sun-Light” lamps. That was in October 1920. The extra brightness introduced a new problem: Irritating flicker. Well, strobe would be a more accurate word than flicker. The strobe had barely been noticeable before. Now it was blinding. To reduce the strobe, the speed was increased to 80'/min at the very slowest. A year later, in the autumn of 1921, the “Sun-Light” lamphouses were put on the market, and deluxe houses everywhere installed them or the equivalent rival makes and models. Hollywood studios needed to play catch-up, and so undercranking could no longer be quite so extreme.

With the extra brilliance of the light, it was possible to fill larger screens. Indeed, by December 1924, Magnascope was put on the market, to enlarge dramatic scenes of major films. (Some cinema managers insisted that all films be projected only in Magnascope, with the tops and bottoms lopped off. What else is old?) Three-wing shutters, which some downtown cinemas had used until then, were junked and replaced by two-wing shutters, to get 50% more illumination. With larger screens and more illumination, strobe was again emphasized and irksome, and so cinemas upped the projection speed to about 85'/min or even 90'/min. The strobe problem went away, even with two-wing shutters.

Zo, when the Jim Cards and Walter Kerrs of the world write in their books (and I love their books, by the way) that silent films were always projected at about 90'/min (24fps), they were remembering their childhoods in the 1920’s. They were not talking about earlier times, before they were old enough to go to the movies, and they were certainly not talking about the times before they were born. They did not realize that many things had changed extremely rapidly. They did not realize that in Europe and in other countries of the world, many things changed extremely slowly. So, yes, some European movies even from 1929 needed to be projected at 70'/min.

Buster’s silent two-reelers were all undercranked, all of them. When you watch those shorts, you will notice a pattern. The films with simpler narratives had speeded motion. The films with richer narratives had extremely speeded motion. If you have a projector with variable speed and turn the knob all the way down to 16fps, those films will still race through as fast as lightning. Now you know why.

Of course, your professor told you all this in film class, right?

As I was working on the machines, and as Bill was watching me and making mental notes of everything I was doing, we chatted. The Frauenthal, he told me, had originally been The Michigan, built by C. Howard Crane, whom I adored. He was one of the greatest theatre architects. The Michigan, though, was a terribly common name for theatres and cinemas, and so when A. Harold Frauenthal donated a gob of money to preserve the building, it was renamed in his honor. Bill told me about working on the many touring shows, and he said that most of the celebrities are exceptionally strange. Okay, I asked, who was the strangest? His answer was instantaneous: George Winston. His contract stipulated that nobody was to talk to him, nobody was to interact with him. He would appear on stage when he needed to, he would play the piano, and he would leave, and that is all. Yes, I had to agree, that was rather odd. Why was he like that? Bill had a postulate, which he could not prove, but it was his intuition: He thought George Winston was just painfully shy. During rehearsals, though, Bill just watched and listened to him play that piano and he was overwhelmed by the artistry.

I promised Bill that I would return in the next few weeks or months, and that I would fine-tune the machines even more.

Punchline: What had been “upgraded”? Nothing! All “upgraded” meant was that the machines were now operating rather than dormant.

I think it was on Saturday afternoon that I saw Tom walking in the auditorium. At least, that’s my memory. Maybe I saw him in his office, instead. Whatever. I said, “Tell me something. You’re friendly. You’re open. You’re helpful. You’re relaxed. You’re concerned. You care about quality. You’re nice. How on earth did you get to be a theatre manager? No theatre manager is friendly or nice or helpful!!! Theatre managers are all ogres!!!” He smiled in recognition, and answered, “I used to be an artistic director. Does that answer your question?”

But the cropping. How was I to explain that? Everybody would hate me. Everybody would conclude that I’m an incompetent dummy, and nobody would ever allow me in the booth again. So I told everybody I could that, “Hey, sorry, the left side is missing, and you will see the cropping, but that was a lab error. You will definitely see that the image is off-center and that important parts of the image are missing. There’s nothing that Bill or I can do about it. I’m sorry.” Advance apologies accepted. Buster’s widow Eleanor and his friend Jim Karen weren’t concerned, and they didn’t even stay for the movies, as they had seen them way too many times already.

So, the movie started, and I walked right up to the orchestra pit during the opening credits, to see if there was any travel ghost. It was perfect. Both machines were perfect. That was luck. That was not skill. That was luck.

I can’t remember who the organist was on the Barton, but I do remember that the organist was one of the few who knew how to accompany silent films properly. There is a skill to accompanying silent films. There are gigantic collections of appropriate music. A good accompanist needs to know all that music by heart, needs to play it effortlessly, needs to transition from one mood to the next imperceptibly, and needs never to distract from the images, but to accompany the images so well that the audience will forget that there is music playing. It is not an easy skill and it cannot be learned by just any musician or composer, and it cannot be learned in just a few months. This organist had that skill down pat. I just loved the Frauenthal!

After the show, several people came up to me to ask, “What was that you were saying about something being wrong? I didn’t notice anything wrong.” Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!

I should mention something else. When I was going through that dusty, dented, greasy cabinet, I found a little roll of film, maybe 20 feet or so. Here are a few frames:

Flummoxed. I thought it looked like Laughing Gravy, but though I really like some of Laurel & Hardy’s movies, I am not an expert. Now, Laughing Gravy is a sound film (and one of L&H’s weaker films). The original prints were full-frame Silent aperture with the sound on synchronized discs. Later prints would lose the left side to make way for an optical soundtrack. This print was rather recent, probably from the 1970’s, when not a single cinema anywhere on earth could any longer run synchronized discs. This was also step-printed, since the original had shrunken badly, and you can see the shrinkage printed in, with double images of sprocket holes and duplicated frame lines. Why on earth would the film be printed this way in the 1970’s, and why on earth was this little clip in the booth of the Frauenthal? I asked David Macleod to identify it. He held it up to the sky, looked for a moment as he adjusted his eyes, and said, “It’s Laughing Gravy.” I later asked Jeff Joseph about this. Was this perhaps a lab test? If it was a lab test, why did it end up in a booth in Muskegon? He said that there’s never any explanation for these things, and he finds things like this all the time.

Laughing Gravy, film versus video.
Nobody complains. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Except for me.

Also, for the record, simply because nobody else would ever document this. When going through that dusty, dented, greasy cabinet, I found a film trap from a first run of Super Simplex. It was a trap with a slider, to give the operator a choice of two apertures. I think the two choices on this one were Silent (.6796"×.90625") and Proportional (.610"×.800"), but I really don’t remember for sure. It was fun to play with it. I had never seen one before, though I had certainly seen illustrations. That answered one of my questions: The booth in 1929 had Super Simplex picture heads.

When I got back home (a day’s drive), I immediately ordered some parts. For the next year, I kept trying to carve out a week to go back to Muskegon, but I could never scrape up the money nor could I ever find a free week. Nervous? Yes, I was getting nervous. Finally, for the next Buster fest, I was back, and this time I brought my tools. I walked into the Frauenthal through the stage door and saw a bunch of guys building a set. “Is Bill Bodell around?” “And gettin’ rounder.” Yes, he was in the booth, and so I climbed up the auditorium, upstairs to the balcony, up the balcony, up more flights of stairs to the booth, and there he was. He was delighted, because he had recently asked a professional from Detroit to go through the machines, top to bottom, and make ’em like brand-new. He turned on the motor of Projector #1, and it purred softly like a kitten. I never found out who that guy from Detroit was, but whoever he was, I would love to meet him. The booth was now entirely black. All along the walls and ceiling were thick acoustical tiles. The silence in the booth was almost painful. “They asked me what color I wanted the tiles, and I said ‘Dark! Dark!’ I didn’t say ‘black,’ but that’s what we have now, and it’s fine.” I apologized for taking a whole year to return. Did he have any troubles with running movies in the past year? Actually, he said, there had been no movies shown at all the past year. I was so relieved to hear that. I installed the new fire-shutter mechanism in projector #2, I tried out the Silent aperture plates that I had brought along, and everything was wonderful. Now that I had tools with me, I made some other promised adjustments as well.

I went to the booth again later that day, or maybe the next day, and there was a visiting technician on his knees working I think on some electrics. He asked me about my wife. No wife. Why not? “Well, you know how it is. ‘You need to spend more time with me!!!!!’ ‘If you want me to spend more time with you, then come to the Frauenthal and work on the machines!’” He laughed. “Oh, maybe you’re not married now, but I can tell that you have been!” “Actually, no, I never was, but I’ve seen enough other couples to know how it works.”

The films were there, and Bill had mounted them onto house reels, but I went through them again. They were in remarkably fine condition. They were used, but there were no repairs necessary. No breaks. No split sprocket holes. No shredded sprocket holes. No rips. No misframes. No upside-down segments. No flopped segments. No peeling glue splices. No misaligned splices. No Scotch-tape splices. No masking-tape splices. No electrical-tape splices. Only one splice at each leader and tail, not 82. What happened? That had to be a first in my experience. The only changes I made were to put double-sided splices at the beginning and ending of each reel, rather than the single-sided splices that were there. Better yet, these films were full Silent aperture! No cropping! Hooray! So I tested a bit of Seven Chances, but, of course, it was off-center. We stopped the film and walked down the several flights to open the side maskings, and I said that the right side of the screen would just have to remain empty. Awkward, but what can you do, absent base shifters or lens shifters?

Anyway, this time I could actually attend most of the conference events, and I had a ton of fun.

The next year, when I returned once again, some of the shorts were full Silent aperture, and I said that, oy vey, we’ll have to have an empty right side of the screen again. Bill then showed me something. He turned a knob on the Simplex Heavy Duty base, and the entire base slowly moved to the right. Duh. I had never known about that adjustment before. Bill smiled, and said, “Yeah, I was wondering why you didn’t do that last year, but I figured you knew what you were doing.” No, I had not known what I was doing! The Simplex Heavy Duty, which I had never operated in any booth, must have been built with that adjustment to accommodate magnetic-striped films.

To this day, I still have a fantasy that my phone rings, and that on the other end is a pleasant voice from the Frauenthal HR Department. “Are you interested in working with us? We would love to have you on our team.” If I were ever to get a call like that, I would clock out of work, submit my resignation, pack all my things, rent a U-Haul, and move my cat and myself out to remain in Muskegon for the rest of our days.

Continue to the next chapter.