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Models and Mache, 1904

The following is a continuation of a newspaper article about the property shop of E. L. Morse on Twenty-ninth Street in New York City. The article first appeared in The New York Times on May 8, 1904, and Mr. Morse’s property shop is long gone. I have previously posted the introduction, a bit on Morse’s career, a story of a fake fish he built and a run down of all the skills a prop maker must possess.

On the table of the shop is a country kitchen, not over a foot wide and a foot high. Yet in it is every piece of rude furniture which was to be put in the large kitchen on the stage. Not only in general appearance is the model perfect, but in all the smallest details. The kitchen table even has a top that folds back—it is hardly 2 inches long—just like tables which Mr. Morse says are found in obscure farmhouses in New England. The chairs, mantelpieces, window frames—all are exact. The whole thing was whittled out with a knife by the master of the shop himself.

“Why, that would make a wonderful toy for some child,” suggests the visitor.

“Yes, and I’m going to give it to one,” Mr. Morse replies. “I never thought about any one’s wanting such a thing until some one suggested it the other day. I guess I’ll not throw away any more.”

All around the room, on boxes and chairs, sit vases to be used in a musical comedy. They are modeled after some rare foreign pottery. The look of them is so frail that you forget they are not breakable, and tread gingerly in and out among the confusion of obstacles. This amuses the master of the shop.

“Oh, you can’t hurt these things,” he says.

To prove it he playfully cuffs one of the vases off the box and across the room. It falls and bounces up and down like a rubber ball. There is not even a dent, for it’s only papier maché, and you could play football with it half an hour without hurting it.

This article first appeared in the New York Times, May 8, 1904.

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A Fine Fish Story, 1904

The following is a continuation of a newspaper article about the property shop of E. L. Morse on Twenty-ninth Street in New York City. The article first appeared in The New York Times on May 8, 1904, and Mr. Morse’s property shop is long gone. I have previously posted the introduction, a bit on Morse’s career and another portion of this article as well.

In the middle of the room a long, spiked monster catches the eye of the visitor. It is evidently meant for a fish, and looks like the kind of fish men see on dry land after a Saturday evening around town. Jutting out from its sides are sharp spear-points. Its scales are shiny, red and yellow, and its eyes are red electric light bulbs.

“What is that thing?”

Mr. Morse chuckles delightedly at your surprise.

“Funny thing about that,” he replies. “A man came in here several months ago and said he was going to tell a fish story and wanted a good illustration. I didn’t catch on at first, but finally he told me that he was going to get up at a dinner, tell a wonderful tale about having caught a fish, and then pull aside a curtain and say, ‘This is the fish.’ The bigger and fiercer the fish, he said, the most suitable to his story.

“He was one of these rich, society people, you know, and he didn’t care what he paid for it. He told me to go ahead and make him one, no matter what it cost. And this is what I made him. I heard afterward about his getting off the story at his dinner. When he came to the end of it and had everybody laughing he pulled the string.

“‘And here is the fish!’ he cried.

“The fish was in a glass tank full of water, and by wires it was made to wiggle around just like a real one. The electric eyes were connected with a battery and glowed like two fierce, red coals of fire. The stunt was a huge success, and the man was pleased to death. As he had no further use for the fish he sent it back to me, and told me to do whatever I liked with it. So there it hangs—to scare away thieves at night.”

The fish is not Mr. Morse’s only curiosity. Grotesque shapes have been the fad in musical comedy lately, and there are many of them in the place. They are made as light as practicable, so as to give as little trouble as possible to the men who bear them in the play.

There is a great wicker elephant, made so that two men can walk inside of it. Near by is a camel, with unsightly humps. The crooked claws of an angry-looking lion almost pull your hair if you stand straight up near the north wall of the room. Filling up the gaps between the larger things are tiny paper forms. It looks as if the owner of the place were afraid some of the walls might show and had carefully covered every inch of them.

This article first appeared in the New York Times, May 8, 1904.

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Edwin Booth’s Prop Maker, 1904

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The following is a continuation of a newspaper article about the property shop of E. L. Morse on Twenty-ninth Street in New York City. The article first appeared in The New York Times on May 8, 1904, and Mr. Morse’s property shop is long gone. I have previously posted the introduction and another portion of this article as well.

With all its reminders of bygone days and forgotten favorites, perhaps the quaintest and most interesting feature of the cob-webbed room is its master. Actors grow into fame and fade away into oblivion, while a property master holds his position and reputation secure. Mr. Morse is a survivor of the days that chroniclers are wont to call “the good old times.” He was property master of Edwin Booth’s Theatre, on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, and was the right-hand man of that famous actor—in a mechanical way…

Though his hair is turned gray, this designer, engraver, and maker of properties is as active as he was before any of the present theatrical celebrities were known. He knows, perhaps, more about the physical characteristics of New York’s playhouses than any other man living. In many of them he has worked, and every stage carpenter or worker of any importance is among his acquaintances.

For five years, since he quit the theatres and set up an establishment for the manufacture of properties, he has made all the “props” for Richard Mansfield. A list of the plays he has furnished would included practically all the big successes in recent years.

He and several of his assistants are now hard at work making gondolas, vases, and all sorts of fanciful animals’ heads for a musical comedy that is to be put on before long. It is a mystery how they manage to do anything in such a crowded place. There is hardly room to walk about, so littered is the floor with all kinds of material—a stranger calls it “rubbish.” Overhead are suspended from the ceiling vases, cloth elephants, trumpets, monstrous reptiles, and all conceivable kinds of stage ornaments—nearly everything made of papier maché.

This article first appeared in the New York Times, May 8, 1904.

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In a Graveyard of “Props”, 1904

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The following comes from a newspaper article about the property shop of E. L. Morse on Twenty-ninth Street in New York City. The article first appeared in The New York Times on May 8, 1904, and Mr. Morse’s property shop is long gone. I’ve previously posted a portion of this article; I wonder if E. L. Morse is related to the Charles Morse in this ad?

How are the mighty fallen! This is the first thought that comes to him who crosses the threshold of the gloomy old “property shop” in Twenty-ninth Street, where the trappings of past theatrical kingdoms and make-believe monarchies lie mold and unnoticed, stripped of all their former glory.

In front of you, as you enter, is the once haughty helmet of a Richard III or the breastplate of a Julius Caesar, or mayhap a necklace of pearls that was wont to encircle the neck of some dusky, passionate Cleopatra. It is a place full of suggestion, of splendor long forgot—this burial ground of discarded “props.” It is not one of the so-called “sights” of New York, but it contains more of interest than nine-tenths of the wonders proclaimed so blatantly by the megaphonic expositors who shout from the lofty, glistening coaches that roll up and down our avenues every day.

A dingy little hole! If you showed it to the ordinary provincial who had come to “see the town,” it’s ten chances to one he would turn up his nose in disgust and hasten away to find delight in one of the gilt-edged glass-covered palaces that adorn the street corners of Gotham.

But if the contents of this quaint, over-crowded little room could speak, what secrets, what choice morsels of gossip they would give up! They would make the memoirs of a famous actor or actress read like a missionary tract. They’ve been in the seats of the mighty and have taken part in the battles of the strong. That crown you see nearly hidden on the dusty shelf used to rest on the brow of a genius; that dagger, hanging harmless on the smoky wall, peeped every night for six months from the girdle of a woman who was the idol of thousands.

To find this storeroom of relics is no easy thing to do. If a kind friend tells you the address, even then the puzzle is not solved. The shop is not dignified by an entrance on either Twenty-ninth or Thirtieth Street, though it lies squarely between the two. While you are getting to it you think of underground dungeons such as you have read about in the wonderful Arabian Nights stories. After you have stood in the street looking blankly at the number to which you have been directed, you decide to display your ignorance and ask aid of the man in the ground-floor shop. The man looks up from his wares, partly impatient and party amused that any one should want to get into the dirty old “prop shop,” as he calls it.

“It’s back of the house,” he says, jerking this thumb loosely over his shoulder.

You thank him and leave him to find your way to the back. The door under the stoop is dark and forbidding, but beside it is a clew in the form of a faded wooden sign, so faded that the letters it bears are hard to make out. The words are “E. L. Morse, Theatrical Properties.” Evidently, Mr. Morse is not overanxious for anybody to find him.

This article first appeared in the New York Times, May 8, 1904.

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Why Film Prop Men Often Die In Their Youth, 1938

Today’s little chestnut first appeared in 1938. It just goes to show that the difficulties we props people have dealing with directors and actors is nothing new. If anything, it is the one thing in our line of work that has remained unchanged throughout the years.

By Frederick C. Othman.

Hollywood, July (U.P.) – The title of today’s movie story is “Why the Prop Man Went Mad.”

Abe Steinberg was the bedeviled property man, working on the set of a Twentieth Century-Fox picture called “By the Dawn’s Early Light.” Warner Baxter, Alice Faye, and Charles Winninger were the stars, while Gregory Ratoff, the Russian actor-writer, producer-director, was functioning in his fourth category.

When we arrived Steinberg was placing fruit cocktails on a dinner table in the home of the American consul in an unnamed Manchurian town. Winninger was the consul, Miss Faye was a Russian adventuress, Baxter was a roving newspaperman.

With the cocktails carefully placed on the table, the cameraman ready to go, and the performers starting to do the scene, a fly buzzed across Steinberg’s canned fruit. He ran for a spray gun and set a vapor of insecticide across the dinner table. That fixed the fly, but it didn’t appease Ratoff, who paced, and thought and frowned. Everybody was quiet while this went on. Suddenly Ratoff’s face lit up.

Not Fruit, Fish!

“That’s what’s wrong,” he said. “They didn’t have fruit cocktails in Manchuria. They have—maybe—fish. Get me some fish.”

“What kind of fish?” Steinberg wanted to know.

“Shrimp,” snapped Ratoff. “Canned shrimp.”

The property department was fresh out of canned shrimp. So was the studio restaurant. Steinberg sent out to a grocery for a couple of cans of shrimp. This took time, because the Fox lot is many a long mile from the nearest food store.

Finally Steinberg’s shrimp arrived. He dumped the fruit from the cocktail cups and filled them with shrimp. He doused the latter with ketchup and an hour and a half after the cocktail episode began, the cameras again were ready to turn.

Ratoff called his actors. Miss Faye looked at the shrimp and said:

“But I can’t eat shrimp.”

Steinberg staggered away, talking to himself.

Originally printed in The Washington Post, July 19, 1938.