Hobart Bosworth, an actor, director and writer for most of his 73 years, dropped in at a studio where had been making a movie which will cost around $850,000 and observed that he made the same picture in 1913 for $9,000.
"I wrote, directed and played the lead in "The Sea Wolf," he said, "and we shot it in seventeen days. It was the seven-reel sensation of its time, and an accountant told me some time ago it has grossed more than $3,000,000.
The picture has been made four or five times, each time at a higher budget. Thousands per-week actors and actresses account for considerable of the cost of the new version.
"We had many ways of economize ing," said the tall, whitehaired Bosworth. "The action called for the collision -of two ferries. So I had one ferry ram itself into the ferry slip at San Francisco violently, with the passengers crowding out and into the water.
"Then I had some of the extras put on different clothing, ordered them all to use different action, and put them on the other ferry and sent it into the ship. In the pictures, it made a convincing collision "But I couldn't resist coming out to the studio" he smiled, "to see what they could do with nearly $1,000,000 that I couldn't with $9,000."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.