A "Silent Movie" That's Fun
The "silent movie" in which boys act the parts without speaking a word, is an excellent stunt for a camp fire. Next time the fellows in your tent are called upon to entertain the bunch, try it. Let one boy announce the subtitles and the other boys do the acting. You don't need much of a rehearsal, nor a stage manager, because you take all your cues from the announcer. You won't have any trouble delighting your audience; you'll find they want action, not polished impersonation.
Here, for instance, is a home-made movie that "got by big" at Camp Brady, run by Detroit Boy Scouts. Six fellows put their heads together and got it up in about twenty minutes. In this sample "movie" the announcer will read to the audience everything but the directions, which appear in parentheses.
Lily of the Alley
Silent Movie in Two Reels, Written and Produced by the Polecat Patrol, Camp Brady
Cast of Characters
 | Lily of the Alley, the winsome darling of Pigeon's Milk Canyon, Arizona. |
| Desperate Desmond, a wealthy ostrich grower of Kalamazoo, but at heart a bold, bad man. |
| Homely Hiram, one of Nature's noblemen, though he totes a face that only a mother could love. |
| Vesuvius, Desperate Desmond's white mule. |
| A Double-Barreled, sliding action rattlesnake. |
Scene I
Pigeon's Milk Canyon, Arizona, on a sweltering afternoon in February. Lily of the Alley is digging clams.
Desperate Desmond gallops up on Vesuvius, sees the beautiful maiden, and starts a flirtation.
Horrors! A rattle, and not a baby in sight! (Rattlesnake appears.)
Desperate Desmond escapes on Vesuvius, leaving poor Lily shaking hands with the undertaker.
Homely Hiram appears, looking for four-leaf clovers. (He sees the snake and, after a desperate struggle, draws a salt shaker from his hip pocket and sprinkles salt on the snake's tail. The snake dies. Homely Hiram clasps Lily of the Alley to his heart.)
Scene II
Thirty seconds later, on Broadway, New York. Between Scene I and Scene II much has happened. Lily's father has died of sleeping sickness--he went to sleep on a railroad track. Desperate Desmond, unbeknown to Lily, has taken her father's papers to the blacksmith shop and had them forged. Desperate Desmond now seeks to marry her and get the rest of her property. The scene opens with Lily in a parlor of the fourteenth floor of the Hotel Ashcanderbilt. Desperate Desmond comes a-wooing.
FIRE! Desperate Desmond escapes with the only parachute on the fourteenth floor. Will Lily of the Alley perish in the flames?
Homely Hiram arrives from Arizona to do his Christmas shopping. He sees Lily on the fourteenth floor, reaches in his watch pocket for his trusty lasso, and yanks her from the fourteenth floor out of the window to safety. They go off hunting a minister.
Desperate Desmond, foiled, blows out his brains with a bicycle pump.
(The End)
This movie runs about ten minutes. At Camp Brady it was a howling success. In getting up such a movie, strive for plenty of action with as little description that has to be read as possible.
