Ten Students Face Camera in First National College Movie Try-outs--Four Hundred Line Up for Preliminary Inspection

Four hundred undergraduates reported for moving picture try-outs yesterday morning, when First National Studios conducted tests for prospective Douglas Fairbanks and Milton Sills in the Freshmen Gymnasium at 11 o'clock. After being lined up in parade fashion, they were marched by several First National reviewers, some ten of the most handsome and most striking were chosen, and the rest were left to watch the victims perform. Those, who were chosen, after watching the process of make-up being performed on two Brown undergraduates, who had been transported to Cambridge for that purpose, were then asked to remove their coats and prepare themselves for the paint. This latter was most lavishly spread on the physiognomies of the chosen few, in turn, by R. L. Stough, expert painter of the First National Studios, amidst the smoke and din resulting from the presence of countless newspaper photographers. At the conclusion of this process, the stars of the picture world, to be, were given three minutes each in front of a First National field camera, during which these they were to depict, for the photographer and acting director, all of their facial eccentricities. Three hundred feet of moving picture film was used on each.

The tests taken at Harvard are a part of the nationwide project of the First National Studios to obtain 10 college men of representative type to become moving picture actors. From each of the 33 colleges to be visited, ten men will be chosen. Of this number, after careful consideration of prospective ability, character and apitude of each of the contestants, ten candidates will be chosen who will be given an eight-week try-out in the First National movie school at Burbank, California. Those who prove themselves valuable will be given five-year contracts with the film corporation with a salary of $75 a week for the first six months, gradually increased so that during the last year of the contract they will be receiving $750 a week.

Although the names of the undergraduates who were chosen have been withheld, several College athletes and other men prominent in undergraduate activities were on the list.