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Learn more- No modern theater nowadays is fully equipped without its attendant firemen, and we are introduced to one who is placed on duty behind the scenes. He evidently has a large heart, for as a ballet girl comes toward her dressing room he tries hard to attract her attention and to make love to her, which she repulses, telling him to attend to his duty. A group of girls now appear and our fireman ogles and grins at the bevy of girls, who treat him with a fair amount of amusement and laugh at his ungainly gait and his awkward love-making. Vanishing into their rooms, they leave him alone to the solitary curtain and the corridor. Tiring of acting as sentinel, he peeps into the dressing-room, where what he sees is vividly brought out on the screen through the peephole, showing a ballet girl trying her steps. Having satisfied his curiosity, he comes to another room, where a fat man is seen making up, the result of which is shown to the audience. Hearing footsteps, our fireman is instantly alert, and the leading lady passes by bearing a beautiful bouquet of flowers. He attempts to intercept her, but she scornfully waves him away and enters her room and our peeping Tom immediately glues his eye to the chink and what he sees we also see depicted on the screen. In this instance the make-up is extremely good and the devolution of a perfect woman is complete when we see the leading lady taking off her wig, throwing off her beads, taking off the India-rubber inflated bust, until she stands before us a man. Turning around, he catches the eye of Peeping Tom at the door and he instantly orders him away. The next scene to which our firemans curiosity leads him has two occupants, one being the star and the other being a colonel admirer in the full glory of his regimentals, busily engaged in making love to the intense delight of the audience and of Peeping Tom. A merry clown appears in the corridor. His silent footfalls are not heard by the fireman, who is so intent with the scenes that he is witnessing that he allows the clown to approach him, so noiselessly had he appeared upon the scene, and take from his belt the turnkey, and going to the stand Merry Andrew proceeds to turn on the water. The hose, the nozzle of which is held in the hand of Mr. Fireman in such a way that to his great astonishment he instantly gets a wetting and in his confusion trying to stop the water flowing from the nozzle, he half drowns himself. The actors and actresses, hearing the noise and commotion outside, open the doors of their dressing-rooms to ascertain the cause, with which all are treated to a cold shower bath, each and all trying to get out of the way of the stream of water. Gradually getting out across the stage, in which a trap door is open, Mr. Fireman, afraid to let go of the hose, is led with them, and, not noticing the trap door, falls through to the scene below, where he lays for a moment dazed and half stunned. This scene represents the fairy coming from underground, and the water being turned off by the same clown who turned it on, the scene proceeds. The curtain is turned up and underneath the stage the working mechanism of the fairy, with Mr. Fireman crouching behind, and having only half recovered his senses, rises with the fairy. Finding himself the observed of all observers, he keeps crouched down behind and then the ballet appears on the stage and our fireman is observed and surrounded. The curtain is rung down and our fireman is ignominiously freed from his position in the theater. -- The Moving Picture World, August 31, 1907
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