By William J. Iliff, Assistant Manager, Southern California Marine Department, Los Angeles

It was dark. Sounds of the Congo jungle were eerie, mysterious, frightening. Six hours had gone since the sun had plumped into the tangle of trees. Six hours had slithered away since her husband and his small safari had promised to return from stalking the killer elephant. Six hours. An eternity.

Icy with fright, the young woman sat in her tent, peering through the mosquito netting at the four natives huddled ‘round the dying camp fire, shadowy figures whom her husband had left behind to protect her. Then, out of the darkness, came the crash – the sound of jungle trees toppling before the trampling of the rogue elephant.

From the primitive prayers of the natives, the bride knew that the enraged animal had picked up their scent. Too panicked to cry, she could only put trust in her guards. Instead, she now saw them scrambling away into the undergrowth. Flight – that was her own chance to escape, the only remaining hope.

Clawing aside the mosquito netting, she dashed from the tent, raced across the clearing – and stumbled. Within the instant she felt the trunk of the crazed, four-ton monster entwining her. In one enormous swing the beast lifted her high, and with a final, piercing screech, he reared up on his hind legs and – "CUT!"

With this simple word from the director, the elephant relaxed and eased the now smiling woman safely to the floor of the sound stage. And with this same cue, 30 men and women, each an expert at his job, instantly went to their respective tasks of preparing the set and its actors for another "take."

Is this make-believe? Is a $20,000 camera make-believe? Are months of preparation through the hands of script writers, artists, researchers, carpenters, craftsmen, prop men, grip men, and electricians make-believe? Are the world’s finest photographic and sound engineers make-believe? Are the weeks spent in gathering scenery and material for this one scene make-believe? Is a sound stage half the size of a Graf Zeppelin hangar make-believe? Is the million dollars that will be spent in producing this film make-believe? Is this, the fourth largest industry in the world, make-believe? No – no more so than the insurance companies that protect this industry and no more so than the 50 million people around the world who will thrill at seeing the picture!

Hollywood is no fantastic land. It is simply the home of the motion picture industry, an industry with a product that for years has helped lift the morale of people around the globe. Sure, it is an extrovert industry and it’s exciting, but under its shell of glamour there hides the world’s greatest combination of art and science. Some of our country’s most prominent financial wizards lead this industry, and it is every inch sound business, from the ground up. And one of the things that Hollywood has always taken seriously is her insurance.

The top 10 motion picture studios have over one billion dollars in admitted assets. Day in and day out there are over one hundred million dollars in exposed negative films being processed in the film laboratories. Insurance plays an important role. And we can be proud when we realize that FIREMAN’S FUND has been one of the insurance companies most heavily leaned upon by this industry for the last 25 years!

Contrary to the belief of many people, Hollywood executives are reasonable businessmen, and whether it is an underwriting problem or a loss problem, they have always been able to appreciate our side and they have always been fair. Like any other industry of its size, Hollywood pays hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to our nation’s insurance companies for those types of fire and casualty coverages that have long been standard. But the motion picture industry has huge insurance problems peculiar only to itself, and it has been here that Fireman’s Fund has stepped forward.

How has this company stepped forward? The "mystery" behind this generally baffling business, and the interesting types of coverage provided – all illustrated with humorous and sometimes near-tragic events – will be explained in subsequent chapters.

PART II

"LIGHTS! ACTION! CAMERA!"

Three little words, but those words spell money at the box office and they represent a tremendous investment in the transformation of such a nebulous thing as an idea into a tangible item which you can see, hear and thrill to.

Without the protection of insurance, the making of motion pictures would be such a gamble that few producers, if any, would care to face it. Hollywood’s cameras and sound equipment, of course, are of great value, as is a vast array of other technical equipment, and all of it must be safeguarded. That’s where, in part, the insurance business rolls into the picture.

And when the cameras roll, we must roll with the changing requirements. Props, for instance, may be one thing one day and something else the next, but they need constant protection, just the same. Under a props policy we could insure anything from an 1890 locomotive that actually runs, to a glass tumbler worth 10 cents; or from a kitchen chair to a $3,500 King Louis XIII bedroom set. Under a props floater as the result of a small fire, we recently paid for a spiral staircase and a 16-foot mechanical alligator!

On one occasion we insured a miniature set of an entire village scheduled for damage by flood and hurricane. All of the buildings were made to break at just the right place as the water struck. The set was insured for a value of $10,000 against All Risk coverage, including premature release of water prior to the actual shooting. There was no loss paid. Wardrobe coverage would include the wardrobes owned or rented by the studio for the production, plus the wardrobes of stars and others while actually being used in the production. A large studio will have tremendous values in wardrobes alone.

Negative insurance is the motion picture insurance with the highest values at risk. Most such insurance is written through the American Negative Film Syndicate. Fireman’s Fund carries slightly in excess of 10 per cent of the negative pool. When you consider that the exposed film of a motion picture, prior to the running off of prints, is the only product containing the assured’s values, you can understand why it is not uncommon for a negative policy to exceed values of one million dollars on a single picture – and they have run as high as five million dollars. Coverage is All Risk, excluding exposure to light and processing while in the laboratory, and the coverage attaches when the film is first exposed in the camera and usually terminates when the final quota of positive prints is run off from the negative.

Every studio has a film library wherein are kept all of their old negatives and prints for use as background shots for future films. These highly treasured libraries are insured under a separate film library policy.

Fireman’s Fund has undoubtedly written more motion picture animal insurance than any other company. The studio rents the animals from the owners and agrees to return them in the condition in which received. The insurance is written on the basis of All Risk of mortality, or accidental death, or All Risk, including illness and injury.

Ever hear of a cosmetic-loving elephant? Well, there was one, and she bellowed for a touch of talcum. We know. We issued the insurance on the big gal. Here’s how it happened: After several days on location – near a cliff – the elephant became ill. A veterinarian was called and diagnosed her malady as – what do you think? Sunburn, of all things! Too long away from the heat of the jungle, she had become as tender as a toddler, and now reacted much as you yourself might if you soaked up too much reflected sunshine from a cliffside. And that’s where the treatment came in; she was given the pat of talcum powder. Pat? Well, hardly that. The snowy talc was heaved upon her back by the shovelful and bucket-load, day after day. She loved it; got well, too.

And then there’s the true story of the sumptuous fish. Here’s how the story unreels: A scene called for some tropical Kissing Fish, and the studio located a pair of them in Pasadena. Extremely rare and worth $500 each, they would be in danger of catching a disease similar to pneumonia if their water temperature were to vary more than a few degrees beyond an exact point.

In Pasadena, the lovin’ pair were eased into a small thermos bottle containing tepid water and were transported to the studio in a chauffeur-driven limousine, with an attendant constantly on duty. When the shooting was over, the fish were returned the same way – and more romantic than ever. No losses were paid.

We insured a small herd of chimpanzees housed in a private zoo in San Fernando Valley; the insurance was to cover the herd while in transit from their home to the studio and return. During their rainy-day trip in a station wagon, a collision occurred and the animals were dumped out upon the wet highway. Subject to many of the same diseases as humans, they contracted pneumonia.

A vet was called but was unfamiliar with treating these human-like animals. Then a doctor of medicine was summoned, but because his prospective patients were not human, he hesitated to take the case. As a result, it was necessary for us to attempt a collaboration between the vet and the doctor. When this was achieved, a serum was flown out to the West Coast from New York City, and all but two of the chimps recovered – but those two cost Fireman’s Fund $11,000. Chimp underwriting has its pitfalls.

At another time some chimps were being used in a jungle scene on a sound stage – up in palm trees and pointing to an airplane overhead. When it was time to come down, they wouldn’t budge. They were coaxed with delicacies. Nix. Then an enterprising studio employee produced a B.B. gun and shot a chimp on the posterior. Stung but not injured, the chimp descended fast, followed by all the rest. The whole sound stage rained chimpanzees that day. "Made regular monkeys of themselves," gagged a worker.

Mother Nature helped us out in one instance. A herd of many monkeys was insured – not individually but only as a certain number of animals by count. By the time the picture was completed, several of the monkeys had died, but a final tabulation disclosed more monkeys than there were at the start. No loss paid.

PART III

Cast insurance might well be called the king of insurance coverages exclusively for the motion picture industry. This policy insures the producer of the motion picture against any loss he might suffer through inability to start his production, or through interruption of his production schedule, because of a player’s illness, injury or death.

In other words, while a producer is making a motion picture, he has definite commitments to meet each shooting day, such as studio rental of approximately $750 – $1,000 daily, rental of cameras, props, sets and other equipment, and the payment of salaries to actors, prop men, grip men, electricians and other employees. If for any reason the cameras don’t roll, these commitments become an expense on which there is no return. Likewise, if a star should die in the middle of a production, all the money expended on the production up to that time would be lost.

The normal cast insurance policy contains a limit of $750,000 or the actual insurable cost of the production, whichever is less. Therefore, cast insurance must be carefully underwritten inasmuch as a producer may be spending up to $25,000 per day during the period of production; it is not inconceivable that the loss could run almost that high for each day the star is out.

If an insured actor catches flu or sprains his ankle or is otherwise incapacitated, it can cause a serious loss to a producer and the insurance company in which the production is insured. Not long ago Fireman’s Fund was insuring a Filmakers production titled Never Fear, directed by Miss Ida Lupino. Shortly after the start of the shooting schedule, Miss Lupino (who was insured under the cast policy) tripped over an electric cable on the set and broke her ankle. But she remained true to the theatrical tradition of "The Show Must Go On." Without waiting for removal of the cast from her leg, she completed directing the picture from a wheel chair, with no delay in production.

Also in connection with cast insurance policies, we write a coverage called Use & Occupancy on props, sets, scenery and other facilities. This coverage indemnifies the producer for expenses incurred as a result of time lost due to damage to his props, sets, etc., by fire or other named perils of extended coverage. This coverage would pay the producer just as a cast insurance policy would pay him during the period that his sets or other facilities were being rebuilt.

Incidentally, the first cast insurance policies were called "Scarred Face" policies and indemnified the producer in the event of disfigurement of one of his stars. The first such policy ever written reportedly was on Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., because he was forever taking a gamble with his features in movie sword duels. There was no telling when a "scarred face" might become a reality.

And so it goes in our movie role; or call it our movie "roll." We must be versatile; we must be able to roll with changing conditions, meeting requirements, when possible, as they arise. As said earlier in this series, Hollywood may be fascinating and outwardly glamorous, but it is solid business and led by men of sound business experience – men who appreciate insurance service and understand many of our problems. They are always fair.

[Fireman’s Fund Archives: 4-1-3-4-64, 0412]