The theatre of science; a volume of progress and achievement in the motion picture industry (1914)

90 Cf)e Cijeatrc staffs of the large producers or else have arrangements to write exclusively for these. Moreover, despite the known fact that hundreds of men and women without previous experience as writers have succeeded in selling scenarios, nevertheless such authors as have made their impress emphatic and enduring nearly all hail from the field of the theatre or from the editorial sanctum. This is so true that one may not find, save in some rare instance, an established writer of photoplays devoting himself entirely to scenario work, unless under contract to the producers. Even such prolific authors of photoplays as Epes Winthrop Sargent, Roy S. MacCardell, Captain Charles Keiner, and Russell E. Smith are actively engaged in other fields. All are experienced writers of fiction for magazines and newspapers. The distinctly theatrical writer has achieved prominence as a photoplajrwright, and more than one erstwhile writer for the publications devoted to the stage and its people has qualified as director also. As stated elsewhere in the volume, the "Dramatic Mirror" has sent from its editorial staff to the film studio such now well-known authors of photoplays as Frank Woods, Calder Johnstone, and George W. Terwilliger (the latter is also a director). Bannister Merwin, Captain Leslie Peacocke, Mark Swan, Charles M. Seay, Emmett Campbell Hall, Larry Trimble, George F. Hennessy, E. Boudinot Stockton, W. A. Tremayne, Lawrence S. McCloskey, and a dozen other representative photoplaywrights have all written for the stage or for the magazines, and it must not be forgotten that about one-half of the scenarios of the established film companies are prepared by the photoplayers themselves.