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The
Motion Picture News
MOVING PICTURE NEWS
Established 1908
EXHIBITORS' TIMES
Established 1913
Volume VIII
October 25, 1913
Number 16
AUGUSTUS THOMAS
An Appreciation of "Arizona's" Author
WOULD you rather make motion pictures or be an ambassador?" I asked Mr. Thomas, as we sat talking pictures after the usual introduction. My victim started. He was obviously unprepared for such a question, and. of course, I meant him to be. He knew practically nothing of me, but I had a clear outline of his career for the last twenty years in my mind when I put this question. Yet without hesitation, and with a slight smile, he replied : "I would rather make motion pictures." There were many paragraphs in the newspapers not long ago stating that President Wilson had offered M r . Thomas an embassy in Europe. Paris and Brussels were mentioned as likely places.
The personality of Mr. Thomas is extremely agreeable. He does not convey to you the idea of having anything to do with stage matters. He is a type of the wellbred man of affairs, affable, cultured, easy in manner, and, above all things, sure of himself.
He has evidently caught the virus picturitis. He talked to me with real enthusiasm of the details of the making of "Arizona." He is a practical man. He
discovered that in picture-making the chiefest asset is time, and that time is wasted more lavishly than money. So he invented a simple detached leaf system of charting the movements of all the characters in his films, indicating how long they were on in a
scene, what they wore, and so forth. He is a veritable Bertillon of the film. "If every little movement has a meaning all its own," it also, in Mr. Thomas' philosophy, has a financial value. It should not be wasted, it should be made in the proper place ; recorded, kept tab of. In the making of a motion picture, every movement must count. For the first time in my experience, I had encountered a personality of a mathematical nature in the making of motion pictures.
Mr. Thomas has large plans for the future. He is carrying them out, I perceive, mathematically. He is a good business man, and has good business associates. On the evening when I met Mr. Thomas he had an appointment. I hinted to him that it would be a delight to me to sit with him and look at his picture "Arizona." He incon(Conlinncd on page 16)
AUGUSTUS THOMAS