Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1914)

202 THE LITERARY SIDE OF PICTURES with a literary past as honorable as his present or his future; indeed, in the early days, he had to wait for the business to grow up to his standard. It is one of the signs of the times that it did. Another whom Biograph started was George Hennessy. He was foxy in his early days. They would not believe that he could write dramas. They were in the market for comedies. He wrote comedies until they liked his dramas and for a long time he was the star writer. He is free lancing now, out in Los Angeles. He had written some of the best stories the Biograph ever produced, but you would not think it to look at him quickly. Look twice and you see the brains beneath the apparently listless exterior. Edwin S. Porter, now of the Famous Players, is another of the "forty-niners" of the game, and Miss Gene Gauntier has written as many one-reel dramas as any writer living. She will go down in history as the author, adapter or what you will of "From the Manger to the Cross," but she is far more important than any one story. But while there were others of those early days, it is not practicable to list them all in separate paragraphs. Mention of Miss Gauntier, very first of the women writers, brings us to others who have made good. Mrs. Beta Breuil, or 'Sirs. Hartmann Breuil, was a Vitagraph editor and still a prominent free lance. Mrs. Catherine Carr, now of the North American, is another \'ita graduate, as is Miss Peggy O'Neill, of the same company. Mrs. Louella Parsons, of Essanay, has written little, but many promising writers owe much to her helpful advice. Miss Hetty Gray Baker gave up a job as law librarian to become editor for Jack London (Bosworth, Inc.). which is not altogether photoplay's gain, for, in spite of the excellence of her adaptations of this most difficult author, she did better original work, having the imagination of a real creator. Miss Cora Drew has lately come to the fore as a woman writer. Mrs. Lillian Sweetser, of Maine, is another and Mrs. Bettie Fitzgerald, of Gasden, Ala., has the distinction of having won the top price for a regular script from Griffith, of the Reliance, solely for the excellence of her work. Mrs. Marguerite Bertsch, the present editor of the Vitagraph, is a woman writer \yhose stories show keen insight into affairs, and Miss Maibelle Heikes Justice, a novelist and short story writer, is one of the Selig stars. Her work is exceptional in many ways. Lois Weber (Mrs. Phillips Smalley) i-s another prolific writer of strength and versatility. Miss Mary Fuller has written some of the smartest stories in which she has appeared, but if we started to list the Edison players who are also writers, we would have to give the complete roster. George Terwilliger, like "Spec," came to us from the Mirror. He had done some capital work with the Reliance. He is now with Lubin as director and writer. He does mostly two-reel stories. Romaine Fielding is also a Lubin author-director. Shannon Fife, of the same company, took to photoplay because the studio was in the same town with the University of Pennsylvania, in which he was a student. Harry Chandlee. lately added to the list, was a Washington correspondent for a string of small papers. Clay M. Greene is a well-known dramatic author and former Shepherd of the Lambs. McCloskey himself, the head of the brainiest lot of stafif writers in the photoplay business, was a Philadelphia newspaper man. Following this writer and Giles Warren, he was the first to put the staff on a business basis, and his organization is probably the strongest to be found. The Universal staff is headed by Captain Leslie T. Peacocke. in the East. Captain Peacocke is also a dramatist and novelist. Walter MacNamara was once a member of the staff, as was Pop Hoadley, to say nothing of Hal Reid, who bought more stories for §10 cash each than any man alive or dead. Monte Katterjohn was its most recent head, but he lately went away and is free lancing again, as well as writing most of the moving picture stuff for the Red, Green and Blue Books, otherwise known as the Chromatic Circuit. Two ministers have found success in photoplay, the Rev. E. B. Stockton and the Rev. Sydney S. Booth. Dr. Stockton ranges from farce to tragedy, but Mr. Booth is at his best in comedy, if he is an Englishman. Perhaps the best paid writer of today is James Oliver Curwood, who does most of his stuff for the Selig company. He gets the top price and is one of the very, very few novelists who can write a practical photoplay script. Gilson Willetts, who used to be a wholesale dealer in magazine stories, is another Selig star. Harold McGrath is not a photoplay writer, nor are most of the others whose names appear on the screen as authors, though Jack London is said to be studying the work. James Oppenheim is a real photoplay writer, but the late Thomas W. Hanshew and Richard Harding Davis, Rex Beach and others do their work by proxy; Others of the new school are ^Iarc Edmund Jones, who came out of a railroad office : John William Kellette, who knows all about linotypes; Harry O. Hoyt, a civil engineer, now managing a theatre in Minneapolis ; E. W. Matlack, train dispatcher on the Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh ; Guy T. Evans and Frank Clarke, of the same place ; Frank K. Shaw, for years on the bench in Maine ; Edwin Ray Coffin, a ranchman : Miss Marian Lee Patterson, a magazine writer ; Julian Louis Lamothe, of New Orleans ; Frank Griffin, formerly of Universal and now with Lubin, and scores of others to whom we offer our apologies in advance. Among the writing editors are Bennie Schulberg, of the Famous Players ; James Dayton, the star of Western Universal ; Richard V. Spencer, of K. B. ; Richard Willis, \\'illis Robards, Charles M. Seay, Herbert Brenon, of Imp, and others to whom we also apologize. Credit for the Series stories would seem to go to Edison, whose manager of negative production, Horace G. Plimpton, was the first to popularize the idea (not forgetting, of course, the Jones series already mentioned), and to Mr. Plimpton's ability to get his directors to give the spirit of the author's work, is largely due the popularity of the book story, though Col. Selig is perhaps the largest buver of book rights at present. It has been a big jump from the SIO to $20 of 1909 to the $50 to $100 of today, but the changes to come will iDe still more marked and it is reasonable to suppose that the story of a few years hence will make these prices seem absurd. Already SI. 000 and even more has been paid for book rights without the advantage of simultaneous publication in the newspapers, and it is only reasonable to suppose that in the time to come, when the best of the book rights shall have been exhausted, the author who writes photoplays for photoplay production will command a better price than the man who writes books that may be adapted. John Singer Sargent is the foremost portrait painter of today, but some of his water colors are jokes. The man who works in his proper medium is the man who eventually will command the best prices and we are still not quite up to the real literature of the photoplay. P. S. — And to make the record complete, E. W. Sargent, a former musical and dramatic critic, editor and writer of photoplays, has done several hundred stories for Lubin, two for Imp. two for Vitagraph and seven for Edison. Also about half a mile of photoplay advice and several miles of short stories and novelettes.