Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

The Evolution of Motion Pictures By Robert Grau Now that the evolution of pictures has been dealt with since their invention to the present day, Mr. Grau, who is author of the articles which has followed this rise of what is to now the fifth greatest industry in the United States, and who is exceptionally well acquainted with the film business, has prepared the following, in which he predicts what the pictures will do in the future. This article is of a valedictory type and has a peculiar appeal to every one at all interested in pictures. This is the conclusion of the series on the evolution of motion pictures. IX— FROM A PERSPECTIVE VIEWPOINT THE development of the motion-picture art, particularly as to its theatrical side, has been on such a scale that the writer has been confronted with pace problems in an effort to adequately ecite and fairly appraise the scope and influence of even the few most prominent institutions which in 1914 began to vastly enlarge and improve the screen output, as a result of the simultaneous advent of the two and three-hour photo play in playhouses of the first grade, iand at dollar prices of admission ; also resorting to theatrical methods of booking and advertising. The movement had come with an impetus so compelling that it was not surprising to hear at every turn the direst predictions of the aftermath, but theatrical history is replete with evidence of the ability of the great public to quickly adjust the evils of all crazes, as they have developed in theaterdom. The laws of supply and demand never were called . upon to regulate the conditions in the amusement field to the extent that the year 1915 will utilize to bring about an equilibrium between the spoken play, or what is called the legitimate theater, and the theater of science and invention. Here we have, perhaps, the most interesting, and surely the mostly vital, phase of present-day amusements. The future of the theater, as conducted since the inauguration of the Christian Era, is at stake. To attempt to deny that this condition exists in the United States is to ignore the realization of the prophecies of less than three years ago. Today such prophecies, based on the laws of proportion alone, if applied to the possibilities of the motion picture as a theatrical attraction — not necessarily assuming that photo plays will constitute the greater motion pictures of to-morrow— would indicate that the problem is nearing solution. That of the intricate question now seriously agitating the amusement field from coast to coast— "Are we due to relegate the player in the flesh to the film studio, in pursuance of the laws of modernism of a scientific era? Or will there come forth at the crucial period so clearly at hand a crop of expert showmen— there is no other term to apply in this instance — such as the field of the theater has lacked in recent years, who will grasp the greatest opportunity that has confronted the theatrical manager and play producer in fifty years, and by recognizing that the motion-picture vogue has created theatergoers out of ninety per cent of mankind, be provided with a greater incentive and a more valuable asset in the conduct of their operations than at any time in the world's history?" Assuming that a genuine effort is made to entice the many millions of newly created theatergoers — the majority of whom were attracted by the low prices in the first instance, but are gradually forced to increase their expenditure for entertainment — into the theaters where plays and players are presented in the old way, the day may be near when such of the producers as have interests in both fields will have awakened to the significance of a condition that reveals ninety per cent— instead of ten per cent as recently as a decade ago — of a populace as theatergoers. And there is much to indicate that with the adjustment of admission prices to a scale almost equal with the two modes of public entertainment, that the film magnate, possessed of the showmanship instinct and provided with playhouses and widely distributed stock companies, recognizing the trend of the motion picture to materially add to the patronage of the spoken play, will himself enter the older field and demonstrate the correctness of the writer's viewpoint. No one believes that there is the least danger of the motion picture replacing the spoken play as an entertainment ; but that the former has routed off the boards all but a few of the traveling companies and has driven cheap melodrama entirely from large and small cities alike, is admitted ; and now that the rosters of the film studio include more well-known players than the speaking stage — with the very last of the producers in the older field, Charles Frohman, capitulating to the lure of the camera man — a condition exists wherein the season of 1915-16 is due to witness a complete change in the theatrical map. Whether the experienced theatrical managers now affiliated with the film industry take the initiative to induce the millions of amusement patrons created by the photo play to become patrons of the so-called regular playhouse, or whether the effort will be made by the gentlemen who have amassed fortunes in the newer field, and who are now in an impregnable position to make such a move, it seems certain that before the year is ended, as a result of the many affiliations between the influential interests in both fields, a highly developed plan of apportioning the "layout" in the nation's theaters will be in operation. And then the question as to whether fifty million photo-playgoers can be enticed to divide their expenditure between the two methods of public entertainment will be answered, perhaps for all time. But there is one phase of this unique