Reel Life (1916-1917)

Synopsis of “THE HONEYMOONERS” Oiie Reel — Featuring George Derr George is engaged to be married, and his bachelor friends have considerable fun at his expense. They are all present at the wedding, and all swear to abstain from matrimony forever and ever. Cupid, however, aided by moonlight, shady lanes, etc., soon manages to soften the hard hearts of the bachelors and one by one they pick their future sparring partners, and sneak off to the minister’s, are married and swear everyone to secrecy. However, George secretly witnesses the weddings, and later invites them all for a cruise on “Honeymoon Yacht.” Here he confronts each of his friends with the evidences of their guilt, and they confess their wrongdoing. Paddy McQuire in a scene from the two-reel Vogue Comedy, “A Lisle Bank.” As a result of a fall from a horse rac¬ ing over broken ground down the side of a thirty-foot railroad embankment, Leo D. Maloney, who plays leads oppo¬ site Helen Holmes in Signal-Mutual productions, had the ligaments above his knee badly torn. For purposes of production, Maloney, mounted on a bare-back horse, was called upon to race through several scenes in the thirteenth episode of “A Lass of the Lumberlands.” In one of them he had to ride at break-neck speed down an embankment. The horse stumbled over a rail and fell headlong down the bank, throwing the rider. He struck on one foot and his leg twisted under his weight, tearing the ligaments loose above his knee. According to the physician who attended the case, it will probably be several weeks before he is able to walk without a slight limp. * =t= Synopsis of “A LISLE BANK” Two Reels — Wherein everyone gets into oceans of trouble. The Boarder, in arrears. .Paddy McQuire The Star Boarder . Arthur Moon The Widow . Margaret Templeton Her Daughter . Gypsy Abbott The Sleuth . Ed Laurie Gypsy, the charming daughter of the widow Templeton, who keeps boarders, is wooed by both Paddy, the boarder in hard luck, and Arthur, the star boarder. Paddy fails to pay his board bill and does not appear at the office in time and is fired. Then it is that he heads for the ocean to commit suicide. Meanwhile a bank has been robbed and the robber has hidden the booty in an old sock, near the ocean’s edge. Paddy finds the sock full of bills and then it is that things begin to hum. After much excitement Paddy and the burglar have a struggle on a jack-knife bridge and both fall into the water. The burglar is caught and Paddy is complimented for his wonderful work of capturing the desperado. However, he is soon in the depths of despair, when he finds that Gypsy has married Arthur. * * * * * telling of his success with what in the old days he had contemptuously termed “fillers,” “that I decided to make a study of them. Gradually I came to see that I was overlooking a valuable source of revenue by not featuring good series of such single reels. I saw that they were building up my clientele, bringing new people and making regular patrons of those who had before only come occa¬ sionally. “Motion Picture News had an article in its December 23rd issue called ‘Con¬ sider the Little Ones — and Profit There¬ by.’ That article might have been writ¬ ten from my own experience, because I have both considered and profited. It is hard, I’ll admit, to get photodramas suitable for a special matinee sometimes, but I have no such trouble with my sin¬ gle reels. The Gaumont Company has an ideal split-reel for such matinees. It goes by the name of ‘See America First,’ but it contains also an animated cartoon that is always a big factor in pleasing the children.” Mr. Golding’s leaflet gives a list of subjects in the forthcoming single-reel releases, as well as an illuminative intro¬ duction to each series. * * * * * * * * * The time has gone by when the exhibitor said to the exchangeman, “Give me a filler.” Now he says, “What entertaining single reel have you?” This is indicative of the rise in the general tone of the business, as well as of the betterment of the single-reel itself to meet the better demand, just how the exhibitor is impressing the value of these shorter lengths of film upon his spectators is well illustrated in the method of advertising employed by Walter Golding of the Imperial Theater, St. Johns, N. B. Mr. Golding issues a leaflet giving a list of the enter¬ taining subjects which he will show in the near future. At present he is featuring the Gaumont single reels with great success, “Tours Around the World,” “See America First” with Gaumont Kartoon Komics on the same reel, and “Reel Life,” the Gaumont-Mutual Magazine in Film. “I became so interested in the attitude of spectators toward the occasional shorter length picture 1 showed that was not a photodrama,” explained Mr. Golding in Just as soon as Jack Vosburgh, who is playing the “heavy” in the William Russell feature, “My Fighting Gentleman,” arrived at the studio, he. was under fire of a battery of questioners who remarked the similarity of his name to that of A1 Vosburgh, formerly an American actor. They are no relation to each other, the new player said. * * * * * George Periolat, who plays an important role in the first scenes of “The Gentle Intruder,” the new Mary Miles Minter feature being directed by James Kirkwood, is having an easy time this week at the Santa Barbara studio of the American company. All he has to do is to lie in bed all day while the camera records his failing health and death. After three or four days of it, how¬ ever, Periolat says he doesn’t wish to see a bed for a week. The episode is the foundation for the the story, for through this death Miss Minter is made an heiress, defrauded by -an attorney who yields to his family’s craze for society. REEL LIFE— Page Five