The story of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation (1919)

Thomas H. Ince The most successful in- dependent picture produ- cer in the world. Fifty of his personally super- vised productions released yearly as Paramount- Artcraft pictures. it—D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Maurice Tourneur, Douglas Fairbanks—almost every artist of prominence in motion pictures has been or will be associated with this organization. This mighty organization, so vast in scope and size and accomplishment, has sprung up in seven years from nothing—except an idea. That idea was in the mind of Adolph Zukor, now president of Famous Players-Lasky. Seven years ago, Adolph Zukor saw the motion picture dying. Dying because it was only a mechanical toy. But in his brain was already seething the idea of what it might become. He saw in this strange mechanical toy the beginnings of something that could overwhelm the world, re-build cities and re-make humanity. To persuade great actors and actresses to appear in motion picture repre- sentations of the world's greatest stories—that was his idea. And at that time the motion pictures showed nothing but crude "chases," tricks of photography, and the like. The actors and actresses of the day turned down his proposals with contempt. So he said to the one man he had been able to interest, Daniel Frohman: "We must secure the greatest of all actresses. The others will follow." Daniel Frohman went to Paris and succeeded in showing Sarah Bernhardt that her art could be preserved in no other way except by the screen. Being a great artist, and possessed of an artist's vision, she accepted. The first genuine motion picture, then, was "Queen Elizabeth" with Sarah Bern- Thomas h. ince studios, interior of one of the bi g stages hardt. The picture caused a sensation. Tht mas H. Ince Studio Grounds from the Administration Building Thomas H. Ince Administration Building