The Moving Picture World (April 1908)

THE MOVING PICTUKli WORLD 289 The reply of the Kleine Optical Company to the bills of complaint entered against it and myself, by the Edison Man- ufacturing Company at Chicaigo is ready for the court, and will be entered by our attorney April 6. Such papers are public documents after they 'are in the court fnles, and ours will receive as much publicity as the Edison complaint which it answers received. Every man that buys or uses films is advised to read what I consider the most interesting document ever presented to a court in motion picture litigation. THEATER SEES A REAL DANGER IN THE GROWTH OF THE PICTURE PLAY. . By Louis V. De Foe, in the N. Y. World. When David Belasco, in an article in The World about seven years ago, said that he foresaw the time when painted scenery on the stage would be superseded largely by,effects of light, and that it would soon be possible to reproduce on a flat surface any previously performed play, not only with every minute detail of the actors' movements, gestures and, expressions, but also accompanied by every subtle shading of their spoken words, his prophecy met with much good- natured derision. That time has arrived much sooner than Mr. Belasco an- ticipated. With it has come, in the opinion of Daniel Froh- man, one of the gravest-perils that has ever threatened the business of producing plays and* managing theaters. The scientific combination of the cinematograph and phonograph and the sudden discovery by authors and actors that* a new field which offers possibilities of great money profit has been opened to their professions have made it impossible for thea- ter managers to control the product of their stages. They realize that it will be only a matter of time when their box- offices will be at the mercy of the moving picture and talk- ing machines. The Paris cables in The World last Sunday described how ingeniously the cinematograph has been adapted to become a substitute for theatrical entertainment at prices against which the regular theaters cannot compete. It was told that already a number of the leading dramatists of France had been retained to write plays for moving reproduction on a screen, and "that several of the leading actors on the Paris stage had been engaged to act them before the cam- eras. Among the former are Victorien Sardou, Maurice Donnay and Alfred Capus, who have fallen in under' the leadership of Henri Lavedan, the first to turn an honest dollar in the new scheme. Some of the actors who, it is said, will perform the characters are such celebrated arjtists as Le Bargy, Jeanne Granier and Bartot. By coincidence it happened that on the day previous to The World's report, a commission of leading New York managers, playwrights and actors was organized to go to Washington and attempt to counteract precisely this sort of thing by urging Congress to amend the present copy- right laws so that they will coyer the mechanical reproduc- tion of plays as well as actual dramatic manuscripts and performances. This demand is a variation of the "canned music" agitation which composers, under the. leadership of Victor Herbert, have been carrying on unsuccessfully for more than a year. Just now the theatrical managers and playwrights stand together in their demand for a more adequate copyright law. If the former claim the right to control the moving pic- torial reproductions of plays in which they have invested their capital, the latter are equally anxious to collect royal- ties for their use. The managers, however, are anticipating with misgivings, the day when playwrights may find it more profitable to deal with the moving picture and phonographic impresario than with themselves. The existing copyright laws control only the tangible means to a theatrical repre- sentation, not the representation itself. They do not cover pictures or sounds on the stage or the devices by which they may be recorded and reproduced. It is idle, of course, to fear that the animate drama as an art will ever be greatly affected through its reproduction uy moving photography or phonographic record. The re- lationship of the two will remain similar to that of the photo- graph and the living subject who poses for it. However in- teresting or minutely perfect may be the reproduction of tliA p,ctur , e earned by the proscenium arch or the record of i7m,- S0u t wnich proceed from it, there must always be iacKing the throb of life itself, which is the vitalizing essence of drama. T n « r ef° re > the art °* the stage will supply its own psychological defense against the ingenuity of science. But the business of managing theaters is quite another matter. A great portion of the public is satisfied with a reasonably good substitute for the real article, providing it can be obtained at a sufficiently reduced price. Therefore, this fear on the part of theatrical managers tfcat moving pic- ture shows, if unrestricted, will not only take the novelty off their regular productions when performed "on the road" in advance of the traveling companies, but that they will also seriously reduce the patronage of theater galleries. This encroachment has been uncomfortably noticed during the last year from the point oi view of theatrical producers. It is estimated that there are between 800 and 1,000 moving picture theaters and halls in Greater New York, and most of them do a flourishing business at a schedule of from five to ten cents admission. The Manhattan Theater has been giving moving picture entertainments exclusively for more than a year, and within the last month Keith & Proctor have substituted similar shows in place of the former vaudeville bills at the Union Square and Twenty-Third Street Theaters. John Fynes, who directs the moving picture department of Keith & Proctor's theatrical interests, is authority for the statement that mechanical representation of the drama by a combination of the cinematograph and phonograph has found an established place in stage entertainment, and that it has been perfected to such a degree that it has actually become a popular substitute for real drama. "To discover," he said, "how much our audiences would be affected by a real play represented by moving pictures, we put on a sixty-five-minute pictorial version of the old Irish melodrama, 'Shamus O'Brien,' to celebrate St. Pat- rick's Day at the Union Sauare, and the interest it awakened in our audiences was surprising. It had to be in the nature of pantomime, for we have not yet the facilities to combine the cinematograph with the phonograph, but it was remark- able how closely the spectators followed the plot. We have had equal success with a reduced version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,' and we intend hereafter to present other plays in motion pictures. "The union of the biograph and phonograph to furnish at once the action and the dialogue of plays has offered a diffi- cult problem to inventors, but it has been solved by a French experimenter, so it will not be long before we will be able . to give reproductions of any form of drama with artists of world-wide fame shown in the casts—on a screen, of course. The difficulty has been to make the two machines operate in perfect unison—to make gesture and facial expression ac- cord exactly with the spoken word and even with the deli- cate - details of vocal inflection. As this has now been ap- proximately overcome, the big manufacturers of biograph and phonograph records, both abroad and in this country, are openmg studios with fully equipped stages, engaging actors arid getting ready to turn out complete visual and oral records of plays. Competition ■will next make it neces- sary to engage actors of greater prominence and also to bid against theatrical managers for the manuscripts of leading authors. "Managers of moving picture theaters will welcome any change in the copyright laws which will help to protect the' rights of regular theater managers, authors or actors. The expense of the royalties will come out of the manufacturers of the records. As "the reproductions of the first record are practically limitless, the increase in the most to the individual manager will be slight. Recognition of an obligation to dramatists and others who control the rights to their plays will also help to dignify our branch of the entertainment busi- ness. "The rapid development of moving pictures as applied to reproductions of dramatic art may be gauged from the fact that only a short time ago our 'acts' were of only fifteen minutes' duration. They have increased to 'acts' covering, sixty-five minutes. So it is perfectly practicable now to rep- resent a performance of a olay in its entirety, even showing the characters and scenery in colors. To accomplish' this requires a photographic tape between 8,000 and 10,000 feet lone." Discounting all commercial considerations, what changes in the ephemeral nature of the drama will the perfected union of the biograph and phonograph have wrought for the play- goer of the next generation! The hocus-pocus of science will rescue from oblivion the creations which now dissolve when the curtain falls and preserve them in faithful picture and exact sound for all time. The great actor need no longer lament that all trace of his genius must die with him. Though its mechanical record may have no greater relative