Motion Picture Magazine, May 1914 (1914)

A New Profession for Women By EDWIN M. LA ROCHE The other night the writer attended a sitting of the Ed-Au Club, an informal gathering of the Motion Picture studio-men who deal in the artistic phases of the business. When the dinner-things had been cleared away, and discussion and cigar-smoke wrestled pleasurably for supremacy across the mahogany, the writer suggested that he was working up a magazine article dealing with women scenario editors. "Why," replied the best-known editor in film stageland, "I myself know of only two, and I 've never met either of them. Where are you going to find the others?" I smiled enigmatically, and this little article is my answer. I am going to send him a copy, and hope he reads it. As a matter of plain fact, most scenario editors, consciously or other- wise, hide their personality behind pen-names, barred doors and printed, tmsigned acknowledgments. Modesty may be the handmaiden for this veil of mystery, but not the confidante. The real reason is utilitarian, if any- thing. When one stops to consider that, to most of the audience, studio people are creatures set apart in a sort of charmed, Arcadian existence, and that admission to the studios is about as difficult as storming a for- tress, there is no wonder in the flood of letters that besiege both actors and editors. Letters are an easy weapon to fling, but not so easy to avoid. The average scenario editor receives about five hundred photoplay scripts per week, each with its barbed personal letter affixed to the dramatic shaft. There are questions and entreaties, rising young hopes and maiden avowals, stern exhortations, and confessions that the author's dramatic soul has at last come into its own. All this without realizing that photoplays are bought strictly upon their merit, not 83 on the "selling wind" that flutters them in inchoate swirls onto the editor's desk. Good old Dame Experience teaches that women in professional life have to be more circumspect than men. The personal note will creep into corre- spondence ; tradition runs that bland- ishment captivates the sex. Hence, at every turn and dark literary alley- way misinformed cavaliers are lurk- ing to waylay the fair scenario editors with intermingled guile and dramatic offerings. Professional women are not prudes. It is a convenient armor, and they wear it in self-protection. And now to the meat of my story. In the Vitagraph studio yard is a little frame cottage, set apart, and about and around it, like the walls of Jericho, film armies tramp and fight their way into the all-seeing eye of the camera. It is a distracting, nerve- racking atmosphere for a literary atelier, but Miss Marguerite Bertsch has grown used to it, and seems to thrive, Laocoon-like, in the coils of film. Efficiency demands that a scenario editor must be in instant touch with the studio world—actors, directors, property men, wardrobe mistress, and even the scene-painters. The script must be interpreted from every point of view. Miss Bertsch is, therefore, at many times the poles of a mimic world. The working script is the plans and specifications of the photo- play structure, and each and every principal, cast and all, must consult as to its interpretation. Then there are hurried changes to make—a thousand and one minutiae —for reasons of policy, market, pro- duction, dramatic emphasis, changes in the cast, "featuring," export or foreign interpretation, alterations from exterior to interior, or contrari- wise, and so on with endless variety. The Vitagraph Company looked