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the motion picture industry, December 1913, and Mack Sennett 23
Biograph, Vitagraph, Kalem, Selig, Essanay, Lubin, and the Universal group, fell behind, some temporarily, some to vanish.
What was being produced in America in December 1913? The leading American director, D. W. Griffith, who had left Biograph, had finished his first feature for Reliance and was starting work on "The Escape," after which he was to set off to California to begin "The Birth of a Nation." Thomas H. Ince was still turning out two-reel westerns and dramas for the New York Motion Picture Company; but he had made one feature, "The Battle of Gettysburg," and was soon to start "Typhoon" and "The Wrath of the Gods," starring the Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa. Herbert Brenon was in Bermuda, directing Annette Kellerman in "Neptune's Daughter" for the Imp Company, a Universal subsidiary. John Barrymore, still a light comedian, was doing "An American Citizen" for Famous Players, for whom Mary Pickford was then making "Hearts Adrift." Vitagraph was starting "A Million Bid" with Anita Stewart. Cecil B. De Mille, Jesse Lasky, and Sam Goldwyn were producing their first picture, "The Squaw Man." (In De Mille publicity releases, this has been claimed as the first feature made in America. Actually thirty or forty features had preceded it.)
The introductory episode of Selig's "The Adventures of Kathleen," the first American screen serial, properly so-called, came out that month, soon to be followed by Pathe's "The Perils of Pauline" with Pearl White, Thanhouser's "The Million Dollar Mystery," and others. These serials and Chaplin's first pictures appeared about the same time, providing a film feast for youngsters not equaled since.
In the big 1913-1914 change-over, actors and actresses, as we have seen, swarmed into the films from the stage. Most failed to adapt themselves to the new me