The theatre of science; a volume of progress and achievement in the motion picture industry (1914)

prefatotp 3l3ote ers, others tempting fate alone as film producers. When the present volume ivas first planned, "The Theatre of Science" was intended to represent every phase of public entertaining of a scientific order, such as the phonograph, the player piano, the organ orchestra, and kindred productions of a mechanical age; hut, while the work was in the process of making, there came the two and three-hour photoplay to the nation's first-grade playhouses. The film producers stampeded the playhouse zone of the metropolis, erecting palatial temples of science, leasing also the majority of the theatres where the spoken draina had ceased to attract the people as of yore, and fi.nally came the productivity of the film studios of Italy, such as "Quo Yadis?" "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Cahiria." The spectacle of the "dollar" photoplay was now on view, mth eleven of New York's high-grade playhouses hetween Thirty-eighth and Forty-eighth Streets in the camera man's possession. Therefore the author teas persuaded to devote the present volume to the Motion Picture from all of its many angles, this decision being hastened by the amazing developments in the early months of 1914 Moreover, a single volume has been found wholly inadequate to present a fair appraisal of the influence on mankind of this new art in the second decade of the twentieth century. The author has nevertheless endeavored to select as subjects such productivity of the film studio as is represented by producers, directors, authors and players, though forced to omit many worthy contributions to the general progress in filmdom, a preference being given to individuals whose careers and vi