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

of Science 93 literature will have capitulated to the lure of the new art. Not all of the most desired acquisitions from the literary calling will come forth solely from great financial incentive. If this were the only aim the sensational success artistically and financially attending the screen efforts of Rex Beach, Harold MacGrath, and a half dozen of their colleagues famous as fiction writers, would suffice to induce a veritable stampede of the studios by authors of world-wide fame. But there is looming on the motion-picture horizon the natural aftermath of the astonishing success of the serial photoplay first introduced by the Edison Company with the "Mary" series and followed later with the sensationally successful "Kathlyn" series, both conceived by famous fiction writers and the last named creating an almost general affiliation between the film producer and the magazine and newspaper publishers. The price paid to Harold MacGrath for the manuscript of the twenty-seven-reel production of "Kathlyn," presented in thirteen instalments, is said to have been $12,000, while his contract for another serial photoplay, entitled "The Million-Dollar Mystery," produced late in June, 1914, by the Thanhouser Film Co., of New Rochelle, calls for a much larger compensation, and the magnitude of this serial production may best be imagined when it is stated that a $10,000 prize is to be awarded for the best solution of the mystery in 100 words. The combination of Harold MacGrath and Lloyd Lonergan (artistic head of the Thanhouser Company) is one that may well attract attention, for here we have two magazine writers who have already proved that