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

96 C&e Cljeatte ograph Company, in April, 1899, Mr. McCardell was offered the position of scenario writer for the Biograph and Mutoscope — the latter the familiar pennyin-the-slot moving-picture machine. During his stay with the Biograph Company, Mr. McCardell originated some three hundred moving pictures. Here he also formed business and social relations with many men subsequently famous in moving pictures — Messrs. Marvin, Long, Marion, McCutcheon, and, later on. Rock, Smith, and Blackton of the Vitagraph, and Edwin Porter, then of Edison and now of the Famous Players. After a year's pleasant association with the practical side of moving-picture taking with the Biograph Company, Mr. McCardell returned to newspaper work for the "World," creating his famous "Jarr Family" series and other newspaper features. He still retained his connection with moving pictures as a free-lance scenario writer, and has been steadily identified with the progress and growth of the new science. Altogether, he has given, at this writing, over eight hundred picture stories to the screen. Marc Edmund Jones, one of the few photoplay authors who make that their sole vocation, is a comparatively new arrival in the literary field. He was born in St. Louis, Mo., October 1, 1888, and was brought up and educated in Chicago, 111. In 1908 he left school and started to work for the Pullman Company, working up to the position of storekeeper. In 1911 he resigned to become associated in the management of a small company in Santa Barbara, Cal., and remained there until 1912, when he returned to Chicago and entered the employ of the Western Electric Company. He resigned from this company in January, 1913, to devote his entire time to writing moving-picture plays.