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

120 Cf)e Cijeatre augural period of the Vitagraph Company's own playhouse, when the high-priced seats were sold days in advance, attracting a class of playgoers quite similar to that of the two-dollar-a-seat theatres. Bunny was accorded by the Vitagraph Company an additional salary for his personal appearance so largely in excess of his regular compensation that it is hardly likely that the dainty silent drama in which he and two of his colleagues appeared would have been kept on the boards for two m.onths if the idea itself had not been successful — in fact, as illustrating the desire to see the idols of the screen in the flesh, the Vitagraph Theatre program will include this feature indefinitely, merely changing the productions and the players, a plan that presents possibilities for the perpetuation of a nearly lost art, that of real pantomime, such as was so artistically offered at Daly's Theatre two decades ago in "L'Enfant Prodigue." Charles Kent was perhaps the first actor of the highest rank to become a permanent member of the Vitagraph Stock Company, his advent therein antedating Bunny's by several years and no better evidence of the stability of the Vitagraph stock policy can be referred to than the spectacle this fine actor's film career reveals. For more than seven years Kent has been one of the pillars of the Vitagraph structure. He has seen in that period a growth of the film company's operations nothing short of extraordinary. When he entered the Brooklyn studio the Vitagraph had but one studio, and its stock company numbered perhaps a dozen persons. To-day Mr. Kent is one of a score of noted leaders in a widely distributed stock organization, including more than 150 men and women, not