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

132 Cl)e Cfjeatre Both are adepts in every phase of the motion-picture art. While Blackton, as he became wealthy and influential, has developed a veritable passion for uplifting policies, Mr. Rock's qualifications are more toward the Vitagraph's business expansion than its artistic or mechanical development. One of the first of the pioneers to enrich himself as an exhibitor of films, he is to-day as incessant a toiler as one may find in the entire film industry. Together these gentlemen form a triumvirate which in this year — 1914 — is merely indicating that the vital era of their vast productivity is at hand. The Kalem Company was one of the very earliest of film-producing houses to present the now common "features," requiring thousands of feet of film and involving prolonged preparation and vast expenditure. Its production of "From the Manger to the Cross," as stated in another chapter, was unquestionably the most ambitious undertaking that had ever been attempted by an American producer, and there are those who believe that even at this late day a metropolitan showing with due regard to environment and appropriate musical accompaniment, would result in a prolonged public response, not only in the Metropolis, but throughout the country, where other pictorial productions of the biblical spectacle have attracted great crowds, particularly during the present year. The Kalems have been noted for a reluctancy to change the personnel of their stock companies, though adding to the numbers materially as the vogue of their productions demanded expansion. Nevertheless, most of the stars of the Kalem productions either began with that organization, or else have been with it for several years. Alice Joyce was undoubtedly a great attraction almost from the day she began to pose before