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

172 C!je Cfjeatte keeping with the pretentious building scheme. While the public will enjoy park, menagerie and picnic privileges in the fore of this wide-spreading place, eight directors, with their acting hosts, will film dramas, allegories, comedies, thrilling Westerns and famous productions in the working half of the enormous place. Here will be found sets and locations for all classes of plays, from the primeval to the last word in modern presentations. Jungles, morasses, forest effects, battle fields — all will be at hand for the busy producers. Already six companies are at work there. For more than a year animal productions, which became worldfamous over night, have been filmed at the incomplete Zoo. Here are seen such notable players as Kathlyn Williams, whose "Adventures of Kathlyn" were put on within this wondrous enclosure. With her is seen Thomas Santschi, the two being the originators of Selig animal pictures, pioneering the way for all followers in this dangerous profession. Tom Mix, the cowboy actor, and his daring after-riders and performers, also are leading the strenuous life before Zoo cameras. The producers include some of the most successful in the profession, while, as a side line, Mr. Selig has added a corps of famous authors to prepare photoplays for the screen. Mr. Thomas A. Persons is the general manager. The Zoo, one of six great establishments operated by the "wizard," wall soon have a combined expense and payroll of $350,000 annually— a hint of W. N. Selig's energy afield in the West. e^ ^H* ^ffi* Probably no other merchant prince of America has ever accomplished so much in so short a time, or has been so remarkably successful since reaching America