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

208 Cl)c Ci)catre King Baggot's loyalty to Carl Laemmle — the Universal's head — has been put to the acid test repeatedly. In no other branch of the amusement field may one point to similar constancy. The Grand Opera stars are never happier than when an Oscar Hammerstein comes forward to create a competitive dem_and for their services, and even so generous and ingratiating an employer as Charles Frohman has seen his best stars — m.ost of whom he made what they are — go over to rival managements, that their financial reward might be greater; but in filmdom_ where competition is keener even than in vaudeville, the "stars" seem to be held fast by the environment wherein they have achieved their fame. Mary Fuller, Marc MacDermott, Gertrude McCoy, Robert Brower, Harry Eytinge, Bigelow Cooper, and as many more Edison stars, have been with that organization practically throughout their film careers. It is so rare that an important photoplayer leaves such an organization to join another that such procedure attracts attention. In the Vitagraph Company there are not less than thirty w^ell-known players who have not only been with that company several years, but the number that have never appeared with any other film organization is still greater. Not a few of the photoplayers have become producers on an important scale. Hobart Bosworth, whom I recall as a one-tim.e member of Augustin Daly's Stock Company, and who was for several years a Selig star, is now a producer of the first magnitude. Associating himself with a group of capitalists tovi^ard the end of 1913, he organized what is knov/n as "Hobart Bosworth, Inc.," for the purpose of visualizing on the screen the remarkable stories of Jack London.