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

244 C!)e C!)catre stories, released by the Universal Film Company simultaneously. The "Evening Sun" and the "Evening Mail" in the same month also capitulated. Evidently the Edison Company was not lacking in appreciation of the vogue of the "Mary" series in "The Ladies' World," for after having for the time being exhausted the prolonged vitality of the intrepid film creation, the big moving-picture concern yearned for new subjects and new magazines with which to increase the vast audience it now appeals to, so in March, 1914, Marc MacDermott, Edison's most compelling male star, was featured as John Pemton, in "The Man Who Disappeared," presented in ten monthly installments on the screen, while "The Popular Magazine" is publishing also monthly chapters written by Richard Washburn Child. This affiliation, like many others of a similar nature, is certain to vastly enlarge the following of one of the most artistic photoplayers in all filmdom, for Mr. MacDermott takes his work seriously, and, as he himself has expressed it, "The call of the stage was constantly lessening in its appeal as I realized the greater scope for expression which the newer art has endowed me with." The publishing house of Doubleday, Page & Co., though it fell in line with others in the epochal year of 1914 by an affiliation with the Edison Company, was one of the very first to recognize the importance of the motion picture through one of its magazines — "The World's Work" — which presented serious essays appropriately illustrated almost from the outset of its existence, and these articles were contributed invariably by writers whose renown was achieved through scientific as well as literary attainments, but not until March, 1914, did this