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

of^cicnce 263 earned money and they will evacuate in short order, and then men like the wizard of Menlo Park, who probably foresee the collapse of the stage producers' movement, will go right back where they were before the 'old-time showman' capitulated." And Mr. Seay knows whereof he speaks, in the opinion of the present writer. The future of the motion picture art will depend on the Seligs, the Blacktons, the Zukors, the Laemmles, the Baumanns and Kessels, and their kind. To these may possibly be added, as Mr. Seay so aptly says, one or two of the newcomers, but up to the present writing I could not predict even one permanent acquisition to the established film interests. Besides, such producers as Selig, Pathe, Lubin, Kalem, Spoor and Anderson, Hite, Aitken, and a half-dozen men of similar calibre, are not seemingly attracted to the stage play movement; at least, not in the manner to which theatrical producers are adapting plays to the screen, regardless of suitability. And when the public indicates a craving for real novelty, the supply will come from the studios where the greatest problems of photoplay production were first solved. Bessie Learn, also of the Edison Company, began her stage career when a small child, in "Hearts Are Trumps," effecting her debut in a baby carriage. Later, appearing in "Lover's Lane," "Home Folks" and "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," I recall her splendid performance with Robert HiUiard in "The Littlest Girl," in vaudeville, and just before joining the Edisons, in "Polly of the Circus." Miss Learn has scored in photoplays because of the sincerity with which she embraces her work, and this is true of so many of the Edison players that one may comprehend