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

of^cience 321 five years, and who has, during all of that time, been identified with the press. Mr. Nixon was on the staff of the Chicago "InterOcean" practically throughout his editorial career as dramatic and musical critic, and his acquaintance with the stage and its people is so intimate and prolonged that I am venturing the belief that his activities in the Selig house have not been confined to publicity. The influence of Nixon undoubtedly has contributed no little part in the many Selig scoops and innovations. On the other hand, Mr. Selig's general manager, John F. Pribyl, has been an active factor in the Selig development. The American Biograph Company was practically the last of the big film producers to capitulate to the publicity call. Even now its policy is distinctively conservative, and the names of its directors and players are withheld from the general public, save as they are revealed by the trade issues, yet one may observe a tendency to bow to the conditions created by an overwhelming public interest in the photoplayers. More of the latter have graduated from the Biograph studios to become celebrated in other companies than from all of its competitors combined. The Biograph Company was, indeed, a school for the photoplayer. Particularly is this true of its comedy exponents. Whether the secrecy it established so insistently was due to its leading director, D. W. Griffith, or not, it is known that this wizard of picturedom has always held that the glamor of the theatre should not surround the photoplayer, and undoubtedly the many stars of the screen of to-day who began under Griffith as "extras," owe their present vogue to his teachings — a statement born out by the fact that simultaneously with Mr. Griffith's departure from the