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

of^cfence 349 while Mr. Edison may confine his efforts to reproducing grand opera quite as effectively as presented in our majestic opera houses, the improvement in the synchronism of the talking pictures will go on, until perhaps the greatest problem in the history of public entertaining will have been wholly solved. The managerial interest in the latest developments along these lines is best illustrated from the manner in which contracts are being issued by showmen all over the country for the Lauder offering, while Mr. Mahan is releasing his "Imperial Singing pictures" — ■ a wholly novel entertainment — with much the same general demand from exhibitors as for photoplays. For the moment the trend of these newer brands of talking and singing pictures is toward evolving a vaudeville program, and if the Webb electrical pictures, as shown at the Fulton Theatre, survive, as seems almost certain, the general belief about Long Acre Square is that vaudeville is due to witness a decreased demand for performers in the flesh, with many of the smaller theatres and the majority of the cities of moderate size presenting entertainments involving no problems as to whether "the spectre will perambulate with regularity." The only salary to be paid wall be to the company providing the scientific entertainment. Augusta Glose has been wanted for at least two of these brands of singing pictures, and it is with such musical monologues as she has been so successful with that the present-day talking picture inventions can best cope. The Edison Kinetophone director sent for John T. Kelly, with a view to specializing with the countless