The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 294 The Educational Screen or a club a machine for "show" purposes; but the purchaser demanded assurance that he might obtain new subjects when- ever he wanted them. And the lar^e catalogues of Urban and Kleine to the contrary notwithstanding, there was not much which was strictly suitable for a school or a church. If it was not just a matter of having ordinary films, there were, of course, illicit sources of supply. Many theatre em- ployees were bribed to send their pictures around to the neighborhood clubs be- tween shows and, too frequently, the man who brought the non-theatrical pro- jector for the evening's entertainment screened stolen prints on the same oc- casion. Many a devout church pastor would have been shocked to know that he had been party to some such rascally deal as this when showing films in his church on terms which he had every reason to believe were those of legiti- mate business. Exhibiting rented films in more places, than had been contracted for by the theatrical exchanges, was an offense called "bicycling" in reference to the usual manner of conveyance. However, it was a practice not confined to non-theatrical exploitation. The smaller theatres prof- ited hugely from it, which was much worse, because the exhibitors there fully understood what they were doing. As to "stolen" as distinguished from "borrowed," prints, these were rarely the original prints legitimately released by the ex- changes. They were, rather, "duped" copies made with astonishing rapidity by dishonest laboratory workers who had managed to "borrow" the original for an hour or two. It is said that they could print a duped negative from a positive print in the time that the unsuspecting owner was being held in conversation. Just back of Times Square in New York, there used to be a regular market for trafficking in stolen goods of this sort. I remember the story emanating from that quarter, that duped prints of Douglas Fairbanks's "Robin Hood" were being spread over the coun- try while the picture proper was just starting its first week on Broadway. But, in referring to non-theatrical film libraries, I am trenching on another chapter. The purpose of this present one has been just to sketch the situation which finally caused the separation of social service, educational and industrial motion pictures, from those dedicated to sheer entertainment. Chapter II — Inventory ALL the while that the force of cir- cumstances was opening the non- theatrical field, more and more films befitting its first needs were being pro- duced. It therefore took but a few sea- sons to outmode, in technical improve- ment, at least, nearly everything in the Urban and Kleine catalogues, although the items there listed went on and on, pioneering where the better values had not yet been appreciated. I dare say that some of those quaint releases are still in service after upwards of twenty-five years. The most familiar single "educational" subject of the period before the World War was geography. In the Kleine cata- logue of 1915, some 56 pages out of 162 are devoted to listings of travel films. Travel pictures were comparatively easy and inexpensive to make, and the Ameri- can public was generally eager to see them. Outlying districts, just beginning to respond to the telephone and the automobile, showed so keen a hunger for knowledge about distant lands, that in- habitants would gather just to hear the printed globe-trotting lectures of Stod- dard and Dwight Elmendorf read to them by one of their own number. Remember, too, that distant lands were the more or less recent homes of millions of natural- ized United States citizens who still had their occasional moments of homesick- ness. In all events, the audience for such films was then surely ready-made. Of course, the travel subjects of three to five hundred feet apiece—half a reel, that is-—were common in the theatrical splits, and had been so for a long time. Gaumont and Pathe Freres had provided most of these; naturally the scenes were chiefly of French, Italian and Swiss localities. England, curiously enough, was rather neglected. As the Pathe or- ganization spread during the peak of its greatest prosperity, and opened studios in other countries, the scenes included also Germany, Spain and, sparingly, Rus- sia. Pathe began printing these little travelogues with its interesting stencil colors at a very early date. I seem to recall the stencilled ones as early as 1904 and if the colors were not absolutely true to nature, they were, at least, as genu- inely pleasing as the synthetic hues of the lecturers' lantern slides being shown com- monly on the old lyceum circuits. They were interesting in subject matter, well- photographed and generally presented in good taste. It is not surprising that they held their places on the standard theatri- cal programs until well into the war period. Paul Rainey's Hunt There were no doubt produced many films which would fall into the broad category of geography long before 1911 when Paul J. Rainey went on his expedi- tion resulting in "The Paul J. Rainey African Hunt Pictures"; but that effort, in five reels with a lecture, was probably the first outstanding real-adventure movie ever made—the first to be an entire show in itself. It was surely the first of that sort to attain widespread popularity. The Theodore Roosevelt African Expedition pictures of 1910, photographed by the swashbuckling Cherry Kearton, were re- leased by the General Film only as a "program feature" in two reels. The Rainey film was not just a glimpse of a generally unfamiliar part of the world, but it was highly attractive in representing strange beasts, or anyway, beasts in surroundings more exciting than in a zoo. As an entirely independent pro- gram it ran for sixteen weeks at the Lyceum Theatre in New York, at a time when to book films into a so-called "legitimate" playhouse was considered downright vandalism. In the spring of 1913 the Rainey pictures had a command presentation before the King and Queen of England at Buckingham Palace. Their general distribution on a "state rights" basis, which means rental by territorial jobbers instead of through central book- ing offices, was handled with marked success by Carl Laemmle. Rainey was described for the benefit of the curious as a wealthy Cleveland man, high official in a large coke-distrib- uting concern, out for recreation. His ostensible purpose was to hunt lions with dogs, a bid for notoriety to be matched in later expeditions by men who visited the Dark Continent to kill inoffensive wild beasts with bow and arrow and with lasso. However, Rainey was rather given to extravagances. In later years, when Rainey was president of the National Fox- hound Club, he kept a pack of 150 prize dogs of that breed at his Mississippi plantation, and gave an annual barbecue there to his neighbors, with sometimes 5,000 guests present. During his lifetime of 46 years, ending in 1923 on his estate in Nairobi when he died on his birthday, he hunted big game in many remote places, including Borneo, British Africa, the Malay Archipelago and India. He did his first serious mo- tion picture making in 1910 with Captain Bob Bartlett in the .'krctic. His last im- portant opportunity to shoot was during the World War, when, as a captain in the British Army, he saw service against the Germans in East Africa. The expedition for his African pictures, according to a statistical press agent, cost a quarter of a million dollars and lasted one year. Concerned in it were 35 white men, 325 blacks, 135 camels, 40 horses, 60 dogs, 54 oxen and 150 sheep on the hoof. It was photographed mainly from blind setups near waterholcs. It is quite possible that the picture returns de- frayed the cost, dcpciuIinR, of course, on the contract which Rainey made with Laemmle. Anyway, in the autumn of 1913 the management claimed in its ad- vertising that the attraction had played to "more than a million dollars at one dollar prices"—^and the lesser theatres had not yet been permitted to book it. It is interesting to add that before Paul Rainey died, he endowed a large tract of land in Louisiana to be kept as a bird and animal sanctuary under supervision of the American Association of Audubon Societies. (To be continued)