The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

December, 19J9 Page 363 ployed, and Stevenson himself drawing a salary ot $30,000. Henry Bollnian was on the staff in that same year, principally editing film. The Brady money seems not always to have been kiik of the enterprise; but its influence may have accounted for the heavy patronage which Visugraphic en- joyed from the Xew York Edison Com- pany, the Pennsylvania Railroad and for other favors from the public relations counsel, the late, celebrated Ivy Led- better Lee, advisor to the Rockefeller interests. Even so, however, there was never again to be a banner year for Visugraphic as it was then constituted. When sound pictures arrived with their expensive perplexities, Stevenson and his people made a gallant attempt to carry on. For a time it appeared that they n-.ight succeed. But for Steven.son it was just the last flush on the cheek of the corpse. In 1933 Visugraphic went into insolvency. A man named White, from the radio field, conducted the receiver- ship and actually developed some further business and a strong hope of revival. The Visugraphic personnel, in its best years, included Perry Arnold, William Barbnrin I.aub. Frank Spcidell, Albuin Mariner and Marie Barrell. Let us par- ticularize. Periy Arnold, energetic sales manager, was a former manager for the United Press .\ssociation. Laub, a facile writer of salestalks in scenario form, had started in industrials with Ivins at Pathescope. Frank Speidell was first of all Visu- graphic's brilliant scenarist. He also be- came one of its most successful direc- tors. The son of a Louisville physician, he had come to New York to engage in advertising agency work, whence he had drifted into pictures. The way was inter- esting. The theatrical screen star, Gloria Swanson, was in a way responsible. She was then at the height of her fame, and making features in the New York studios of Paramount. She had been called upon to report on her income for the federal tax collector and, in despair, had callefl on the officials of the National City Bank for help. Her adviser there recommended a rela- tive, Frank Speidell, as a dependable per- • son to keep her accounts straight. As it ' was only a part-time matter, Frank was able to take the work on along with his regular employment. The arrangement worked out quite to Miss Swanson's lik- ing; and she continued it for the term of her contract with Paramount in the East. Speidell was invited to the studio now and then and, by degrees, he thus familiarized himself with the routine of picture making until he felt that he might essay it for himself. Marie Barrell was the wife of C. W. Barrell, he being then in charge of the Motion Picture Bureau of the Western Electric Company. Her specialty was ar- ranging distribution, principally through the lesser theatres, which Visugraphic sold along with production. She had been very efficient in this place. Her training in such work had come not merely from witnessing the professional activity of her husband along the same lines, but she had served for a time as assistant to Mrs. Elizabeth Dessez in Pathe's non- theatrical department. .\n additional familiarity had come through an earlier term of service as sales representative to her husband's friend, Carlyle Ellis. But the most picturesque career of the lot was presented by Albuin R. Mariner. We met him when he joined Harry Levey at Universal; but there is much more to be told about him. In the early years of the century, it seems, there was some member of the Mariner family conduct- ing an esteemed photographic portrait studio in every important city of .-Xustria. .■\s the new art of motion pictures came in, the older members of the family felt that their specializing group should know something about it. Accordingly, they ap- r«)intcd one of their youngsters to go to Berlin and learn. They chose Albuin, who lad graduated from the Munich School of Photography in 1907 He duly went to the German capital and remained there for some time, studying assiduously. Then an uncle, Joseph De Frenes, who for some three years had been employed as a staff technician at Urban's Kinema- color Company m London, summoned Mariner there as laboratory assistant. .Albuin quickly advanced and presently was made laboratory chief of a Kinema- color branch established in France. One day, when there was a shortage of cam- eramen at the plant and a photographic job to be done, he tried his hand at cranking a color camera. He did so well that they kept him at it. He ground out plenty of black and white film, too. It is related that in 1908-1909 he was even strapped to the wing of an airplane to photograph some of the small warfare of that ominous time in the Balkans. Brought now to London, again, he be- came for Kinemacolor a sort of house- hold photographer to the Royal Family, accompanying the King to his shooting- box in Scotland, and otherwise serving to record the human interest phases of His Majesty's life, with the identifying flag of the Royal Household on his camera. In 1911 he was one of twenty- three Kinemacolor cameramen sent by Charles Urban from London to India to photograph the Durbar. And when Hickey, Urban's American manager, picked the crew to come to establish Kinemacolor in the United States, Albuin Mariner was one of those selected, cancelling another arrangement just made, to send him to New Zealand. What happened to him between the time of American Kinemacolor—when one of his notable assignments was to photograph the glamorous Lillian Rus- sell—and his coming to Visugraphic, be- longs to another part of this narrative. I mention now only one passing phase— his work as cameraman for the indus- trial department of Universal. When he came with V^isugraphic he remained there for seven years . . . until the virtual end. Caravel and Castie There are left unnamed in the New York area but two important non-theatri- cal producers of the silent days—Caravel Pictures and Castle Films. Caravel was a subsidiary of Business Training Cor- poration, a concern formed about 1917 to advise on, or actually to attack, problems of industrial relations, marketing and sales promotion. The president was Meyer Rosenbloom until the summer of 1934, when he retired from that office to give his attention to other interests. In 1929 the parent concern claimed over 800 client companies. The officers quickly discovered the im- portance of motion pictures as an aid to modern business and organized Caravel, with offices at the Business Training headquarters on Madison Avenue and a studio in Long Island City. Manager of production was David Pincus, with a permanent staff consisting of Mr. Rath- man, director, and Jules Sindic, camera- man—three especially efficient workers whose joint efforts have resulted in many creditable industrial films. Orders for these came chiefly from contacts made through Business Training Corporation, President Rosenbloom tak- ing a strong personal interest in the well- being of the subsidiary concern. Rosen- bloom's eventual retirement proved a serious blow to the film organization. His place was taken by a Dr. Lowe, who negotiated some excellent new business, wliile handicapped without Rosenbloom's original sales organization. Among outstanding clients of Caravel have been the Kohler Company of Wis- consin, manufacturers of plumbing fix- tures ; the Willard Storage Battery Com- pany; the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company; the Hammermill Paper Com- pany; Davis & Geek, makers of surgical sutures and anesthetics; the Postum Com- pany; the National Lead Company; the Commonwealth Shoe & Leather Com- pany; the International Silver Company and the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. For many of its ac- counts Caravel also arranges distribu- tion through theatres and various non- theatrical channels. About 1930, when high rents and heavier fire restrictions caused so many non-theatrical producers to leave Long Island City, Caravel re- linquished its own studio there and took another at Hempstead, which it still uses. In 1936 Caravel, approximately sixteen years from the time of its establishment, began a reorganization in which the full stress was placed on theatrical exhibition of industrial films. .After various surveys Caravel Distributing Corporation was formed. Stanley Ncal became managing director, and Bert Ennis, well known theatrical press agent, was engaged t« organize publicity. Early in 1938 a cocktail party was held at Caravel's New York office, at 730 Fifth Avenue, to give a preview to the press and the advertising space-buy- ers for a number of national accounts, of a $35,000 three-color Bristol-Myers Ipana Toothpaste animated cartoon. This picture, "Boy Meets Dog," was presented as the first of a series of "sponsored" shorts, mostly in colored animation, which would be produced for various concerns, using celebrated Hollywood talent. The announcement told of a force of sales- men to book them in theatres over the country, and one new reel was to be re- leased each month. "Boy Meets Dog" was scheduled to open April 1, 1938, with 250 "first run" bookings in theatres along the Atlantic seaboard, and 3,250 other