The film daily year book of motion pictures (1926)

events of the last half dozen years. That we may have a perspective in this view of today's titan tumult of this billionaire industry, we must review some milestones in rapid succession. 1 895-6-7 — The period of the screen's birth was dominated for their little hour by the inventors, Edison, Armat, Lumiere, Lathan, Paul and the K. M. C. D. with its American Biograph. These were men who wanted to make machines. The motion picture in their era was a novelty, and its business was a trivial chaos. "1908-910-11 — Mastery of the screen passed to men who wanted to make money. They used machine patents as their major weapons. Pictures themselves were still of little importance. It was the era of the Motion Picture Patents Company. Business brought organization. J. J. Kennedy, an engineer and corporation expert, became the boss of bosses. Exploitation and distribution was king. The monopoly fattened — and went to sleep. "1912-13-14-15— Gold-hungry outsiders alert to oppo tunity lured away the better picture makers of the mononoly, taking Florence Lawrence, Arthur Johnson; Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith. Edwin S. Porter, Mack Sennett and many others. The invading independents made bigger and better pictures — because they had to break in. They bettered the art to better their own business. "1916-17 Competition grew apace with frenzied bidding for stars, directors and stories in the war of product. The new bosses were righting for supremacy. They began as makers of pictures but swiftly evolved into engineers of organization. Exploitation and distribution were king again. The names of the neriod are : Adolph Zukor, Carl Laemmle, John R. Freuler, H. E. Aitken, W. W. Hodkinson, L. J. Selznick, Richard Rowland, William Fox — all exploiters, primarily makers of money, secondarily makers of pictures. In the right for supremacy they concentrated the picture-making genius of the studios under their various banners. Zukor's camp became the strongest. Pictures improved to improve the power of the box office. "1918 — Exhibitors, the theater men, with ever and ever bigger houses and bigger investments were becoming increasingly conscious of pressure. All the production, exploitation and distribution was aimed at them. The pressure tended to deve'op resistance and a consciousness of power. The exhibitors stood last on the line from studio to screen. They found pictures costing more and more. Admission prices went up to the limit and then public resistance, expressed in refusal to pay more at the box office, forced the theater men to turn and fight the other way. Some large theater institutions had come into being. Here are a few names : lialaban & Katz. Stanley Mastbautn, Mitchell Mark, Turner & Dahnken, Jensen & Von Herberg, Stephen A. Lynch, Marcus Loew, Rubin & Finkelstein. There were millions in theaters and in a dollar war millions are power. Some of these millions pooled their power and First National Exhibitors' Circuit was born to buy box office value at the source. Contracts were made with Chaplin, Pickford, Griffith and others. First National made stars into producers. It also blazed a1 path for theater booking combines. A new power was born to consciousness. "1919 — Now came the stars' turn. Adventures in production under the sheltering assurance and patronage of the box office combine made them into producers and whetted ambition — ambition for a bigger share of that handful of silver at the box office window." The development of United Artists is then told and of how Marcus Loew bought into Metro and how "The Four Horsemen" was acquired by Richard A. Rowland, then president of Metro. The part that June Mathis played in this important picture is told in detail, also how Rowland paid Ibanez $190,000 for his share of the picture, and Ramsaye points out that had the original deal with the author rone through at ten per cent of the gross, that Ibanez would have received $350,000. In other woids, the picture grossed three million and a half. Considerable space is given to the marriage of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. The Arbuckle affair is mentioned, and how Will Hays came into the picture business is told by using a reprint of a news item which appeared in THE FILM DAILY, issue of May 6, 1919, which wa» captioned "Mystery Lunch" — "Who Was the Little Man at the Important Party?" On Dec. 8, 1921, Selznick and Saul Rogers visited Hays in Washington and offered him a three year contract at $100,000 a year, and the following March, Hays opened his offices. Ramsaye concludes his article by saying: "Since the coming of Hays, motion picture sensations have not been so sensational. A slight and normal sprinkling of divorces and the like still occur in the Latin quarter of the films, but they are not now symbols of the industry. Picking on the films is no longer the national sport. Some legislative triumphs for the pictures have been recorderd, and, most important of all, people with a pain about the films can now tell it to Hays instead of shouting to the newspapers. "The Hays office costs the motion picture industry, and therefore the public, about a half a million dollars a year. "It is the biggest bargain since Thomas Edison spent $24,000 inventing the Kinetoscope in 1899." Chaplin's Gold Coast Triumph {By Permission of the New -York Times) Chaplin's triumph in "The Gold Rush" was one of the sensations of the year. But note what Erick Berry found in Accra, on the old gold coast of barbaric Africa: "Then the glare of a movie lit up the dark street. The sign read "Accra Picture Palace." Even in West Africa the movie house must be a palace. A small building, but looming large in the straggling street of huddled native houses, it was plastered a brilliant salmon pink— a shade beloved by the 'negro. Four ornate and somewhat crooked pillars formed an arcade under which the market women like to congregate. Wading through a mob of yelling humanity, which sprawJed gossiping on the steps, we stepped over two boys who lay at full length sweetly asleep on the sidewalk under the flood of the electric arcs and totally undisturbed by the noisy, sauntering crowds. "Here were Fanti savages from Ashanti land, up-country Kroo boys who work along the docks, and who with their little trident-shaped paddles and wild savage chants bring one across the stretch of dangerous water in the surf boats to the harbor; black mammies, their frizzy tresses straightened and stiffened with lard and charcoal and built up on wires to an appalling egg-shaped height, the whole bedecked and bedizened with ornaments of the native 13