We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
FEATURE PICTURES 107
hibit it in America, with or without the assistance of his associates.
He bought the American rights, and when the picture reached New York, gathered the manufacturers and officials of the patents company and General Film and a number of prominent exhibitors into the company's projection room and screened it for them. With the exception of one man, the audience remained through the entire nine reels and agreed that "Quo Vadis" was a remarkable photoplay, but the rulers of the trust declined to modify their system and permit "Quo Vadis" to be distributed apart from the program.
The man who left the projection room before the completion of the picture was Marcus Loew, one of the most important New York theater-owners. Loew agreed with the trust conservatives that an audience could not maintain its interest throughout a long film. Within ten years, Loew's Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios were making no films shorter than six reels and some of them ran to twelve.
Kleine, anticipating rejection by General Film, had already concluded to rent a Broadway theater and attempt to accomplish the impossible by showing "Quo Vadis" as an entertainment equal to stage plays. The renting of a theater proved unnecessary, for when Sam Harris, play producer, saw "Quo Vadis," his enthusiasm was as great as Kleine's. George Cohan and Harris booked the picture for the Astor Theater on a percentage basis, Kleine receiving forty percent of the gross receipts.
"Quo Vadis" opened at the Astor on April 21, 1913, at a dollar admission. A photoplay at a dollar was a daring innovation. Kleine and Cohan and Harris were rewarded with enormous success. The Astor was packed with appreciative audiences from spring until autumn, and by the middle of the summer twentytwo "road shows" were exhibiting the picture in stage theaters in all sections of the United States and Canada. The overwhelming popularity of "Quo Vadis" convinced progressives of the soundness of their contentions that the public was ready and