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EDISON WRITES A LETTER
175
broke the Trust. Having admitted this exponent of more ambitious films, it could not in reason refuse licences to other newcomers with a superior product. From that time forth, it cut less and less figure in the world of shadows. The tide of progress had overrun all the artificial barriers. By 1913 the distinction between
regulars” and “independents” had grown hazy. By 1915, when the courts finally dissolved the combination, the line had disappeared. Generally, those who were lords of the motion picture before 1912 retired to live happily ever after on comfortable fortunes. Leadership of the newer and greater era passed to those who had been least of their vassals — the little five-cent, store-show exhibitors and agents of the back streets. Here the Trust virtually disappears from this story.
The names of Bernhardt and Hackett had made magic, as expected. The spoken theatre was nodding to its hoyden cousin. Dan Frohman worked day and night to shove the movement along. Every fine afternoon he brought parties of dramatic, social, and literary celebrities to the cluttered studio in West Twenty-sixth Street and displayed to them the novel spectacle of films in the making. Some daring debutante asked for a chance with the extra girls, which Frohman graciously granted. It became fashionable; certain mobs of the old Famous Players productions look like a garden party at Tuxedo. More practically, Frohman was making