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228 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT
vived in this country the animosities and controversies of the Civil War. It cost perhaps $100,000 — an unprecedented sum — and it yielded millions. Out-of-theway houses are showing it yet, for it tells a story simply and with a sure instinct for essential points. Thomas Ince was beating his own way toward modern form. Charlie Chaplin, becoming his own director, was finding new possibilities. Douglas Fairbanks, creator as well as actor, was climbing from the ruck. Fox had discovered Theda Bara, who wrote “vamp” into the language. These discoverers dragged to tinsel glory in their trail such new stars as Mae Marsh, Norma Talmadge, Mary Miles Minter, Lillian and Dorothy Gish.
The “serial craze,” bom of a newspaper circulation war in Chicago, rose, blazed, and vanished. This film fashion is now so very dead that it needs description. A producer put forth a weekly series of multiple-reel melodramas, tied together by a leading woman and an insoluble mystery — as The Perils of Pauline^ The Adventures of Kathlyn^ or The Million Dollar Mystery, Concurrently, a newspaper printed the “running story” and offered a prize for the best solution of the mystery. It ran its course in less than two years. Zukor, for one, refused to be tempted by its glittering possibilities of quick returns. “Our policy is high-class films,” he said. “Besides, it won’t last.” However, it gave directors a large field in which to experiment, and served further to educate the screen in technique.