Motion Picture Herald (Sep-Oct 1939)

8 MOTION PICTURE HERALD Cctcber 7, 1939 This Week The First Preview [Continued frovt preceding page] Europe, which he did not think were priced on their pictorial merits. He did not, note you, seek attention for his electric light — nor did he mention that he was at that very moment on his way to a preview. Let us dally a moment with the fact that for the first, and probably the last, time on earth, a producer had opportunity to say that he was about to unveil the greatest motion picture ever made, and prove it. It was a sneak preview — and the first. There was a delegation of "the boys" from the plant, even as now, to tell him how good they were and what terrific things they had done while he was away. Among them this Sunday morning was Mr. William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, laboratory assistant, who had been working out, in Room 5, the details on the picture machine job, applying, since late August, the newly available roller photography material from George Eastman, and which Edison had named "film", to the machinery they had been building since 1887. It was quite a while between the time that Mr. Edison had decided to make a machine that would really move pictures and the time that he got it — but not nearly so long nor so costly as many a picture project, like, say, "Gone with the Wind". It cost, by some rather good accounting, about $24,000 for the West Orange plant under Edison to deliver the motion picture — or about as much as the option on a story that somebody might have wanted the other day. Mr. Dickson led, and pushed, Mr. Edison into Room 5, and asked him to lean over the busy black box that was Kinetoscope No. 1. There, under the aperture, with a considerable buzzing of the machinery, he saw a picture of Mr. Dickson lifting his hat. ■r^ OR the information of technicians, it was a continuously running A/ film, printed from a negative making forty-eight exposures a second, viewed through a magnifying glass, illuminated by an incandescent lamp and transmitted to the eye through a revolving multiblade shutter. It had extremely low light efficiency. It had "drag" and "pull" and several kinds of aberrations. Mr. Edison knew it. He said something like "Umph" and went home to dinner. For two years the machine stood, gathering dust, in a corner of Mr. Edison's library. He was not very proud of his motion pictures. He refused to spend $150 to patent the machine and the notion in Europe. Important things in the great world of industry interested him more. In 1891 came a promoter, who wanted to show it at the Chicago World's Fair in 1892. The fair did not open until '93, but, even so, the Edison plant had no machines ready until 1894, after the fair had closed — so the Kinetoscope, a peep show, had its world premiere April 14, 1894, at 115 5 Broadway in New York. After that came the screen, many lawsuits, and a great industry, with both the lawsuits and the pictures getting bigger and better, year by year. —TERRY RAMSAYE Unions and Guilds Actual negotiations of the new hours and working conditions under the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees closed shop contract which gave 12,000 studio technicians and workers a 10 per cent wage increase two weeks ago will mark time pending a survey by major producers of possible changes in production methods. In announcing the obtaining of a 10 per cent wage increase, William'Bioff, chairman of the lATSE negotiating committee, said that producers had agreed to open conferences in about four weeks. ^ Studio managers met Tuesday with Pat Casey and Victor Clarke, producer labor contact officers, on labor matters, including a demand for a 15 per cent increase for members of the Moving Picture Painters Local 644, made Alonday night by Herbert Sorrell, business representative. The deadline is October 16th. Howard Robertson, president of the United Studio Technicians Guild, and other members of the Guild, filed a National Labor Relations Board petition Monday, charging that the election wliich established the lATSE as the studio bargaining agency is invalid because producers allegedly financed the Alliance. A shakeup in the Hollywood offices of the Labor Board Tuesday resulted in the transfer of several field examiners including chief field examiner William Pomerance. Pat Casey, producer labor contact officer, said Tuesday he would meet with a committee of International Alliance newsreel cameramen and William Bioff, lA leader; for negotiations over a 25 per cent wage increase sought by workers. The new contract between the Screen Publicists' Guild and the studios goes into effect Monday, October 9th ; with senior members of the Guild drawing a minimum of $100 a week, and junior members $50. The agreement also calls for preferential hiring of Guild members from a list of those unerriployed. For other union activities see page 52. New Trouble Business practices of foreign, particularly French, producers, whereby they allow several individuals the rights to sell their pictures in North and Latin America, is resulting in widening confusion, it is understood. American distributors, in many cases, finding that films to which they were given the rights in certain Latin American territories, have already been sold in those tero-itories, by others, here and in Latin America, to whom the same rights were given. A corollary development has been the piracy of prints ; their duplication in certain Southern cities ; and their shipment, directly and indirectly, to unauthorized Latin American distributors.