Motion Picture Magazine (Mar-Jul 1918)

,}V '.n*1 P :,H: Hi :,►<: ill Photodrama in the Making A Department of General Interest to All Readers, Showing How Photoplays Are Plotted, Written, Submitted and Sold Conducted by HENRY ALBERT PHILLIPS Staff Contributor; Lecturer and Instructor in Photoplay Writing in the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences; also in the Y. M. C. A. of New York; Author of "Th; Photodrama" and "The Feature Photoplay," and many Current Plays on the Screen, etc A COMPLETE PHOTOPLAY SYNOPSIS NOTE— More than half the inquiries STILL received by this Department ask HOW and in WHAT FORM Photoplays are submitted and sold NOW in this year 1918. The following Photoplay SYNOPSIS is a fac-simile copy of the Photoplay which I sold. Furthermore, the form and style are identical with the Photoplays I am writing and selling TODAY. This play was bought by The World Film Company and produced by them in 1917, Alice Brady taking the part of the widow. Hence this is the SALABLE FORM. This is the seventh instalment of the serial publication of the . Synopsis. A SELF-MADE WIDOW By Henry Albert Phillips SYNOPSIS— (Con timied) Part III. — To the Ends of the Earth — (Continued) In the meantime, Crosby has returned to his furnished room, where he lives with a very suspicious lady whom we do not pay too much attention to yet. Crosby is a clever forger and his specialty is that of raising checks. It was this knack that he practiced when signing Fitzhugh's name to the marriage certificate. The name that was signed to the death note he copied to perfection. Shortly after this he is sent up for six months for complicity in another crime. When Sylvia is mysteriously summoned from her work in the millinery shop, she is quite as much surprised and awed by the fine gentleman and Butts as all the other peeping milliners are. She is asked if she is Mrs. Castleton and, as usual, replies emphatically that she is. They then ask her to prove this statement, and she produces her wedding certificate, which is unimpeachable. The gentlemen leave, saying that she will hear from them again in a few days. Within a week a fine automobile appears with Butts and the attorney, and Sylvia is told that since her husband died intestate, she as his wife is entitled to enjoy the estate until it is settled on her legally at the end of the year. The eavesdropping milliners hear this. Sylvia is now like one in a dream-come-true. As tho it were a dying request, she asks that she may be permitted to take her only friend as a chaperon. And so Mrs. Tootle is whirled away with her, to the gaping amazement of Blue Bank. Thus Sylvia continues actually to experience things that not even her wildest dreams of Romance had dared cherish. She arrives at the magnificent estate of which she is ostensibly now the sole heir. There are acres of gardens and greenhouses and carriages and cars and liveried servants in the Enchanted Castle. And instead of Sylvia Smith, she bears one of the finest names in the whole country, Sylvia Castleton. But above all things is the magnificent collection of family jewels that is now placed at her disposal. Gowns galore she has made from the generous allowance that is sent her by the attorney. On the deck of a tramp steamer is Bobs and a blackened stoker who has just emerged from the stoke-hole to get a breath of air. He is black with soot and stripped to his waist, and there is a look in his face as tho he were not yet sure of things and especially of this horrible experience. All his spare time Bobs spends reading books he can borrow from the Captain. He remarks to Castleton: "SINCE YOU'RE TAKING A HACK AT MY SIDE OF LIFE, I'M TAKING A PEEP INTO YOURS." Mrs. Van Dusen is fairly disgusted on learning the details of Fitzhugh's dying Romance, but Lydia conceives a sudden respect for her erstwhile betrothed in thus selecting a woman of his choice. At least it took away the odium of her having driven him to suicide rather than marry her. (To be continued in our next) BOUQUETS AND BRICK-BATS The Story is the thing ! When will they be willing to see it? The Story and the Author are the last things they think of. The author gets by far the least percentage of profits from the vast gross receipts that are so carelessly thrown about and wind up with a dead loss or slim net profits. This Photodrama is going to rise on the talent of the author. It cannot fall into oblivion, no more than any other Art can, and the Producers who recognize the prime necessity of the Story and the cultivation of the worthwhile author are bound to succeed. You dont learru this great big Art of the Photodrama overnight. It is distinct from editing a magazine or newspaper, or writing a story or a stage play. It is NEW, difficult and requires a special talent. Some months ago the Artcraft-Paramount-Select combination announced that they intended spending One Million " Dollars in advertising their pictures. All very well and good. Their advertising has been of a very high order. It has been clever, artistic and wide-" spread. Yet it has a vital fault. It promises us every inch wool — and we get yards and yards of shoddy mixed with the wool. If the plays were as consistently good as the advertisements, we would not even murmur. But they are not in the same class with the advertising. If the million dollars had been spent in making onehundred-cents-on-the-dollar plays, they would need no "paper" inflation. The public would get the million dollars' worth in merit which it really pays for and not miles of paper camouflage which it swallows in good faith. The Artcraft-Paramount-Select Program seems mainly that of adapting the works that have succeeded in other branches of artistic effort in such a manner that they become unrecognizable on the screen. They succeed in inverting the old proverb and make a sow's ear out of a silk purse. WHY in heaven's name do they persist in this secondhand policy when they might be running a first-rate, firsthand shop? Their authorized agent announced the other night that they paid anywhere from $750 to $4,000 for sound Literary or Stage cattle on the hoof willing to be dealt with in their screen slaughter-house. Yes, and I know that they bought a fairly successful stage animal for $10,000 less than a month ago ! What a price for a barbecue of warmed-over steer! Now this is HOW they take perfectly nice moo-cows that have been known to give quarts upon quarts of golden milk night after night, entice them away from green pastures into a stuffy study, hit them over the head with a typewriter and six months later forever dim their former glory by serving them up in the form of lukewarm Goulash to a host of roast-beef audiences. Shades of Hoover! I think it was Paul West, adapter extraordinary in the Paramount abattoir, who recently confessed some interesting facts. That poor, gentle, tho eccentric Bossie, "Jane Eyre," was the subject. He said, in effect, that once upon a time he had considered Jane a veritable cream dairy of Romance. He returned in his maturer days for the purpose of putting the poor thing out of her misery and justified the deed by convincing himself that she was just a plain, simple, buttermilk hoax. He was disappointed in her and her progeny. (Continued on page 116)