Motion Picture News (Oct 1913 - Jan 1914)

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THE MOTION PICTURE NEWS The Motion Picture News MOVING PICTURE NEWS EXHIBITORS' TIMES Published by EXHIBITORS' TIMES, Inc. Business Offices 220 West 42nd Street, New York City Telephone Bryant 7650 Chicago Office 604 Schiller Building WILLIAM A. JOHNSTON EDITORS THOMAS BEDDING, JOHN M. BRADLET ADVERTISING MANAGER JAMES F. F AIRMAN ASSISTANT MANAGER WILLIAM M. PETINGALE WESTERN REPRESENTATIVE C. J. VER HALEN Subscription $2.00 per year, postpaid in the United States, Mexico, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. Canada and Foreign $2.50 per year. Advertising Rates: Dis ^^ggSpgSSj^ Entered as Second-Class play Rates on Application. ti^^?|S^^"^."->52 matter in the New York Classified Rates 10c a line. ^^"*SsbsSS^ Post-Office. Cuts and copy are received subject to the approval of the publishers, and advertisements are inserted absolutely without condition expressed or implied as to what appears in the text portion of the paper. Vol. VIII October n, 1913 No. 15 This publication is owned and published by Exhibitors' Times, incorporated under the laivs of the State of New York. The offices and principal place of business arc at 220 West 42nd Street, New York City. President, Wm. A. Johnston ; Vice-President, Henry F. Sewall; Sec'y, E. Kendall Gillette; Treas., Wentworth Tucker. The address of the officers is the office of the publication. THE DARK HOUSE AND THE PICTURE ONE effect we hope of the erection in Central New York and the centers of other large cities of photo-drama houses, especially and exclusively for the exhibition of the motion picture, will be the disappearance of the dark house. The dark house is an abomination in the eyes of all lovers of good motion pictures properly projected amid suitable environments. The dark house is a melancholy confession of theatrical failure or ineptitude. The dark house is dark because there are no plays to fill it. There are plays, but the people who put on plays are mostly unable to tell a good play from a bad play. That is why these theatres are dark. In Central New York, and indeed in some of the outlying sections of the city, there are always these dark houses. Sepulchres of buried hopes ; graveyards of unrealized ambitions ; tombs, mortuaries, morgues — we just hate to see them because they typify failure. Into these morgues comes the savior of many a diminishing bank balance, the motion picture. At the present time in the Broadway section of New York City there are a dozen of these places. Pictures are put in and indifferently projected and hastily arranged music flung at the picture as our confrere, J. M. B., is constantly pointing out elsewhere. The picture becomes literally a feature of these mausoleums. A substitute, any old thing you like, as long as the house is kept from going dark. Of course, it's business — pro tempore — but the picture suffers in public esteem. Mr. David Horsley is talking about building high-grade theatres. Well let him start on Broadway or in the center of other large cities ; tear down these dark houses and put real motion picture theatres in their places. Because in New York the best motion picture houses are away from the center of things. It is a moot point whether the New York center of things is the best of things with regard to amusements. Broadway, according to keen observers, is being rapidly shorn of its glories. Even New Yorkers, the most pleasure-loving people on the face of the globe, are becoming sensible in their pleasure-taking. They can get high-grade theatrical performances and good motion picture exhibitions on their own doorsteps, so to speak, so why should they worry about Broadway? Especially when there are so many dark houses there and so many other theatres which are but registrations of failures and the fatuity of infatuated angels. SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY MOTION PICTURE SCHOOL The photographic school at Syracuse University will probably, by the end of the year, be housed in a home of its own, as plans are now under consideration for a special building comprising on the ground floor a lecture room, studio, four darkrooms, plate, lens and shutter-testing rooms and the usual offices. On the first floor will be built a portrait and motion-picture studio, 30x60 feet, in which it will be possible to stage any ordinary play. Professor E. J. Wall, who is in charge of this department, hopes to have installed in the new building a Hurter & Driffield plate-testing machine with its complement, a special photometer, a complete optical bench, these instruments now being on the way. With these he hopes to make the school a reliable testing establishment for lenses, plates and papers. There will also be put in, at the earliest possible date, a shuttertesting machine. A photomicrographic department is to be fitted up and spectrographic work is to be undertaken ; the necessary equipment being all on the spot, only want of room preventing its being installed ere now. The department has received many donations in the form of apparatus. George Eastman has given a complete series of kodaks, developing tanks, etc.; the Edison Company has donated projecting machines; F. J. Marion, of the Kalem Company, a motion-picture camera and printer; the Ansco Company, two of their printing machines ; the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company, a complete set of lens-grinding tools and a lens in the various stages of grinding from the raw glass; (Continued on page 17)