Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug-Dec 1913)

and the Olympic, and the luminous period of Mrs. Richardson, Mary Taylor and Tom Hamblin. The Philadelphia veteran gazes back to the golden era of the old Chestnut Street Theater, the illustrious times of Wood and Warren, when Fennell, Cooke, Cooper, Wallack and J. B. Booth were shining names in tragedy, and Jefferson and William T waits were great comedians, and the beautiful Anne Brunton was the queen of the stage. The Boston veteran speaks proudly of the old Federal and the old Tremont, of Mary Duff, Julia Pelby, Charles Eaton and Clara Fisher, and when Julia Bennett Barrow and Mrs. John Wood contended for public favor. In a word, the age that has seen Rachel, Seebach, Ristori, Charlotte Cushman and Adelaide Neilson, the age that sees Ellen Terry, Mary Anderson, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Henry Irving, Salvini, Coquelin, Lawrence Barrett, John Gilbert, John S. Clarke, Ada Rehan, James Lewis, Clara Morris and Richard Mansfield, is a comparatively sterile age," etc. The veteran critic then goes on at great length, naming the great players of the different epochs of modern times. Were he to name the great players of the present day, how many would the list contain ? And whom would he name ? Were some great Motion Picture critic to rise, and were he to name the great photoplayers of our time, how long a list would it bef If he named such favorite players as Mary Pickford, Earle Williams, Warren Kerrigan, Alice Joyce, Romaine Fielding, Carlyle Blackwell, Francis X. Bushman, G. M. Anderson, Blanche Sweet, and so on, would the mention of each name at once suggest one or more masterpieces in which that player had made an indelible impression ? Perhaps not. Perhaps our players have not yet thought of the future. When they do, we shall see greater care and thought and effort displayed. ^ ''Content is more than a kingdom," runs an old proverb, but it is mis vi leading. To be happy and contented is a consummation devoutly to be wished, Jf but it would be sad indeed if we could be contented when there are so many problems to be solved, so many improvements to be made, and so much suffering and injustice to be alleviated. Discontent is the mother of progress. If we were contented with present conditions, the world would go to sleep. There is a persistent something within us that keeps urging us onward and upward -for better things, and it is this restlessness that paves the road of progress. Much has been said against the too frequent use of death scenes, murders, burglaries, and so on, in the pictures, but nobody has yet given what is perhaps the most important reason of all. The director who insists on showing these things usually does so because he seeks to appeal to morbid tastes, or because the script in hand calls for it, or because he knows no other way to cover the situation. In nearly every good play there is one hig moment, which we call the dramatic climax, and it is seldom or never a murder or death. All the action of the play leads up to this climax, and the climax is near the end of the play. Hence, to crowd a play full of other tragedies, such as murders and death-bed scenes, often takes from the pith of the play. William Dean Howells, the dean of American literature, in speaking of short-story writing, recently said something that is directly in point: ''The Greeks, who knew pretty well everything, knew that a death scene was most effective when un ; ^fh-^-^^ 109 r^^f^>^:<^^^S^^