The Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1914)

There are two subjects just now more widely discussed on the theatrical "Rialto" than any other at this period. One is the impromptu speech at a Friars' dinner, in which the elongated and much married De Wolf Hopper uttered a vigorous protest against the modern trend of stage realism — the substance of which was the query : "It is not Where shall we go? but Where can we go? that confronts the playgoer in an effort to choose a playhouse where he can safely attend with his family.' ' The other topic of conversation whenever stage folk congregate is — the near approach of the conversion of the Criterion Theater, in the heart of the playhouse zone, into a permanent home for the exploitation of Vitagraph films, and there are not a few who believe that, with the advent of the film magnate as a direct bidder for the public's favor in palatial Broadway playhouses, Mr. Hopper's daring question, which has already echoed thru the breadth of the land, will be answered. Stranger things can happen than that the men who have achieved fame and fortune as the pioneers of a vast industry, and the birth of a new yet compelling art, will solve the intricate problems which have caused catering to the public's entertainment to become far more risky as far as the speaking stage is concerned than at any time since those days when the stage calling was regarded with suspicion. That the Vitagraph Company is eminently fitted to establish the first permanent photoplayhouse of high grade in the theater zone none can doubt, for what the Vitagraph Company is today is due solely to an uncompromising and inviolable policy in which business rectitude combined with a catholic fairness lias characterized its operations for well-nigh eighteen years. The writer recalls the early struggles of the company's officers in those days when the Motion Picture was regarded as a mere toy, when the "chase" and slapstick buffoonery formed the incentive for the camera man's productivity. The Vitagraph people then occupied a small room in a downtown officebuilding; its stock company comprised six persons, including the three proprietors, who often helped out with the acting. Today the Vitagraph Company is an institution of such vast proportions that any attempt to describe its scope and immensity would require a volume. Yet, with all its development, there has been no change in the basic policy which Messrs. Rock, Blackton and Smith established in the little Nassau Street office, a policy that had for its standard-bearer a determination never to permit on the screen a picture that the founders of the company would not willingly place permanently in their own homes. With its more than 150 players, in eluding no less than thirty former members of Charles Frohman's forces, and fully a score of erstwhile stars of the speaking stage, who shall say that the advent of the "Life Portrayal" camera man in Long Acre Square is not timely? The "team work" of John Bunny and Flora Finch, and the mellowed artistry of Sydney Drew, Maurice Costello, James Lackaye and their colleagues express the superlative mode of artistic procedure that today obtains in the modern film studio. But the Vitagraph Company did not aim to have its own playhouse until it had a message to address to that overwhelming majority of mankind that admires its productivity on the screen. There will be something more than a mere luxurious playhouse in an acknowl (Continued on page 152) 107