Motography (Jul - Dec 1915)

October 9, 1915. MOTOGRAPHY 719 Why I Went Into Motion Pictures BY GERALDINE FARRAR IT is the sounding board of the piano that gives roundness and substance to the tone ; it is the resistance of the carbon that gives greater brilliance to the arc, and it is the artistic sympathies of our hearers that inspire us all to redouble our efforts to interest, instruct, or entertain. The orator is more eloquent in proportion to the numbers of his sympahetic hearers ; the actor more brilliant as his audience sways to his art. All this is by way of introduction to what follows. Frequently, since last spring, when I determined that the time had arrived for me to enter a new field of artistic endeavor, I have been asked the question: "Why?" My friends have said : "Already you have reached great popularity through the operatic and concert stages. Why motion pictures?" While it is true that to most of these inquiries I have answered, "Why not?!' in half jest, I am glad now to tell more fully precisely the reasons why I declined a summer of rest and ease for a summer of mighty hard work. For what was said in the first paragraph is quite true. The artist — the person who had dedicated himself to an artistic cause — if he be sincere in his response to the call from "within" cannot stand still. There is but one road in art and that is "straight forward." There is no detour, no turning back. And in exact proportion to the inspiration which the artist obtains from a responsive and sympathetic audience, precisely so is the effect of lassitude and wasted opportunity. Work is for workmen, as the comedian once said. And friends are for artists. When Morris Gest first interested me in motion pictures as a field of work exceptionally suited to those gifts with which I have been endowed as an actress, I was more surprised than amused. I had been at various times to see motion picture entertainments, but usually in the theaters in Europe. It never had even occurred to me to act for the screen. The more I thought of the suggestion the more it interested me and before long I knew — I felt, as it were, — that motion pictures really offered a field in which I could not only work with great sincerity and happiness, but also through which I would be answering that inner command constantly in the artist's mind, "Broaden yourself, extend your scope, make new friends." After attending scores of motion picture entertainments in New York and other American cities, I saw and understood to what wonderful ends this great medium of dramatic expression was pointed. The Paramount theaters interested me most because of the truly high principles that seemed to prompt the producers and exhibitors. After a discussion with Samuel Goldfish, head of the Lasky Feature Play Company, I found myself within a few weeks thereafter on the way to Hollywood, Cal., where the Lasky studios are situated. Right here I wish to say in all my experience never were those around me so eager to please, so kind in their attentions. When I first sang for the talking machine I believed for a moment that I would be unable to overcome the feeling that it was a mechanical contrivance. I was not sure that the best artistic impulses would respond. My experience, however, was that once I started to sing all sense of the mechanical thing in front of me disappeared. I saw in my mind's eye a great throng of people to whom I was singing. And that was my experience before the motion picture camera. I lost sight of the photographer and his steady turning". I saw only a mighty gathering of Sketch of Geraldine Farrar, made from life by LeRoy Baldridge of Photoplay Magazine staff. men, women and children — thousands and thousands — who were watching my every movement. It was thrilling and I knew that my sincerity was meeting with response and that my picture would please,