Motography (Jul - Dec 1915)

964 MOTOGRAPHY Vol. XIV, No. 19. While with Lubin he first met "Walt" Stull. Stull had begun his theatrical career in stock, starting with the Forepaugh stock company of Philadelphia in 1894. The local popularity which Stull almost instantly re ceived resulted in his engagement as leading stock man at the Girard Avenue theater, Philadelphia. As a matinee idol he remained at the Girard many years until attracted by an offer by Emma Bunting to go on the road as co-star. This was followed by several seasons of juvenile roles in a dramatic company headed by Creston Clark. In 1907 Stull decided to go into business for himself and the Walter H. Stull stock company was the result of his decision. After two successful seasons the company disbanded, when Stull accepted an attractive offer from the Lubin Company and transfered his talents to the screen. At first he played the "heavy" in one of the Lubin companies until a far-seeing director saw his comedy possibilities and, from that time on, consistently assigned Stull to comedy roles. When Burns and Stull went to the Reliance as author-directors, they met Burstein. It was then that the three put their heads together and resolved to Scene from "Midnight Prowler result of the report of burglars in the neighborhood. "Midnight Prowlers" will be followed the next week by "A Pair of Birds." Pokes and Runt are in jail. They decide to escape and their escape is most unique. After many mishaps, they are finally more than glad to surrender to the guards and to get once again the protection of prison bars and striped suits. On November 26, "Pressing Business," the third release, will appear. A man sends his one and only suit of clothes to the tailor. While they are at the tailors he must stay in bed. Imagine his horror when he learns that the tailor shop has burned down while his one suit of clothes was there! Comedy aplenty is furnished in his efforts to get another suit. Leading members of the "Pokes and Jabbs" array are Ethel Burton, a vivacious and charming comedienne, "Spook" Hanson, formerly a clown at the Hippodrome, Edna Reynolds, a popular stock favorite, "Babe" Hardy, a three hundred and fifty pounder. At present, Burstein is negotiating with several other promising favorites and the result of these negotiations will be announced later. Burns and Stull with their coterie of mirth provokers are leaving New York early next week for tropical Florida, where they will establish winter quarters. "PENNY-A-LINERS" WONT DO create a new line of comedy. Vim comedies are the result. The first release is entitled "Midnight Prowlers" and deals with the fright of Mr. and Mrs. Jabbs as the Virile Authors Needed Badly for Film Stories — Arthur H. Spiegel of Equitable Trying to Lure Noted Fictionists Arthur H. Spiegel, head of the Equitable Motion Pictures Corporation, and at present attending important board meetings of that concern, threw a bomb into the Equitable camp this week when he displayed a number of copies of letters and cablegrams he had sent during the past four weeks while at the helm of his large merchandising plant at Chicago. Rudyard Kipling, Stewart Edward White, C. N. and A. N. Williamson, Richard Harding Davis, Jack London, the Castles, J. Egerton and his wife, William J. Locke, James O'Donnell Bennett, Brand Whitlock, Robert W. Chambers, Frederick Jackson, Tolstoi's estate, and publishers for Guy De Maupassant, Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Sir Waiter Scott, J. Fenimore Cooper, and other creators of splendidly unconventional stories, were among those who had been queried by Mr. Spiegel regarding the converting of their works into screen vehicles. Mr. Spiegel called a meeting of those directly responsible for the success of Equitable, and without opposition, without the least hesitation, Russell Edgar Smith and Marc Edmund Jones, heads of Equitable's scenario department, were instructed to follow up Mr. Spiegel's lead and secure such of the old and new fiction classics as were protected by copyright and procurable in form suitable for screen adaption. "The penny-a-liner," to quote Mr. Spiegel, "who writes for the yellow back novel, the cheap magazine and the boiler plate newspaper at so much a line, without consideration of the matter he is writing, who simply compiles laboriously a flow of rhetoric, because he is getting so much for so much, is of no earthly use to the film world. "We need, ever so badly, more brain power in the story department, and we have decided to get