Motography (Jan-Jun 1918)

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May 4, 1918. MOTOGRAPHY 843 Vitagraph Goes After Louis B. Mayer PLANS TO PUSH ANITA STEWART CASE TO THE LIMIT THE Vitagraph Company of America last week tiled suit in the Superior Court at Boston for $250,000, naming Louis B. Mayer, Colman Levin ahd J. Robert Ruben as defendants. Albert E. Smith, president of the Vitagraph Company, has engaged Daniel H. Coakley, a well-known attorney of Boston, to handle the case, which is an outgrowth of the litigation started by Mr. Smith to prevent Anita Stewart from leaving Vitagraph and entering the employ of Mayer. The complaint of Vitagraph charges Mayer and his co-defendants with conspiracy in attempting to entice Miss Stewart away from the company with which she began her motion picture career. Affects Entire Industry This action, like its predecessor, is certain to have an important influence on the entire motion picture industry. At the outset of the suit to enjoin Miss Stewart from leaving Vitagraph, in which action Vitagraph recently won a final decision, Mr. Smith declared that he was seeking to establish a precedent for the protection of motion picture producers in their contract rights to a star's services. The newer action is a broader development of this principle, because if the Vitagraph Company is successful in its litigation against Mayer and his co-defendants it will serve as a further protection to manufacturers against interference from the outside with stars that they have under contract and will act as a deterrent to persons seeking to lure players away from a company by offers of fabulous salaries and other inducements. How Vitagraph States Case The Vitagraph Company states its position in this respect in the first part of its complaint as follows: "... in this connection the plaintiff has built up a great business and has established for itself an enviable reputation for the high character of its productions and for the employment in connection therewith of motion picture actors and actresses known as stars of unusual, unique and exceptional ability, and particularly for its reliability in producing such pictures with the assistance of the stars advertised and announced to appear in its said productions, upon the strength of which announcements and advertisements many hundreds of exhibitors rent and are under contract to continue to rent the said product of the plaintiff.'* After making this direct statement of the producer's rights to a star's services and the responsibility of the producer to the exhibitors, the Vitagraph complaint recites briefly the history of Miss Stewart's connection with the company. In this section it is stated that Miss Stewart came to the company in 1912, when she was about seventeen, and worked as an "extra" for twenty-five dollars a week. She was unknown, says the complaint, to the motion picture industry and to the theatre-going public. Deals With Publicity The complaint further recites that Miss Stewart was given opportunity to portray leading roles in costly photoplays and again taking up the cause of the manufacturer, says that Vitagraph "expended several hundreds of -thousands of dollars in advertising and publicly exploiting the merits of said productions and particularly the merits of the said Anita Stewart in connection therewith and in causing her to become well and favorably known to the motion picture exhibitors of the country and to the motion picture theatre-going public, not only throughout the LTnited States but throughout the civilized world where motion pictures are exhibited." Built Up Good Will "By reason of her extraordinary and unique ability, her personal charm and popularity as a motion picture actress," the complaint continues, "and by reason of the plaintiff's said advertising and exploiting of her and her said pictures, the plaintiff built up and established an extensive good will and value for all of the motion pictures in which the said Anita Stewart might thereafter appear and by so doing greatly enhanced the value of the right to engage and control her exclusive services as a motion picture actress." The complaint then reviews the making of the contract with Miss Stewart last year, which Vitagraph charged in its original suit she was seeking to break. After citing the terms of the contract, whereby Miss Stewart was guaranteed compensation of not less than $127,000 a year, the complaint states: "... The plaintiff says that between March 1, 1917, and August 23, 1917, while its said contract with Anita Stewart was in full force and effect, the defendants, well knowing of the existence of the said contract, and well knowing all of the facts herein recited, wantonly and maliciously conspired and agreed together to entice the said Anita Stewart away from and out of the employment of tthe plaintiff under the said contract as aforesaid and to induce the said Anita Stewart without cause to break her said contract with the plaintiff and to enter the employ of one of the defendants. "And the plaintiff says that pursuant to the said conspiracy, the defendants caused the said Anita Stewart to break her contract with the plaintiff without cause and without justification, and thereupon still further pursuant to the said conspiracy the defendants then and there caused a contract to be entered into with the said Anita Stewart in the name of the defendant, Louis B. Mayer, for the employment of the said Anita Stewart as a motion picture actress at a salary greater than that which she had been receiving from the plaintiff. "And the plaintiff says that thereafter the defendants caused the fact that the said Anita Stewart had entered into a contract with the said defendant Mayer to be published throughout the motion picture journals and trade and caused it to be known that the defendant Mayer had obtained the exclusive right to engage and control her services as a motion picture actress, and the defendants caused the said Anita Stewart to refuse to continue to work for the plaintiff under said contract, and caused her by means of threats and other means to continue to refuse to carry out her contract with the plaintiff and to use her utmost endeavors to defeat the plaintiff's efforts to preserve the contractual relations between the plaintiff and the said Anita Stewart with which the defendants had so interfered as aforesaid." A copy of the complaint was served upon Colman Levin, one of the defendants, in Boston on Tuesday last, but no date has been set for the trial. Levin and Ruben are said to have been financially interested with Mayer in the Stewart contract, although Miss Stewart's agreement was with Mayer personally. Device Obviates Rewinding W. R. McCutcheon, an operator of Oshawa, Canada, has invented an attachment for projection machines which does away with the necessity for the rewinding of films. Patent rights are pending and negotiations have been started toward the marketing of the device.