Moving Picture World (Jan-Mar 1918)

490 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD January 26, 1918 Freuler Announces "Screen Telegram" A Twice-a-Week News and Current Events Reel to Be Distributed Through Mutual Exchanges. THE SCREEN TELEGRAM," a twice-a-week news reel, of a new type, is announced by John R. Freuler, of the Mutual Film Corporation and various allied film enterprises. This release is to be available at Mutual exchanges beginning the week of March 4, according to Mr. Freuler's announced plans. It will follow up and supplant the Mutual Weekly, which is one of the oldest and long-established news reels in the film trade. "We have elaborate and promising plans for the production and assembling of the 'Screen Telegram,'" said Mr. Freuler, discussing the new release at his New York offices. "We have arranged for an extensive system of foreign camera correspondence with a war news service from some new angles, which we expect will give an unusual attractiveness to the reel. "I have been giving the news reels particular attention for a long period and I have come to the conclusion that improvements in this field have been very slow to come. Yet the enduring success of the Mutual Weekly and some of its better competitors, and their obvious value to the best theaters, prove the permanence of demand. "In the production and assembling of the 'Screen Telegram' we shall take advantage of all of our long experience in news film manufacture and distribution. While we are not ready to announce the complete staff of the 'Telegram' organization it is sufficient to assure that we have arranged for the services of the best available experts in the newspaper and news film fields. "The 'Screen Telegram' will be a true screen publication presented with refinements of make-up and dress which will make it a fitting unit in the best programs of the best theaters. "The mechanical work of the 'Screen Telegram' will be handled at the excellent laboratories and printing plant of the American Film Company, Inc., which is, I hold, a guaranty of a film product as near technical perfection as the market affords. "This means that the 'Screen Telegram' reels will be of the same high physical quality as the feature productions of that concern released through the Mutual Film Corporation. The American Film Company is famous for the quality of its prints and the excellence of its development, tinting and toning processes. This plant with its million feet a week capacity can give us all the speed we can use. "The location of the printing and shipping plant of the 'Screen Telegram' in Chicago at the American Film Company will afford the release special advantages as to time for the whole United States, while supplementary arrangements have been made for the printing and shipping of 'extras' from New York and other important points when extraordinary conditions call for such a handling of the subject." The Mutual from its Chicago offices is conducting negotiations with camera men in a number of points yet to be covered by the "Screen Telegram." This detail of the organization is being handled through the office of Terry Ramsaye, the Mutual's director of publicity. Chicago Picturemen in New York Freuler and Hutchinson of Mutual Come Here to Plan Series of Big Specials. NEGOTIATIONS preliminary to the production of a number of big special feature pictures are being conducted in New York by Samuel S. Hutchinson and John R. Freuler, who were in the city during the week of January 7. According to present plans it is said that the specials will be made by a separate organization working on the west coast with the Santa Barbara studios of the American Film Company, Inc., as headquarters. It is to be assumed that these specials will be made available to exhibitors through the exchanges of the Mutual Film Corporation, although no official announcements to that effect have been made. "We. have found certain market tendencies will assure us that, to a considerable proportion of theaters, a series of occasional big special productions will have a particular value in the coming year," said Mr. Freuler. "There are basic reasons for this trend, representing an evolution in the business of presenting pictures. This will not affect our handling of star productions featuring 'big stars only,' including the Mary Miles Minter, Margarita Fischer, Williarh Russell, Edna Goodrich, the Charles Frohman plays and others." Mr. Hutchinson is conferring with a number of available authors and stars, who will be at liberty for contracts at the periods planned for the special features. "We are starting amply in advance to insure careful preparation for every aspect of these pictures. I am not just now in a position to make any announcements relating to the stars and casts of these specials, but I can say most assuredly that these pictures will, unlike those of today, present both a real star and a real story." When Irvin Cobb Sold Cold Stuff CONTEMPORARY biographers of Irvin S. Cobb, who just can't wait for his funeral to begin writing interesting things about him, are having a merry time calling up this or that incident in a career of which this distinguished author is frankly unashamed, although its records Irvin S. Cobb. reach back to the age of sixteen, when Cobb was village iceman in Paducah, Ky., and include nineteen, when he was the youngest managing editor of a daily paper in the United States in this same town. But Mr. Cobb himself is his own best biographer, as the following, related by Robert H. Davis, editor of the Munsey magazines, testifies: Without knowing to whom he was speaking, a stranger once asked Irvin Cobb what kind of a person Cobb was. "Well, to be perfectly frank with you," replied the Kentucky prodigy, "Cobb is related to my wife by marriage, and if you don't object to a brief sketch, with all the technicalities eliminated, I should say that in appearance he is rather bulky, standing six feet high, not especially beautiful, a light roan in color, with a black mane. His figure is undecided, but might be called bunchy in places. He belongs to several clubs, including the Yonkers Pressing Club and the Park Hill Democratic Marching Club, and has always, like his father, who was a Confederate soldier, voted the Democratic ticket. He has had one wife and one child and still has them. In religion he is an Innocent Bystander." Mr. Cobb has many a claim to literary fame both as a humorist and as a writer of heart-gripping stories of dramatic force and fire. Among the latter one of the more recently successful is "Fields of Honor," and now made into a motion picture with Mae Marsh as the star. This Goldwyn subject is said by its producers to be one of the most promising vehicles Mae Marsh has ever had. "Fields of Honor" will be released throughout the country on January 14. MESSRS. GREENE AND ABRAMS ISSUE STATEMENT. That no advertising or publicity announcement purporting-to be indorsements by them of any state right features is to be considered authentic unless their signatures are attached to these comments, was stated last week by Hiram Abrams and Walter E. Greene. Testimonials regarding photoplays other than Paramount or Artcraft Pictures without this reproduction of their signatures are not to be accepted as emanating from the offices of Messrs. Greene and Abrams with their consent and knowledge.