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oi,| Hi Underwood
Jacques A. Berst, executive head of Pathe.
The Daddy of Them All
T-wenty-two years ago be was in the same business — selling moving pictures
By Paul Grant
TWENTY-TWO years ago. What were the occupations, in that remote age, of Adolph Paramount Zukor, Charles Universal Laemmle, H. Mutual Freuler, R. Metro Rowland, Albert Vitagraph Smith, H. Triangle Davis, William World Brady, and all the other men who now rule the camera world? It is so long ago, most of them have themselves forgotten. Twenty-two years ago, if any of these gentlemen had asked you what business you were in and you had said "Moving pictures," they would have thought, and with reason, that you meant you were an expressman with a specialty. You couldn't have been in what is now known as the moving picture business twenty-two years ago, because there wasn't any such thing.
"Oh, there wasn't, wasn't there? Are you quite sure?"
Who is this that so rudely interrupts our retrospection?
Ladies and gentlemen, let me present Mr. Jacques A. Berst, vice president and general manager of the Pathe Exchange, Inc., New York City.
Twenty-two years ago Mr. Berst (who is still, as you will observe from the accompanying faithful likeness, a rather youngish middle-aged man) was in the same business as that in which he is now engaged — selling moving
pictures. And he was working for the same firm — the Brothers Pathe. He was the first employe of the company, and while he did not — as is sometimes said — start as office boy, from what I have seen of him, and from what Pathe men have told me, I am quite sure that if the office needed sweeping or dusting, and there was no office boy about, Mr. Berst undoubtedly volunteered. There is a lot of common sense in that funny song from "Pinafore:"
/ polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished the handle so careful-ee
That they made me the ruler of the Queen's nav-ee. In recognition of his long and successful service, the Brothers Pathe have given Mr. Berst the biggest job the company can offer — supreme authority in the American business of the corporation. And who can say but, if it had happened one of those days, twenty-two years ago, that some little task had seemed to young Berst too menial for his dignity, and had been left undone, and Charles or Emil Pathe had noticed this premature assumption of dignity, there might be some other genial gentleman sitting in the handsome office at 25 West 45th Street, New York City? Be that as it may, it is J. A. Berst who presides there, which answers the question, after all.
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