Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1919)

54 Photoplay Magazine don't pretend to know everything. We want to be convinced." There's a dramatic situation in itself, classifiable perhaps as Gozzi's No. 5, "Pursuit." Every month about forty magazines launch more or less original fiction. Perhaps twentylive novels, even in these war times, can be added to this. And then there is the great flood of independent manuscripts, pouring in every day. All this has to go through the mill. In a month not less than three thousand stories pass through the machinery of the Paramount scenario department. Out of this three thousand, it is necessary to get from ten to fifteen that will screen. It ought to be easy. Strangely enough, it isn't. And that's where old Gozzie is proved to be not such a boob after all, for when you boil most of the three thousand down to what will show on the silversheet, there is little left, and that little is so obviously similar to one of the parent thirtysix that it would have about as much right on the screen as an old, faded tin-type in an exhibition of Alfred Cheney Johnston portraits. Confronting the same dilemma, Ricord Gradwell, of the World, hit upon a brilliant idea. He decided to make the New York Public Library an annex of his scenario department. He engaged a little staff of readers who know French and Italian, and turned them loose in the foreign fiction department of the library with instructions to find ideas, more especially among old and forgotten books. Results were immediate and gratifying. One reader reported "The Romance of a Poor Young Man," a French novel a century old. Fifty years ago it was made into a play, "The Art of Being a Gentleman." Today it is a World picture, "The Golden Wall." Out in Flatbush, where Eugene Mullen conducts the literary department of the Vitagraph activities, they have a staff which combs magazines and novels, but are going through the process of reorganizing and extending it. The majority of the productions here, as elsewhere, come from published books and stories. At Paramount eleven productions of sixty recent productions were from original manuscripts. At World, on the contrary, the staff writers have been developed, and half of the material comes from this source, one-third from original stories submitted, and the small remainder from published tales. Practically all the Goldwyn productions are from published works G ASSED," reads die casualty list, and another American soldier suffers from the Hun poison! But there are the gas masks. Uncle Sam is turning them out — by the thousands. To do this there must be charcoal. The best charcoal for gas masks is made from the stones of peaches and other fruits. Uncle Sam needs these stones! Saving peach-stones is the easiest thing you can do for your country to help win the war, but it is not a small service. Gas masks save soldiers' lives. Save those peach stones! Save peach, plum, apricot, cherry, prune and olive pits. Some cities have receptacles for them in public places. Many theatres give admittance for so many stones. and plays. At Metro the output is about evenly divided. Just how these scouts feel about the race for material can best be described in their own language. "Famous writers," Mr. Mullen remarks, "clever as their novels and plays may be, must positively first master the technique of the screen before their contributions can be of much value. Some of them, on the strength of their fiction successes, have submitted stuff to this office often so inexpressibly bald in treatment, childish in theme, and senile in conception, that the men into whose hands their attempt; pass cannot contain their disgust. This is a pity, and let us hope, a temporary condition, for the screen needs good stories no*v as it never needed them before." "We try to keep in touch with the most successful authors," Mi<s June Mathis of Metro reports. "I think authors are beginning to realize that there is a great field in the moving picture world and are offering their stories with a greater amount of warmth than previously. Within the last six months our scenario staff has furnished five stories. We do not. as a rule, encourage our staff writers, as we prefer to develop the outside writer and would much rather make his story suit the screen. "We find that the average original photoplay writer will tell his story in narrative and not in situation. A situation is the keynote of the photoplay. These authors, however, are encouraged, and an attempt is always made to explain to them just exactly what we wish." Until quite recently, the sleuthing of the plot-hounds, in their search for material, was impeded rather than aided by the more successful authors themselves. For years they had looked upon the screen as an interloper. The story is one thing. The stage is something else again. The author whose story is dramatized seldom objects to the necessary changes made to adapt it to the stage. He sees that the stage is different from the book, that it expresses the idea in an entirely different shape, that a new form is necessary. Yet. when it goes into third speed, and is placed on the screen, he will scream like a wounded elephant because the book is not followed line by line. Yet the day is rapidly approaching when the author will see that the silversheet has its advantages, and they who know its intricacies should be left to handle matters for themselves. Jimmie Blue 'By Harry J. Smalley IXfllERE'ER he came from, no one knew ' * Just drifted 'long, as boys will do. He hung around the lot awhile, And always wore a happy smile, — And then one day, a job he copsBecame assistant to our "Props!" And tilings grew brighter when lie came Into the studio; his name Was Jimmie Blue. The brightest kid I ever met! We actors soon made him our pet, His cheerful way, his pep and vim — No one could help a-liking him! All of us at the studio Were pals of Jim. you'd better know! A happy, careless, winsome lad, — 1'he skies of life one color had For Jimmie: blue! One morning Jim did not appear For work as usual, which was queer. We then discussed the absent lad And learned some things that made us sad! It seems the blithesome little cuss Had borrowed coin from all of us! Yours truly lost ten iron men. — It was a day of mourning when Our Jimmie blew!