Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1922)

Photoplay Magazine — Advertising Section The Romantic History of the Motion Picture "5 {Continued from page 53) Following on his picture and market misfortunes Grey Latham suffered a new buffc'. of fate. He came to the end of things with Rose O'Neill. She left her husband and went west. Presently there was a divorce. Grey Latham turned to the stock market and real estate for a living. Otway went into a mercantile line, presently taking a decree of divorce for desertion by Natalie Lockwood, and remarrying. His new bride was Mercedes Allen, an actress. Pathetically the father, Woodville, put his motion picture hopes aside and cast about in quest of a new field. He moved away from the theatrical district and th; scenes of his shortlived dream of affluence. He took up quarters in a modest rooming house uptown and never looked at Broadway again. The years in which the screen rose in power and began its shower of gold upon luckier men saw Woodville Latham forgotten and unknown, going from house to house, a book agent selling "The Children's Hour" and volumes of the sort. The taste of the years was bitter. Major Latham grew dour and silent and irritable. He was given to sleepless nights, long tired-eyed hours of reading and endless cups of black coffee. The landlady commented on his long burning of the light in his hall room. It was past her understanding that a man who sold books all day should want to read books all night. She probabbdeemed it unmoral to be awake after n o'clock. SO went the later days for Woodville Latham, major of artillery, professor of mathematics and chemistry, the pioneer of the picture screen, a gentleman of old Virginia — and after all a book agent ringing doorbells in Harlem. Swiftly the new born motion picture industry forgot him. A long way ahead there was yet another day coming for Professor Latham, of just a day, brief but tremendous even though tinctured with the gall of failure. In a chapter on ahead he comes once more out into the light just before the end of all his problems and strivings. And in that fall of i8g6 when the Latham picture affairs were running into rapid decay the motion picture was making vigorous beginnings otherwhere, more especially in stuck around and made friends. As a matter of course he took a look at the living pictures and puzzled over them a good deal. He wanted to know all about them, l.ubin was to be a great screen name in years to come. The funny little immigrant who peddled smoked glasses at the Mardi Gras was destined to be the master of a ten million dollar corporation — for a while. Meanwhile the young newspaper man Jimmy Blackton, who had been among the first to interview Edison about the vitascope was building up a friendship at West Orange and about the Edison establishment. Edison was vastly interested in Blackton's lightning skill with the sketching crayon. Through a long two hour session Edison sat watching Blackton make funny drawings on a big sketching block. He "haw hawed" in that abandoned Edison way as the features of William McKinley, Grover Cleveland, that genial fisherman and statesman, and David B. Hill flashed out of the swiftly drawn lines of the charcoal pencil. The versatile young Blackton was a space worker on the New York World then and he padded his income variously, among other things by giving "chalk talks" or illustrated cartoon lectures. At times he appeared jointly with Ronald A. Reader and Albert E. Smith, who as disciples of The Great Hermann, presented sleight of hand and spirit cabinet performances. And down on Park Row there are some greyheads on the copy desks who say that Jimmy Blackton used to make all of his drawings two columns wide when one column would do, just to get more space, therefore more money, for his work in the World. Mr. Blackton's newspaper specialty was "sob stuff," being principally stories about starving families evicted by heartless landlords. Pictures of furniture standing on the sidewalks could be drawn rapidly and easily. Blackton's chalk talk demonstration gave Edison the notion of making it into a motion picture. So the Black Maria turned out a subject entitled "Blackton, the Evening World Cartoonist." It was something of a success, and the close-up pictures of the charcoal sketches might with verity be called the ancestors of the modern animated cartoon of the screen. connection with the state's rights sales of the Edison Vitascope, invented by Thomas Armat, ' I 'HE Vitascope was now appearing in a marketed by Raff & Gammon. *• number of cities in the hands of the Among the earliest of the Vitascope cus territorial buyers. Raff & Gammon were tomers of Raff & Gammon was the late William Rock, endeared to motion picture memory as "Pop" Rock. Mr. Rock had been variously about New York, Harlem and Hoboken in the pool -hall business. He was given to fancy vests, jewelry of sorts and was among the wise 'uns in matters pertaining to prize fights and horse races. He had tried out the peep show machines in his pool halls with success and he was minded to take a flyer in this new fangled projection machine which threw the picture on a sheet. "Pop" Rock got his Vitascope and a handful of films and went to take possession of Louisiana, the territory allotted to him. The Mardi Gras at New Orleans seemed a likely opportunity for the living pictures. Down in New Orleans Mr. Rock struck up an acquaintance with a curious little chap, a belligerently busy peddler of smoked glasses through which the purchaser might view an impending eclipse of the sun. This little man was Siegmund Lubin, an immigrant arrival of a short while before. He was alert and anxious to share in the great opportunities of the day. He was after a foothold or a toehold most anywhere. Now the impressive William Rock had one of the largest and most ornate of gold watch chains and wore other gleaming tokens of success. Mr. Lubin decided that Rock was a winner. He handling the films and machines under their deal with Edison. Percy Waters, a prominent executive of today, was employed in the New York office and out of the demand for new film subjects and the return of old films established what approximated for the period the film exchange of today. The films, however, were sold outright to the exhibitors, and the old films purchased back at a price depending on their condition. When renovated they were offered for sale again at a price slightly below that for new prints. Something like five years had to pass before the rental system was evolved. Two enterprising men from Connellsville, Pa., bought the Vitascope rights for Indiana and California. They were Richard Paine and Robert Balsley. They gave the first motion picture screen exhibitions west of the Rocky Mountains. One of their first bookings included fourteen weeks at the west coast Orpheum theaters. Paine and Balsley in this run showed Los Angeles, where, lacking new films to give the enterprise continued interest, the show shut down. 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