Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1922)

Photoplay Magazine — Advertising Section Often young Cecil Hepworth arriving in the mornings to deliver his electric lamps lor the Paul machines, had to pick his way up the stairs through the waiting buyers who slept on the steps to be on hand for the delivery of their projectors. In England there were no hampering patent rights and no litigation in the way of early development. Paul did not seek and could not have sought rights of monopoly. The motion picture in England was any man's game. Over across the channel in France Lumiere had by this time made a number of theatre showings in Paris. So from the three great world capitals, London, New York and Paris the motion picture was going out to conquer the world for the screen. We must now turn back about two years earlier to pick up the story of a man who came to be a major influence in the early day development of the pictures in the United States. And probably the best introduction to this man comes in the words of the late Robert Grau, who used to tell with zest about a certain chat one day down at Tony Pastor's bird cage of a theater in Fourteenth street. Grau and Pastor had been watching the variety bill at that house together. It was what was rated a strong bill that week, with Filson & Errol, Maggie Cline, Barry & Bannon and half a dozen others, all regulars. But the attendance was light and the audience indifferent. "What's the matter?" Grau turned from counting the house and looked at Pastor. "Bob, the old time variety show is dead." Pastor spoke with a slow deliberation to let his words sink in. "It is 'refined vaudeville now'. That fellow Fynes up the street running the Union Square for Keith is putting us all to sleep. He's going to raise cain with the variety business in this country unless something stops him." Now this man Fynes, J. Austin Fynes, had come to Broadway some twelve years before, leaving the night editor's desk of the Boston Herald to join the staff of the Clipper, a dramatic weekly. Incidentally he became the dramatic critic of the Evening Sun — a position in which he was succeeded by Charles Dillingham, by the way. Fynes had been thinking of the variety show and its evils a long time. When B. F. Keith, the Boston "continuous variety" showman, came on with his opportunity Fynes seized it. It was a chance to demonstrate. AND now a part of that opportunity was the new motion picture. Since the variety shows of the day drew heavily on European acts for their performers it was natural that Fynes should choose to import the Lumiere machine and its pictures from France. There would be more novelty in them than in the native Vitascope products, he held. Keith's foreign agent got into touch with the Lumieres and made an exclusive deal. It became rumored about up and down Broadway and Rich G. Hollaman of the Eden Musee, also alert for European novelties, learned of the Lumiere contract. Posthaste he sought out Fynes and argued him into allowing the Lumiere pictures to go also into the Eden Musee, on the contention that the Musee was not a theater but an educational museum. So it came that on the night of June 29, 1896 both Keith's in Union Square and the Eden Musee in 23rd street presented the same first program of motion pictures. The advance notice in the New York Times of Sunday June 28, 1896, reads: One of the English equivalents of the vitascope, called the Lumiere cinematographe, will be placed on exhibition at Keith's Union Square theater tomorrow night. It is much better than its name, as was proved at a private view yesterday. It is said to be the first stereopticon kinetoscope exhibited. Its pictures are clear and interesting. One represents the arrival of mail trains in a railway station, another the bathing pier at Nice at the height of the season. This was the coming of the first foreign film to America. J. Austin Fynes was setting a pace in vaudeville. His introduction of the cinematographe ordained for the motion picture a vaudeville career which continues today. For many years the vaudeville theater was the only important agency of film presentation. So much for Broadway. The scene changes. T*\OWN inTexas in the spring of '96 a wander■*—' ing cowpuncher rode in off the range to Dallas. He had alkali dust in his eyebrows and a determination to quit "hoss wrangling" for something more immediately profitable. He was tall, gaunt and sinewy. He was tanned and tough and ready for anything from a social glass to a social duel. He could rope 'em and tie 'em and brand 'em. He could ride anything on four feet without grabbing leather. That was Thomas L. Tally. Mr. Tally slapped the dust out of his hair pants and rode up and down the main stem of Dallas, giving the town a dry eye. He was looking for something or anything, entertainment, excitement or opportunity. A sign caught his eye. "Living Pictures — Kinetoscope Parlor." Tally swung off, dropped the bridle reins over the mustang's nose and walked in under that sign. He was prepared to be shown what this thing was. "Howdy, stranger!" Tally proceeded to get acquainted fast. The proprietor of the establishment had that chronic Texas complaint, the desire to be elsewhere all the time. They talked business, while the mustang waited in the street with his ears down. When Tally came out he was in the peep show motion picture business. He went to a hotel and took off his chaps and spurs. That was a big day for Tom Tally. That was the day he started on the road to a million or so and the founding of the First National Exhibitors' Circuit, twenty years ahead. In August of that same 1896 a sign at 31 1 South Spring Street, Los Angeles, announced that T. L. Tally had opened there a "Phonograph and Vitascope Parlor" where one might hear the latest song hits from New York and see living pictures. Motion pictures were served in three varieties. The peep show kinetoscope pictures, the American Mutoscope, the Casler peep show machine, and on the screen as presented by the vitascope. Tally had chanced to come into possession of the machine which had been doing duty at the Los Angeles Orpheum. Mr. Tally found that his patrons down in Spring Street were wary about going into a darkened room to see pictures on the screen. To meet this condition he fitted up a partition with holes in it, facing the projection room screen, so that patrons might peer in at the screen while standing in the comfortable security of the well lighted phonograph parlor. A real sport could put the phonograph tubes to his ears and look at the pictures at the same time. Three peep holes were at chair level for seated spectators, and four somewhat higher for standees — standing room only after three admissions, total capacity seven. The price per peep hole was fifteen cents. The Tally showing was typical of the" motion picture business of the west in that period. In this chapter we have seen the decline of the pioneer screen promoter from a transient success to the drab tedium of the book agent in the closing chapters of an eventful life. In the next by curious contrast will come the opening phases of the story of a young man whose book agent days sent him into a remarkable career in the world of the motion picture, with adventures all the way from Detroit to Delhi. {To be continued) bani iracie Every ltyP6mans , Depilatory Before Your Dip ' YOU should remove unsightly hair from arms, underarms and limbs. The nicest, quickest and most simple way to remove it is with De Miracle, the original sanitary liquid. 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