Pictures and the Picturegoer (October 1915 - March 1916)

PICTURES AND THE P1CTUREGOER 52 Week ending Oct. 16, 191 5 The Subj ct of our Cover. ACALIFORNIAN by ljiitli. Bessie Learn bears testimony to that State's already great reputation as the mother of pretty girls] This charming litt'e ingenue. began her stage career when but ten 5 eat 's of agd. With the exception of the tliroe years which she has spent at the Edison Studio, she has devoted her entire time to the stage. Her three y^ars at the Studio have been busy ones, for she has played leading parts in a great many films, among them -The Wand of Jlurror.'-l Vie Ever Gallant Marquis, and Faint Heart Ne'er Won Fair I. a I11. Miss Learn wrote and played the lead in Her Grandmother's Wedding Dress. The same sunniuess of disposition and buoyancy of spirit which has made Miss Learn so popular with the public lias made her a great favourite, at the Studio, where she is always the centre ■of an admiring' circle. Miss Learn, though frail and delicate in appearance, is an indefatigable worker, and possessed of a good stock of courage, which is so necessary to the successful picture-actress. In A .Romance of' the Hails it will be remembered that she was seen running across a high railroad trestle, but not one of the thousands who saw that picture ever realised that the camera had to be placed at a distance from the trestle in order to conceal the bruises and cuts en Miss Learn's face. She had caught her heel between the ties, and plunged headlong during the first take,"' but had repeated the scene, despite the pain and fatigue from which she was suffering. CHARLES CALVERT, the producer of many Crick's and Mart in dr "Calvert" of "Cricks." IT would probably have been difficult to find a producer better cpialified to film The Wraith 0/ the Tomb, a story of ancient Egypt, referred to in a previous issue, than Charles Calvert, the Cricks and Martin producer, who has travelled extensively in the Oriental world and absorbed much of the charm and colour of the East. Mr. Calvert is the youngest member of the well-known Calvert family in ttie profession, and incidentally one of our youngest producers. He made his firgt appearance on the stage at the age of nine with his father in the Cow -p< * Calvert Repertoire Co., playing Willie Carlyle to his mother's Lady Isabel After touring the provinces for " some years he secured a long engagement with Mr. Frohman, at ~the-Duke_ of York's, during which he created the part of" Tombes " in The£V> Look', Sir J. M. Barrie's famous one-act play. . About this time Mr. Calvert was tempted to appear on the screen, and •made a success as the brother in Tennyson's Maud,produced by the Clarendon Co. He was induced to take up producing for them, and while there put out a number of very successful one-reel dramas and short comics. Later, however, an offer came to him from Tedrenne and Eadie to play in Milestones, and consequently Mr. Calvert returned to the legitimate stage for a time, until he was approached by Mr. Cricks with a view to producing. . He closed with this latter offer, and has been with Cricks and Martin ever since with the exception of six weeks when he went to the B. and C. to produce The London Mi/stt r "My first subject," he told us in our office the other day. "was attended hv an excitingthough happily not disastrous accident. In it there was a car of people to pass over a frail bridge which had to give way and cause the car to fall many feet on to a railway line, smashing itself to pieces. It was while backing the ear into position that the brakes did not act. with the result that the car ran backwards over the bridge and disappeared, carrying the driver with it. Every one rushed forward expecting to see the car overturned and the driver crushed beneath. But to their amazement the car was intact, the back wheels having caught the embankment and simply run down it on to the lines. The driver was still at the wheel, and the only remark he was heard to pass was. 'Dash it. l'\e broken my collar stud! The Art of Picture Acting A^ so many of our readers arc "dying "to act for the films, the following paragraphs should proi e of more than ordinary interest. They form part of a lucid and informative article b\ Cecil M Hepworth on 'The Art of the Cinema," which appeared in a recent issue of Drawing, There is no CECIL M. HEPWORTH Reproduced from <( sketch in " B greater authority on the subset than Mr. Hepworth. a pioneer of British film production, who has himself successfully produced countless Hepworth picture plays. He says : — The art of r icture-acting is vastly different from that of the stage. Here it is not a case of learning by rote a string of words, whose meaning may lie varied through almost limitless shades by differences of intonation, and repeating those words and the actions which accompany them night after night. until by their repetition they become almost second nature. Acting for the pictures is a much more spontaneous thing than this, and requires a verymuch higher degree of initiative, and possibly of personal understanding. The same kind of character-study is no doubt necessary; the same sympathy and comprehension. It is the method of expression which is so different. I have often heard people say that they understand the difference that, naturally, for the picture one must exaggerate, one must use much larger and broader gestures to make up for the absence of the voice. In reality this is almost the exact opposite of the truth. Exaggeration on the stage is probably ssary because of the distance between the player and the public; exaggeration before the camera is fatal. Any gesture which would not be used in real life, or which is bigger than its counterpart in real life, is wrong, and so far from movements being bigger than they would be on the stage, they must, if anything, be smaller than they would be in reab'ty. if only because the space in which they may lie made is sq very greatly restricted. A lady once came to me and said that she could act, had had a lot of oxperienoe; and when 1 asked her what that experience was she told me the names ox several plays in which she had acted principal parts, and she deduced from