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16
What a Picture Earns
"Intolerance," the most expensive production ever filmed, was a financial failure.
has progressed, and at least a half dozen of the early leaders, unable to keep step with modern methods, have dropped by the wayside.
To get back to the real beginning of the moneymaking side of pictures, we must go back much farther than "Traffic in Souls." Edison and Selig were making theater "chasers" fifty or a hundred feet long before the
Spanish-American conflict. During the year of that so-called war, George Melies sent to this country a film called "A Trip to the Moon." This made more money than any moving picture had made prior to that time.
Then there was a lull for several years, due largely to litigation. The next financial coup was pulled off by Edison with the making of "The Great Train Robbery," which also antedated the store show and the nickelodeon. In those days positive prints were sold outright by the foot, so that there is no way of telling how much money a picture made. Of the pictures of the early "movie-theater" days, two of the biggest money makers were Edison's "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend" and Vitagraph's "Haunted Bedroom." Eight hundred copies of the latter were sold. These, as well as other favorites of that day, relied mostly on trick photography. About the same time also appeared the forerunner of the animated cartoon. J. Stuart Blackton, one of the partners in Yitagraph, drew the pictures himwent out as "Lightning Sketches." time, San Francisco did its famous
self, and they About this
"shimmy," and the continent had its most spectacular catastrophe. Movie cameras were rushed to the stricken city by Vitagraph, and its laboratory worked day and night making prints for distribution all over the country. According to pioneers in the business, it was the
Frisco shake that really started the epidemic of store shows. That was in April, 1906, just fourteen years ago.
Seven years later the industry was still in the hands of the pioneers, most of whom had gone into the production business from the "movie" house or the exchange. Foreign producers were apparently devoting more thought to production, and their pictures were in great demand. "Quo Vadis," made in Italy, was the first film play to reap a gross return of one hundred thousand dollars. The next high spot in film history was Universal's "Traffic in Souls," which was acclaimed the first "million-dollar" film, although the gross returns were actually something around three-quarters of a million.
In the last few years a great deal has been printed
about the
"Male and male" will make more money, it is
million-dollar picture," but pe. to date no production has ever
said, than "The actually cost Miracle Man." that tremen