Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

Advertising Section 9 "Why, / could write a better story than thatP' Thousands say that, just as you have said it dozens of times Perhaps you could npHE motion picture industry extends a genuine welcome to you to try; and offers you fame and fortune if you succeed. The industry faces the most serious shortage of photoplays in its liistory. It needs, and will liberally pay for, 2,000 good scenarios. Not mere ideas, not patchworks of incident and action, but connected, workable stories for the screen. It is because the studios cannot obtain sufficient good material that so many thousands of patrons are criticising so many of the pictures shown. And it may be that you, who can tell a good from a bad picture, can help. "But," you say, "I am not a writer. I am only a housewife — or a salesman" — or what ever you are. Many who are now successful might have looked at it that way. But they didn't. They tried; and some of them now enjoy big incomes. We discovered their ability and the rest was a simple matter of training. A nation-wide search for story-telling ability As the Standard Oil Company employs men to search for new sources of oil supply ; as the Copper Industry has its engineers, prospecting for new ore, so the motion-picture industry — the fourth in size — has the Palmer Photoplay Corporation searching in every office and home not for writers but for men and women who have the power to tell a dramatic story vividly. The sincere, simple fact is that storytelling; ability lies hidden in the most unexpected places. C. Gardner Sullivan, whose salary is $2,000 a week, was a farmer boy before he discovered "his natural gift for creative writing. .T. Leo Meehan was undiscovered and a dissatisfieil routine worker when he took up the study of photoplay writing. Yet in a few months after beginning his training he was earning a big income as a studio scenarist ; Caroline Sayre was and is a farmer's wife in Missouri. Yet she wrote "Live Sparks," a feature picture in which J. Warren Kerrigan was starred. In the crying need for stories, without which the motion picture industry cannot exist, the producers have determined that there is just one solution — to test every man and woman who is willing to cooperate in the test in his or her own home, and to offer accredited training to those who show any real evidence of story-telling power. To this end a simple home test has been prepared consisting of a questionnaire such as the T'nited States Array used to detect various types of al)ility In the Iste war. It is the invention of Prof. Malcolm Shaw MacLean, former instnictor in short-story writing at Northwestern TTniversity. and Mr. H. H. Van Loan, the celebrated photoplaywright. Acting with the producers, the Palmer Photoplay Advisory Council Thomas H. Ixce Thomas H. Ince Studios Cecil B. De Mille Director General Famous Players-Lasky Corp Jesse L. Laskt Vice President Famous Players-Lasky Corp. Lois Weber Lois Weier Productions, Inc. Frank E. Woods Chief Supervising Director Famous Flayers-Lasky Corp. C. Gardner Sullivan Author and Producer Allan Dwan Allan Duan Productions Rob Wagner Author and Screen Authority .James R. Qcirk Editor and Publisher Photoplay Magazine Corporation has volunteered to place this simple liome test in the hands of every reader of Picture Play who will agree to fill in the questionnaire and return it. Will you Send for tbe Van Loan QnesUonnaire Today? You incur not a penny of cost in making this simple test in the coniidence of your own home. If your questionnaire reveals no talent you will be frankly advised of the fact. If it does reveal this most souglit for and valuable gift of telling a story dramatically the educational facilities of the Palmer Photoplay Corporation will be opened to you \1 you express the desire. The headline of this advertisement is a promise that it will give us the greatest possible satisfaction to help you to fulfill. We want story tellers: we will incur any reasonable expense to find them and develop them : we will rewaril them as almost no other profession can reward its successes. You have some storytelling ability. Find out if you have enough to be worth developing. The cost is the 2 cents required to mail the coupon : Fame and large income are the possible rewards. With the questionnaire we will send you a free sample copy of The Photo dramatist. official organ of the Screen Writer's Guild of the Author's League, the photoplaywright's magazine. PALMER PHOTOPLAY Corporation, Dept. of Education, Y-11 Please send me. without cost LW. Hellman Building, Los Angclcs, CaL or obligation on my part, your questionnaire. I will answer the questions in it JN amC Jind return it to you for analy.=;is. If I pass the test, I am to receive further in AddrCSS formation about your Course and Service. Also send free Sample Copy of the Plinto dramatist. *