Reel Life (1914-1915)

REEL LIFE Fifteen STORIES OF THE NEW PHOTOPLAYS ward Maggie becomes “Margaret” and the wife of Mr. Court. A MODERN FREE-LANCE A Romance of Newspaper and Theatrical Life by the American Players March 16, 1914 CAST Robert Randall . . Ed Coxen Desmond, Robert’s Rival . George Field Mary Rollins . Winifred Greenwood Necia . Josephine Ditt Daniel Fromanson . William Tedmarsh Robert Randall, a reporter, is ambitious to find a pro¬ ducer for the play he is writing. He spends so much time at night writing the play that for several mornings in succession he oversleeps and is late at the newspaper office. Finally he is told that he is neglecting his work and that his services will no longer be required. The young reporter has been wooing Necia, a young society woman. She rather favors Desmond, Robert’s rival. When she learns that Robert has lost his posi¬ tion, she treats him with disdain. The young reporter, however, finds consolation and sympathy in the company of Mary Rollins, a pretty waitress in the restaurant where he takes luncheon. With the money obtained from the newspaper upon his discharge, Randall locks himself in his room and with brief snatches of sleep and a few minutes taken to eat his meals, drives himself on to finish the play. At last the manuscript is completed and the young man starts to make the round of the theatrical producers. When his supply of food is exhausted, Randall, weary with his daily tramps through the theatrical district, sits down on a park bench where he meets Mary, the pretty little waitress. When she learns of his distress, Mary smuggles food to him. Later Randall is knocked down and badly injured in the street. While Randall is in the hospital his play, which he has left with a theatrical manager, is accepted and produced. The young reporter only learns of the success of the play when he leaves the hospital. Necia, learning of his triumph, calls upon her former suitor and tries to re¬ establish their friendship, but Randall shuns her and marries the little waitress. . BILLY’S RUSE A Princess Mid-Winter Comedy By John W. Kellette March 6, 1914 CAST Boyd, Muriel’s sweetheart . Boyd Marshall Muriel . Muriel Ostriche Billy, Fanny’s husband . William Noel Fanny . . . Fanny Bourke Mrs. Warren, a neighbor . Katharine Webb Billy is busy showing Muriel how to do the tango on the ice, with Boyd, Muriel’s sweetheart, who cannot skate, helplessly looking on, when Fanny, Billy’s wife, discovers her husband with his arm rather tightly em¬ bracing a strange young woman. Billy breaks away re¬ luctantly from his fair escort and attempts to flee. Fanny is determined to make an example of her hus¬ band for other wives to gaze upon, and finally she pur¬ sues Billy so closely that he is obliged to jump through a fisherman’s hole in the ice. He swims under the ice to another fisherman’s hole and from that coign of vant¬ age watches with amusement his wife’s despair at hav¬ ing driven him into an early and unmarked grave. The reconciliation between Fanny and her shivering husband is a particularly affecting scene. THE COMING OF THE PADRES An Historical Pageant of Early California by the American Players March 21, 1914 CAST Senor Felipe Neve, Governor of California. . Sydney Ayres The Commandante . Jack Richardson 'Com. Ortega . Harry Von Meter Pedro de Cordoba . Jacques Jaccard Father Junipero Serra . Perry Banks Mercedes . Vivian Rich This semi-historical drama of early California days was staged and filmed at the Santa Barbara mission not far from the western studios of the American Film Mfg. Co. Great attention was paid, in the filming of this story of the days when California was a Spanish colony, to the costumes and historical details of the mise-en-scene. It was planned to make the play a historical document which might be filed in both the California State archives and among the records in the steel vaults of the Govern¬ ment at Washington. The film contains the pageant of the coming of the padres or Spanish missionaries to the Western coast of the American continent and interior views of the “Hermita,” the mission church in which the Rev. Juni¬ pero Serra celebrated his first Mass in 1782. The bi¬ centennial of the birth of Father Serra was recently held at Santa Barbara. The religious rites introduced into the film are subsidiary and incidental to the dramatic story told by the American players. THE ADVENTURES OF SHORTY A Broncho Comedy of the “Wild and Wooly” Variety Shorty attended the dance which “the boys” of Clay Gulch gave to “the girls” of the town in a condition bordering on intoxication. Believing that in his inebri¬ ated condition “Shorty” would not notice the deception, one of the cowpunchers dresses up in woman’s clothes and accepts “Shorty’s” invitation to the dance. “Shorty” finds that he has been cruelly deceived, and decides to “Shoot up” the place. The boys corral “Shorty,” however, before he does any serious damage, and take him down to the freight-yard, where they put him aboard a train bound for Goodnessknows-where. “Shorty” is jolted into a sober condition, and awakes in his side-door Pullman to find a gentleman of the road pummeling a small boy. “Shorty” interferes, and trouble follows fast. The brakeman of the train hears the quarrel, and attempts to stop the fight by drawing his revolver. The tramp takes the gun away from the brakeman, and shoots the latter, escaping in the confusion by jumping from the train. “Shorty” is accused of the crime, but the sheriff who arrests him happens to be the boy’s father, and “Shorty” is released and given a comfortable sum with which to return home.