Reel and Slide (Mar-Dec 1918)

WITH THE REEL OBSERVER J^' it? By Henry MacMahon (Special Correspondence of Reel and Slide.) NEW YORK— With their garnerings of the good old summertime, the picture-takers, cameramen, nature directors, globetrotters and traveltalkers are back in Gotham having their stuff printed up, peddling their wares or (the luckier ones) arranging for the advertising and publicity on the new pictures that have already been contracted for. It' has been a busy season for both the nature directors and the nature fakers. The camera has done some wonderful tricks and it has recorded as wonderful actual achievements in Europe, ■the far East, the South Sea Islands and right here in America. It is fascinating to watch this constant procession of movie makers drift in and out of the office. Some are fat, some are thin, some are tall, others are short, some are clean-shaven, others have cultivated surplus whiskerage on their travels, some have noble arched brows and expressions indicative of thought, others of receding heads and squat features belong to the homoid stage and have taken up the camera as mere artisans. Movie production seems to be getting as common as the production of books and papers. Anybody who has invested a fewhundred dollars in a motion picture camera and has enough surplus cash to take a trip abroad or into the domestic wilds, is free to try a hack at it. There is no way of sorting the excellent from the mediocre, or the mediocre from the utterly impossible, than just to look at all the stufl and accept it or refuse it. A MEDIOCRE subject may be a good commercial proposition provided it is timely and the theme is interesting enough, even though it has been handled in an ordinary way. The utterh impossible is just what the word describes, that is, below the level of fair quality now demanded by the movie fan. The truly excellent is the occasional gem that all film distributors are looking for, just as the editor of a magazine is looking for that "good story." Some of the high spots of the season's output are: Martin Tohnson's South Sea pictures of life among the cannibals; E. M. Newman's travels in the warfront of Franceand Italy and his very instructive scenes taken behind the lines in the Allied countries; Robert C. Brace's new series of California and Northwestern Scenics; Wright's "Mexico Today," now being followed up with a new series dealing with President Carranza and the political life of Mexico; Harold Horton's entertaining pictures of Cuba, one of which, "Cigars for Kings and Millionaires," is released by the Educational and the others of which are issued by him to exhibitors direct. I had a long talk with Newman and he gave me as many thrills in that three-quarters of an hour as D. W. Griffith did with his wonderfully vivid descriptions of the battlefront to a coterie of film men last autumn. Mr. Newman was gassed and shellshocked and driven from pillar to post until it seemed as if the Chicago lecturer would be voiceless for the season of 1918-19 at least. It all happened first in Alsace, later up on the Asiaego Plateau and down in the front line trenches of the Piave River in Lombardy. But when I saw him, Mr. Newman was in good voice once more and expressed highest admiration for the American and Allied troops and the most glowing confidence in the ultimate Allied victor}-. Of course he will guard these wartime pictures jealously until the lecture public, after the Committee on Public Information, gets the first glimpse of them in his five lectures entitled "Wartime England, London, iFrance, Paris and Italy." Next Spring, however, at the conclusion of his lecture tour, the>will be released generally to the picture theaters by the Educational. I HAD an interesting letter the other day from George D. Wright, who unlike many of the other outdoor directors is not coming to New York right away because he is being kept busy with his new Carranza pictures. Mr. Wright's "Mexico Today" pictures, his first series, are a creditable piece of work. He is in the motion picture business to stay. At one time Wright thought of following up his first series by another of Central America, Yucatan and the less known parts of the Panama Peninsula. So much interest was excited, however, in his Mexican stuff and there were so many inquiries for pictures touching on the political conditions there, that he induced Mr. Carranza to afford him opportunities for taking a political series in Old Mexico. As the brother of a capitalist, who has large interests in our southern republic and who is now on friendly terms with everybody, this young director has fields opened up to him that are not available to the everyday mari-with-the-camera. Robert C. Bruce will drift into New York this month or next and his coming is keenly awaited, not only by the Educational's immediate staff and -by Manager S. L. Rothapfel of the Rialto and Rivoli theaters, but by a great body of the general public, who want to see the new Bruce Scenics. Bruce's stamping ground is peculiarly his own and he gets the best results when he sticks to the great Northwestern and Pacific Coast country. His expeditions this year have taken him from the eastern confines of Wyoming and Utah to the Yosemite and Lake Tahoe, and from the wonderful mountain ranges of Washington and Oregon to the redwoods of California. He has been favored with generally good weather, but reports the great density of guides, horses and mules, owing to the demands made by the war. He will be back with fifteen or twenty brand-new scenics, probably the best that he has thus far put forth. HAROLD HORTON is an interesting character, a free lance photographer who began away back in the old days when Kinemacolor pictured the gorgeous pageants of the early years of this century in more or less "kaleidoscopic form." He did the Indian Durbar for them, one of the big successes of eight or ten years ago. Later, Mr. Horton, who is an Englishman, came to this country, working part of the time for film companies and often "on his own." A recent trip to Cuba has brought forth some excellent stuff, including a story of the evolution of the "dollar cigar" entitled "Cigars for Kings and Millionaires." Another enterprising free lance, even more adventurous than Horton, because traveling hitherto untrodden ways, is Martin Johnson, maker of "Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Pacific." These pictures were shown for the first time in America at Rothapfel's Rivoli Theater the week of July 21. It took nearly a year to make them and a voyage of 18,000 miles in small craft among the Solomon and New 'Hebrides and other members of the South Sea group. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and a convoy of twenty-five native soldiers and fifty barrier boys. Johnson had been in some ways equipped for the job through his experience as Jack London's companion on the famous voyage of the Snark. He encountered many perils, but got what he was after and wasn't eaten in the process. The Rivoli Theater did Johnson's picture the honor of running it as a feature during the week of July 21. That is, they omitted the usual fiction story altogether and ran this "stranger-than-fiction" stuff instead. Surely the instructive pictures are coming into their own. Film Invented by Episcopal Minister IF it were not for a minister of the Episcopal church, very likely the motion picture as we know it today never would have come into existence. The United States Supreme Court not long ago handed down a decision which seems to establish the fact that the Rev. Hannibal Goodwin, who in the early eighties was pastor of the Episcopal Church at Newark, New Jersey, made the first photographic films in the old rectory. Mr. Goodwin was a great lover of children, although he had none of his own. He was always scheming for their enjoyment, and it was in order to make a picture-machine to amuse his Sunday-school that he turned his attention to photographic films, the secret of which he discovered. He made the films and sometimes he went directly from the pulpit to the laboratory in his vestments. He resigned his pastorate in 1888, but it was not until ten years later that he obtained his patent. 15