The talking machine world (Jan-Dec 1908)

68 THE TALKING MACHINE WORLD. Arc Yoti Wise TO THE FACT THAT OUR MYSTIC REFIECTORS will increase your sale of Talking Machines ? A FACT — with it you can ILLUSTRATE THE SONGS AND BALLADS PLAYED ON YOUR MACHINES, You wish to INCREASE YOUR BUSINISS tjen use the latest methods. Don't wait for some one else to get all the pie. THE MYSTIC REFLECTOR is the only perfect machine of its kind in the world. Yon need no Glass SUdes as with the old Magic Lantern. YOU DO NOT VIOLATE ANY CITY ORDINANCE by using dangerous films as with Moving Picture Machines. With our machine you may reproduce any object or picture in all its natural colors, giving you a picture magnificently enlarged. Superb in detail, marvelous in effect. The machine is liuilt entirely of steel, neatly finished. Fitted with either electric light or our latest improved calcium carbide generator. Shipped to you complete securely packed. Sells at retail for $5.00. To dealers only we allow a discount of 40T. Order to-day. CHURCH SUF»F»LV C01VIF»ANY 116 Nassau Suite 301 Street (A. M. SHIEBLER, Pres. and Mgr.) NEW YORK CITY "ALAS, POOR YORICK!" Talking Machine May Supplant You as Matinee Idol. And now the actor passes. It was long ago that he began to fall under suspicion as a needless excrescence upon the true and the beautiful. Severe analysis of the dramatic art had its results. A process of elimination ruled out most of the factors that seemed essential to Aristotle and our grandparents. There was a period of rapid and violent theorizing in which philosophers said that nothing ought to remain except the scenery or the ballet or the ticket speculators. Charges were hurled against the actor. He was accused of being an unintelligent impostor, a phrase parrot and an emotional tank. He was called a machine that ground out words and gestures. Yet nobody could prove it. How could a machine draw a salary and get its face on the billboards? Many a scientific prevision h;s been set up against such a difficulty. At last it is proved that the actor is a machine by the simple method of creating a machine that is an actor. Alas, poor Yorick! For thee no more the ghost may walk. Thy eyes in a fine frenzy rolling will not attract the matinee girl. The bloodless machine gets thy curtain calls and "mash" notes. Thou art most bitterly undone by an inanimate rival, and nothing remains except to try to get elected to Congress. Perhaps thou wilt find that machines are already installed there, too. What is the trend of this twentieth century dramatic art that has no use for Salvini and Bernhardt? Who gets the $1,000 a week that formerly went to great players? Will the machine travel on a special train and lose its diamonds? How will the machine behave when the woman writer approaches it for a newspaper interview? Can the public live without know ing the fads and divorces of its histrions? Will the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals grant licenses for baby machines to perform on the stage after midnight? Will not dramatic criticism become a branch of mechanical engineering and comment be confined to statements that the wheels were well greased last night, but the cylinder showed signs of wear? We should not be too impatient or apprehensive in our questions. The machine is here. It will take a little time to get used to it. The reasonable curiosity of the great American public to go behind the scenes and see the wheels go round, as the said public formerly did with the living machines, will i:ot be denied by the humane press agents of the new-fangled apparatus. Incidentally, these press agents are still sentient beings who draw salaries. Science hopes to box them up, too, in the next decade. The ticket seller has been already transformed into a slot machine. The mechanical usher is on the way, and the brass-lunged ticket speculator, looking like a cross between the chess automaton and a racetrack Senator at Albany, may he dimly descried in the distance. The combination of moving picture and talking machine includes in its repertoire already three Shakespearean plays, three grand operas and our childhood's favorite, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Imagination thrills and leaps at the possibilities. Hamlet says in his sonorous voice: "Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue," and the machine replies: "I can't. I have an abrasion in my rubber diaphragm." Or, after the conclusion of the third act. there are loud calls for speech and the gramophone unsteadily advances to the footlights and says: "Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you from the bottom of my cogs for this whole-souled appreciation of a freble endeavor. I know you love ait or you wouldn't stand for this. The Bard Watch for the :SF»ECIAL= Moving Picture Machine Comint; Out Soon VIASCOPE MFG. CO. 112 East Randolph St.. Chicago SHEET MUSIC ^ This should interest all Talking Machine Dealers as a side line. Write us, w^e have one of the best propositions to offer as a moneymaker and free advertiser. H. A. WEYMANN & SON Publishers and Jobbers lOlO Chestnut Street. Philadelphia. Pa. of Avon would be delighted if he saw us at this job. My maker wishes me to say that duplicates of myself may be purchased at any department store for $68.79. Souvenirs to all ladies at the matinee to-morrow. Now let us attune ourselves to continue with Hamlet's grievous troubles." It really seems imprudent for the machine actors and actresses to give themselves away at first and leave nothing for the future. Their private lives, unlike those of their living predecessors, are bound to be rather tame and monotonous. However, it is their risk and not ours in exposing their insides. In the first place, the talking machine and the cinematograph of the "theatorium" are of the best quality and so hitched together that they work in perfect unison. It would never do to have Dr. Jekj'll emit a blood-curdling yell at the wrong moment or the dragon snort in the midst of a lyric passage in "Siegfried." A serious climax might be wrecked if the hero burst into words of love to the Chinese cook, anticipating the arrival of the heroine. Such mishaps, barring accident, will not occur. A multitude of devices account for the fantastic moving pictures shown in the actorless theater, says the New York Tribune. The law of gravity is seemingly defied and heavy objects are made to rise in the air and enter windows. This is done by reversing the series of pictures showing the same objects normally falling to earth. The man who ascends a falling chimney on skees and travels through the clouds has no special difficulty. A series of pictures of a real falling chimney has been combined with a series exhibiting the skee operator on a level against a neutral or cloudy background. Substitution is a simple trick; a witch instantly changes into a lovely maiden by substituting the maiden series for the other at any point. Closing or opening the diaphragm of the moving film camera gives backgrounds for double exposures and graduates scenes towards clearness or obscurity. The mermaid swimming in the depths of the ocean looks prosaic when you see her in the flesh wriggling horizontally on a painted canvas with the camera straight above and iwinting downward. All she has to do is to wriggle; the moving slip of sensitized gelatine has been previously exposed to the corals, medusae and fishes of an aquarium, and with the addition of the recumbent wriggling figure the effect is of a mermaid sporting through changeful ocean scenes. It is the opinion of some theatergoers that the new art may be good enough for Shakespeare and Ibsen but they still want to see Sam Bernard and the Rogers brothers in the flesh. No machine can talk back to the audience like these artists, drink beer with its friends and go to baseball games. CHICAGO COPS CENSOR "MACBETH." Moving Picture Film Loses Macduff and Dagger Scenes Before Presentation. (Special to The Talking Machine World.) Chicago. June 3. 1908. Lieut. Joel A. Smith, head of the police squad recently detailed to censor moving picture BURNT CORK POST CARPS A new card that's a winner — 130 designs. !j;ir).00 a thousand. Paper Cards. All the latest designs in fast selling nov(>lties. Send for latest literature on our cards. We are agents for the New Perfection Post Card Displayer. Leather Cards, post card pillows, pillow tt)ps. banncr.'i, etc. As we are acknowledged loaders in LEATHER CARDS it will pay you to write for further information. CLOVER SOUVENIR MFG. 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