The Syracuse Journal, Volume 1, Number 38, Syracuse, Kosciusko County, 21 January 1908 — Page 7

The 5$ Theater and the Moving Picture Drama

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I Cheap, and even humble, as many of the moving detune shows may be, they represent ,a growth hardly paralleled in the hi-ory of amusement in this country.. Within the last "five years their ifelarii signs, strident music and brightly-lighted portals have been multiplied by thousands with a rapidity almost magical. In the larger cities they are umbered by hundreds. Few towns of any size or country .fairs jack one or n re of them.’ Flourish- *-• ing on the thin purses which came with the recent fir mcial depression, they affected the theatrical -business so seriously that sol e types' of sensational melodramas have been almost driven from the field. Yet these facts. lu><y give a hint iof the scope of the subject—the milliom of dollars invested in such shows, the outlays for machines, films and tl aters, the 4 streams of nickels and dimes which flow into the box offices of s ch resorts, every week, the growth of a wonderful scientific invention and tin ingenuity displayed by a dozen manufacturers of films in supplying noveltie' Cost of Running This Amusemt if. > Twelve millions of dollars invested in nujvipg p Lure shows in Greater LNew York alone was an estimate made by an expel in the business, ?to’ a write! for the Philadelphia Lodger. There arc in ro nd numbers 500

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motion bictere operator at work. and PhilacF“plua .about 200. It is safe to sly tli.it there is'hardly-a town east of t “...Rocky mountains of 2,000 pomlation, or more that--has- imt a moving pid tare show! In many Cities of ®rmn-T. r r,ooo"td lOO.doO population you tin surprisingly elaborate theaters >f the surf-Costing ■sso.( i (i(ftor upward. If tl average investment of $4,000 e>*h is placed on 10,000 theaters In the count) the investment would be $40,0®,000.” < The ■lms made in America every year for the cture shows .are worth at least ■102,000. The manufacture of the films, is ’radically controlled by nine cotXeriis. Eight of these are licensed under ie Edison patents; th'" ninth Ijt just formed a combination with a eompa .y representing some of manufacturers. With ar outpußof TwCtv--filjns a week Ky the licensed'cwicerus and a total output oi) two-Americrnr ■ ; ms~aud__Eiree imported every-AVwk riy-the new combination, there arevat 1 ist seventeen films put on the mmrket every seven days. j. The. moving picture' show usually‘ consists of >ur films and three or four illustrated songs. In the large -theaters the f ins-are withdrawn and new subjects substituted every day. The films are tiled to the proprietors of-the shows at so much a week. The moving pietu ie nurdimes now in use, with their,lenses, powerful iightfi-arrd reels; lire ftvot ir = $2,0d0,000. A weli-equipp’ed picture exhibitlop requires the ;ervices of fen persons. By this is meant the working force of a ‘‘story sh< ;r,” not—ti—theater. Tiie list includes a piano player, a drummer, a man at the lantern and Ins'asdistant, and two ushers only. ■ Their wages average a out $2(10 a week. .With 10,000 such shows, the rolls would be $2,()00,0t - for-fwiorce of 10,0,000 ‘ . Into the box offices of these moving picture she s at least $3,000,000 is passed in dimes and nickels every week by Americtn ]fleasure-seekers< The- • average city “store show” takes'in S3OO a week, tin.,proprietors counting, on an. audience of -200 persons'll t each performance. n the theaters devoted to-moving picture shows r(|eeipt'sj of $37000 a week : e considered good business. The latter class are excluded from the. s3,o< >,tW estimate, the sum being based on 10,000 “store shows” at S3OO each. With one-half of the $3,000,000 receipts representing nickel admissions and. one-half tickets costing a dime, the receipts - indicate that 45.,-' 000,000 persons vlsited-thCSe“shews every week, or r -any in the Butted-States. - . * ’ How the Pictures Are Manufac ured. Some idea of what it means to make a moving li'ctwre was gained from a visit to one of tiie largest” studios. Here the stag the (tressing and property rooms are as elaborate as those of awell-equi ped theater. - J Tlie points, of difference frofii Ihe theatrical s ige are, however, strik- ' ing. owing to the limitations of photography. Al of the scenery—a different set for each series of pictures—is painted i black, white and gray! to make the films clear-cut. The stage, sixty feet i ide and forty feet deep,

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There are approximately 120,000 unemployed workers in Chicago. How are‘they and‘their families to be carried through the winter? This question stares the city and county olfi* cials and the relief and charitable organisations in ithe face. Nobody can give exact figures as to the number of •unemployed. The experts, however, give this rough estimate and Classi tie cation: Teamsters, 6,000; restaurain ■workers, 12,000; -woodworkers, 8,000; Ironworkers, 7,000; building trades, 25,000; stationary engineers arid firemen, 3,000; unskilled labor, 50,000 to 60,000. This gives a total of from 111000 to 121,000. These figures, of course, tell only a part of the storiy, since at least 50,000 of the unemployed, according to the’ experts, have fami lies. Bad as the situation is, under ordinary circumstances it could be much, worse, says the Inter Ocean. With the approach of winter tliere

is annually an influx of floating population to Chi ago, because of the-ease, with which-lodging and food can be obtained trier through relief organizations. : This year, however, measures were take to minimize this influx. The police have attempted to kcbp away th vagrant element. Wo jd has been, sent broadcast to the workers who usual r flock to‘Chicago in the winter to keep away, as there is no work for;tl an. Moreover, with the approach of winter and the practical certainty th : there would be no employment for them, thousands of foreigners left tl - city and went home to Europe, to stay at least until times become bett r. These foreigners are thought to number at least 50,000, and their absence relieves the situation mja- ► terially. The county agent, the Salvation Army, the Associated Charities and the various employment agencies all agree tl it there are more unemployed workingmen in Chicago now than there has beep in many years past. The big relief organizations of Cook; County, th county in which Chicago is located, are taking care»of a large 'number of t e unemployed and needy. , The county agent maintains a large store, when all kinds of staple commodities for the relief of families are kept. The lunty aims to investigate cases to ascertain whether or not applicants are y rthy, but not many questions are asked of first applicants if thejre appeals o be a need of immediate relief In extreme cases the county will send prov dons to families, but as a

shows” in t a city, besides twenty regular thea ers devoted to the exhibition of- moving, pictures. ? An average in estment of $4,000 for each “store show.” was considered conservative’ The cheapest,of them cost SSOO,- the more pretentious $25,000. Ou side of New York City there were 0.000 of these pietdre shpws whei the last count was made, about i year* ago. This year, one expert s id. the number is nearer 15.000 th .n 10.000. • “You ca lot gain an idea •of the growth f the business,” he refnarked, “u Jess you travel from City to city and see these show places. .Ch ‘ago has

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has a rloof a’nd walls of glass, with screens of white cloth to'soften the daylight Forty stage calciums, or arc lamps with a .special violet ray,, focussed on a. narrow area, supplement the day ight and make night photography p issible. In this light the/‘actors” weir the usual stage makeup of powder and grease paint. The. stage is in movable sections. Under i; i£ a tank of water sixty feet long, anl forty feet wide for aquatic scenes and' climaxes; or series of films in which the unpopular characters have a ducking. In another wing <>’'

"the building are the’.testing and developing apparatus, the , latter inelud-, ing porcelain tanks and reels,-each made to receive films 250 feet long. “Where do the (people who appear in the pictures come from?" The question was .asked of one of the stage managers of the studio. “Most of the principals are trained actors,”, he replied. "There are always enough of them idle in the city who are willing to earn-’ from $5 to $lO by rehearsing a few days, then going through the pantomime seen in the pictures,” The presence of the tanks suggested the question of how often exterior i scenes were built for the studio. They arc. arranged there sometimes, -was the reply, but not frequently. The studio is used chiefly for interior scenes. I The exterior settings are almost invariably the streets, parks, woods or hills ‘ of'the qlty anti suburbs. A jjopular series of pictures called “A Thief Chase” was post'd in Bronx i Park, New York. A deserted suburban mansion served as a background for POSING THE ACTORS IN A MILITARY DRAMA. 1 fxi 1 1 jWf hii ltMfjjk ___ -ffje <ytudi'o - “A Fire ih a Boarding School,” In “The Great Train Robbery." another popular series of pictures, the scenes showing a dance hall, a telegraph office and the % interior of a baggage car were made in the studio. The train scenes!were photographed near Paterson, N. J. A .special passenger train . was hired for the occasion, and 100 theatrical supers were rehearsed to act as passengers, train crew and bandits. Most of the moving pictures showing what were announced as scenes in the recent Cuban war were made in the Orange mountains. One set, depicting* the landing of some of the American troops, is said ‘to have been made in Cuba. The rest were-carefully rehearsed with professional supers. “Curiously,” said one of the stage managers, “the most difficult scenes of all to make.are those in city streets.. When we go into the country to make films we post a circle of pickets to keep people away from our scene. But In! the city the appearance of a camera' means the gathering of a crowdIt is next to impossible to keep the people out of range.” Thp old saw that things are seldom what theyqjeeni is nowhere more

general rule benefjciaries are expected to appear in person. The monthly double ration which is issued here to families having more than three children consists of two bars of soap, six pounds of rice, five pounds of beans, five pounds of rolled oats’, two pounds of coffee, one pound of tea, two bags of flour and five pounds of corn meal. Coal is also furnished if needed. In the case of repeated applications extreme care is taken to see that the cases are worthy of assistance. The biggest central bureau outside of the comity agent’s office is the Bureau of Charities. This is the biggest central bureau of'the city, and it conducts the most extensive work of private charity in the homes of the poor in Chicago. Besides this organization are the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, the United Hebrew Charities and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The Salvation Army and the Volunteers of America do a vast work in supplementing the work of the big organizations. Both have their headquarters, their storehouses and their branches, through which relief is afforded the needy. .. Homeless wanderers are always taken care of in the police stations of the city at night or supplied with tickets for the municipal lodging house, which has now been in existence for several years and has been found to be practical in its workings.

WJ .WHICH HAVE JLUTIONIZED THI tEMENT BUJ’INEXf

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true than with the moving picture. This does not merely mean that the "Great Train Robbery” really happened near Paterson, N. J., or that tha scene of “The Storming of San Juan Hill” was in the Orange Mountains. It applies ,to the dancing Teddy bears and the whirling detached letters slipping into a continuous sentence, as well as to k many other tricks of the moving picture studio. ' • Once these tricks_yere closely guarded secrets; now the makers of moving pictures realize that their success depends upon the cleverness of their ideas rather than on the tricks themselves, and they talk freely of' them. - ; ' Most of the tricks depend on the fact that a moving picture is, in . reality, a series of photographs pn a gelatine film, each showing a slight in movement ami reflected on a screen in kuch rapid succession that the changes in the pictures are merged or blended, so that the objects photographed seem to move. How delicate are these slight variations in the pictures .may ,be suggested by the fact that a moving picture requiring fifteen minutes tr> show comprises from 14,000. to• 16.000, photographs an .inch long and of’an inch wide .on a film 1,000 feet long. They pass through the lantern at an average speed of from sixty to*seventy-five pictures a' second. , While preparing the photographs it is a simple” matter to-stop the film in the camera and make changes in a grouiV Thus a dummy is substituted for .an actor just before a train is supposed, to strike him. A doll or a Teddy bear may seem to move on a lantern screen by taking each photo- ‘ graph separately and changing the poses very slightly between times. Such siibstitutions also explain the, so-ca Sled “magical pictures,” originated by Malles, a magician, in Paris, in wtiiell objects disappear oh characters are “materialized” in an instant, seemingly from nowhere.

NOTORIOUS CONVICT KILLED. I: 'K Aj I “Eddie” Quinn, notorious bank robber and professional cracksman, who escaped from the Joliet penitentiary Aug. 28. 1907, and who has successfully eluded ;the police of tiie country in their search*for him 'for over a year, was shot tofdeath by the ftown marshal. F. C. Wood, of Greenwich. Ohio. Quiini was killed while he and several other men wmre blowing the safe , of the First National bank of Greenwich, The escaped couwict and the marshal engaged in a revolver battle-. After several shots Quinn fell dead and the marshal was severely wounded. The remainder of the bank robbers escaped. . ‘ The criminal career of Quinn bega.n in 1884, at Laporte, Imi. of-goods valued at $15,000. He was captured and sent to the Indiana State prison. After serving his sentence he came to Illinois and was again arrested on the charge of fobbing the First National bank at Abingdon. Sentenced to the Joliet penitentiary, Quinn was assigned to the prison h'os- , pital. He succeeded in sawing the bars hi, one of the windows, and with the aid of bandages and a hoop he improvised a rope, with w hich he flowered himself to the ground. BLOWN UP BY DYNAMITE. Homesteader Sits on Box of Explosives and Sets Off Fuse. Claus Carlson, a homesteader, 28 years'old, living in Itasca, Minn., com- < mitted suicide by sitting pn a box of , dynamite and setting it off in a tent 1 back of his house, where a lumberman’s outfit was kept. Fellow work-- i men heard him say as he was setting 1 the dynamite off: “Run for your lives, i I am going up.” The camp was badly < shattered and the men inside barely 1 escaped. The body was blown fifty ’ feet and badly mangled. <

MRS. LEASE NOW LEOTURING. Noted Expounder of Populism Says .7, She Hum Toned Down. Mrs.'Mary Ellen Lease of Kansas, who for many years spoke of populism, spiritualism and other “isms,” and who ■ has been characterized as “the political carrier pigeon of’the Sunflower State,” is appearing in a brand-new role. Once high priestess of the populist party, Mrs. Lease is now appearing under tho direction of tiie lecture bureau of the department of education as a lecturer in the public schools ■! New York City. One of her lectures is entitled “America and the Americans/ 1 ' In giving it recently her talk was of a patriotic nature, and in her speech there was" little to identify her as the same wbman who turned the poljti.es of Kansas upside down, who nyide and unmade Senators and RepresentatVes, who caused the Supreme Court of her State to reverse its de- ision on theLmortgage tax ftiw. J That the United States is problems and is in the midst of jin era\ when the question as to whether this, nation will continue 'as a republic or follow in the footsteps of so many\ancient governments, that labor-savNjg machines have proved a menace and that the bread line is a disgrace' to modern civilization were sonje: of things discussed by Mrs, Lease. She talked Os the Star Spangled Banner, MRS. MARY ELLEN LEASE, of “the boundless prairies of the West,” of the “nation’s great undeveloped wealth.” “Oh, I’ve toned dow n in iny bld age,” she told a reporter after the lecture, “but I feel as strongly on reform issues as I did years ago. . This, however, is a conservative hge, and I find that it is best to be too radical. Then, too, jit would not be proper to discuss suejh things in a schoolrooßfi.” ■V

AUTOMOBILES AND HORSES. The fight of the horse ( car men against the trolley' Car is remembered by all. The claim was then made that 2,000,000 horses would be thrown out of work and that horse breeders would starve. The trolley is .well-nigh univer-, sal, and yet more horses are raised each year than the yC|jr before and ] they bring better prices. The ‘horse interests have ever fought the automobile, There have been thousands of columns of argument publish- ' ad against it and' short-sighted men I’ave' advocated such heavy taxation k against it that a great aiul ever-grow--7 ing industr,- would have been “ sadly tiampef-ed had half the. unwise legislation planned been put ihto execution. Now' highway experts, aided by the motor car ihtc<ests and a powerful as- fi sociation of London and its*suburbs, have turned like the trodden worm and started an attack on the horse, the United States director of’office of public roads says. , - ~ . |- The claim they ailvance is that.,the polluting of all public thoroughfares is clone not by automobiles, but by horses; .that- if no horses were allowed to drop organic matter oi/public thoroijahfares the dust nuisandb w'.ould soon be naught 1 but an unpleasant memory. ’iXiey advance the logical sftatemebt/that the nuisance created’.by hundreds of thousands of horses, is detriinpnw to public health and a menace to Yhe pavemerits and they charge that thekcontlnual cleansing of the streets becariSe of, • this traffic imposes a’ vast and unjust tax upon the citizens. TO SHOW HIS GRATITUDE, | AVjheu Hannah Perry ’wa« dying, Gould, tli<- good-for-nothing old fellow who "had been practically supported by * her charity for years, and who had shirked even the slight'"jobs”- which she had given hjm,’underwent a curious change. He hovered about the house : continually, knocking at the . .kitchen door and ’asking ’the woman that Hannah s sister Jiad-. 'go •to coak during the illness, how "she” was. For ’ some’ reason hq never called her by , name. , . ' "He came round the first dhy it got noised about that Hannah was ailing,” 1 said the sister to a caller after the ' fiiueral, ”and yvanted to know . what '. ■» ‘ .he could do. Os course 1. didn't know ' him from Adam, not having visilqd here since father died. 1 told him Nothing’ kind of sharp; I guess,, and he „ ivent off looking shamefaced. “The next day he came round again, arid'wanted to know ff he could-chop. some kindlings. 1 had found out .who p he was/ but there wasn’t any wood to be. split, so I told him ‘no’ again,, and he disappeared. I never laid eyes on him till the day before she died. What ■ do you suppose he had been doing— . that. shiftless old fellow? Why, he’d been building a chicken coop for her!” "A chicken coop I” echoed, her listener. “Os all things I” ?. • “Yes, Mrs. Douglass, that’s what it <3 was. Not a’ particularly good one, either. I said to him, ‘What is this for?’ - “He said, Tt’s for her,’ anjl jerked bis thumb up at the window. *’ “Then he looked so. sheepish that I told him to set it next the shed and come into the kitchen. Hannah gave up keeping, hens ten years ago, and ' a woman on her ‘deathbecl, arid got, money saved up the way she has,, isn’t going to start in any poultry bfti.siness. Os course I didn’t-say as? much to hilt), because it was just plain grief that made him go to work and do it.” , “What did you do?” “Oil, I gave him some pie, and told Sim that it was a nice'coop, but T didn’t think that llannah’d ever use It, and sent him off. Popr old fellow! I guesk it was the first piece of-hard labor .he’d done for) many a day.” e ‘ “Or will do.” • “Yes, but he’s old, and this shows that his. heart is good.” “I wonder,” mused theoother, “if I can’t find some things for him to patter rpurid-about, now that Hannah’s gone.. I’ll ask Henry.” , A Man’s Taci. Nobody but Mr. Henley would have asked such a question, in the first place. , "Miss Fairley,” he said, “If you’ Could make yourself over, what kind of». hair and eyes would you have?” “If I could make myself over,” said Miss Fairley, “I would Iqok just exactly as. I do now.” “You would?” .exclaimed Henley, in honest surprise, and to this day he * '. can’t understand why Miss Fairley - thinks him a man of little taste and less tact. ' A Friend in Need “Loan me a dollar, old man,” said the actor. “I’m hungry.” “I'm' broke myself,” responded. - the stage manager, “but I’ll put you on in the bill to-night. We have an eating scene,” . “Man, I’ll starve before night.” “In that case I’ll call a rehearsal.” —St. Louis Republic, / r Natural. Undo Si (to the leap-for-life per- . . former) —Haou’d you come to git into this business? The Artist—Why, the idea struck me while employed as a book agent.— Puck. ' . ■ r Quite Relined. Mrs. Callqr—Are your new' neighbors ■eflned? Mrs. Nextdoor —I should say to! They never borrow anything but >ur silver and cut glass.—Chicago Yews.