Author Earle Snell Gets High Praise from Middleton (1919) 🇺🇸

George Middleton, who produced all of Beatriz Michelena’s past successes, considers Just Squaw, which Robertson-Cole will release through Exhibitors Mutual, the greatest story she has yet appeared in. As among her past successes are numbered Salomy Jane, by Bret Harte; Mignon, by Goethe [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]; Salvation Nell, by Edward Sheldon; The Unwritten Law, by Edwin Milton Royle; The Woman Who Dared, by C. N. [C. N. Williamson] and A. M. Williamson, this statement of Mr. Middleton’s is a high compliment to Earle Snell, the author of Just Squaw.

Earle Snell was born in California, and has made a painstaking study of life as it was in that state in the early days. The result is shown in his stories. He presents his ideas along entirely original lines, according to Mr. Middleton. His scenarios are full of action, suspense and wonderful climaxes.

Earle Snell has been associated with Miss Michelena since she entered pictures, and he has devoted his time to cutting, assembling and titling productions, as well as to writing.

Mr. Snell also wrote Miss Michelena’s coming release, The Dead Line. Another work of his is The Busher, a baseball story written for Charles Ray. This will be produced and released shortly. During the past year Mr. Snell has given a course in scenario writing at the University of California, and it has been one of the best attended and most successful courses held at the university.

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Robertson-Cole Has Big Productions for Summer

The various producing units of the Robertson-Cole Company, division of films, are bending every effort to fulfill the promises of the parent organization to give exhibitors during the approaching summer months some of the finest types of photoplays as a bulwark against the customary poor hot season business.

Four pictures are now in the course of construction in California. The great outdoors furnish the locale for three of the attractions under way.

Sessue Hayakawa is working on The Gray Horizon.

Bare-Fisted Gallagher, the next William Desmond picture, is being filmed by Jesse D. Hampton in a picturesque but remote section of the San Gabriel Canyon under the direction of Joseph J. Franz.

Billie Rhodes’ In Search of Arcady, another attraction which breathes of the romantic country of the Far West, has been virtually completed.

Bessie Barriscale, starring in her own productions, is now filming Tangled Threads, which will be her next issue.

The Gray Horizon has as its background the splendor of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The entire setting of the picture is in the hills, and every advantage has been taken of the extraordinary light and cloud formations that occur over these beautiful mountains.

To get the desired effects in some of the scenes the entire company had to be transported by mule packs through the narrow mountain trails to an elevation of nearly 5,000 feet. It is at this height in the early hours of the morning that the cloud banks are found, and it was the good fortune of the Haworth players to get the one scene that was so necessary to convey the full meaning of the name of the story.

William Worthington is the director, while Clifford Howard wrote the piece.

Bare-Fisted Gallagher was especially written for Desmond by William Parker. The San Gabriel Canyon, where the Desmond company is camped, was reached only after a long automobile journey from Los Angeles, and nearly an eighteen-mile mule ride into the mountains.

The cast is a small but excellent one. Frank Lanning, widely known as a heavy, and little Agnes (Brownie) Vernon are the players who are featured in the Desmond support.

M. B. Havey, head of the scenario staff of B. B. Features, is author of Tangled Threads. Fred Myton made the screen version.

In the cast are Rosemary Theby, Nigel Barrie, Henry Kolker, Thomas Holding, Ben Alexander and Mary Jane Irving.

In Search of Arcady is the story of an American girl who is bored to death by titled personages in search of her hand, and who runs away to adopt the gypsy mode of living to avoid their pursuit.

Reports from Middle-West Show “Destiny” Going Big

Reports from the middle West show that the new Jewel picture, Destiny, is being received by the exhibitors as a sequel to The Heart of Humanity as far as the success is concerned.

Six of the large Chicago theatres have booked the picture. Destiny was shown as a pre-release at the 20th Century Theatre in May, and is booked for a return engagement In June. It was shown for six days as a pre-release picture at the Chicago Casino, and it is reported that the box-office receipts were much above the average. Other Chicago houses which have booked the production are the Vista, Harper, the Hamlin and the Lubliner and Trlnz Theatre.

Others of the big theatres of the middle West which have booked the film for an early showing In June are the Castle, at Bloomington, Ill.; the Empress and Columbia, at Peoria, Ill.; the Park, the Champaign, Ill.; the Art Theatre, at Gary, Ind.; the La Salle, at South Bend, Ind., and the Colonial, at Joliet, Ill. A prerelease showing of the picture at the Majestic Theatre, in Tulsa, Okla., proved a great success, and it is booked for one week at the Lyceum, at Winnipeg, Can.

Among the players supporting Dorothy Phillips are William Stowell, Harry Hilliard, Stanhope Wheatcroft, Walt Whitman, Gertrude Astor, and Allan Sears.

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Marion Davies Working on “April Folly.”

Work on Marion Davies’ latest starring vehicle, April Folly, is well under way in the Biograph Studio, where the star and a large company is working on the screened version of Cynthia Stockley’s novel of the same name.

Conway Tearle plays opposite Miss Davies, and Esther Marshall [Madeline Marshall] is seen to advantage in the early part of the story.

Miss Davies is cast in an almost dual role, playing in the early part of the story a secret service sleuth and changing places later with the petted daughter of an aristocratic Earl.

Many of the scenes in the film are being shot aboard a transatlantic steamer.

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First Capellani Picture to be Released June 22

Albert Capellani will inaugurate his advent into the ranks of independent producers on June 22, the day that has been scheduled for the release of “Oh Boy,” the first subject to be made by the recently organized Albert Capellani Productions, Inc. Oh Boy will also be the first of a series of special features in which Creighton Hale and June Caprice will be co-starred under the banner of the Albert Capellani Productions, Inc., and will be released through Pathé Exchange, Inc. Final laboratory work on the production, which is the first “Filmusical Comedy” to be shown on the screen, has been completed, and it is expected that prints will be available for showings at the Pathé branches within a week.

Oh Boy is adapted from the musical comedy hit of the same name which was originally presented at the Princess Theatre, New York, where it played for over sixteen months. The picture was produced under the personal direction of Albert Capellani.

Oh Boy lays claim to being that rare thing in motion picture — a production of a purely farcical nature entirely devoid of incidents bearing even a remote resemblance to melodrama. By cleverly blending incidents of a romantic nature with a series of highly amusing farcical situations. Director Capellani has succeeded without the aid of any sinister or dramatic element in registering a swiftly moving and highly diverting light comedy that embodies all the qualities of popular appeal.

An excellent and timely advertising angle is afforded exhibitors in the new “Filmusical Comedy” by the introduction of a number of episodes in which prohibition figures. In fact, it is prohibition that starts all the trouble, for his royal muchness, Judge Carter, is a confirmed opponent of the demon rum.

The cast is headed by Creighton Hale and June Caprice. The supporting company includes Flora Finch, Zena Keefe, W. H. Thompson, Joseph Conyers, Grace Reals and Maurice Bennett Flynn.

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Goldwyn Soon to Release “The City of Comrades”

Basil King’s new novel, The City of Comrades, and shortly to be released in picture form by Goldwyn with Tom Moore as the central player, brings to the screen a new realism of a man’s redemption by love. The romanticism and unwillingness to see life as it actually is that seems to pervade most screen dramas is here scrupulously pushed aside. The result is a picture that is startling by its verity, its amazing insight into what actually goes on inside the soul of a real man when by inertia and temptation he has been brought to the brink of ruin, and by love and his own power of will he draws himself back to self respect.

The City of Comrades is a story of the new feeling of brotherhood that has grown out of the war, a gripping narrative of the rise of a young man of family from degradation to accomplishment and a beautiful woman’s love by the aid of men who had suffered and fallen even as he had.

Collection: Moving Picture World, May 1919