Betty Nansen Coming to America (1915) 🇺🇸

Betty Nansen, of the Danish Royal Theatre, and known in America as the wonderful leading woman of the “Great Northern” pictures has already left Copenhagen, Denmark, to play in a series of big offerings that William Fox is preparing.

She arrived in New York on the “United States” of the Scandinavian-American line as was expected on December 23. Her coming is an event of international artistic and literary importance and a large committee headed by Professor Brander Mathews of Columbia University and including many prominent fellow countrymen of hers and American players, among them Mary Shaw, and also critics and literary people who take this chance to pay, as it were, their respects to Ibsen [Henrik Ibsen] through her.

Betty Nansen’s relationship to the Ibsen plays is peculiarly interesting. The Danish Royal Theatre was built and endowed by the Danish king for her to play these great Scandinavian dramas in and many of them were written by Ibsen with special view to having Betty Nansen play in them just as, at present, Sir James Barrie writes plays especially for Maud Adams. She is endowed with the power and scope that made it worth while for a writer like Ibsen to plan situations for her, and it is not saying too much to claim for her, now that Sarah Bernhardt has retired, the leading place among living actresses.

Such an artist naturally could not be induced to come to America without a princely recompense. William Fox has in preparation some big things and has felt that Betty Nansen is alone best able to do just what he wanted and so he induced her to come by an offer of $25,000 a year. A tug will take the committee down the harbor when the United States comes in to meet and welcome her.

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The Three of Us

A Good Family-Life Picture — Sister Fights to Keep Younger Brother Straight and Save Gold Mine (Life Photo).

Reviewed by Hanford C. Judson

This five reel picture, The Three of Us, made by Rolfe Photo Plays for the Alco program, may be depended upon to make a strong appeal on account of the nearness of its interest to the people’s hearts. It is based on Rachel Crothers’ play and its title comes from the name of a gold mine, the sole legacy of three children. The girl (Mabel Taliaferro) and the boy (Creighton Hale) are growing up; the youngest is a child and these three are balanced to get the most, dramatically, out of the lad’s straining away from the home ties. They have a gold claim. The father had thought it good and the girl is doing her best to make the brother keep on with the fight; but he is dreaming of the delights of the city.

The second interest of the offering is a melodramatic love story in which Steve, Edwin Carewe, the hero, loves the girl, Rhy. He, too, is having discouragement in finding pay dirt in his mine, located next to “The Three of Us.” The villain, Beresford (Irving Cummings), is a sort of capitalist’s man. They know that Steve’s claim is good and want Beresford to get it for them. Steve has an option that will expire at noon in a few days, and this option is the pivot around which the action turns with increasing speed. At the climax every character is influenced by the fate of that option and events are happening fast. It was directed by John W. Noble and has been well conducted in all its vigorously alive scenes, ably conducted in its love story scenes, and acceptably conducted in those scenes in which the background characters appear. It will make a good offering.

The scene that will be termed the “big” scene, the big “punch,” is a fight between Steve and Beresford. The latter has stolen the option after Rhy, with, it must be confessed, some dramatic forethought, had taken it from Steve and left it in a jar on her shelf. She had seen a paper like it in his pocket at a party and now finding it gone, goes to his cabin to steal it back from him. Steve sees her there and sees the option too. It strikes him that she has played him false and is in the cabin because she wants to be there. There is a terrible fight between him and Beresford, they really break the cabin up. The best scenes in the picture are the home-like scenes and the most clearly drawn character is Steve, by Edwin Carewe, though the acting on the whole does all concerned credit. The photography and stage craft are very fair.

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Ince a Human Dynamo

Thomas H. Ince, chief of the studios of the New York Motion Picture Corporation, where so much has been done to enhance the Mutual program, eats up time as most people do a meal. He works eighteen hours a day. Work is play, happiness, everything to him, and this quality has earned him the title of the human dynamo. Every morning he leaves his Hollywood home at seven o’clock and reaches Inceville by motor, and once there he arranges the day’s work for his corps of directors, and then goes out personally to superintend the more important productions. The entire plant comes under his supervision, and with a dozen plays being filmed at the same time, this famous gentleman manages to keep very busy.

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A. M. Kennedy Selected Kriterion Producers

Franchises covering the manufacture of films for the Kriterion Program have been issued with great care and on an entirely original plan. The instigators have not selected their manufacturers indiscriminately. They entrusted to A. M. Kennedy the entire supervision covering the selection of manufacturers and the granting of contracts to the manufacturers in question. Mr. Kennedy was particularly well adapted to the requirements as he had for the last seven years been connected in an executive capacity as general manager and managing director of some of the largest and most successful film manufacturers.

One of the producing companies of the Kriterion — namely, the Santa Barbara Motion Picture Company, located in Santa Barbara, Cal., is under the general management of Mr. Kennedy. He has entirely reorganized this company to take care of the releases tendered it by the Kriterion people. This company is considered to be one of the best equipped motion picture companies in California, where it is well known that 70 per cent. or more of the films produced in America are made.

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Theater on Church Site

The Crescent Amusement Company, of Brockton, Mass., lessee of the New Orpheum theater, that city, has purchased for more than $60,000 the Old St. Patrick’s Church building and rectory in Brockton upon which the company will build a big moving picture and vaudeville theater. Plans are being drawn, and it will be one of the biggest houses in New England. It will be 170 feet on Main street and will be about 150 feet deep. Work will begin on the erection of the structure in the early spring.

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Betty Nansen

Scene from The Three of Us (Lift Photo)

Collection: Moving Picture World, January 1915