Burr McIntosh in Pathé’s “Wallingford” (1915) 🇺🇸

Actor, author, photographer, publisher, lecturer and coal mine magnate, here is a list of activities any one of which is sufficient to engage an ordinary man his whole life, but Burr McIntosh is no ordinary man.

That’s why he has been signed for the Wharton production of Pathé’s The New Adventures of J. Rufus Wallingford. George Randolph Chester said Mr. McIntosh was the one man to play Wallingford, and his advice has been followed. Mr. McIntosh was a classmate at Princeton University with the Hon. Job Hughes, Senator Pomerene of Ohio, Hon. John Harlan of Chicago, Wm. Stewart Tod, the philanthropic millionaire, the late Alec” Moffat, and others, and he is by no means the least famous of that famous group. Look at the height and width of him and you will readily believe that back in his college days he held the 100-yard intercollegiate championship and played on the varsity baseball and football teams.

On leaving college he went back to his home in Pittsburgh where his father was president of the largest bituminous mining company in the country. Our college athlete at once jumped into both business and politics forming the “Six Foot Republican Marching Club” of 150 men, each of whom was six feet or over in his stocking feet. Pittsburgh still speaks with pride of that remarkable organization.

Tiring of the coal business, Mr. McIntosh left to become a journalist in Philadelphia, and got a job at $10 a week on the Philadelphia News. Within five weeks he had a full page expose of the most notorious thieves’ resort in the city. The proprietor of the dive, James Kane, was starting for the News office with a gun in his pocket when he ran into McIntosh’s brother Andy, and killed him instead.

Having sufficiently proven his versatility in business and reporting, Mr. McIntosh went on the stage, making his debut in Bartley Campbell’s play, Paquita, at the Fourteenth Street Theater. Some of the parts which he made famous are Colonel Moberley in Alabama, Jo Vernon in In Mizzoura, Joe, the cowboy in The Cowboy and the Lady, and other Southern character parts. His best work, perhaps, was as Puddin’head Wilson, as Senator Langdon in The Gentleman from Mississippi, Col. Watterson Blossom in Cordelia Blossom and Taffy in Trilby.

The Burr McIntosh Monthly is everywhere admitted to have been the most perfect pictorial publication of its time, and it was Mr. McIntosh’s own product. As a photographer he won the Grand Prize (1000 francs) in the Paris Figaro contest of art and beauty with a portrait of Maude Fealy. In 1905 he was the official photographer of the Taft trip to the Philippines. He also secured some wonderful photographs in the Spanish-American war. His experience in these two trips he made into the lectures With Secretary Taft in the Orient, and The United States and Its Menaces, which he has given before hundreds of thousands of people.

Mr. McIntosh as may be seen, has done many things and done them all well. It is safe to prophesy a splendid interpretation of Wallingford by him in this new Pathé series.

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What Vitagraph is Doing

An air of unusual activity at its studios both east and west — many productions under way.

The Vitagraph Company at its Flatbush Studios, and the Western Company at Santa Monica, California, has begun active preparations for a program of fall and winter releases that will surpass anything heretofore turned out by this company. The program will include one- and two-part comedies and dramas from the pens of the best short story writers, three-part Broadway Star Features, and Vitagraph Blue Ribbon Features bearing the V-L-S-E trade mark. The majority of the Blue Ribbon Features have been picturized from books by well-known authors, books that have run through several editions, and consequently a visualization of the story will be doubly attractive on the screen. Another feature of the Big Vitagraph releases is in the fact that they are being produced under the personal supervision of Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton, heads of the Vitagraph Company.

Taking the directors in alphabetical order the pictures now in course of production include “On the Trail,” a two-part drama being directed by George D. Baker, with a cast including Edith Storey, Evart Overton, Ned Finley and Arthur Cozine. The Gods Redeem, in two parts on which Van Dyke Brooke is at work with Maurice Costello, Leah Baird and Mary Maurice. Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew are producing A Case of Eugenics, a typical Drew comedy, which will be one of the regular Friday (Drew Day) releases. The Woman in the Box, which Harry Davenport is directing, will introduce Harry Morey, L. Rogers Lytton, George Cooper and Peggy Blake in the principal characters.

The Conquest of Constantia, a one-part comedy, is now nearing completion under the direction of Courtlandt J. Van Deusen employing the services of Flora Finch, Kate Price, Rose Tapley and Florence Natol. Ralph W. Ince has just started work on a four-part Cyrus Townsend Brady story, My Lady’s Slipper, in which Anita Stewart and Earle Williams, supported by an all-star Vitagraph cast, will be seen. Tefft Johnson is producing one of the Famous Sonny Jim Series, One Plus One Equals One, in which Bobby Connelly is featured. Director Theodore Marston has a five-part picturization of Archibald Clavering Gunter’s The Surprises of an Empty Hotel well under way and has in his cast the distinguished actor, Charles Richman, supported by Arline Pretty, Leo Delaney, Charles Eldridge, William Dunn, Edward Elkas, Ethel Corcoran and other Vitagraph Players.

Wilfrid North is directing a production of A. E. W. Mason’s delightful comedy, Green Stockings, a five-part picturization of Margaret Anglin’s successful starring vehicle in which Stanley Dark, Lillian Walker, Louise Beaudet, Charles Brown, John T. Kelly and Charles Wellesley will portray the principal characters. S. Rankin Drew is producing Thou Art the Man, picturized in five parts from the original manuscript, by George Cameron, with a cast including Virginia Pearson, Joseph Kilgour and George Cooper. The latest addition to the Vitagraph directing forces. Paul Scardon, is at work on another Brady story, The Island of Surprise, with William Courtenay, Eleanor Woodruff, Zena Keefe, Charles Kent, Anders Randolf and Julia Swayne Gordon. Wally Van is directing the production of a two-part comedy, featuring Hughie Mack, Dorothy Kelly and Donald MacBride, and C. Jay Williams with a cast including Jewel Hunt [Jewell Hunt] and James Morrison, is working on a one-part comedy, The Little Trespasser.

These are the most important productions now under way in the East, while at Santa Monica Director Rollin S. Sturgeon is at work on still another Brady feature picture, “Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer.” Ulysses Davis is finishing a Broadway Star Feature, Cal Marvin’s Wife, in which Mary Anderson is playing the lead.

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Forty Artists’ Models in American Feature.

Forty artists’ models appear in the four-part Mutual Master Picture, The House of a Thousand Scandals, produced by the American Film Company. In this story, which centers around the activities of a Greek cult, these girls wear the flowing garb of the ancient Greeks, the same being the reason why artists’ models were elected to do the wearing. The result is one of the most beautiful scenes the screen has given the public. The wondrously musical dances of the Greeks, the graceful and delightful movements all are shown in this picture, making an intensely artistic setting for the dramatic action carried through the story by Harold Lockwood and May Allison.

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Herbert J. Daiss Dead.

Herbert J. Daiss, formerly of the General Film Company, and more recently of the Cleveland Pathé Exchange. Inc., selling organization, died September 1st at his home in Indiana Township, Pennsylvania, and was buried at Dorseyyille Saturday. September 4th. Mr. Daiss had many friends in the moving picture business throughout the Ohio territory and while connected with Pathé Exchange, Cleveland, established a reputation for himself as being a Class A salesman.

Collection: Moving Picture World, September 1915