Dorothy Bernard (1915) 🇺🇸

Dorothy Bernard, the clever little twenty-four year old English girl, who recently closed her engagement in New York with The Salamander under the direction of Selwyn & Co., has joined the Lubin forces and has been assigned to Mr. Barry O’Neil’s Company.

Miss Bernard was born in South Africa. Her father and mother were in one of the first English stock companies to play in Africa. By her third birthday Miss Bernard had been in Australia and India and had come to America with her parents who were with Charles Frohman. When she was nine years of age Miss Bernard went to Australia with Nance O’Neil’s company, then back to San Francisco to the Grand Opera House Stock. From there she went to Los Angeles and Portland playing child parts for the famous old Belasco and Burbank Stock Companies.

At seventeen years of age Miss Bernard was one of the most popular ingenue leading women on the Western Coast. From then on her life has been a most interesting one. She was in stock with Vaughan Glaser in Detroit, in vaudeville with William Courtleigh and leading woman for Shubert in The Ringmaster. For two years she was with the Biograph under the direction of D. W. Griffith, and played some of their most important roles.

After her work with the Biograph Miss Bernard went back to the stage at the Columbia theatre in Washington, D. C., where she played for two seasons. Last year she was starred there. Miss Bernard has played all sorts of parts from Puckers in Prince Chap and Topsy to musical comedy and big emotional leading parts.

Miss Bernard says she is very glad to be back in pictures again and hopes and expects, in them, to do the best work of her career.

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Dorothy Bernard, famous alike to photoplay patrons and theatergoers, has been specially engaged by Kalem to play the leading role in the powerful three-act feature production, The Second Commandment. Miss Bernard recently joined the Kalem forces at Jacksonville, Fla., where this drama is being produced.

This versatile actress’s experience goes back to her fourth birthday. Despite her tender years, the child’s amazing ability attracted attention and she toured Australia and America with such famous stars as Nance O’Neil, Edward Morgan, Wilton Lackaye and Theodore Roberts. Upon Miss Bernard’s graduation into ingenue roles she appeared with various Western stock companies and at the Belasco Theater, Los Angeles.

Then came a vaudeville engagement with William Courtleigh. But the two-a-day did not appeal to the versatile actress and she returned to the legitimate stage, playing in stock in Detroit and Columbus. After a period of this work, Miss Bernard became a leading woman for the Shuberts, appearing in The Ringmaster. Just about this time, the silent drama was beginning to command attention. Like many other stars of the stage, Miss Bernard heeded its call and became a member of the company directed by D. W. Griffith, with whom she remained for two years.

According to Miss Bernard, she has played everything from musical comedy to Shakespeare. This charming star is particularly pleased with her role in The Second Commandment. This feature, which is one of a series of ten, each based upon one of the Ten Commandments, is admirably adapted to Miss Bernard’s peculiar talents. The production will be released through General Film Company’s Regular Serial.

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Introducing Characters

Novel Plan Adopted by Lasky in The Ghost Breaker and Cameo Kirby to Identify Principal Players.

In two of its recent productions the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co. has shown methods of introducing the characters so novel as to create a great deal of comment. This problem, which has always been one of the admitted problems of the business, was solved very happily both in The Ghost Breaker and Cameo Kirby, the most recent of the Lasky releases and the next one forthcoming.

It is an admitted fact that the introduction of characters in a legitimate play is apt to become confusing unless the audience pays very close attention, and this is in spite of the fact that the action moves far more deliberately than in a photodrama and the lines spoken by the artists carefully identify the various individuals. To avoid any misunderstandings of the plot it has for some time been customary, in the case of photodrama, to introduce the characters upon the screen one at a time prior to the beginning of the action.

When this was first done it was generally in one routine manner — the character appeared before a curtain, bowed and disappeared. Soon, managers with more imagination made the innovation of showing the characters each in some bit of characteristic action or at least in characteristic pose. But for sheer ingenuity, combined with the origination of the appropriate atmosphere, the two productions already mentioned — H. B. Warner in The Ghost Breaker and Dustin Farnum in Cameo Kirby — are worth a word of special comment.

The Ghost Breaker is a play about ancient castles with a modern hero and heroine — American hero and noble Spanish heroine. The artistic desire was to create an atmosphere, so to speak, of the modern in ancient surroundings. The opening of the picture, therefore, was devised so as to show the gallery of family portraits in an ancient castle with the modern American hero proceeding from picture to picture. As he pauses before each picture the ancient painting — which might almost be said to be the ancestor of the character in the play — changes and is replaced by the modern descendant of the subject. In this manner the characters are presented to the audience, and, at the same time, an atmosphere of antiquity, combined with surprise and novelty, the main attributes of the drama itself, is obtained.

Every one who has ever seen the play will remember that in Cameo Kirby Dustin Farnum plays the role of a gentleman gambler of the South. In fact, the romance which concludes the drama is made possible only by his renunciation of games of chance. Therefore, it is the suggestion of the chances of the game, and the greater chances of human destiny, that the director seeks to convey at the very outset.

At the very beginning of the picture we see Farnum at the gaming table, cards in hand. Then the cards are thrown upon the screen and from each emerges one of the characters. The spirit of the game of life which is to be interpreted is thus revealed.

Just as the first act of a legitimate drama is important mainly for giving the right impressions of conditions and individuals, so is the first act of a film important in the same manner. And nothing can go further toward putting the audience in the right receptive mood than the right presentation of the persons of the plot. The artistic effort and strain of ingenuity thus displayed is consequently well recompensed.

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Pictures the Children Like

F. H. Madison

An industrial picture showing the removal of stumps by dynamite was so vividly described by Eloise Beebe, a seventh grade pupil at Davenport, Ia., that it won the prize of twenty-five admission tickets offered by the Friendly House association in its contest to get the best expression by children on the subject of their preference in moving pictures. Other answers from the youngsters, showing their choice in films and the reasons included:

Sixth Grade boy — Panama Canal. — He was so interested in the motion picture of the Panama Canal that he went to the public library for books to follow the subject further in books.

Girl — drama. — “I liked this picture because it showed kindness and thoughtfulness of the little boy.”

Girl — scenic. — “The reason I liked this picture is because it has helped me in my geography, and in my composition work.”

Boy. — “The pictures which I liked best were those which showed the way animals and birds live.”

Girl. — “Those I like best are the ‘educationals’ of the different things one may never see in life.”

Boy. — “The picture I like best is Mutt and Jeff, because the little man Jeff was nock on the bricks and he seen stars and when he got up he had a balk and blue eye and he had a boump on the back of his head, and his colths was toure and he! he! Mutt was a brick.”

Girl — comedy. — “One afternoon I went to the Friendly House, and when I came out I was sick to my stomach, I had laughed so much.”

Boy — Western. — “When I go to a picture show I generally look for a place where they have a western drama, because in these western dramas generally there is such pretty scenery. Another thing is, a western picture is generally exciting and thrilling, which I like.”

Early replies to the Minneapolis, Minn., Tribune include the following reasons why children go to the picture shows:
To forget their troubles.
Because they are unhappy.
It is the best rest for a tired person.
Because it is lonesome at home.
They have nothing else to do.

Boys evidenced a liking for cowboys, Indians and comedy policemen.

Early returns in Minneapolis showed the popularity of the following dramas: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Trey O’ Hearts, The Million Dollar Mystery and The Perils of Pauline.

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Dorothy Bernard

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The Warrens of Virginia

A Filmed Version of the Well-Known Belasco Play, Which Had Such a Record of Success.

Reviewed by W. Stephen Bush

The screen has seen the great American war drama “acted o’er and o’er again,” and it may be that audiences are somewhat cloyed with civil war plays. The Warrens of Virginia has become a classic on the speaking stage. Just what screen values are to be found in the old play may be an open question. Of course in the matter of spectacular effects the screen is a far better medium than the stage. In the filmed version of the Lasky Company quite a good deal has been made of the spectacular possibilities. One or two scenes are especially worthy of note, such for example as the ambushing of the Confederate supply train and the destruction of the powder wagons. There was, throughout, much evidence of a most laudable desire to do things on a lavish scale. I noticed, too, that attention to detail, without which a real feature is impossible.

As to the acting, the work of James Neill as General Warren, may be characterized as thoroughly capable and conscientious and effective; House Peters as Ned Burton had a most trying part which tested his art to the straining point; Dick La Reno made a most acceptable “General Griffin.” Blanche Sweet has a charming personality, which has won her innumerable friends among patrons of the screen, but in the part of Agatha Warren she is scarcely at her best. In the great scenes which precede the discovery of the forged dispatch there was a lack of fire and spirit. In the scenes where sweet girlishness was needed Miss Sweet was at her best. She fitted well into the refined but simple atmosphere of an old-fashioned Southern home. All the outdoor scenes in the play were extremely well chosen. Here and there I noticed a flash of the skill which visualizes quickly and powerfully, but evidences of this skill were less frequent than in other Lasky productions. The part of Mrs. Warren was in the filmed adaptation of the play a minor and not a very grateful one, but it might have improved under better treatment. Touches of humor occurred occasionally and often they were good, but once or twice they seemed labored.

Taken as a whole, the production will go well on most programs.

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Cruel Sally Crute

It was in a Broadway dansant a tall, raw-boned man stepped up to Sally Crute, the Edison favorite, and asked her to fox trot. Sally soon found that her partner needed many rehearsals but he was enjoying himself immensely, totally unconscious that he had stepped on her foot about fifteen times. He emphasized the sixteenth episode by gazing fondly into the depths of her eyes and breathing “I could die doing this.”

“Well, hurry up about it,” replied Miss Crute.

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World Film’s Minneapolis Office

The Minneapolis branch of the World Film Corporation is located on the fifth floor of the Produce Exchange building, Sixth street and First avenue in the Northwestern metropolis. E. D. Selden is in charge of the office.

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Selznick Practicing the “Poverty Flat”

On his recent visit to San Francisco, Lewis J. Selznick, vice-president and general manager of the World Film Corporation, had as his guest Miss Michelena at an impromptu party at the famous Cliff House. There Miss Michelena taught Selznick the “Poverty Flat Trot,” and the big film magnate, quickly learning this forty-niner dance step, proclaimed himself its ardent admirer and promised to introduce the innovation to the more sedate East as soon as he had finished his present tour of the country.

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United Film to Release Play Based on “Divorce”

Ruth Helen Davis, the distinguished writer, whose translations of French masterpieces have placed within the reach of American readers many notable works of contemporary literature, has been secured by Jack Rose, president of the Humanology Film Company, to prepare for early production a play based on “Divorce,” the famous poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, which will be released by the United Film Service.

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Fulton Establishes Production Department

E. E. Fulton Co. extends their field by opening what is known as the Motion Picture Production Department. They have secured E. B. Lockwood to take the management of this department, and will produce Industrial and Educational Films, take topicals and events. Their well-known policies of service and efficiency have served to guarantee success in the past and assure the success of the production of motion pictures.

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Dorothy Bernard

Scene from The Warrens of Virginia (Lasky)

Collection: Moving Picture World, January and February 1915