Edith Thornton, Unafraid (1915) 🇺🇸

With the return of the Superba Company from the south, where under the direction of Director Charles Hutchison they have been making comedies for the United Program for the past few weeks, it was learned that Edith Thornton, “the prettiest little ingénue,” and incidentally the youngest one of the Superba Company, had made a sensational flight in a hydroplane at Savannah, Ga., on Easter Sunday before thousands of people, who were held spellbound by the reckless daring of the girl.

The pictures taken of Miss Thornton in the hydroplane will be a part of a one-reel comedy which has not yet been named, but which will appear soon as a part of the United Program.

“I was not a bit afraid to go up in the hydroplane,” says Miss Thornton, “though Mr. Hutchison and the other members of the company were so much more frightened about it than I was. We went up so slowly and beautifully, and when we got up high it seemed as if we were standing still and the whole world beneath us was moving.”

Miss Thornton proved her fearlessness in more ways than one during the southern trip of the Superba Company. On the way home on the boat “Montgomery,” she kept the passengers in constant fear of her life. She is an excellent gymnast, having received a thorough training in fencing, boxing, climbing and jumping under the direction of her father, and on the return trip, clad in midi blouse and bloomers, she climbed the rigging, swung out from the yard arms, jumped and ran to her heart’s content, almost out-daring the sailors in her recklessness.

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Goebel Organizing New Company.

President Otto E. Goebel, of the St. Louis Motion Picture Company, which produces the Premier Pictures appearing each week on the regular United Program, is spending a busy two weeks in New York getting a new company together for the exclusive production of single-reel pictures. The present Premier players, headed by Lillian Hamilton, Edythe Sterling and Frederick Church, are giving all of their attention to two-reel pictures, and Mr. Goebel has decided to double his forces so that he can increase the output of his studios by two releases a week. Two well-known directors are cooperating with Mr. Goebel in choosing his new artists, who will include a star of established reputation to be announced at an early date.

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Good Pictures Coming.

Famous Players’ contribution to next Paramount quarter includes notable list of stars and celebrated plays.

The Paramount program for June, July and August will include ten of the strongest feature attractions ever yet produced by the Famous Players Film Co. Judged both from the personal attractive power of the stars and the national popularity of the plays, this company’s list of forthcoming productions is indeed certain to be a veritable series of unusual successes. Exhibitors and photoplay fans throughout the country will be pleased to know that the program will release one Mary Pickford production a month. This phenomenally popular star will be seen in a notable characterization, Rags, by the famous novelist, Edith Barnard Delano, to be released in June; in an elaborate picturization of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s famous play, The Dawn of a Tomorrow, to be issued in July, and in a typical portrayal, entitled Little Pal, released in August.

Other stage artists who have become celebrated film favorites, through the medium of Famous Players productions, and who appear on its forthcoming program, are Marguerite Clark, Hazel Dawn, John Barrymore, and Pauline Frederick. Marguerite Clark will appear in screen versions of Madeline Lucette Ryley’s celebrated comedy romance, Mice and Men, and the noted stage success, Seven Sisters. Hazel Dawn will appear in photo-dramatizations of Clarissa and the famous comedy triumph, “The Gay Lord Quex.”

Pauline Frederick, who, through her amazing portrayal of Donna Roma in the Famous Players Film Co.’s greatest production, The Eternal City, has been acclaimed as the foremost emotional artiste ever seen on the screen, will be presented in July in a powerful photoplay rendition of Herman Bernstein’s great dramatic work, “Sold.”

Besides the return of these favorites to the screen, the Famous Players Film Co. will in July introduce John Mason to the motion picture public in an adaptation of the international dramatic success, Jim the Penman, by Sir Charles L. Young.

Collection: Moving Picture World, May 1915