Eleanor Gates in Photoplay Field (1914) 🇺🇸
Eleanor Gates, author and playwright, has organized a photoplay company which will produce on the screen her books, plays, and stories. She is one of the first authors, as well as one of the first women, to head her own motion picture producing company.
The works of Miss Gates are well-known in the literary and dramatic world. She is the author of “The Biography of a Prairie Girl,” The Plow Woman, Cupid the Cowpuncher, and The Poor Little Rich Girl. The latter was a great success, both as a book and a play, and the other titles were all “best sellers” as novels. Besides her stories and plays, she has written numerous stories and one-act sketches.
“I believe that the possibilities of the motion picture are just being realized,” says Miss Gates. “As much art can be put into a picture as into a story or a play, and with the whole world available as a setting, the limits of the legitimate theater disappear and the author is unhampered. The last few months have seen a great change for the better in motion pictures. At first they were a novelty, a new wonder of the world. The first pictures made for the purpose of telling a story or showing a drama were crude and elemental, action being the chief requisite.
A new day has come, and a new art is being developed which brings into play all the skill, ingenuity and creative power of cameraman, director, actor, and writer. It is my ambition that the Eleanor Gates Photo-Play Company, of which I am president, will keep abreast of this advance in ideals and ideas in this new art. Our motto is not many photo-dramas, but good ones.”
The first releases will be three and four-reel features made from stories by Miss Gates, which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, with a cast of actors and actresses who are of the types Miss Gates had in mind when she wrote the stories.
The studios of the company are at Mt. Kisco, New York. Richard Garrick is director.
The company is not in the market for scenarios, since Miss Gates’ novels, plays, and short stories will take a long time to produce. The office of the company is at No. 2 East 58th Street.
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A Correction.
The big Burland Theater in the Bronx is controlled by the Midas Amusement Company, which is composed of David V. Ficker, Nathan Machet and Isaac Picker. The managers of the house are Nathan Machet and Isaac Picker. A statement in the Moving Picture World last week contrary to the foregoing was due to misinformation.
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Pioneer Picture House Being Enlarged.
W. G. Cook and F. D. Beardsley, who comprise the Soo Amusement Company, Sault Ste. Marie. Mich., are enlarging their Temple Theater in that city so as to accommodate 1,000. When completed the expenditures will reach $12,000, and the Temple will then be one of the best exclusive picture houses in Michigan, excepting Detroit. The Temple Theater has done a capacity business for eight years.
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Costello Theater.
On Wednesday evening, May 20th, in New York City, a new and very elaborate theater was opened at 159th Street and Broadway. It is one of the largest in the city, and named The Costello, after the celebrated Vitagraph star. Maurice Costello. Mr. Costello appeared at the opening personally, and was given an ovation. The beautiful show place was crowded to the doors and many persons were turned away, disappointed in not seeing the moving picture hero.
Mr. Costello arrived at the theater in his large touring car, accompanied by his wife and children. As the machine drew up at the curb, the crowd, pressing their way into the new structure, heard somebody exclaim, “There he is now.” Immediately he was surrounded by a gaping throng who gazed in open eyed wonder when it was whispered around that the beautiful woman and two children in the car were his family. The play presented was the Broadway Star Feature, Mr. Barnes, of New York, in which Maurice Costello is the star.
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New Theater at Barberton, Ohio.
H. L. Hamilton will open on May 30 the Gem Theater at Barberton, Ohio. The house is a small one, seating only 297, but according to information it is to be up to date. In the operating room there are two Power’s No. 6A machines always in use. Two thirty-six inch exhaust fans help to keep the air fresh. Mr. Hamilton is an old picture man, having been in the business for a period of eight years.
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Clem Kerr in Town.
Clem Kerr, promotion secretary of the convention and exposition to be held at Dayton, Ohio, under the auspices of the Motion picture Exhibitors’ League, was in New York last week. Mr. Kerr reported splendid progress on the part of the exposition and said that the Dayton convention promised to be the greatest in the history of the league.
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Mac is Back.
Mr. and Mrs. A. MacArthur, Jr. returned to New York on Monday, May 18, from Bermuda, where they spent their honeymoon. Mac reported a delightful trip.
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Fiala Has Pictures.
Anthony Fiala, who accompanied Theodore Roosevelt on part of his trip through the unexplored Amazon region of South America, has several thousand feet of motion pictures taken on that trip and saved from the bottom of the Amazon, where they went when his boat sank. They will be offered soon.
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Photograph of Loew’s Broadway Theater, showing how Greene’s Feature, “A Modern Mephisto,” was advertised.
[Transcriber’s Note: A Modern Mephisto was released in the US in 1914. The movie was filmed in Italy, but the original Italian title and names of cast/crew are not available]
Collection: Moving Picture World, May 1914
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