Jacques A. Berst — The Daddy of Them All (1918) 🇺🇸
Twenty-two years ago. What were the occupations, in that remote age, of Adolph Paramount Zukor, Charles Universal Laemmle, H. Mutual Freuler, R. Metro Rowland, Albert Vitagraph Smith, H. Triangle Davis, William World Brady *, and all the other men who now rule the camera world?
by Paul Grant
It is so long ago, most of them have themselves forgotten. Twenty-two years ago, if any of these gentlemen had asked you what business you were in and you had said “Moving pictures,” they would have thought, and with reason, that you meant you were an expressman with a specialty. You couldn’t have been in what is now known as the moving picture business twenty-two years ago, because there wasn’t any such thing.
“Oh, there wasn’t, wasn’t there? Are you quite sure?”
Who is this that so rudely interrupts our retrospection?
Ladies and gentlemen, let me present Mr. Jacques A. Berst, vice president and general manager of the Pathé Exchange, Inc., New York City.
Twenty-two years ago Mr. Berst (who is still, as you will observe from the accompanying faithful likeness, a rather youngish middle-aged man) was in the same business as that in which he is now engaged — selling moving pictures. And he was working for the same firm — the Brothers Pathé. He was the first employee of the company, and while he did not — as is sometimes said — start as office boy, from what I have seen of him, and from what Pathé men have told me, I am quite sure that if the office needed sweeping or dusting, and there was no office boy about, Mr. Berst undoubtedly volunteered. There is a lot of common sense in that funny song from “Pinafore:”
I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished the handle so careful-ee
That they made me the ruler of the Queen’s nav-ee.
In recognition of his long and successful service, the Brothers Pathé have given Mr. Berst the biggest job the company can offer — supreme authority in the American business of the corporation. And who can say but, if it had happened one of those days, twenty-two years ago, that some little task had seemed to young Berst too menial for his dignity, and had been left undone, and Charles or Emil Pathé had noticed this premature assumption of dignity, there might be some other genial gentleman sitting in the handsome office at 25 West 45th Street, New York City? Be that as it may, it is J. A. Berst who presides there, which answers the question, after all.
There were originally four of these Pathé brothers [Emile Pathé | Charles Pathé | Théophile Pathé | Jacques Pathé], but after three weeks, two of them, aghast at the chimerical ideas of Charles and Emil, withdrew and took their capital with them. Thus, with only about $2,000 as their total resources, the adventurers began operations. Today — or rather at the beginning of the war — not less than ten thousand men and women were drawing salary from the firm. They began by operating the old nickle-in-the-slot machines, the Edison invention or adaptation. Then, in 1895, Lumière [Louis Lumière | Auguste Lumière] invented the projection machine, and the continuous celluloid strip replaced the pictures on a wheel. Emil Pathé became interested in the phonograph, and has since confined his activities to that branch of the business. Charles stood by his first love. He bought one of the first moving picture cameras made, and became a producer.
“In those days one did everything connected with the business,” says Mr. Berst. “I was primarily a salesman, but I worked in the office, delivered films, and collected the money. We sold only for cash. We had to have the money or we would not deliver the film. We treated it as if it were the most precious stuff in the world. We sold outright, getting about 16 cents a foot for our pictures. Among our customers were some of the oldest and most responsible firms in Paris, but even if they could get credit for a tar-load of diamonds, they had to pay cash for our films.
“Those films were far from being the moving picture dramas of today. At first they were ten to fifteen feet in length. They showed such scenes as chickens feeding, a man running, cattle grazing. The mere novelty of seeing things move in a picture was sufficient for our public then. From this, of course, it was only a step to the producing of plays.
“Max Linder, an obscure actor, was engaged at $4 a day to make the first picture play ever projected. With the success of these Linder comedies, the increase of income and resources, came the creating of longer films, and better stories.
“And this is the most important development in the history of motion pictures — the constant increase in footage of pictures until now one film will serve for an entire evening’s entertainment. The longer picture was what made not only possible, but absolutely necessary, the better story. The better story called for better actors, better directors, better scenery. And in no other direction has the moving picture improved. The photography is no better today than it was twenty years ago, and with the improved projection machines will run as steady on the screen. Many camera tricks and improvements have been developed, but only as decorations.
“In 1904 I came to America to open a branch of the business here. I brought with me a three-reel production of the ‘Passion Play.’ We had no distribution system then, and I tried to interest Mr. Rock of the Vitagraph in it. He wouldn’t even bother looking at it. ‘Who wants to see a picture that long?’ he asked. But finally I persuaded him to take a look, and he then decided to take a chance. The result was that eventually five hundred prints of that picture were circulated. The old exhibitors will tell you today that this picture was what saved the industry from ruin at that time. The people were getting tired of the short, trivial films, and the American producers had not properly diagnosed the difficulty. We had been in business longer in France, and knew by experience that longer pictures were the only means of making the business permanent.”
“If the longer picture has been the greatest aid to the industry, what has been its greatest drawback?” I asked.
“The fact that people are looking for beauty rather than talent,” Mr. Berst replied promptly. “Screen acting is not developing as it should, because there is no use in trying to give the public a star who is not pretty, and it is seldom that the pretty girls are the cleverest. The handsome hero and the lovely heroine are always in demand, and the best actors are the villains. But after all, it is the public for whom we make the pictures, so we have no right to complain, I suppose. They want serials, so we give them serials. They want beauty and thrills, and we are going to do our best to supply the demand, just as any merchant tries to carry the stock that his customers want.
“When you scold a producer for turning out something that you consider trashy, first consider this — that if a good many thousands of people don’t want that kind of a picture, the producer is going to lose money. And that will make him feel badly enough without your scolding. And if, on the other hand, a good many thousands of people do want that kind of a picture, you have no business to scold the producer. He didn’t make the picture for you, but for these thousands. So if you don’t like the picture, scold the public. You may have an aversion to eating rabbit, but you wouldn’t, on that account, scold God for creating them, would you?”
Which, from this viewpoint, admits of but one answer, and is an irrefutable argument. And the other viewpoint has no place in this article anyhow. Besides, it is unfair to reply in print, because the other fellow has no chance of getting back at you, and you give yourself the last word, which is a woman’s prerogative solely. (I make these observations parenthetically so you will understand that I have a perfectly good reply to Mr. Berst’s argument up my sleeve, though, confidentially, I’m blessed if I know just this minute what it is.)
While Mr. Berst is now with the same firm he was associated with twenty-two years ago, and has been in the picture business longer than any other man in America, he has not been with Pathé all the time. It is difficult to conceive of Mr. Berst apart from Pathé or Pathé apart from Berst. But it is a doubtful compliment either to a man or a corporation, to say that the man is indispensable. Mr. Berst is not indispensable to Pathé. This was proved by the fact that from December, 1913, to January, 1916, they struggled along without each other. Mr. Berst left Pathé in 1913 to become treasurer of General Film. In 1915 he left General to become vice president and general manager of Selig. A few months later he returned to General as president, but the Brothers Pathé decided that the interlocutory decree of divorce should not be made final, and persuaded him to return in 1916 as head of their American interests. He was not indispensable — but gosh, how they missed him!
* Adolph Zukor | Carl Laemmle | John R. Freuler | Richard A. Rowland | Albert E. Smith | H. O. Davis | William A. Brady
—
Jacques A. Berst, executive head of Pathé.
© Photo: Underwood & Underwood
—
Cockney Tenacity
Montagu Love, Emperor of raconteurs, tells this one: An English soldier was captured by the Germans, and kept annoying his guards by shouting at them. “Any ‘ow, we give you ‘ell at the Marne.” The guards ordered him to shut up, and threatened all manner of punishment, but he stubbornly kept up his chant, “You know we give you ‘ell at the Marne.” So they took him before the commanding officer, who was greeted with the same reminder of the great German disaster. In a rage he told the Englishman he could have five minutes to swear allegiance to the Kaiser or be shot. After four minutes had passed, the Englishman decided to take the oath. As soon as it was administered, and he was put into a German uniform, he was taken to the canteen, and the squad, with filled steins, with ironical cheers, drank the health of their new “kamarad.” Then they demanded a speech. The little Cockney promptly mounted a chair, and remarked:
“Well lads, now that we’re all comrades ‘ere together, we’ve got to admit that them Hallies did give us ‘ell at the Marne.”
Collection: Photoplay Magazine, April 1918