Horne a Product of Stage (1916) 🇺🇸

Kalem Director brought into limelight by success of “Girl from Frisco.”

Director James W. Horne, of Kalem’s staff of producers, long regarded by his fellow screen workers as one of the most artistic of picture craftsmen has, however, seldom been found in the limelight of publicity. The success of Kalem’s series of the west, The Girl from Frisco, featuring Marin Sais and True Boardman, has resulted in bringing him into the rays of the calcium.

Among the successful Kalem productions staged by Director Horne, the Stingaree series, by E. W. Hornung, comes to mind most readily. He will also be remembered as the producer of The Social Pirates, by George Bronson Howard and a number of multiple reel successes, including The Barnstormers and The Pitfall. Judging from its reception by exhibitors and the fans Stingaree is probably his greatest success, though the Girl from Frisco, now in the seventh week of its career, bids fair to run the series by the creator of Raffles, a close race. In both productions Marin Sais and True Boardman are the featured stars, with a strong cast in support.

Director Horne is a native of California and a real product of the stage, as he was a member of the Belasco-Mayer stock company at the Alcazar in San Francisco when only 13 years old. Stage work carried him to New York and Chicago many years later, his last engagement in the spoken drama being in the role of Bragdon in the Cohan and Harris production of Brewster’s Millions.

He entered photoplay work with the Kalem Company four years ago as a scenario writer, being sent to the Glendale studio. In a little over a year of this work he showed such ability that he was given the directorial reins. Horne soon established himself in the front rank of screen producers.

Under the direction of Mr. Horne work was started this week on the ninth episode of the western series by Robert Welles Ritchie. This is called The Web of Guilt. For A Battle in the Dark, the eighth production in this two-reel series, Director Horne secured some unusually striking fire scenes by burning a three-story Glendale house to the ground.

The director was fortunate in learning of a house which the owner was preparing to tear down. By offering $3,500, many hundreds higher than the nearest bid of a house-wrecking concern, he secured permission to stage his private fire with the house as the offering. The Glendale fire department stood by to prevent possible spreading of the blaze to adjoining buildings, while a bond was also called for to cover the latter contingency. The scenes were photographed by a battery of four cameras at night and furnish a spectacular climax to this episode.

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Turning ‘em Out at Triangle

Director West completes important production — many stars busy on big subjects.

The much-heralded production, at the Triangle-Ince Studios at Culver City, of the new play which is to present as a tri-star combination Dorothy Dalton, Enid Markey and Howard Hickman, has just been completed by Raymond B. West, and is now going through the cutting the titling process. It will soon be in the hands of exhibitors. This is the play that has a sensational railroad collision as one of its strongest features. In theme, it is a vampire story; and in it, it is said, Dorothy Dalton presents her strongest claim to honors as a screen siren.

William S. Hart has completed the exterior scenes of his new “Western” from the pen of J. G. Hawks, and is now working on a series of interiors especially constructed in one of the great glass studios at the Culver City plant. These will probably be finished by the end of the week, and Hart will begin upon another play now being written for his use by one of the writers in the scenario department.

Frank Keenan, the Triangle-Ince star, is attracting much attention this week at the studio in his picturesque work on his new southern story by John Lynch. The action of the story is supposed to take place about the year 1848 on a Louisiana plantation. Some of the scenes take place oh an old stern-wheel steamboat on the Mississippi — a veritable Mark Twain type of vessel. Walter Edwards is directing. While Keenan is completing his work on this, Chief author C. Gardner Sullivan is at work on a new story for the star. Nothing has been definitely announced about this new vehicle, but it is said that it will afford Keenan the part of a miserly old mill-owner. It is also said that it constitutes a sequence of exceedingly powerful situation.

The harmonious working of the tri-star combination, composed of Dorothy Dalton, Enid Markey and Howard Hickman, has impelled the Triangle authorities to arrange another of the same kind composed of Dorothy Dalton, Charles Ray and Louise Glaum. The vehicle to which these three have been assigned is described as a deeply psychological subject, written by Alice P. Brown [Alice C. Brown], of Pasadena. Cal. The scenario has been made by Monte M. Katterjohn, of the authorial staff. The supporting cast includes Margaret Thompson, Robert McKim, J. Barney Sherry and Charles K. French. [Transcriber’s Note: The movie in question is most likely The Weaker Sex (1917)]

John Lynch, the writer who, of recent months, has provided Triangle-Ince players with several of their biggest subjects, has just completed a new drama for William Desmond and Enid Markey. It deals with college life, providing Desmond with the role of a heroic athlete and Miss Markey with that of a chorus girl. In the supporting cast are Howard Hickman, Margaret Thompson, Charles Gunn, J. Barney Sherry, David M. Hartford, J. Frank Burke and Louis Durham. [Transcriber’s Note: The movie in question is most likely Blood Will Tell (1917)

At the Triangle-Fine Arts studio, Douglas Fairbanks [Douglas Fairbanks Sr.] is working in the East on a new story, one of the thrilling moments of which is the chase of a private yacht in New York Harbor by a revenue cutter. For the making of this picture the United States Navy donated the use of one of its finest torpedo destroyers. As usual, Fairbanks will have many thrilling escapades, and a real love story. Lloyd Ingraham is directing.

Much interest is being shown at the Triangle-Fine Arts Studio in the present starring vehicle of Wilfred Lucas. It is called Bugs, and in it Constance Talmadge has the leading female role. It is a detective story of unusual kind. In the supporting cast are F. A. Turner, Winifred Westover, Pomeroy Cannon, Fred Warren, James O’Shea, Jack Sealock, Kate Bruce and Monte Blue.

Dorothy Gish is hard at work at the Triangle-Fine Arts Studio on a racing story called The Best Bet. Tod Browning, the director, is the author, although the director in this particular instance is George Siegmann. Raymond Jerome Binder is leading man in this feature, while others in the cast are Adele Clifton, Carl Stockdale, Loyola O’Connor, F. A. Turner, Joe Neary and Tom Wilson.

At the Triangle-Keystone Studios, Louise Fazenda has just put the finishing touches to a new two-reeler called The Girl Guardian. Charles Murray has the principal male role in this production, and has the pleasant task of saving Miss Fazenda from drowning.

The Three Slims is the title of a new Triangle-Keystone comedy in which Slim Summerville, Slippery Sam Potel and Slim St. Clair have the leading parts.

Ora Carew, the Triangle-Keystone star, has to play opposite herself in a new comedy called The Twins. She plays both parts of a winsome little country girl and a gawky country boy, throughout a vastly amusing action, Joseph Callahan and “Baldy” Belmont have important roles in her support.

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Kerrigan in “The Mainspring.”

J. Warren Kerrigan is to be seen next in the role of a newspaper reporter who stumbles on the scoop of a lifetime, but who is held prisoner so that what he has learned may not become public property and thus cause a financial panic. There are five reels of thrilling action in the play, The Mainspring, the scenario of which was prepared by William Parker. Kerrigan will be directed by Jack Conway, of the Universal forces.

Collection: Moving Picture World, October 1916