Leonid Samoloff (1915) 🇺🇸

Ivan Abramson, the President and General Manager of the Ivan Film Productions, Inc., has entered into a contract with Leonid Samoloff to play the leads in four high-class features that his company will release. Mr. Abramson is well known throughout the United States and Canada as the creator and father of high-class grand opera at popular prices. Eight years ago while Mr. Abramson was the impresario of the Ivan Abramson’s Italian Grand Opera Company, whose productions at $1 were then favorably compared by the critics and the public to the high-class five-dollar opera, discovered in Mr. Samoloff a powerful dramatic tenor. He was so impressed with the brilliancy of his voice, that he sent Mr. Samoloff to Milan, Italy, at his own expense, to study under the famous Italian masters.

After completing his studies of singing and acting, Mr. Samoloff was engaged as the leading tenor of the opera companies in the principal cities of Italy, France and Switzerland. Six years ago Mr. Abramson engaged him for his opera company which toured the country to sing the leading parts in Aida, Othelo, Faust, Pagilacci, Trovatore and Gioconda.

Mr. Abramson is well known in theatrical circles as a playright and director. He recently wrote the scenario of the photo-drama Sins of the Parents, featuring Madam Sarah Adler, which feature has proven to be a house jammer. Mr. Abramson has also written the scenario of Should a Woman Divorce?

Should a Woman Divorce? has for one of its principal parts a character which requires the interpretation of an artist possessing extraordinary dramatic ability. Mr. Samoloff having these qualifications, was engaged for this role.

—

“Her Menacing Past”

A two-reel Thanhouser which presents an interesting psychological problem with a melodramatic development.

Reviewed by Margaret I. MacDonald.

It has been frequently asserted that subjects of psychological interest are unsuited to screen production, for the reason that they are difficult to demonstrate clearly. Time has proved the reverse, however, and the ambitious director turns today with considerable ardor to this class of play as a vehicle in which to display his ability to secure startling effects.

Her Menacing Past, a two-reel melodrama of the class referred to, was written by Philip Lonergan, and produced in splendid style at the Thanhouser studio. Mignon Anderson as the young woman who, as an accomplice of her father in burglary, meets with an accident which obliterates her memory of the past, recovering to become an interesting and interested member of polite society, acquits herself more than ordinarily well. The role is a difficult one to play, presenting as it does at least four distinct psychological stages, all of which have been handled intelligently by her.

To the ordinary observer the handling of the burglary scenes will afford considerable pleasure. The production is brimful of action, and has been handled in fine melodramatic style without being lurid or inconsistent.

The picture has a big appeal at the point where the girl, who after her accident in a run from the police, is cared for by a young doctor and his mother, meets with another accident through a fall from a horse, is restored to a memory of her former life, and predominated by a desire to return to former associations, steals away from the home of the young doctor, now her husband. The close of the picture seeks to prove the power of good environment, in presenting the young woman again face to face with the influences of the past, yielding to the power of the new environment with which she has been surrounded since her separation from her father, and the love of her husband, and returning to brighten his life and to continue the second and best chapter of her own life.

Morris Foster also appears to good advantage in this picture which was released on Jan. 5th.

—

Scene from Her Menacing Past (Thanhouser)

—

E. J. Connolly to Play for the Screen

Edward J. Connolly, late of the legitimate stage, arrived in Los Angeles December 16 to begin work as a leading man under a contract with Producer Thomas H. Ince, director-general of the New York Motion Picture Corporation.

Mr. Ince has not yet made known just what vehicle he has in mind for Mr. Connolly, but it is understood he will be starred in a feature production now being prepared. Mr. Connelly is well known to theater audiences. His greatest triumphs, however, were scored in Everywoman, the successful morality play, and A Good Little Devil.

—

Who Has Seen Mrs. Baruch?

J. Baruch, of 857 Elsmere Place, New York, is looking for his wife, Zora (or Zorica, or Hajnalka Zambelli), whom he suspects has joined some motion picture producing company. Mrs. Baruch is a comely young woman of 21 years; she is about five feet, three inches in height and weighs 165 or 170 pounds. She has long, light brown hair, deep-set, greenish blue eyes, a rather pale round face, a gold upper front tooth and a small cut on the left side of neck.

Mrs. Baruch has a pleasant voice and speaks Italian, Hungarian, German, Spanish and imperfect English. She has been missing since Saturday, December 5. Her husband is of the impression that she has secured a position with some motion picture studio because of suggestions of friends that she would make a good motion picture actress, but he has no information that would indicate that she has pursued such a course. Every clue is being followed by the anxious husband, however, and should any reader of the Moving Picture World learn of the whereabouts of Mrs. Baruch it is requested that information be sent to her husband, J. Baruch, 857 Elsmere Place, New York.

Collection: Moving Picture World, January 1915