Lottie Briscoe — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1914) 🇺🇸

It was a hot sticky day; the kind that Philadelphia writhes under and that Philadelphians rush to Atlantic City to escape. And it was a day that Lottie Briscoe chose to go forth and shop.

by Mabel Condon

“I wouldn’t buy anything on a day like this unless it had ice in it,” growled Arthur Johnson, turning from the registry desk of the Hotel Hanover, where the request to see Lottie Briscoe had been made in vain.

“Well I, for one, would enjoy something with ice in it right now,” accepted Florence Hackett and when we started off for the something that would be mostly ice she remembered that the hotel fan she was wielding would be an acceptable addition to her dressing-room at the Lubin studio, so brought it with her.

We had the ice and an auto ride about Philadelphia and then followed a rush to the four-ten train; and I had the disappointment of not having met Lottie Briscoe. But the next day a violet-inked and gold-tinted note from Miss Briscoe told me she was sorry she had shopped that additional crepe blouse, as only for that she would have been back at her hotel in time. But maybe I would come to Philadelphia soon?

That was almost a year ago; and just before the three-weeks ago New York convention, I again visited the Lubin studio. It was just after Mae B. Havey, of the Lubin scenario staff, had said “Let’s call on Rosemary Theby and Anna Luther,” that she changed her mind and tapped on a door that admitted us with a welcome “Come in” from somebody. And the somebody was Lottie Briscoe.

“Mr. Johnson told me how you had all waited for me that melting day while I was buying other things and a crepe blouse,” she remembered, with a warm smile and a warm hand-shake.

I replied that I remembered too, perfectly, and guessed that she must just have been shopping again, for she wore the freshest of dimity frocks with white mull vest and lapels setting off its pinkness, while the frock bespoke its utter newness by the length of its tunic.

“Yes, yesterday,” Miss Briscoe agreed with a laugh that revealed the double row of pretty teeth for which she has long since been famous.

“I shop just once a month; it’s a regular ceremony with me and after I have given a day to it, I’m through for another whole month. I buy things I need and things I think I’ll need and those of the things that I think I’ll need and find out at the end of the month, that I haven’t needed at all, I put away in my emergency trunk — that one that Miss Havey is sitting on and sometime or other, I find, they always come in handy.”

“And that crepe blouse?” I asked, wondering if the irony of fate on that day almost-a-year-ago could have classed it among the-things-I-think-I’ll-need; the while Arthur Johnson fumed at the heat, Florence Hackett fanned with the circular card-board that advertised the hotel Hanover, and I found that I couldn’t wait and catch my train too.

“No — that,” Miss Briscoe vindicated, “was on the things-I-need list.” Encouraged at this proof of kindness on the part of Fate, I wondered if Miss Briscoe would have time, right then, to tell me the things I had come to ask months ago.

“Yes; we’re waiting for Mr. Johnson to begin a scene in ‘The Last Rose’ — that three-reel play of yours, Miss Havey! — so I have nothing to do now but wait. What shall I tell you?”

“Everything.”

“But —” Miss Briscoe remonstrated, then settled back on one foot and the window-seat and began:

“St. Louis gave me both my start in life and my start on the stage; the first was on October first, 1892, and the second was four years later. It was with McKee Rankin as the boy in the play The Runaway Wife that I started and after that there were many child parts and after that, there were years with Richard Mansfield and Augustus Daly and three years in the principal role in Editha’s Burglar, the creation of the female lead in For Fair Virginia, the character of Claude in The Two Vagrants, two and one-half years with the Original stock company at the Orpheum in Philadelphia, and a road tour throughout the states.”

“No wonder the people in Milwaukee know you so well, then,” I suggested and Miss Havey came forth with the information —

“And in Portland, Maine, too. I have a cousin there who says the people pride themselves on having seen Lottie Briscoe.”

“Well!” Miss Briscoe politely exclaimed and after a short pause Miss Havey and I answered, “Well?”

“In 1910,” the Lubin leading lady resumed, “I signed a year’s contract as lead with the Essanay company in Chicago, and I was the first legitimate star to go into pictures, as a business venture. During that year at the Essanay studio, Francis X. Bushman came into the company and he made his first appearance on the screen opposite me. The end of the year showed me what a perfectly good venture going into pictures had been. It also let me know that I needed a rest, so instead of signing again with the Essanay company, I took a trip to Europe. I was gone for months, and when I returned, I joined the Imp company and played opposite King Baggot.

“A little later, the Majestic company was formed and again I signed as lead and this time Owen Moore played opposite me. It was in February, 1912, that I left the Majestic to come to the Lubin studio and Arthur Johnson and I have played together ever since. And that’s all,” she finished, untucking the foot that had gone to sleep during her narration.

“My foot often goes to sleep,” consoled Miss Havey from the top of the emergency trunk.

“I wouldn’t mind, only —” began Miss Briscoe, but stopped at the signal of a violent summons on the door.

“The door’s locked, I guess,” called Miss Briscoe.

“I see that it is,” returned a deep voice that anyone would guess belonged to Arthur Johnson.

“Scene’s waiting —” he began, as Miss Briscoe opened the door. He knew Miss Havey, of course, and then recalled the day of last July when we waited for Lottie Briscoe while Lottie Briscoe shopped. In the months since then, Mr. Johnson has grown stouter and the added weight is assuredly becoming.

“And now for ‘The Last Rose’,” he suggested, after a while, so we went out into the studio nearest the Briscoe dressing room and Miss Havey and I watched a scene in which Mr. Johnson directed Miss Briscoe in the gentle art of powdering her nose and summoning her maid Celeste. Then we hurried off to the Theby-Luther dressing-room where somebody had to perch on the table so the others of us could have the chairs. By popular acclaim the one on the table had the right to talk the most; so she did.

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“Uriel Acosta” Released

The Great Players Feature Film Corporation has released the story of “Uriel Acosta,” in five parts, featuring B. Adler and Rosetta Conn, both being well known on the dramatic stage for the excellence of their work.

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Scene from “Uriel Acosta,” Great Players production.

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Lubin Mourns Lost Negatives

Few persons who patronize motion pictures today are familiar with some of the old style pictures, as they were manufactured but a dozen years ago. Every manufacturer of note regards his first efforts with a keen degree of sentiment. About these old films which are now used largely for either foreign or stock productions, centers a great deal of pride; for in those days the industry had not reached the high state of development which exists today. Imagine, then, if you can, what must be the loss to a manufacturer who is forced to realize that every one of his historic negatives and the first prints of his first pictures are destroyed.

The recent fire of the Lubin plant in Philadelphia, apart from the financial loss of a half-million dollars worth of films that could not be insured, caused Siegmund Lubin many a heart ache which even this stoical business man could not well conceal. Films that were made in his little unassuming laboratory and which represented his first efforts meant almost as much to him as the beautiful productions which cost him thirty and forty thousands dollars to make at the present time.

Probably one of the films which Mr. Lubin prized as highly as any which he lost was that of President McKinley and his cabinet at Camp Alger during the Spanish-American War. He also possessed a valuable film which showed the funeral of the martyred president, as well as some films of funerals of foreign monarchs. When the Lubin Company started to manufacture and produce well known plays “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was one of the first which the firm made, and Mr. Lubin himself essayed the part of Simon Legree and his acting and the entire picture was one of the films which the Philadelphia manufacturer prized as highly as almost any other film in his plant. Among the other important films which can never be replaced and which are included in Mr. Lubin’s losses are pictures of the Pan-American Exposition, the Buffalo and the Paris Exposition, the Galveston disaster, the San Francisco earthquake, the Transvaal war, and the almost priceless films showing the war between Russia and Japan and the bombardment of Port Arthur.

This great collection of films would not be complete without a mention of the pictures which Mr. Lubin possessed of record-making athletic contest and these, too, were all lost. Among these of special interest were the films of the Dixon-Gans fight, the Corbett-McGovern fight, and a picture of the crucial game of the baseball season of 1902, when Rube Waddell pitched the Athletics to their first American League championship.

The most peculiar part of the fire was the fact that every one of the Lubin films had been stored in a steel and concrete vault which was supposed to be fireproof and able to resist every explosive force. Each of these vaults was lighted from above by small prisms, and the rays of the sun, beating through these magnifying glasses, formed a direct conductor of heat that set fire to the films and later exploded the gases, which could not be carried off through the ventilating system that had been installed. With the rebuilding of the vaults, in which will be stored the new negatives, Mr. Lubin has planned for the construction of a lighting system that will not give rise to any such condition as caused the recent fire.

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Stanley Lowry, who was custodian of the Lubin faults, viewing the ruins of $500,000 worth of films.

Collection: Motography Magazine, July 1914