Lucille Taft (1916) 🇺🇸

Lucille Taft, the charming, dark-eyed leading woman for Richard Garrick's company of Gaumont players, who appear in the Mutual program in Rialto Star Features, is an ardent advocate of the theory that it pays to work hard. Miss Taft is a Southern girl. She was born in Memphis, Tenn., and in spite of the languid ease in which Southern girls so typically beautiful as Miss Taft are wont to conduct themselves, this enterprising little daughter of Dixieland is never idle a minute.

Seven years ago Lucille Taft went into the motion pictures. Her pretty dark hair and expressive face made her particularly adaptable for screen purposes and she has been enormously popular. Some months ago she went out in the Gaumont studio at Flushing and asked Director Richard Garrick to let her play extra parts. But Miss Taft was quite sure that it was willingness to work at all times and at all things which made Mr. Garrick think her deserving of it.

Miss Taft appeared to good advantage in the three-part Rialto Star Feature picture released some time ago, The Card Players, in which she played in support of William Roselle. She played opposite Hal Forde in Lessons in Love. At present she is playing opposite Malcolm Williams, the well known Broadway star, in the first Gaumont Masterpicture, which will be released through the Mutual later.

—

Audience Applauds Bernhardt

First showing of “Jeanne Doré” draws full house at Proctor's Twenty-third Street Theater.

The news that Sarah Bernhardt, in all probability, never will visit this country again increases the importance of her performance in Jeanne Doré, a picture in which she appeared shortly after the amputation of one leg. As the first of the Blue Bird Photoplays, this five-part offering, given its initial public showing at Proctor's Twenty-third street theater. New York, on January 6, should attract interested audiences in all parts of the country for many months to come. If there is never another Bernhardt picture, Jeanne Doré will stand as the last artistic accomplishment of the world's most famous actress. It will be preserved as the work of a woman, who, seventy-one years old and physically incapacitated, retained a spirit that would not be downed and a genius for emotional expression strong enough to surmount handicaps.

That many people are anxious to see Mme. Bernhardt in her latest picture was amply manifested by the audience that nearly filled Proctor's theater for the premiere showing. There were few vacant seats when the title of the production was flashed on the screen and the introductory appearance of the Di¬vine Sarah was recognized by generous applause. Her playing was followed with close attention throughout the five reels, and at the conclusion the audience again registered its approval by applauding.

An analysis of the merits and effects of the photoplay, Jeanne Doré, adapted from a stage work of the same name by Tristan Bernard, is unnecessary. According to American standards it reveals a few deficiencies, but in supplying Mme. Bernhardt with a character of strong sympathetic appeal the main purpose is served. Here is an instance where the player and not the play is most emphatically the thing. The theme is mother love, a mother love so intense that no amount of suffering, no ingratitude or coolness on the part of the loved one, serves to lessen its fervor. Mme. Bernhardt portrays a woman capable of any self-sacrifice, first for the worthless husband who gambles away his money and his wife's jewels; then for the son who inherits the wild traits of his father.

The story is so devised, with the series of tragedies all calculated to bring sorrow to the unselfish mother, that there is no break in the sympathetic appeal. And Mme. Bernhardt's acting brings out all the poignancy of a ruined life. She expresses much by quick, characteristic movements oi her hands, by instinctive gestures that never fail to convey a meaning, and in the more tragic moments of the story her facial expressions give a wonderful revelation of the feelings of the tortured mother. So great is the skill of the great tragedienne that an audience almost loses sight of the limitations imposed by physical infirmity. Most of her scenes are played while seated in a chair, or leaning against a convenient support, and on the few occasions that she does walk, her feeble steps are aided by other actors.

Possessing a cumulative emotional power, the picture reaches its most impressive moments in the tragic scenes preceding the execution pf Jacques and in the actual execution, giving a quite startling view of a guillotine in operation. The company in support of Mme. Bernhardt is adequate, with the exception of a young woman who suggests little save emotional and physical coldness when the character demands the reverse.

An unexpected feature of the program which included the first showing of Jeanne Doré at Proctor's was the appearance of Florence Lawrence on the stage. She was introduced by Jack Edwards as a member of the Universal Company's feature organization and the audience expressed its hearty approval of her return to photoplays.

—

Scene from Jeanne Doré (Blue Bird).

—

Mutual's six-a-week.

 New schedule commences January 17 with some interesting features.

The six-features-a-week releasing schedule of the Mutual Film Corporation will be ushered in January 17, with the five-part American, Mutual Masterpicture, De Luxe Edition, featuring Charlotte Burton and William Russell, entitled The Thoroughbred. Following upon the appearance of this Masterpicture, De Luxe Edition, The Five Faults of Flo, a Thanhouser five-reeler, featuring Florence La Badie, and The Bait, a Horsley production of similar length, starring Betty Harte and William Clifford, will be shown the same week. The Thanhouser Masterpicture will be released on January 22, 1916, Wednesday, and The Bait on Friday, January 22.

While it is the decision of the Mutual, as announced, to increase the output of two three-reel pictures to a three-a-week, in addition to the three Masterpictures De Luxe, only one of the three-reelers will be released the week of January 17.

The Phantom Witness, a Thanhouser production, in which Kathryn Adams and Edwin Stanley are cast for the leads, will appear on January 19.

In the two following weeks, two of the three-reel features will be put out. In the fourth week of the Mutual's new policy, which is the week of February 7, the Mutual will have struck its three-reeler pace.

The Mutual Masterpictures, De Luxe Edition, which will constitute the Mutual's release of the second week, are As a Woman Sows (Gaumont), Lord Loveland Discovers America (American) and Betrayed (Horsley). The two three-reel features of the same week will be The Burglars’ Picnic (Thanhouser) and The Smugglers of Santa Cruz (Mustang).

Collection: Moving Picture World, January 1916