Mahlon Hamilton (1917) 🇺🇸

Mahlon Hamilton, who has made an enviable reputation for himself in the legitimate drama and in the motion picture world, is adding to his laurels by his excellent work as Jack Ramsey, the secret-service operative, who is the hero of The Hidden Hand, the Pathé serial which will be released in the early winter.

The Hidden Hand is known as Pathé’s four-star serial in which Miss Doris Kenyon is the bright particular star, while Sheldon Lewis, Miss Arline Pretty and Mahlon Hamilton are the featured members of the cast.

Mr. Hamilton has been on the stage for ten years and is known throughout the country as one of the most polished of the younger actors. He began his stage career in At Yale, where he put over the “college hero stuff,” as he himself describes it. Then he played with Jessie Bonstelle in The Great Question. After that he was in the cast of The Chaperon, the play with which Maxine Elliott opened her playhouse.

After playing in Charles Frohman’s production of Israel, he spent a season in vaudeville with William H. Thompson in a sketch called For Love’s Sweet Sake. He next played an important part in Over Night, after which he made his debut in pictures with the Kinemacolor company in California. He was then selected by Blanche Ring for a leading part in Claudia Smiles.

Motion picture fans who were struck with the part of Paul in Three Weeks, will have the chance of seeing their idol as Jack Ramsey, as Mr. Hamilton enacted that role for the camera. He also played in The Heart of a Painter, with Olga Petrova, and in Final Judgment, with Ethel Barrymore. He played the lead in pictures opposite Gail Kane in New Mexico and later did a picture with Marguerite Clarke, called Mollie-Make-Believe.

After the picture with Miss Clarke, he signed to play opposite Madam Olga Petrova, and played the lead with her in the following pictures: The Eternal Question, Extravagance, Bridges Burned, Black Butterfly, Silence Sellers, Unto the Death, The Fall of Magdalene, and other successful pictures. After his engagement with Madam Petrova he played in several Lasky features, among them An Undying Flame, Law of the Land and Exiled. He is well and favorably known for his work in stock throughout the United States, having been a member of stock companies in Washington, D. C.; Albany, N. Y; Schenectady, N. Y; Troy, N. Y; and Dayton, Ohio

This is the first serial in which Hamilton has appeared, and he says it is more interesting than ordinary pictures. He says there is always something doing and time never hangs heavy on his hands.

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Kaplan Returning to Moscow

Russian producer to install American laboratory methods in his studios

With plans completed for the release in the United States of the screen productions of the Moscow Art Theatre, N. S. Kaplan, president of the Russian Art Film Corporation, has engaged passage from Vancouver for October 25, and will return to Moscow to continue the production of film features for the American market. Unless government obstacles intervene, he will have in his party a combination studio and laboratory manager and a cameraman, thereby assuring the continuation of the Russian repertory under the best possible auspices. The launching of the repertory in America has been a tremendous task because of the handicap of cutting and titling the pictures in New York, thousands of miles from the base of production. This handicap will be eliminated under the new programme, and the features will arrive in America ready for release.

As intimated last week, Mr. Kaplan has obtained the co-operation of one of the most important distributing organizations in this country to market his productions. With a year’s supply of features on hand before any release is made it is the intention of Mr. Kaplan and his associates in America to institute a program of one release a week. In addition to this program, later there will be a series of special features under the sole direction of Mme. Sophie Kaplan.

Mme. Kaplan was directing a chain of superior motion picture theatres in Russia when Mr. Kaplan began to market there the productions of the Moscow Art Theatre. Their marriage followed, and soon afterward, when the government accepted her offer to use her theatres as barracks for soldiers, they came to America. During the months that they have been here Mme. Kaplan has spent the greater part of her time in study of the American film industry, from production to distribution and presentation. She has read dozens of scenarios, but of one thing she is determined, she will stick to Russian stories.

“After reading many, many scenarios written by American authors,” said Mme. Kaplan, “I am convinced that best results will be obtained by adhering to our previous policy of Russian stories for Russian stars. After all, the fundamental emotions are international and I believe that American playgoers will welcome the tense, dramatic plots and the quiet but effective methods of our stars. But I am also convinced that the best results can be obtained by a combination of our resources and yours. To achieve this result Mr. Kaplan and I have decided to install American laboratory methods in our studios. An American cameraman and laboratory manager to superintend the photography and the cutting and titling of our features should result in 100 per cent efficiency.

“While Mr. Kaplan devotes his attention to the production of one five or six reel picture a week, I intend to produce one extraordinary feature a month. Both series will be released in America by the same distributing organization.

To this Mr. Kaplan adds that he expects to do for his American associates in Russia what they are going to do for him in this country. There will be an exchange of features and the first hand knowledge of each individual will be utilized in the production of such features as will have a consistent appeal in both the oldest and the newest republics.

Mr. Kaplan has maintained ever since he arrived in New York last spring that there was a splendid opportunity in Russia for the marketing of the right the kind of American films.

“The time is not far distant when America and Russia will be working side by side for the achievement and advancement of the most popular expression of art — the motion picture.”

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Shift in Fox Releases.

A change just made in the monthly schedule of William Fox’s special features results in setting back one week each of the pictures originally scheduled for October. The revised order of releases places A Rich Man’s Plaything for the week of September 30 instead of Conscience. Following is the new schedule:

October 7, Gladys Brockwell in Conscience; October 14, Virginia Pearson in Thou Shalt Not Steal; October 21, George Walsh in This is the Life; October 28, June Caprice in Miss U. S. A..

Two Standard Pictures will he issued. These are When a Man Sees Red (October 7), William Farnum’s superb melodramatic vehicle, and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, the second of the Fox Kiddies productions, which opened so successfully at the Globe theater, on Broadway.

Collection: Moving Picture World, October 1917