Norka Rouskaya (1918) 🇺🇸

That motion pictures continue to attract the artists of the stage is again evidenced by the latest recruit from the ranks of the footlights. This time it is Norka Rouskaya, the young woman who has captivated Europe and South America with her talent. Miss  Rouskaya is indeed a find. Aside from her beauty and musical and dancing art, she is an actress of ability in spite of her nineteen  years.

Miss  Rouskaya was born in Switzerland, and before crossing the Atlantic performed in the principal theaters of France and Italy. Her success in South America was sensational, and in some of the republics, such as Peru, she became a popular idol.

Miss  Rouskaya is making no secret of her ambition to win fame on the screen. In fact, the lure of the silent drama culminated in the decisive step of canceling all her contracts in Havana, Panama and other Latin-American capitals for no other purpose than to reach New  York, the Mecca of the cinematographic art, as soon as possible. Her friends predict she will rival our prominent emotional actresses. Miss  Rouskaya is a young woman of culture, speaks four languages, including English, and her artistic temperament has been cultivated and developed to a high degree.

An exotic, although exceedingly attractive face and winning personality, will be the gain by producers of American motion pictures as soon as Miss  Rouskaya makes her local debut before the camera.

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Exhibitors Are Smiling, Says Goldwyn Man

Situation summed up by Jake Lowrie, quoted as saying “We’re not coming back, we’re back”

Exhibitors all over the country are smiling again. No better proof is needed that the motion picture industry has fully recovered from the recent slump, which for a time threatened dire things. Whether because of the war tax or a depression in business, first class motion picture theaters which in normal times boast capacity business played to so many empty seats for four  or five  months that an exhibitor without a complaint was a rarity.

Now things are changed, according to a Goldwyn traveling publicity representative recently returned from a tour that brought him into close contact with showmen in every section of the East and Northwest and a part of the Southwest. Boson, he found, was the first big eastern city to outlive the slump.

“We’re not coming back, we’re back,” replied Jacob Lourie, the big Goldwyn exhibitor in the Hub, to the publicity man’s query. Similar conditions were noted at Providence, Lowell, Springfield and Brockton. Lynn and Portland are just convalescing, their full recovery being retarded by labor troubles.

Buffalo is at its theatrical best now, the new Curtiss plant and several other new war plants bringing thousands of young men and women to the upstate metropolis. “Business was never better,” said Michael Shea, of Shea’s Hippodrome, where Mabel Normand in Dodging a Million, did a record business recently.

It was in the Northwest that the Goldwyn representative found the greatest wave of motion picture prosperity, conditions in Minneapolis making some of the large exhibitors forget there ever was depression. There, as in many other large cities, the slump was not without its compensations. It drove a lot of fly-by-night exhibitors out of business and removed their cheap store shows which had long been eyesores.

Finkelstein & Rubin, owners of a chain of theaters in the Twin Cities, reported prosperity for all their houses. Their statement was borne out in part at their New Garrick theater, St.  Paul, where The Auction Block played to tremendous business the week the Goldwyn man spent in the Twin Cities. A trip to Rochester, Minn., revealed that prosperity did not pass up the smaller places in its sweep.

Of all Northwestern states, Wisconsin had the hardest time in wrestling itself from the grasp of the slump. It was not until the middle of February that the motion picture boom made its appearance there. La  Crosse and Oshkosh, which suffered most, were the first cities in Wisconsin to note a change for the better.

Theaters in St.  Louis had worn an air of prosperity weeks before the Goldwyn man put in an appearance. Here, too, a number of padlocked store shows revealed where the slump had put in its work. Further evidence of the cinema boom the Mound City is enjoying is the recent decision of the management of the New Grand Central theater, the Goldwyn first-run house, to run continuously instead of giving four shows a day, as heretofore.

A week’s sojourn in Ohio helped to prove that motion picture prosperity was general all over the country. Cleveland felt the boom soonest, just as it had felt the slump first four months before. Eighteen of the twenty-one big exhibitors in the Forest City reported exceptionally good business. Cincinnati is doing well. Many of the big exhibitors there say the slump never touched them. MacMahon and Jackson, owners of Gifts theater, report that while trade journals announced depression everywhere, there was no noticeable falling off at their house.

There was a peculiar situation in Pittsburgh. Apparently only the smaller houses felt the slump there. Complaints from the higher-priced houses, were few and far between. Harry Davis, head of the Davis circuit of theaters, said he had experienced no falling off worth being concerned about and that his spacious Lyric theater had done remarkably well since last summer.

Despite what Cincinnati and Pittsburgh think about it, there was a marked depression elsewhere, but that exhibitor smile, so prevalent everywhere now, is proof that the slump has done its worst. Motion picture producers have every reason to hope the smile will never come off.

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McDonald Goes Abroad with Y.  M.  C.  A. 

John J. McDonald, an assistant of Sales Manager A. Schmidt in the home office of General Film Company in New  York, has resigned to accept a position as a war secretary and physical director for overseas service in the Y.  M.  C.  A.  He will leave at an early date for France to take charge of the recreation work at one of the huts back of the American trenches or in one of the foreign training camps. Mr.  McDonald will have the rank of civilian captain, and is well qualified to act as coach and instructor in boxing, football, baseball, wrestling and other army sports. Mr.  McDonald is a graduate from the efficiency department of the American Druggists Syndicate. He was also physical instructor at Captain O’Brien’s police civil service school.

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“O. Henry” Letter Sells High.

The tremendous increase in popularity of the name “O. Henry” is reflected in the record breaking price of $810 paid last week by a New  York collector for an autographed 1,200  word letter written by “O. Henry.” Although “O. Henry,” or William Sidney Porter, died nearly eight  years ago, his stories and his personality enjoy a greater measure of interest and approval today than at any time during his career. The “O. Henry” vogue during the last few years has been remarkable, part of this tremendous revival in interest undoubtedly being due to the series of O. Henry pictures distributed by General Film Company.

Collection: Moving Picture World, April 1918