Olive Trevor Joins Gaumont (1916) 🇺🇸

An addition to the Gaumont forces at Jacksonville, Fla., that further strengthens the company is the acquisition of Miss Olive Trevor, an artist’s model and dancer. She will make her first Gaumont appearance in The Haunted Manor, playing the part of a model who endeavors to win the love of the artist for whom she is posing.

Miss Trevor was born in New Orleans, her vivacity and charm being inherited from her French mother, and her dramatic ability and poise from her father, Judge Trevor, who is of American and English descent. After attending the fashionable Ward-Belmot school at Nashville, Miss Trevor visited on the Pacific Coast, where she secured her first dramatic experience. This was in a stock company at San Francisco. Later she joined the Balboa Motion Picture Company, where she played for almost a year.

An engagement in vaudeville followed the Balboa season, but the lure of the screen was too strong to be resisted. Miss Trevor returned to the studio, going with the Universal Company. She also posed for leading New York artists and sculptors. It is interesting to note that Supervising Director Garrick [Richard Garrick] was so struck with a picture he saw of her in the studio of a New York painter that he immediately made inquiries which finally resulted in Miss Trevor going to Jacksonville. Director Edwin Middleton held up the scenes in The Haunted House in which the model appears until Miss Trevor could reach Jacksonville.

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“The Screen and the Novelist”

As seen by George Bronson Howard, who is writing the stories for Kalem’s big new series, The Social Pirate.

“The screen is a necessity to the modern author,” says George Bronson Howard, the prominent novelist and playwright, who is writing the stories for The Social Pirates, Kalem’s forthcoming series, starring Marin Sais and Ollie Kirkby. “He can no longer afford to neglect the motion picture as an important field for his labors. It is necessary both as an outlet for his surplus energy and as a means of bringing him sufficient return to allow him to attempt more ambitious but less speedily profitable efforts.

“The novel, of course, offers the greatest field for the literary worker who is striving to meet high ideals,” he declares, “but no novelist can depend upon his novels exclusively. If his novels are worthy, he will starve to death while preparing them as they should be prepared. Thus the novelist must use his ingenuity and art in an allied craft. It is for the particular worker to find his own allied craft, the one to which he is best suited and to which he can give the best that is in him. I will frankly confess that I turned librettist in order to gain more leisure to write the things I wanted to write. Likewise, the short story has proven the life-saver of many a novelist who is ambitious.

“I have spent considerable time,” he says, “in analyzing the photoplay with the view of writing expressly for the screen. The adaptation is all right in its way, but to the creator, the story-teller, there is something amiss in a story told through a medium for which it was not intended. It is perhaps a sin of omission rather than of commission. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with the adapted photoplay, but how much better is the story that had its birth and development in the mind of the author with the screen and its possibilities in mind.

“That is one of the strongest reasons for the pleasure I am getting out of writing The Social Pirate for Kalem. From the very inception of the theme for the series, the stories have been built for the screen. To that extent the two clever young women who carry the title Social Pirate are children of the screen, and their lives are full of the exciting adventure and incident that picture audiences delight in. But throughout the stories, which portray the exploits of two fascinating heart-breakers in wreaking justice on unscrupulous men, I have endeavored to weave a thread of satire which I believe will be a welcome relief to the more tense moments.

“I am trying to include a slice of life in each episode,” he declares. “The clever ruses and swindles that I saw during my reporting days and in the Orient are furnishing ample material. Were I desirous of posing as a reformer I believe I could almost stand on The Social Pirates as an expose of the refined and sharp-witted tricksters who pick only the very wealthy and seemingly sophisticated for their prey. But my main purpose is to tell a story, and while The Social Pirates will serve its end as a means of shedding light on many shady practices it is the story that interests me mostly. I can assure you that I am more anxious to see the stories as they work out on the screen than any avid follower of the photoplay could possibly be. I have visualized my characters so thoroughly that I am confident my manuscripts give the director just the ideas I wish to convey.”

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Manheimer Moves.

E. S. Manheimer, proprietor of The Film Exchange, has moved his offices from 39th street to the new building at 48th street and Seventh avenue, New York.

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Another Batch of Unfounded Rumors.

The rumor factory was unusually busy last week, turning out motion picture canards. Particularly interesting was the statement that the Lubin Manufacturing Company had sold to Thomas F. Ryan. Almost as much so was the statement that the Triangle Film Corporation had “gone bust.” Both statements were quickly denied by all parties interested or supposed to be. This leaves the rumor mongers back where they started.

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Chaplin’s Price.

Charlie Chaplin has been in town for the past few weeks, waiting for the lightning to strike him. He has several high potential wires out and only such connections as are of high voltage need apply. One line is labeled $10,000 per week, $100,000 in advance and an interest in the company. Charlie is surely bidding for real money.

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Raver to Handle Ocean Films.

Arrangements have just been perfected whereby the Raver Film Corporation takes over the exploitation of all films produced by the Ocean Film Corporation. These consist of Life Without Soul, an unusual drama founded on the famous story, Frankenstein; The Fortunate Youth, by Wm. J. Locke, and a photo-revival of the famous old play, Driftwood, with Marshall Farnum, and other successes now in preparation.

The Raver-Thomas productions, including The Other Girl, with James J. Corbett and Paul Gilmore; “The Hoosier Doctor,” with Digby Bell; The Witching Hour, “Alabama, “ “The Ranger,” “As a Man Thinks,” “The Embassy Ball,” The Harvest Moon, Mrs. Leffingwell’s Boots, “Oliver Goldsmith,” and other Augustus Thomas successes are to be distributed in conjunction with Ocean productions to the same buyers in each territory.

The sales departments of the Ocean company have been discontinued and removed to Harry R. Raver’s offices in the World’s Tower Building.

When approached, regarding the possibility of a definite combination of the Raver and Ocean companies, as indicated by the amalgamation of selling forces, Mr. Raver would make no statement for publication other than to say that the present arrangement was satisfactory to both firms and that no statements regarding the future would seem advisable at this time. He did admit, however, that big interests were working out certain plans involving a large investment and that for the present both the Raver and Ocean companies would continue production as separate organizations.

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Julius Timer with Standard Machine.

Julius E. Timer, for eight years an active motion picture man, has joined the sales force of the American Standard Machine Company.

Collection: Moving Picture World, February 1916