Jeanne Ivers (1916) 🇺🇸
Out of a score of applicants it remained for an Ohio girl to attach herself as the star of the motion picture production One Day, sponsored by B. S. Moss, in New York City. The girl in question is Ruth MacTammany, of Akron, Ohio, with talent and beauty in abundance. Her professional name, and the one which has identified her in this country and abroad as a classic dancer and soloist, is Jeanne Ivers.
Miss Ivers made her first appearance on the stage at the age of five with a local stock company. At fifteen at a “home talent” concert, Miss Ivers electrified her audience with a voice of unusual charm. A representative of a talking machine company engaged her for a year. Miss Ivers sang frequently at the famous Tremont Temple of Music. Miss Ivers went to Europe to study and later made a concert tour of the European capitals.
Combining her ability as a singer, Miss Ivers has marked talent for dramatic work, fostered by thorough stock experience. Miss Ivers is a brunette. She is fond of outdoor life, being a golf devotee, and can hold her own in shooting, horseback riding, and drives her car with the skill of a professional.
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see also Ruth McTammany as Alma (1917)
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Big Writers with Universal
Plenty of high-class story material is being supplied by prominent playwrights and novelists.
With writers such as Harold MacGrath, Richard Barry, Vera Tyler, Elizabeth Carpenter, Reginald Wright Kauffman, Paul West and Irving R. Bacon, contributing to the Universal program, there is no reason for any of the players suffering from the lack of suitable material.
Mary Fuller, who has just completed Thrown to the Lions, from the celebrated novel of the same name by Wallace Irwin, has started work on The Huntress, written by Vera Tyler. After The Huntress, Miss Fuller will appear in Richard Barry’s novel, Horns of the Devil *.
Irving R. Bacon’s human interest, story, Alice *, which received such wide-spread publicity at the time of its publication on account of its sweet, delicate story, has been dramatized for motion pictures, and will also be played by Miss Fuller.
King Baggot has also been provided with several plays which are particularly adapted to his personality, and under the direction of Henry Otto should make some of the greatest pictures of his career. His first big production will be in Half a Rogue, the novel which brought in more royalties to Harold MacGrath than any other of his best sellers. The Haunted Bell is a fine two-reeler in which Mr. Baggot is ably supported by Edna Hunter in the leading role. One Was a Man *, is the title of a quaint picture play in which only male characters take part. Ethel Grandin has returned to the Universal fold and will be seen in the near future in The Thousand Dollar Pendant *, by Elizabeth Carpenter.
Paul West, formerly editor of the New York Sunday World, has joined the list of Universal regular contributors, .and many West Comedies which have delighted the World’s Sunday readers, will be filmed. His first was Object — Matrimony, and his second contribution will be The Society Sherlock. Both of these comedies will be produced by Director Matt Moore with himself and Jane Gail in the leading roles.
Billy Garwood, just returned to the eastern studio after having been loaned to Universal City, has started in directing his own company. His first play was Charlie’s War Brides, a funny comedy, presenting the troubles of a man who falls in love with “war brides” and faces all sorts of international complications.
H. J. Shepard, head of the scenario purchasing department of the Universal in the East, is responsible for the many new writers who have been attracted to the Universal fold, and his knowledge of books and plays has greatly benefited the Universal releases in the past few months. Reginald Wright Kauffman has been engaged by Mr. Shepard to write a play in which a woman star will be featured. The title has not yet been selected, but it is known that the play will be sociological drama.
* [Transcriber’s Note: This movie probably ended up in Development Hell]
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Fleming Directing First Episode of “The Iron Claw.”
The commendatory notices upon the showing of the first “episode of The Iron Claw, the new Pathé serial, inspires Carroll Fleming to rise to remark, “I did it.” Mr. Fleming was formerly associated with the Shuberts in the Hippodrome productions and gained his first motion picture experience with the late Charles J. Hite. He remained with the Thanhouser Company until some time after Edwin Thanhouser assumed the management. Afterward he became associated with the Feature Film Company which undertook the production of The Iron Claw for Pathé. Mr. Fleming has had a long and successful career as a producer of dramas and spectacles.
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Harry Palmer Making News Cartoons.
Returning to the particular cartoon idea which he was the first to present upon the screen, Harry Palmer will now devote the entire time of his Gaumont staff to the making of animated cartoons, which are humorous reflections upon the news of the day. This will replace Keeping Up with the Joneses upon a split-reel with Gaumont’s See America First series, a Mutual weekly release.
Mr. Palmer was a cartoonist of national reputation when he turned to the screen with the first animated cartoons of news events. In addition to working on metropolitan newspapers, he had spent two seasons in Canada during political campaigns as official cartoonist for one of the great parties of the Dominion.
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Hoffman on Tour
Manager of Bluebird Photoplays goes South — tells how he put Bluebirds over.
Mr. Hoffman [M. H. Hoffman], general manager of Bluebird Photoplays, left New York last Friday for a trip that will extend through the South and Middle West for the purpose of seeing for himself the work branch managers have accomplished in establishing the new feature program in their territory. For just two months Mr. Hoffman has been overseeing the job from his New York headquarters and now he goes to get a close look at results.
Regarding what has been accomplished Mr. Hoffman said: “I haven’t really had occasion to survey the job as a whole until right now. Of course I have known every step in the campaign of exploitation, but what we have accomplished through able assistants in about eight weeks surely is considerable, now that I come to reflect with the whole work assembled as one job.
“Where we had the advantage over most new programs was in the fact that we made ready the preliminaries before we announced what we were going to da. That, in my survey of like propositions when undertaken by most firms, is an unusual procedure — others generally announce what they are going to do several weeks before they start doing it; we simply reversed that order, by attaining preparedness and then going ahead without delay.
“We made the first announcement of our program in the trade papers dated nearest to January 1. On January 5 we pre-released the Sarah Bernhardt feature, Jeanne Doré, to the F. F. Proctor theaters in New York, and in the Studebaker Theater, Chicago. Before the regular release date for Sarah Bernhardt we had also pre-released Helen Ware in Secret Love, and Ida Schnall in Undine.
“The regular release date of Jeanne Doré, which initiated the series, was January 24, giving us seven features in our program, to include Rupert of Hentzau, March 6. Right now there is not a community of any size containing a theater capable of paying the price for Bluebirds that does not have the pictures regularly shown.
“This has been accomplished, as I have said, by active co-operation on the part of our enthusiastic representatives. These men knew me and I knew their capabilities, forming a combination that depended for success only upon the fundamental plan of campaign. This plan has worked out in two months better than we had figured; we are now where we really did not expect to be until several weeks hence.”
Collection: Moving Picture World, March 1916