Valentine Grant with Cort (1915) 🇺🇸

Valentine Grant, whose work in The Mother of Men, the first film in which she ever appeared, has come along this Spring season and taken away the best of parts assigned by picture producers to their leading women. Miss Grant is now playing opposite to Walker Whiteside in The Melting Pot, the Zangwill play which is being made for the screen by the Cort Film Corporation.

Miss Grant will be remembered as the young Seattle concert singer who came to New York a few years ago to pursue her studies in voice culture, but turned aside temporarily to play several roles on the screen for Sid Olcott, who was directing for the Warner company. She appeared in a number of films and then accompanied Mr. Olcott’s company to Europe when he started on a tour across the Atlantic to make pictures. The trip was cut short by the outbreak of the war and Miss Grant returned to America. While abroad she had a number of interesting parts, nearly all of them being of the Irish colleen sort, which were played in pictures taken amid Irish scenes.

When Mr. Cort began to cast for The Melting Pot Miss Grant was chosen for the role of the Baron’s daughter and she seems to have fitted into the character of a Russian woman of rank quite as well as she did into the Irish character. Miss Grant says that she has not given up her vocal art wholly for that of pictures, but she does admit that she enjoys work before the camera very much. She still keeps up her singing, however, and has a grand piano in her apartment uptown where friends often gather of an evening to hear her voice.

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Frank Beal is doing Mismated, with Reina Valdez and Harry Schenck for Features Ideal. He is working at the Jap village near the ocean shore and is staying at the beach for three days, where he is getting a lot of good scenes.

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After about three months’ good trial, Static Flashes, that wide awake and high tension magazine of the cameramen’s club is to continue as a regular newspaper with Captain Jack Poland as editor. April 24th the wise little paper will be enlarged to eight pages. It now is read all over 4 pages. There will be more pictures used, and more news matter printed with features once in a while. Advertising, heretofore unsolicited, will be admitted, but not as a money making idea.

see also Grace Kingsley's Hollywood - Short History of the Static Club

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Our friend from the west, Mr. William S. Hart, came near being killed a few days ago when the automobile in which he was riding crashed into a bank and injured him severely. He landed on his head, nearly breaking his neck, and suffered a dislocation of the knee and several bad cuts and bruises.

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One serial which is going on steadily regardless of full page ads and written stories in the Sunday supplements is the Hazards of Helen, in which Helen Holmes appears. This week the players are doing “Helen’s Peril” and a bunch of players are thrown from a train on a trestle into the water and rescued by the healthy and hardy Helen. J. P. McGowan is walking about now all recovered from his bad fall of last year.

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Brand Blotters, by Wm. MacLeod Raine, is being produced for Features Ideal by Director LeViness [Carl M. Leviness] with Norbert Miles, Henry Aldrich, and Edna Payne. The company went, guided by Manager Robert Levy, about 50 miles from the city over a rough mountain pass to get the scenes wanted. The trip was made by mules and pack train, requiring five hours. Forty-six people went, and 50 animals were taken along on the 16-mile rough trip. In going over the mountainous road 35 crossings of young rivers are made.

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Edward J. Piel [Edward Peil Sr.], ex-Lubin and Kriterion, has joined the big U forces and is under the direction of Albert W. Hale, who comes to this company to direct Edna Maison and Alan Forrest.

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When the automobile in which he was being elevated by block and tackle tipped perilously. Eddie Nolan, assistant director to Ford Sterling, grabbed the block and mangled his fingers in the pulley. He was rushed to a doctor who set the broken bones and dressed the wounded hand.

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Al Thompson, who specializes in hazardous stunts for the screen, has joined the Flying A and is busy with The Diamond from the Sky players. He is going to ride over a cliff with an automobile, leaping with the machine when it goes over.

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Another from Santa Barbara says that Ed Coxen made a 30-foot dive from a cliff into the ocean for Henry Otto who is doing Wife Wanted. The swim was made to rescue a drowning girl.

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Archie McMackin used the open air stage for a set last week, the shot thru the window showing the real outside street, the interior being built at the side of a big building. That’s getting atmosphere sure enough.

Clarke Irvine

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Many Bids for “The Melting Pot.”

State rights buyers and those who have been preaching this method of distributing films will be able to take heart to a great extent through the experience of the Cort Film Corporation, which offered The Melting Pot, with Walker Whiteside in the leading role, to purchasers of territorial rights. It was announced from the offices of John Cort, president of the corporation, this week, that 170 telegrams and a good-sized stack of letters were received within a short time after the advertisements appeared offering the picture in that way.

A representative of Mr. Cort said a big demand was expected for the picture on account of the combination of star, author and play but that they were not prepared for the avalanche of inquiries which descended upon the office. There was a great deal of interest shown throughout the country, much of it being due, no doubt, to Mr. Whiteside’s popularity in the west and south where he was a great favorite for many years before he achieved success on Broadway. The picture is booked for the Hippodrome, New York, May 9.

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Power’s Patents Sustained.

Judge Mayer of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York recently handed down a decision sustaining the patents No. 826,112 on the framing mechanism of a projection machine and No. 959.601 covering the fire valve on the film magazine. Regarding the framing mechanism Judge Mayer said:

“Business ability, finely constructed machine parts and a good selling organization cannot accomplish such a result without a basically satisfactory product. We are not dealing with some pleasing article which, for the time being, catches the public, but with a delicate mechanism which, to succeed, must consistently make good with the exhibitor and the audience. I am fully convinced that the patent is meritorious and should be sustained.”

Concerning the fire valve patent the opinion of the Court includes the following:

“We all know that motion picture exhibitions are attended daily by many thousands of people and we all appreciate the danger which would result not only from fire but more seriously, perhaps, from panic. Thus, any instrument of fire protection becomes important which shall instantaneously extinguish fire and be so constructed and adjusted as not to scratch nor impair the film… What the art needed from an efficient and commercial standpoint was a fire protection device which would also protect the film. It must be remembered that the film travels at the rate of about 16 pictures per second, that splices are not unusual and that scratching either destroys or impairs the film to the extent of seriously deteriorating the picture which is thrown on the screen… In my opinion, it required a faculty more than ordinarily to be expected from the man skilled in the art to produce the Power valve… Indeed, the prior art in respect of this device which now looks so simple but which was unattained by others, is, to my mind, convincing proof that what the Power accomplished in this regard was invention.”

Collection: Moving Picture World, May 1915