Waldo Walker Becomes Assistant Director (1916) 🇺🇸
Waldo Walker, formerly of the publicity department of the Oliver Morosco Photoplay Company studios in Los Angeles, has been made assistant to Director Frank Lloyd. Mr. Walker has had a varied career, starting out as a newspaper and magazine writer.
He “broke into” the Century Magazine with his first story while a student at the University of Chicago, and subsequently contributed to various eastern magazines, being perhaps best known for his “Green Book” series of stories on “Sammy’s,” a noted Chicago theatrical café, which he wrote under the name of “Bailey Lane.”
At College Walker was a member of the Dramatic Club of the University of Chicago, and appeared in both amateur and professional theatrical productions. At night he worked as manager of the Chicago Telephone Company, and on leaving college his employers induced him to abandon an artistic career by appointing him day manager of the north side exchanges. Unable, however, to resist the lure of the footlights, Walker returned to the stage, going out with the eastern road company of A Stubborn Cinderella, the musical hit of a few seasons ago.
After various engagements, and also further excursions in the newspaper and magazine field, he came to the Pacific coast and went into the motion picture field by becoming connected with the Morosco film offices.
Waldo Walker has made many friends in the business during his short career in filmdom and receives the hearty well wishes from all. His first work as Assistant Director commenced with the production of the Anna Held subject, Madame la Presidente.
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Zukor Raps Sex Plays
President of Famous Players Film Company discusses method of discovering what the public wants.
“There is just one way of determining what the public wants,” said Adolph Zukor, founder and president of the Famous Players Film Company, in discussing the old yet ever new question, “and that is to take the consensus of opinion of as many exhibitors as possible. This opinion should be based solely upon the actual record of the results obtained by showing various types of film in their respective theaters. It is in accordance with this view that the Famous Players receives from the Paramount Pictures Corporation, its releasing medium, weekly reports on every feature that is produced.
“This report covers every section of the country and a similar index extends to the foreign nations as well. From a careful study of its averages, it is simple for the producer to determine exactly what kind of films are well received and those of inferior popularity. There is no more effective method devisable for the obtaining of accurate and detailed information of a really comprehensive nature. No one exhibitor, however judicious or well informed, can ever draw proper conclusions from his own limited field of observation.
“Though the exhibitor can, of course, determine his own needs, it is impossible for the producer to accede to the demands of the individual exhibitor. To paraphrase a familiar line, he must meet the greatest needs of the greatest number.
“The producer who attempts to determine on his own initiative just what the public wants, or who attempts to force the public to want what he thinks that it ought to want, is predestined to come to grief. There are those who consistently attempt to foist upon the public a salacious type of film, either under the guise of preaching sermons or with the frank intention of appealing to the sexes. The temporary success of that style of production has lured several manufacturers to release plays of this sort, but the records of the stage play and of the photoplay prove absolutely that the success is merely temporary and that the releasing of such pictures is poor judgment from a business standpoint. ‘In the long run,’ clean pictures pay best, whether they are comedies or dramas.
“That the frankly suggestive film is a detriment to the industry as a whole there can be no question, inasmuch as it spurs the censors to increased activity and gives the agitators for censorship grounds upon which to base their arguments.
“Our records show that clean comedies and the powerful dramas of the better sort are the supreme favorites today. The lasting success of films of this type and the heavy demands for the appearance of the stars in them proves beyond doubt that the public today is getting what it wants. Any new attempt to gauge ‘what the public wants’ by different standards than those of country-wide reports on the successes of the immediate past and of the present is doomed to failure. As I have said before, it is a physical impossibility to produce films to suit the requirements of any given locality. The standards of measurement must be broad and there is no possible way in which to make them so except that which has already been adopted.
“Individual reports are also made on the productions grouping them according to the star which appears in them. In this way we are enabled to keep strict account of the popularity of Mary Pickford, Marguerite Clark, Pauline Frederick, Hazel Dawn and John Barrymore, and to see at a glance in what type of play they are best received. The constant tendency of our popularity pendulum to swing toward the stronger dramatic plays and toward the lighter comedies has determined our policy for the coming year.
“So far as the source of material is concerned, experience has shown that to be of no importance whatever. It makes no difference whether a play or a novel is being adapted, or whether the subject which is being produced is an original scenario prepared especially for the screen. There is just one point of importance: has the finished product real screen value; is it a good photoplay?”
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Free to Exhibitors.
The Moving Picture World will send free of charge to any exhibitor who asks for it its literature on the censorship question and its brochure on the Sunday Law. Sooner or later every exhibitor will have use for either the one or the other and, in most cases, probably he will need the two pamphlets. We have distributed a large number and we want every exhibitor to have this extra service which goes free to all readers and subscribers of The Moving Picture World.
Send for this useful little library to-day.
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The First Selig–Tribune
Initial edition of the new News Pictorial Weekly is just out — covers a wide field.
The first edition of the Selig–Tribune News Pictorial was released by the General Film Company on Monday, January 3. Though it is rather early to estimate the degree of popular favor with which this new picture weekly will be received a glance at the titles of subjects covered indicate that it will cover a wide range of territory and subjects and should be, in consequence, a welcome number on the program of any motion picture theater. It is in reality a semi-weekly as it will be issued twice each week. A few of the interesting features are:
Scenes from the various battle fields of the great European conflict, supplied by John D. McCutcheon and other war correspondents: the new $8,000,000 bridge at Memphis, Tenn.; exclusive views of Col. E, M. House, friend of President Wilson, about to embark for Europe, On the same vessel leaving New York City are shown Captain Boy-Ed, formerly naval attaché at the German Embassy, recalled at the request of President Wilson, and also Brand Whitlock, novelist, former Mayor of Toledo, and now U. S. Minister to Belgium, who returns to his duties. Kewpie, the baby elephant at the Selig Zoo, at Los Angeles, is shown partaking of breakfast and how lie gets it is a study in natural history.
At Washington, D. C, the pages of the U. S. Senate are entertained at dinner by Vice-President Marshall, while guards watch plants manufacturing war ammunition at Aetna, Indiana. At Revere Beach, Mass., a roller coaster, wrecked by a gale, falls and crushes two houses and injures many persons. How the holiday spirit invades the Navy and how the bluejackets on the battleship Nebraska act as hosts to hundreds of poor children will prove of true heart interest.
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Another London Agent Coming.
George B. Cormack, of George B. Cormack & Co., Cinematograph Film Distributors, London, is in New York to complete some important film contracts.
Collection: Moving Picture World, January 1916