What Kind of a Fellow Is — Blackton? (1918) 🇺🇸

Being a glance at the real human side of the big men of the picture game caught in action

by William A. Johnston

J. Stuart Blackton hasn’t been at all “clubby.” In the language of the street “he slipped one over on us.”

We had anticipated an easy task telling you what kind of a fellow J. Stuart is. For we would have been able to cover at least half of this page with witty — more or less — allusions to Flatbush and the other half with our landlubberly remarks on Commodores and yachting clubs — and Gravesend Bay.

Next to golf, with which we have experimented, we know of no subject so pregnant with possibilities as yachting — -of which we know nothing. Unless it is Gravesend Bay!

But — as we said before — Mr. Blackton fooled us. Mr. Blackton packed his trunks arid those of his producing company and moved to California some long months ago.

And now — why we can’t understand our own rashness in daring to mention Flatbush on the same sheet of white paper.

For J. Stuart Blackton has discovered California; he has Christopher Columbused it; he has fallen in love with it; he won’t mention anything else in the letters he writes back East — he is out-nativing any native son who ever lived.

We gather, from all we hear, that Mr. Blackton, who has been making pictures almost since there was a picture, wonders how he ever made pictures anywhere but California.

All of which is typical of the J. Stuart Blackton that we know. He is an enthusiast — whole-souled in the thing of the moment with that enthusiasm of temperament natural to the artist.

For Mr. Blackton, while most successful as a business-man, is an artist first. His leanings are artistic, his joy more in the creation, shaping and staging of a production than the tallying of the profits. Incidentally, of course, this works into a pretty good formula for making profitable productions.

Mr. Blackton’s bubbling enthusiasm probably comes as the result of a long residence in Oyster Bay — within the atmospheric influence of Theodore Roosevelt. That same influence, you will remember, Mr. Blackton credited with inspiring The Battle Cry of Peace — the first, and first by many moons, of the screen’s contributions on a spectacular scale to patriotic propaganda.

And, by the way, we don’t believe that Mr. Blackton has ever received the full measure of credit due him for his foresight — his showman’s feeling of the public pulse — in the staging of that same Battle Cry of Peace. However, the production shows on the company’s books over one million dollars in gross rentals.

Some day some one will reckon the value of that production in helping to create an American psychology that welcomed the gospel of preparedness, and, when the shadow of war did touch us, performed the miracle of the centuries in its acceptance of conscription.

We know of nothing more calculated to make J. Stuart Blackton mad than the news account in one of our recent issues, which told how Germany is using his Womanhood — with completely reversed titles — as part of its own militaristic propaganda. We have it on good authority that he is going to smash back at the Huns with another Battle Cry of greater magnitude than any of his previous accomplishments.

He makes a dandy presiding officer — for either business or pleasure gatherings. We watched — and admired him — at the Board of Trade meetings; his handling of the banquet to President Wilson proves the latter point.

He is a patron of sport. His contributions to motor-boating were in large part responsible for the present popularity of that sport. He divides his present enthusiasm over California with admiration for Theodore Roosevelt and Sir Gilbert Parker.

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Illustration by: Harry Palmer (Harry Samuel Palmer) (1882–1955)

Collection: Motion Picture News, June 1918