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

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

by William A. Johnston

Hurray! Hurray for what? Why “Hurray” for our Motion Picture Orchestra. It’s getting along famously.

Remember that we had Jesse Lasky for the cornet? And Harry Schwalbe for the oboe? And we thought of calling in Bill Brady [William A. Brady] for the bass drum?

Well, now we have a pianist who can double on the pipe organ. Yes, and a pianist of no mean ability.

It’s Harold Edel — Managing Director of the Strand theatre, New York. The same Edel and the same Strand that you read about in the manufacturers’ advertisements whenever he condescends to say that a picture went over big at the Forty-seventh street house.

Harold Edel is eligible to our Motion Picture Orchestra. But now that we have admitted him we don’t suppose we can have S. L. Rothapfel wield the baton. To say the least, there might be a clash of artistic exhibitor temperaments — a discord, as it were.

But Harold Edel is a real pianist, as the instrument in his office will show, and the harmony he brings forth will prove if you happen in his office some morning when he is seeking inspiration for a presentation idea via the ivory keys.

If you stick around a while, and the inspiration doesn’t come, you will probably be able to follow him out to the empty auditorium and hear some strains from the pipe organ.

And by the way, we have been reading picture theatre advertisements so long that it is difficult to merely say “a pipe organ.” We are always tempted to say “the monster $500,000 pipe organ,” or “the mammoth $5,000 pipe organ,” or some sort of elephantine dollars and cents instrument.

Getting back to Harold Edel we had probably better begin at the start of that manager’s interesting career. First crack out of the box we’ll tell you his age. The fact that we know it shows that Manager Edel has none of the sensitiveness on that point possessed by most motion picture personalities.

Harold Edel was born in Greenville, S. C. twenty-nine years ago.

And he must have slipped something over on Thomas A. Edison and entered this world with a bit of film in his mouth — for in 1904, just turning the age of fifteen, we find him managing a penny arcade on Fourteenth street.

The owner of the penny arcade was the late Mitchel Mark. And one of the most consistent tributes paid the late Mitchel Mark was his uncanny ability to pick the right men to handle different branches of his many activities. Young Edel must have “showed something” as a youthful arcade manager, for he was soon given charge of a picture theatre seating one hundred and twenty-five in Lawrence, Mass.

After six months here, Mitchel Mark again polished a higher rung in the ladder and the still youthful Edel was transferred to Cleveland, to manage for the next two years the Coliseum and Globe theatres. Picture men who remember when the Alhambra in Cleveland’s exclusive section was the most luxurious motion picture house in the country, will also remember that Harold Edel took charge of the house at its opening and until he became General Manager for the Kinemacolor Company in Canada, in which capacity he presented the famous Durbar pictures from coast to coast.

Later he became manager for the Mark-Brock enterprises in Buffalo, serving with that concern until the new Strand theatre of that city, in which he purchased an interest, when he took charge of that institution, which brings us down close to the time two years ago when Mitchel Mark scoured the country for a manager for his Strand in New York and then let his eyes come back and rest on the worker who had grown from boy to veteran in his service. And so New York gained Harold Edel.

With room for but one more fact we might add that Harold Edel’s favorite sports — aside from the piano and pipe organ — are golfing, fishing and hunting. His club — the Long Island Commuters — our own.

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

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Metro Exchanges Report Record

Year Declared to Have Been Most Successful in History of the Company — Plans for Still Wider Activities Discussed

Metro exchange managers are returning to their homes this week after having attended the third annual convention of the exchange managers. Meetings were held at the Hotel Astor and covered a period of three days. Thirty-two managers from all parts of the United States and Canada were in attendance.

Unusual importance attached to this meeting because of the discussion of further expanding the already enlarged Metro policies. It was reported that the past year had been the greatest in the history of the company. Officers of the company told the representatives that the Eastern and Western studios have been constantly busy during the past year and that the pictures made have surpassed those of other years in their successes.

One of the important matters discussed was the future plans for the super-production of Screen Classics, Inc. These elaborate screen masterpieces, which Metro distributes, have played to capacity houses in all sections of the country, many exhibitors heretofore opposed to week-run pictures breaking their long-established rules and doing business even beyond expectations. Among the Screen Classics features made the past year were Blue Jeans, with Viola Dana; The Legion of Death, in which Edith Storey was starred; Draft 258, with Mabel Taliaferro; The Slacker, with Emily Stevens; My Own United States, starring Arnold Daly, which the Frohman Amusement Company made and which William L. Sherrill presented on the Screen Classics, Inc., program when Metro distributed it; The Million Dollar Dollies, in which the Dolly sisters [Jenny Dolly | Rosie Dolly] made their screen debut, and To Hell with the Kaiser, featuring Lawrence Grant with Olive Tell.

Richard A. Rowland, president of Metro Pictures Corporation, presided at the meetings. Others participating were Joseph W. Engel, treasurer of Metro; William E. Atkinson, business manager; Harry Cohen, special representative of Metro All Star Series pictures and Screen Classics, Inc., super-features; E. M. Saunders, representing Boston; Cresson E. Smith, Chicago; Joseph Unger, Regal Films, Limited, Canada; Harry Lustig, special representative of the Pacific Coast; S. A. Shirley and W. C. Bachmeyer, special representatives of the Middle West, and exchange managers from Atlanta, Albany, Washington. Philadelphia, New Jersey, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Des Moines, Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and other sections of the country. Arthur James was among the speakers.

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Export and Import Settle Down

The Export and Import Film Company reports that it is now comfortably settled in the suite of offices on the eleventh floor of the Godfrey Building.

The tasteful furnishings, a cool Japanese reception-room and the still cooler projection room are said to have gained popularity among the buyers viewing pictures in the Times Square district.

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Necessary Equipment

Lucas Set Out to Equip a New Theater and Didn’t Forget the Important Detail

Lucas Theatre Supply Company
Atlanta, Ga.
158 Marietta St.

July 26, 1918.

Motion Picture News, 129 Seventh Ave., New York, N. Y.

Gentlemen:

Messrs. Stover, Babb and Whitmire are erecting a motion picture theatre at Greenville, S. C, which will be opened shortly under the name of the Strand.

We sold these parties two complete motor driven Simplex Projectors as well as a quantity of accessories, and included in this list which we prepared was a year’s subscription to the Motion Picture News, as we felt that this was one of the very necessary requirements.

Their Post Office Box is No. 307, and we will thank you to enter their subscription accordingly, forwarding us a statement for $2.00 by return mail.

With best wishes, we are,
Yours very truly,
Harry K. Lucas, General Manager.

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Collection: Motion Picture News, 10 August 1918

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We had expected to tell you this week the answer to the query: “What Kind of a Fellow is Edel?”

But last minute pressure on the news columns forced us to hold the feature over till next week after it had been set in type and ready to run.

We have the room, though, for a word of apology to Manager Edel for a few words appearing on this page recently which unintentionally made it appear that he was trailing someone else when he presented the three-reel novelty Outwitting the Hun as a feature.

As a matter of fact Brother Edel had a double feature bill — no less a person than Mary Pickford being also on the program.

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Collection: Motion Picture News, 3 August 1918