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

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

by William A. Johnston

It’s a shame that it seems to have become an unwritten law that nothing approaching “news” should enter these near flashlight studies of picture men.

We almost broke the rule last week in discussing J. Stuart Blackton when we let slip the news that he is preparing to start work on a patriotic spectacle as successor to The Battle Cry of Peace and Womanhood.

But even so, that news beat was somewhat of a slip of the pen. We’ll have to regard it so, and in a few weeks we suppose we’ll have to give page heads in a surprised sort of way to the press agent’s announcement to the trade that J. Stuart Blackton is staging a new propaganda spectacle.

But this is one week when we would like to borrow the function of the news pages.

We would have liked the job of backing William L. Sherry into a corner and asking him just what he means by his plans to establish a new chain of exchanges.

Yes, we know that is a subject which has already been covered in the news columns. But we don’t believe that the matter-of-fact news stories have told half the story.

We suspect that behind that restrained Sherry smile plans are brewing more definite and even greater than the mere establishing of a new Exchange system.

We think that William L. has something up his sleeve — or concealed behind that neatly trimmed mustache.

And we have only a hunch to base our suspicions on — a hunch born of the impression we have always carried regarding William L. Sherry’s status in this great and glorious motion picture industry.

It started back in the days when we made our own bowing acquaintance with the fillum game.

One of the biggest things we became acquainted with was the William L. Sherry Feature Film Company. Its chief activity was the distribution of Famous Players pictures in these Eastern parts ; but we remember that the hazy impressions of those days used to leave us often wondering whether the William L. Sherry Feature Film Company didn’t often overshadow the Famous Players Company in importance.

Then came the formation of Paramount. Through its executive personnel and producing units Paramount naturally deserved ranking as important — but — film men of the time will tell you that it sounded a whole lot more important when one remembered that the William L. Sherry Feature Film Company was actively interested.

And so on to the present day, which finds William L. one of the largest individual stockholders in Paramount.

William L. Sherry has always had a place up front on the seats of the mighty in this game, and if he is starting something new — well, it isn’t going to be “just another one of those things.”

For our personal appraisal of the man we relied on two employees. The first one we hinted our desires to replied:

“Sherry? Why, he’s the greatest boy that ever lived. He’s —”

“Yes, we know all that,” we interjected. “But tell us something definite. Why is he great?”

“Oh, just because. He’s the greatest man ever; he’s — oh, because, because; well, because if you’re working for him he just treats you so white that you’d fight through hell for him. That tells everything in a nutshell.”

The other man told us:

“An interesting point is the fact that he is one of the few executives who can go out and sell his own product when the salesman falls down.

“Sherry doesn’t have to sit in his office and wait for others to bring home the bacon. “He can go out and get it.”

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

Collection: Motion Picture News, June 1918