Wilfred Buckland — Getting Belasco Atmosphere (1914) 🇺🇸
Mr. Wilfred Buckland engaged by the Jesse L. Lasky Company to stage its future productions.
The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company has engaged the services of Wilfred Buckland, who for ten years has been associated with David Belasco. He was Belasco’s first producing assistant at the time when the Belasco productions were on an enormous spectacular scale. He has had years of daily training as an actor, stage manager, and technical director in the companies of Augustin Daly, Daniel Frohman’s Old Lyceum Theater, Charles Frohman’s Empire Theater company and later in the companies of Mrs. Fiske, Maude Adams and Henry W. Savage.
Mr. Buckland achieved a good deal of success as a decorative artist and as an electrical expert in stage lighting. Some of the best known modern devices in stage lighting now in general use. such as the incandescent or “baby” spotlight, were originated by Mr. Buckland. Mr. Buckland is the artistic director of the play, Omar, the Tent Maker.
Mr. Buckland is going to Los Angeles in the near future, where he will devote himself to a thorough study of the artistic possibilities of the screen. These possibilities, he thinks, are far from being exhausted. He thinks that too many of the pictures produced today are either altogether too conventional and made according to stereotyped formulae or else lacking in that element of art which proclaims the quality of a great painting to every human eye. and hopes eventually to produce a film which will stand out for art. He has in addition to his numerous other qualifications having been a painter for many years and he believes that the director who sees the picture as the painter would see it is capable of doing great things on the screen.
Mr. Buckland has carte blanche from the company which has engaged him and he will be hampered by no conditions. He can follow his own peculiar artistic bent and go as far as he likes on the road of originality.
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Grand Junction, Colo., to have handsome theater.
The Rex Amusement Company, of Grand Junction. Colo., has purchased the Majestic Theater in that city and will begin immediately to transform it into a modern picture theater. The Rex Company is composed of William H. Swanson, president; A. K. Wilson, vice-president, and Harry T. Nolan, secretary and treasurer. The exterior will be of flat white stucco with trimming- in old copper. The entrance arch will be 228 feet wide and 26 feet high. The Louis XV style of architecture will predominate throughout the exterior. An unobstructed view of the picture from any seat in the house will be had, and the name of the renovated will probably be the Rex.
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Theater Changes Hands
C. W. Joehrendt, of Campbellsville, Ky., has taken over the picture house in that city which was formely owned by R. Hobson. Mr Joehrendt has given the house a new front. He has purchased’ a Powers 6–A machine and has installed the indirect lighting system.
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$20,000 Picture House for Le Mars, Iowa.
A $20,000 moving picture theater is being built in Le Mars, Iowa. George W. Kluckholm, of that city, is to be the manager of the house, and he expects to open it about the beginning of September, 1914. The new theater will be equipped with its own electric light plant.
Collection: Moving Picture World, May 1914
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