New-York tribune., 1919-02-23
Why Not The Factory
System in Play-Making?

school for a living, making occasional
attempts on plays in his spare time,
but this determined him to gamble
everything on his belief that he could
write plays.
But the nature Of his product had to
be determined cold bloodedly at the
start-whether he would be suicidally
courageous and write from the inspira-
ton of his immersion in Sudermann.
Strindberg and Ibsen, and so revert
automatically back to school teachinp.
or whether to learn to write for the
market. Though he was young he was
discreet, and calmly scrapped the in
'eliectuals and picked George M. Cohan
Tor his model But if you think it
LOOKS easy to write like George NJ.
Cohan, try it. The substance Of the
American successful play may be light,
but It's technique is tricky Shipman
tound he had to learn a new alphabet
Dy which to try it; and so greatly was
ne animated by the commendable de-
sire to succeed that he put all his con-
siderable stock of patience, shrewdness
and enterprise to the task of learning
1t. In the fifteen years that have
elapsed between that decision and h;s
arrival this year as one of Broadway's
most successful playwrights he has
written nearly fifteen plays. -Four of
them were done in collaboration with
Julie Lippman. They met chiefly with
indifferent success, but out of each he
has distilled something for his bag of
tricks. The mystery of popular success
has yielded up its secrets to him one
by one, until now he comes as close to
having the formula for the American
popular play as is possible.
Now, having perfected the mechanics
OIL production, Shipman is prepared for
the next logical step-which is GUAM
tity production. How inefficient to
merely produce play at a time. when
the same principle is applicable to
many plays The backward individual
lstlc system of the theatre needs to be
revised IN favor of the progressive fac
tory idea. How, then, can we keen our
forty-five theatres filled with PLAYS?
Shlpman is working out his idea now
IN this manner. He has plotted out
the ideas for four plays, which he has
turned over to four collaborators.
With each collaboration he sketches ont
the rise of the action in each scene,
leaving him to clothe the skeleton with
dialogue and incident. After this has
been successfully accomplished with
each collaboration he returns to the
first one for revision of what has
been done. In this way he is the direct
ing intelligence, he is relieved of rou-
tine work and is enabled to make four
plays yield royalties where only one
yielded it before. Of course, four is a
small number of plays to start with.
But there is no reason why they cannot
be produced in even larger quantities.
Surely no business man can regard the
arts disrespectfully after this!
Mr.. Shipman reached languidly into
a drawer and brought out contract.
which he contemplated thoughtfully.
They offer me ten thousand dollars
for scenario" he remarked. 81 of
fered them the same series of seen
arios three years ago at a thousand
dollars apiece and was refused bv
them. l believe l shall not sell them
for Jess than fifteen thousand apiece"
But with all this glittering achieve
ment, Mr.. Shipman is burdened by an
unsatisfed longing to write an intel
lectual play. In it, we suspect, Mr..
Shipman will feel himself under no