The New York herald., 1921-02-06

lust about the time his company decided
to have the picture titled they succeeded
in losing the only existing manuscript
exposing the plot, and the man who did
the titling had 70 guess what the char
acters meant by those weird gestures.
A favorite method of wildcat COM
panies for dragging the money out of
the old stockings and down the movie
drain pipe is to advertise that buyers of
stock will have the privilege of acting in
the company's pictures-without adding
that they would probably also have 10
buy UP patrons to see them. School
teachers seem to be particularly suscep-
tible to this form of fiattery, though
it is a mystery why they think that in
culcating the truth that Zanzibar lies off
Africa should make them capable of
great emotion.
Jesse l.. Lasky first vice-president OF
Famous Players-Lasky. has just bowed
before the will of the people and decided
in accordance with a recent plebiscite
to retain the original name of THE
Affairs of Anatol" for the screen version
of Schnitzler's comedy, instead of THE
Five Kisses" the title which threatened
to overcome 1t for a time. Perhaps this
is the first faint flush of a dawn in
which movie producers will call spade
n spade and not something more Freud
ian, so that he may yet live to see some
picture. originally named "Sin," more
correctly entitled "Slush."
The departure last Thursday of j.
Stuart Blackton to London, there to
consecrate all his film enterprise to
English soil, snaps one of the remaining
links connecting the motion picture
business with a past of which the in
dustry need not be quite so ashamed as
some of its vampires are of their earlier
career. Few persons perhaps, realize
that in going to the British Isles Com
modore Blackton is but patterning HIM
self after the homing pigeon, for 1t was
in Sheffield, England. that he emitted
his first loud call for action. He COM
menced his education, in fact, at Elton.
and then--such is fate--had it polished
off here at c. c. N. Y.
After organizing the Vitagraph Com
pany in 1900, he and his eye glasses
were dominant factors in the screen
world, but financial litigation tied up his
money and of late years America hadn't
been hearkening so much to his voice
through the directors megaphone. Be-
sides stimulating the growth of the
movies anu dlulllS III the ueVelOpIueHt OIL
such stars as Mr.. and Mrs. Sidney Drew,
Anita Stewart and John Bunny, he was
known as close student of the history
of motion pictures, and even discovered
that the ancient Egyptians had the rudi-
ments of them, together with the fully
perfected vampire. His story about the
Egyptian movie was something like this !:
can Egyptian king about 5000 years
ago had temple erected with figures
carved on the side, and showing the
same huge man. with the same whiskers
but slightly differing postures. Starting
at one end. the forearm as you went
along was more and more raised, and
the whiskers were turned around more
and more. These separate portraits
were cut off by the pillars of the colon
made before the temple. so that the
Egyptian mobiles, darting past in their
charots, got a swiftly changing, cine
photographic view of the first movie, and
at the end of this reel they could realize
that here was the first true movie star.
with his head completely turned and his
hand permanently outstretched."