The Seattle star. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1899-1947, 1921-03-21
The Progress of an Art
Compare "Way Down East With the
First Movie You Ever Saw
TWENTY YEARS AGO novelty in minstrel and
4 vaudeville shows was the Mhte SCREEN on which

vaudeville shows was the white screen on which
moving pictures were shown The pictures were
crude. They resembled the prescnt-day films much
as the rude bark and rock pictures of the Chinook
and the Swash resemble the best work of Paul
Gustin and Ambrose Patterson.
You saw them in silhouette only Generally there
remarkable in that the ships moved always in
straight lines, and all the shots were fired directly
to the front or rear.
With mingled awe and enthusiasm you watched
the Spanish flagship lose its masts which lay rak-
Iishly fore and aft along the deck Then came the
great explosion scene. For there was depart
ure from the black and white of silhouette. There
was flash of fiery red as if somebody had touched
off photographers magnesium Sheet and you
wondered whether perhaps box of matches had
been lighted behind the screen.
THE SILHOUETTES were merely the forerun-
ners of the actual motion picture. Next came
instantaneous photography, with its Jumpy. flicker
las the pictures were flashed on screen from IN
'front.' in much the same manner as they today
One of the first of these you may recall. 1t was
that well known picture of the Black Diamond
Express on the Lehgh Valley railroad, rounding
Horseshoe curve. near Mauch Chunk Pa.
That was. thriller. sure! None of your present.
day Bill Harris and Tom Mixes three-gun men
locomotive jumping airplanists furnish the tense
ness that the small boy of 1908 or thereabout felt
as he watched that train appear around the noun
tain spur grow ever nearer (while the snare drum
mer increased his din) and finally dash off the
lower right-hand corner of the screen as If to kill
"a quarter of the audience.
Watching "Way Down East" at the Met the other
night, we fell to wondering what persons impress
sions would be if he had never seen motion pic
ture between the old Black Diamond and Griffith's
modern masterpiece.
''Movie stars" were undreamed-of then It wasn't
till about 1909 that the word movie" invented
Laboriously referred to the "knematoscope" and
the 'motophotograph" And the hall where these
were shown was merely store building where some
bright young man had closed out his stock of cigars
or shoes and put in seats and the side of tent
Generally there were illustrated songs before or
after the kinematoscope program A yellow-haired
girl warbled "Just Across the Bridge Of Gold" or a
youth with wavy jet locks and an appropriate trem
olo sobbed his way thru "In the Baggage Car
Ahead"
Admission? One nickel. And no war tax.
If the fare was dime they had to add an act or
two of what those days passed for vaudeville.
THE PHOTOPLAY ART has travelled long dis
lance when such super-films as "Way Down
East can be produced. The cost probably exceeds
the entire investment of the first five years of the
new art
And photoplay such as Griffith's latest isn't
something at which the auditors look in detachment.
1t is reaNmore real than stage performance 1t
is life.
No small part of it is the orchestral music that
accompanies the screening, and with something like
wizardry seems to put words into the mouths of
how convey more vivid impression of reality than
did the words actually spoken by the actors when
Way Down East was popular drawing-card on
the stage.