Lost1915FalstaffOne reelComedy

Movie Fans

Name: Movie Fans
Genre: Comedy
Released: 1915-04-30

Also released as Dreams of Greatness

No copy you can watch online. No print is known to survive. What follows is what does: the release, the cast, the story, and what the trade press said at the time.

The story

“A young clerk and a stenographer meet in a movie theatre. They fall in love and marry. They have been drawn together by common ambitions. He dreams of being a successful scenario writer, and she of starring on the screen. But, as time passes, their hopes are not realized. Instead of fame, the girl receives the honest love of her young husband, and the clerk is grateful to be able to keep a job and support his devoted wife. When their baby daughter is born, all dreams of wealth and glory pass out of their heads forever. And they agree that for them ‘future greatness’ is bound up with the health and happiness of their little Laura.”

Summary from Reel Life · 17 April 1915

What the papers said

2 reviews · 1 advertisement

“A slight comedy offering, showing how two people meet at a moving picture theatre. He dreams of being a great scenario writer, she of becoming an actress. Billy Sullivan and Lorraine Huling play the lovers. Rather pleasing for a light subject.”

The Moving Picture World · 15 May 1915

Read in full · 1 min

“The idea behind this 1,000 foot refined comedy is a good one, so good, in fact, and so well presented, that is one is liable to overlook the good looks of the leading characters, Lorraine Huling and Harry Sullivan. What is more, it is all about the picture industry itself. And it is highly imaginative. He goes to the picture show and imagines himself as the author of the films, while the girl next to him, who has histrionic aspirations, pictures herself as the leading lady of the picture she is viewing. This imaginative material, of course, gives play to some very excellent dissolve work, and plays the two young people, who eventually marry and lead a normal domestic existence, very much into the camera’s eye. It is another of the acceptable Falstaff comedies.”

The New York Dramatic Mirror · 12 May 1915

1 May 1915The Moving Picture World · signed by Edwin Thanhouser1 min

“On April 30th, which is Friday, the Falstaff Comedy Day, I release the Falstaff comedy in one reel entitled The Movie Fans. I’m not going to say a word about this, but if it is not what I told you Falstaff Comedies will be, I want you to do the talking to me—and go as strong as you like! That’s all!”

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Cast and crew

Director: Arthur Ellery
Cast: Billy Sullivan as the shipping clerk
: Ernest C. Warde
: George Platt
: James Dunne
: James J. Dunne
: Lorraine Huling as the stenographer

Every name opens that person's page, with each film they appear in and which of them you can watch.

Watch instead

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1915 · Same directorMme. Blanche, Beauty Doctor

More about this film

Bowers’ notes: “The” was added to the beginning of the title in numerous notices. 2. In a review in The New York Dramatic Mirror, May 12, 1915, Billy Sullivan was listed incorrectly as “Harry” Sullivan.

From Volume II: Filmography of Q. David Bowers’ Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, reproduced with permission and unchanged. Read the history of 1915 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “Movie Fans”. thanhouser.org/films/movie-fans/

Where a print is held

Held by: No print known