Volume I: Narrative History

Chapter 5 (1912): Dickens Again

March 19, 1912 was the date of release of a Thanhouser magnum opus: Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby in two reels. For the first time for a large production the Thanhouser Company issued a detailed list of cast members, a roster of over two dozen names. Harry Benham took the title role, Mignon Anderson portrayed Madeline Bray, the object of his affections, David H. Thompson was the schoolmaster Squeers, and Marie Eline was Squeers' son Wackford. In the play, Romeo and Juliet, which was included in the story, Ethyle Cooke Benham played Juliet.

As he did with Thanhouser's productions in 1911 of David Copperfield and The Tempest, the reviewer for The Morning Telegraph considered Nicholas Nickleby to be "little more than a series of animated tableaux with explanatory subtitles." However, "it is nevertheless so well staged, so accurately costumed, so creditably acted, as far as the photoplay allows in its short presentation of the story, that it takes rank among the notable offerings of the day." Other reviewers were very enthusiastic, and in a lengthy commentary in The Moving Picture World, W. Stephen Bush noted:

To tell the story of Nicholas Nickleby in 2,000 feet of film and tell it entertainingly, with no loss of its humor and pathos, and to give that swiftness of action so necessary to the successful photoplay, seemed plainly and simply impossible. The Dickens wizards of New Rochelle have, however, achieved the humanly impossible and...have placed a wonderful production in the hands of the Independent exhibitor. Through the medium of these pictures millions who have never read a line of Dickens will shake with laughter and feel the dint of pity, even to the shedding of the "gracious drops."

The following Thanhouser release, The Taming of Mary, distributed on March 22nd, was split on the reel with The Golf Caddie's Dog. Filming was done in South Beach, Florida. Both subjects were comedies and were well reviewed.

For Sale - A Life, released on March 26, 1912, featured Joseph Graybill (who also worked for Biograph during this period) as the sick husband, an omen of his real fate, for the next year he would take sick and die. Marguerite Snow plays his attractive wife. She is courted by James Cruze, who met her on shipboard enroute to Florida. The sick husband, with his meager savings depleted by gambling aboard ship, eventually devises the idea of divorcing his wife if Cruze will pay $10,000. The wife rejects the idea, and soon the husband dies. A widow, she is not the slightest bit interested in Cruze now.

The next film, My Baby's Voice, featured Marguerite Snow as the mother who is tempted by a lover. A telephone operator (Florence LaBadie) overhears plans for a rendezvous and to save the situation connects her with her child (Marie Eline). She hears "her baby's voice" and gives up the idea of infidelity. This picture furnished a suggestion for an article in The Telephone Review, Note which mentioned Thanhouser's use of modern technology. The author stated that there is more romance in a telephone than a pair of lovers seated beneath a cherry tree, and that a telephone can play an important part not only on the stage but in motion pictures. Further:

It has been my good fortune to make the acquaintance of Mr. Edwin Thanhouser, president of the Thanhouser Company...and talks I have had about the telephone with him and his publicity man, Bert Adler, inspired me to write this article and endeavor to give the telephone full credit for the part that it takes in the moving picture industry of today.

After a play (scenario as it is called) has been accepted, it is turned over to a director who must find a suitable background or scene for the picture that is to be produced. Then the permission of the owner of the premises must be secured, the telephone frequently being employed with good results. At times certain scenarios require more performers than are on the regular staff, whereupon the telephone toll line is freely used to communicate with the theatrical agencies which promptly supply the additional people required. The property man's best friend is a telephone. It's saving him considerable valuable time and many unprofitable trips.

Many items of interest are quickly reported to the management by telephone from some distant friend, thus making it possible to secure pictures ahead of competitors. Examples of this are the railroad wreck at Bridgeport, Connecticut and the recent flood in Austin, Pennsylvania. This picture company was enabled to send its performers to the scene of the flood on the first train from New York after word was received by the Associated Press of the disaster. Note The pictures were placed on the market throughout the United States by means of "Night Letters" over the Western Union telegraph lines, and inside of three days after the flood occurred, we were telephoning to the Thanhouser Company the telegraphic orders that had been transmitted to our joint offices over the Western Union Morse lines.

In the moving picture scenes the telephone is used probably a great deal more than it is on the stage for the purpose of introducing characters that could not be introduced in any other way. A story is told of how the telephone assisted in saving much time and inconvenience in the production of a certain film. The scene was set for the period of Louis IV [sic], and the performers were ready to take their proper places before the camera, when the director's eye happened to observe a pair of 20th century slippers upon the feet of the principal actor. The railroad timetable was consulted, the costumer was reached by telephone, and the proper footwear was obtained by special messenger, delaying the performance less than one hour.

Frequently we are asked to loan the picture companies telephone apparatus required for certain films around which a story is centered. Their latest, titled My Baby's Voice, is described in their weekly magazine as follows: "The telephone switchboard operator has at last come into her own - in the films. The great power she actually wields is given moving picture recognition in this peachy heart interest story."

On March 26 and 27, 1912 the Ohio Exhibitors' League convention was held in Dayton. This event attracted representatives from nearly all of the major motion picture manufacturers and trade publications. In a tragic happening, James P. Chalmers, editor of The Moving Picture World, mistook an unprotected door to an elevator shaft for the darkened entrance to a projection booth and fell to his death. William Lord Wright covered the convention for The Moving Picture News, and had the following to report about Thanhouser: Note

I met "Smiling Bert" Adler of the Thanhouser Company for the first time. Adler has a reputation for making a hit with married women, and he certainly sustained it at the convention. Whenever the Misses Miles, Evans, Kessel, or Macahan were missing it was a cinch they were out walking or taxi-ing with Ad. He was so sedate and ladylike himself, he was always good company for the ladies - if they're married and unromantic.

Adler is about 15 years younger than most of us thought he would be. In fact, he was from 15 to 20 years younger than any of the other Sales Company delegates - he's just old enough to vote. SOME age for a representative of so august a body as the Sales Company and so mighty a man as Edwin Thanhouser. Bert is an odd combination - with the morals of a minister, and the good fellowship of "the mixer." Bert bumped the Dayton press for keeps with several unusual stories that kept the conventionites in a roar, the best of which, of course, was the "honeymoon" yarn, in which he was assisted by Mrs. Herbert Miles, and which made him the most sought after man in Dayton for two days. Hats off to the original Thanhouser Kid.