Volume I: Narrative History

Chapter 7 (1914): Other June Releases

The Toy Shop, a Princess film released on June 12th, featured Muriel Ostriche and Boyd Marshall supported by three infants who earlier had been on stage in vaudeville and on the screen for Biograph: Maurice Steuart, Jr., and his two sisters, Loel and Eldean. Next on the schedule was The Girl Across the Hall, issued on June 14th, which included just one of the Fairbanks twins. Reel Life named her as Marion, while The Moving Picture World identified her as Madeline. Reviews were favorable, but The Morning Telegraph, concentrating on more important films, did no more than give two sentences about the plot of this one-reeler: "The girl across the hall makes a man of a young tough. When he fully reclaimed himself he asks her to be his partner through life, and she accepts."

Remorse, released in two reels on June 16th, was directed by James Durkin and featured Morris Foster as Jack and Ethel Jewett as May. Jack, ostensibly a gray, aged man, tells his listeners at the Salvation Army about a young man who lived a life of alcohol and dissipation, finally losing his wife and child. Eventually reforming, the man decided to help others by relating his own experiences. The film concluded with a surprise ending: "'That is my story,' ended the gray-haired man. 'I look as if I were 50 but I am 35. I am Jack.'"

The Man Without Fear, issued on June 19th, was reviewed by The Moving Picture World: "This pictureplay, featuring Mignon Anderson, contains many scenes of intensified interest. The photography is particularly clear. The direction has been attended to carefully in all details. Miss Anderson is ably supported, and the whole combines to make this a most satisfactory screen offering." On the same date, The Little Senorita, a Princess offering, reached theatres. Sunday, June 21, 1914, was the release date for The Outlaw's Nemesis, a Western subject filmed in Ogdensburg, New Jersey, where scenes for The Wheels of Justice and Beating Back had been taken.

On June 6th the combined convention of the International Motion Picture Association and the Second International Exposition of the Moving Picture Art was held in the Grand Central Palace, New York City. The event was opened by President Woodrow Wilson, who sent a signal from the White House at two o'clock. The Mutual Film Corporation displayed photographs of its players in a flower-bedecked booth. Copies of the Mutual magazines, Reel Life and Our Mutual Girl Weekly, the latter an update on a 52-episode Mutual serial produced by Reliance and featuring Norma Phillips, were available gratis. Norma was scheduled to appear in person but was deterred from doing so by illness. In addition to the regular periodicals, Mutual Movie Fillers, a newspaper-style publication with news releases, pre-written reviews, and suggested texts for newspaper articles, was available to theatre and exchange operators.

An idea of the reputation that a firm founded in 1912 was gaining is indicated by a report in The New York Dramatic Mirror Note of an exhibit at the show: "Naturally, a company so important in the film field could not afford to play second fiddle to any of the other manufacturers, so Messrs. Adolph Zukor and Daniel Frohman, the heads of the Famous Players Company, gave orders that no expense be spared to make their exhibit the finest possible. They engaged the largest space in the building, the prettiest girls to give out their souvenirs, and had, all told, the most elaborate display of any of the manufacturers. A beautiful life-size portrait of Mary Pickford was the piece de resistance; and 'Little Mary,' as she was affectionately called by the fans, appeared in person several times and was always the center of the largest crowd in the building...."

At the Essanay booth actresses Beverly Bayne and Lillian Drew attracted admirers, and Francis X. Bushman's right hand was in danger of being crippled from signing so many autographs, the same account noted. Manning the Pathé booth were Pearl Sindelar, Pearl White, Frank Powell, Crane Wilbur, Paul Panzer, Frances Carlyle, and Eleanor Woodruff, while the elaborately decorated Edison booth had as its star attraction Mary Fuller, except when Thomas Edison himself made a brief appearance and stole the limelight. All Star offered celebrities such as Ethel Barrymore, Dustin Farnum, Upton Sinclair, and Gail Kane, while Eclair offered Agnes Egan Cobb. George Kleine held forth at the booth bearing his name. Vitagraph was populated by its principals - William Rock, Stuart Blackton, and A.E. Smith - as well as by a contingent of players, including Clara Kimball Young, Lillian Walker, Anita Stewart, John Bunny, Edith Storey, and others.

At the Lubin display Siegmund Lubin himself was there for a day, and throughout the show such players as Arthur Johnson, Ormi Hawley, Gaston Bell, Earl Metcalfe, Rosemary Theby, Eleanor Blanchard, Shannon Fife, and Joseph Smiley came and went. Overlooking the proceedings was a huge Liberty Bell, the Lubin trademark, emblazoned "Lubin Films are Clear as a Bell." Kalemites at the show included Alice Joyce, Marguerite Courtot, Guy Coombs, Anna Nilsson, and Tom Moore.

The J.C. Seeburg Piano Company, the Bartola Company, and the American Photo Player Company each demonstrated musical instruments for theatres, while a representative of the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company was on hand to direct prospects to a nearby movie house where one of their products was in use.