Volume I: Narrative History

Chapter 7 (1914): Into the Serial Game

Selig's action-packed serial, The Adventures of Kathlyn, continued to draw a cascade of nickels, dimes, and quarters. The race to produce serials was on, and The New York Dramatic Mirror, April 1, 1914, told of another entry:

THANHOUSER THRILLER: The Million Dollar Mystery is the latest of the big serial pictures to flash upon the horizon. Thanhouser will produce this feature, and Harold MacGrath, whose Adventures of Kathlyn has proven such a hit, will collaborate with Lloyd Lonergan, Thanhouser scenario editor, on the stories. The Chicago Tribune and over 200 newspapers throughout the country will publish the stories as the pictures are released.

Plans for The Million Dollar Mystery have been underway at New Rochelle for some time, and C.J. Hite, Lloyd Lonergan, leading players, and producing directors have been holding secret meetings, the object of which was only last week divulged. The Million Dollar Mystery is to be written around the sudden disappearance of an heiress, and her thrilling adventures. Flo LaBadie will be seen as the heiress, and the balance of the cast will be recruited from the strong Thanhouser roster. Marguerite Snow will be seen as an old faithful family servant. The pictures will be in two reels, issued weekly, starting June 21. Note

Other announcements told that a prize of $10,000 would be awarded to the person providing the best solution to the mystery in 100 or fewer words. As might be expected of Charles J. Hite's love for corporate complexity, another company was set up to distribute the serial: the Syndicate Film Corporation, Room 1421, 71 West 23rd Street, New York City. Exhibitors were encouraged to write there. This wasn't far from another separately capitalized Mutual venture, the Mexican War Film Corporation, located in Room 1205. Note Among those financially interested in the Syndicate Film Corporation were Joseph Medill Patterson of The Chicago Tribune and several of his Chicago associates, the most important among whom were bankers Paul Davis and John Burnham.

Reel Life, April 18th, informed its readers: "The Thanhouser Company is preparing to produce a series of airship films. They will be under the direction of A. Leo Stevens, the eminent aeroplanist." No such series ever materialized, although A. Leo Stevens and his balloon were to be utilized in the forthcoming Thanhouser serial.

An important change was revealed by The New York Dramatic Mirror: Note

Bert Adler, in charge of publicity for the Thanhouser company since its inception and for the past year the Majestic, Princess, and Apollo publicity and business detail, has a new post. Last week he was created special representative of the Thanhouser Film Corporation and C.J. Hite with a roving commission that will take him to any section of the country where his concern or chief need him most. The traveling thing will come as a diversion to Adler, who, since the start of the Thanhouser business has practically never left the office where he prepared every Thanhouser advertisement, news story, poster, and wrote almost all the general business correspondence from the first. In the rearrangement of the Thanhouser offices, Jay Cairns comes in as publicity manager and Ray Johnston as secretary to Mr. Hite.

Left unsaid was the reason for the change: Jay Cairns, with ties to the Chicago financiers behind the project, was to take over publicity for The Million Dollar Mystery serial.

The first regular Thanhouser release of the month was the April 3, 1914 Princess film, Her First Lesson, whose cast included Muriel Ostriche, and which featured Nellie Williams in dancing routines. The picture was essentially plotless, so much so that The Moving Picture World suggested that Thanhouser should explain why it was released. The Tin Soldier and the Dolls, issued on April 5th, was a revival of an idea used by Thanhouser several times in years past: dolls coming to life. Reviewers liked it, and surely the children who saw it in theatres must have liked it too. A Debut in the Secret Service, released April 7, 1914, was the third in the Diplomatic Free Lance series. Trade comments were favorable.

Not much ever appeared in print about Too Much Turkey, the Princess film of April 10th, but apparently it was about a newly-married couple who found themselves in destitute circumstances on Thanksgiving. Each secretly plans to make a sacrifice to get a bird, and apparently others helped, too - with the result indicated by the picture's title. "This is a clean little comedy," opined The Moving Picture World.

An Hour of Youth, issued on April 12th, featured William Noel and Ed Brady as "human polar bears" and was to have been filmed on February 18th, when cameraman Henry Cronjager and players were diverted to the scene of the conflagration at the Oaksmere School in New Rochelle. The scenario told of an old man who takes an elixir to gain what the film title suggests. The Musician's Daughter, distributed on April 14th, was from a scenario by Maude Fealy and featured her in the title role. Reviews in The Morning Telegraph and The Moving Picture World seemingly were adapted from Thanhouser's printed synopsis, for the quality of the production was not mentioned.

Increasingly, one- and two-reel films were being passed over by reviewers, who were kept busy reviewing larger pictures, such as The Squaw Man, a six-reeler directed by Cecil B. DeMille for a relatively new studio, the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. DeMille, an old hand at stage productions, was just getting his feet wet in cinema. In an interview with The New York Dramatic Mirror Note DeMille, who was said to have been in Wyoming, commented: "When I went out one glorious morning to take the first stills and to actually begin posing the artists, it felt to me just like it must feel to a prisoner leaving solitary confinement for the open air. Imagine, the horizon is your stage limit and the sky your gridiron.... It was a new feeling, a novel experience, and I was enamored with the way Mr. [Oscar] Apfel went about focusing his camera, getting his actors and actresses within range of the lens, and the way in which our cameraman followed every move, studied the sun, tried to dodge a cloud, edged his camera into a more advantageous location, and then the artists. I felt lost at first. I could not get the stage idea out of my head at first.... I learned all over again the technique of directing, this time with the universe as a working basis...." Learn he did, and well, for DeMille was to go on to become one of filmdom's most famous directors. An acquaintance of Edwin Thanhouser, he was to keep in touch with him over the years.

In the meantime, Thanhouser directors were ever watchful for local incidents which could be woven into a motion picture. The New Rochelle Evening Standard, April 13, 1914, carried this item: "Howell Hansel, one of the Thanhouser directors, was at the scene of the railroad wreck near Rye yesterday. He took a large company and two automobiles, arriving before the wrecking crew, and performed several thrilling rescues for the movie camera before the railroad detectives arrived and chased them."

Her Awakening, the Princess film of April 17th, placed Muriel Ostriche in the role of an office stenographer who attracts unwanted attention from her employer. Then on April 19th The Infant Heart Snatcher, with Helen Badgley in the title role, was released to good reviews.