Tom Barnes's Blog: Tom's 'RocktheTower' Blog - Posts Tagged "b"

This Week:
Let's Go to the Movies
My 'Little Boy' Thanksgiving story
Writers Notebook: Thomas Jefferson slogan


Hollywood Silents 1914-1929 Part 6
The Birth of a Nation's distribution problem was resolved through the success of the picture. The Epoch companies road-show presentations earned an enormous amount of money and as a consequence every area film distributor made a bid to show the film in their theaters.
Producers Griffith and Aitkens were awash in money and because of their huge success probably became overly generous in the bid process. Their basic contract demanded an up front fee plus ten percent of the net box office receipts. They had no solid accounting rules and the ten percent net figure was an open door for abuse, which has plagued the industry over the years.
One of the bidders was Louis B. Mayer front man for a film distribution agency in Boston. The contract called for $50.000.00 for exclusive rights to show Birth of a Nation in the New England area. Mayer and his group got the contract and did a good job marketing the film – and made a very nice profit for their efforts.
Louis B. Mayer was a Russian emmigrant who became an American citizen and entrepreneur. With his success in Boston Mayer opened an agency in New York, all the while thinking about motion picture production. Within two years Louis B. Mayer landed on Mission Road in east Los Angeles, California with his mind set on producing films.

While Los Angeles and Hollywood enjoyed the growth of the motion picture industry Santa Monica already had Inceville Studios, a production company that dwarfed, at least in acreage, all the other film companies combined.
Thomas Ince owned the land and the film company. Ince grew up in the theater working in vaudville, and made his Broadway debut at the age of 15.
IHe got his start in pictures with Biograph Films as a director, and after making just one film Carl Laemmle's Independent Motion Picture Company hired him as a director and sent him to Cuba to make films. That move was made by Laemmle in order to be out of the reach of the Picture Patent Company, the same trust company that most other film companies were fleeing New York to avoid.
Ince made a few films in Cuba, but soon returned to New York and joined the New York Motion Picture Company and headed off to California to make Westerns. By the end of 1912 Ince purchased several thousand acres of land in the Santa Monica mountains overlooking the Pacific and formed his own independant company.
During the year of 1913 Inceville Studios would make more than 150 films, mostly Westerns and Civil War dramas.
Thomas Ince hired the best directors he could find and through the years his selection process worked out well. Among those directors hired by Ince were Francis Ford, brother of John Ford, Frank Borzage, Fred Niblo, Jack Conway, Henry King and William S. Hart the actor who directed his own films.
Hundreds of actors worked at Inceville Studios but none of them became a household name faster than John Gilbert. Gilbert came from a dysfunctional family that worked in the theater, and owned a stock company in Spokane, Washington. John grew up in the theater and got his training as an actor there, but he wanted out.
Gilbert dreamed of becoming a movie star, but didn't know how to make it happen. At the time he wanted to get away from his immediate family he also needed a job. John talked the situation over with his Uncle George, a theater director, and while his uncle couldn't hire him at that time he did had an idea that might help. The uncle knew Thomas Ince and wrote a letter to his studio in Santa Monica and gave his nephew a reccomendation and introduction. Ince replied almost immediately and said to send the boy down and he'd pay him $15.00 a week. The young Gilbert jumped at the chance, took the offer and traveled to Santa Monica.
And it was at Inceville where Gilbert got his early training in the movie business working as an extra and bit player.

Blanche Sweet was born in Chicago, grew up in the theater and made her first film at Edison Studios in New York in 1909 at the age of fourteen.
In the years to follow she would go on to work for Famous Players-Lasky, Majestic and others. At Biograph Blanche Sweet worked in several D.W. Griffith films including 'Home Sweet Home' and 'The Avenging Consciounce' before starring in Griffith's 'Judith of Bethulia' in 1914.
Photoplay Magazine picked up on her popularity and used her on the cover of their April 1915 issue. She went to Hollywood In 1915 where she worked in several films including two for C.B. DeMille 'The Warrens of Virginia' and 'The Captive.'
In 1915 Hollywood was buzzing with motion picture production and keeping its known stars busy doing at least a dozen films each. Mary Pickford's films included 'The Girl of Yesterday' and 'Madame Butterfly.'
A couple of Fatty Arbuckle's popular films were Fatty and 'The Broadway Stars' and 'Mabel and Fatty.'
Among Charlie Chaplin's films that year were 'Burlesque on Carmen' and 'Shanghaied' where he played the Little Tramp.
(To be continued)
From The Little Boy Series:
A Thanksgiving Story from my childhood.
I was three of four years old and we were living in Bonita Springs, Florida at the time of this incident. It was only a short walk from our house into the Everglades. Dad walked with a purpose that day, a rifle slung over his left shoulder, and I followed along only a few steps behind. I didn’t know exactly where we were going, and it didn’t matter because Dad knew. He didn’t always tell me the purpose of our outing when we were going fishing or digging for oysters or just going for a walk, and maybe I didn’t need to know all the time.
In any event, we must have walked a mile or two at a slow pace; Dad seemed to be listening for something. Then all of a sudden he stopped beside a big palmetto tree, kneeled down and whispered for me to stay quiet and not to move away form the tree.
I nodded and without a sound he moved into the brush. It was so quiet I don’t even remember a birdsong to break the silence.
My wait didn’t seem too long, just long enough for me to start worrying about being lost in the Everglades. But about the time I was sure Dad would never find me again I heard the crack of his rifle.
Then I bet it wasn’t more than a couple of minutes when I heard the brush rustle and my Daddy came into the clear with a broad smile on his face, the rifle in one hand and a turkey slung over his shoulder.
‘Lets go home, Son. We’ve got Thanksgiving dinner.’

Writers Notebook:
The next time you prepare to write a query or even an email use the mindset you put in place when writing a log line.
Use the three T’s as an anchor. Tight, Terse, Telling.
You might also think of a slogan Thomas Jefferson used in his everyday writing.
‘The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.'

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com
http://TheHurricaneHunter.blogspot.com