Part 11

Doubtless the value of the moving-picture drama will be greatly enhanced if speaking and singing parts in moving-picture performances, with the aid of the phonograph, have been made thoroughly practical by means of an instrument known as the “magnaphone,” as is claimed by promoters of the device. The promoters are so well satisfied with the outcome of their experiments that they claim it will soon be used in all parts of the country. The instruments are not sound-magnifiers, but consist of a number of instruments resembling the megaphone which are placed in various parts of the audience, and the voice from the phonograph, which comes over a wire, is thus brought close enough to all parts of the house to make it plainly audible to every one.[7]

The following progress of “Picture Plays” has been kindly furnished by Mr. Alexander Black:

1--First “plays,” in three acts, written, photographed, and presented by Alexander Black--1894.

2--Episodic motion-pictures placed in series.

3--Short five-minute comedies in motion pictures.

4--Scenes of travel in motion-pictures.

5--Scenes from novels in motion-pictures (“Vanity Fair,” for example, presented in consecutive series--1911).

6--Scenes from “Odyssey” in consecutive series--1911-12.

7--Sarah Bernhardt in “Queen Elizabeth”--1912.

PICTURES IN NATURAL COLORS

With other improvements have come the admirable pictures in natural colors, all mechanically produced. For some time we have had hand-colored films, but these have required extraordinary patience on the part of the colorist, who had to treat each of the sixteen thousand pictures one at a time. Excessive care was also necessary as an overlap of a thirty-second part of an inch would show the color many inches out of place when the picture was shown enlarged on the screen. The work is so tedious that the capacity of the colorist is said to be limited to about thirty-five feet of film per day; the cost is thus made excessive. And the market needs, which frequently require two hundred reproductions of a reel, render the hand-colored film commercially impracticable.

The machine which now produces beautiful color pictures is known as the “kinemacolor.” It is the joint work of Mr. Charles Urban, an American who went to London a few years ago as a representative of manufacturers of an American motion-picture machine, and a London photographer. The machine differs from the ordinary cinematograph in several important

## particulars. The most noticeable difference is a rapidly driven,

revolving skeleton frame known as a color-filter, which is located between the lens and the shutter. This color-filter is made up of different sections of specially prepared gelatin, two sections of which are colored, one red and the other green. The filter-screen is revolved while the pictures are taken, as well as when they are reproduced, being so geared that the red section of the filter appears in line with the lens for one photograph, and the green section for the next.

The photographs are all in pairs, and twice the number of pictures are taken and reproduced as in the ordinary machine, and the speed is also twice as great, the kinemacolor taking and reproducing thirty-two--and sometimes as many as fifty-five--per second, and the ordinary machine sixteen. Incidentally, to care for the greater speed the kinemacolor machine is also driven by a motor instead of by the ordinary hand-crank.

When a negative is produced through the red screen, red light is chiefly transmitted, and red-colored objects in the original will appear transparent on the copy produced from the negative. Where the next section of negative has moved into place the green section of the filter has come into position, and the red-colored objects on this part of the negative will appear dark. This can be noticed in the illustrations, where such objects as the red coats of the horsemen and the red of the flowers, as shown in the enlarged pictures, in the small pictures appear light in every second view, and dark in each succeeding one. When the pictures are thrown on a screen, the transparent parts allow the colors of the filter to pass through, and the revolutions of the filter are arranged for showing the appropriate color for every picture. This will cause confusion, if, in repairing a broken kinemacolor film, an uneven number of pictures are cut out and the “pairs” thus interfered with.

The successful reproducing of these wonderful colors is largely due to what we know as “persistence of vision” (the same principle on which the kinetoscope is based), and is easily recognized when we remember that the lighted point of a stick appears to our vision as a ring of fire when the stick is rapidly revolved. Just so with these pictures: they are produced so rapidly that the red of one lingers on the retina of the eye until the green appears, and the red of the first picture melts into the green of the next, which does not appear, however, until the red one has passed away. The green selected for the filter has in it a certain amount of blue, and the red a certain amount of orange, and in the fusion of the colors may be seen pleasing combinations of greenish-yellow, orange, grays, blues, and even rich indigos.

The early products of this kinemacolor process were the pictures of the George V “Coronation” and the “Durbar.” The coronation pictures are noteworthy for the brilliancy of the scenes, showing in action thousands of horses, some bay, some chestnut, while others are pure white, black, or of a peculiar cream color, all of them carrying gay horsemen, with bright red coats, before a sea of color shown in the gorgeous hats and exquisite gowns of the spectators and court attendants. The durbar pictures, of course, are more recent. They consist of 64,000 feet of pictures taken in Bombay, Calcutta, and Delhi, where the actual durbar ceremonial of coronation was held. The pictures at Calcutta, showing the royal elephants, are probably those which will most impress Americans, particularly those showing the superb control displayed when, at the mahout’s bidding, the elephants go into and under the water, head and all, and leave the mahout on his back apparently standing on the water’s surface. One set of pictures shows the elephants in the pageant, and illustrates the wonderful color capabilities of the process by distinctly reproducing on the enormous cloth of gold covering the elephants the sheen as its folds move with the elephants’ steps.

In another part of these durbar pictures is shown a sea of color where fifty thousand troops pass in review before the eyes of the spectator in ten minutes. Two sets of the pictures show how quick is the action of this particular process. These are the polo tournament at Delhi and the cavalry charge, the action in which was so rapid as to require the machine to take fifty-five pictures a second, in order to show faithfully all of the movement.

After witnessing pictures so full of interest and so wonderful in color effect and action, one accustomed to democratic ideas could but wonder to see moving upon the screen, on a mechanically revolved table, so inanimate an object as a crown of jewels. Interest, however, was aroused when it was learned that the appearance of this picture was due to the fact that, as a mark of high appreciation of the coronation and durbar pictures, the king broke many precedents and permitted his crown to be taken for photographing to the private studio of Mr. Urban, the inventor of the process. Incidentally, too, the crown was more wonderful than its appearance at a distance indicated; for the company informed the writer that it is made up of 6170 diamonds, 24 rubies, and 25 emeralds, the largest of which weighs thirty-four carats.

Another mark of the king’s appreciation was his storing away in the “Jewel Office” of the Tower of London, in hermetically sealed vessels, a complete set of the pictures, to show posterity at successive coronations the exact manner in which George V became King of England and Emperor of India.

FROM BUD TO BLOSSOM

A rare set of pictures taken by this color process which had not been given to the public was courteously shown to the writer in the private theater of the company. These, which are called “From Bud to Blossom,” show a stream of pictures in such rapid succession that they simulate the trick of the Eastern magician who makes flowers grow into being before the eyes of the spectator. The pictures are taken in intervals of about three minutes by an automatic arrangement which continues the work for a period required for the flower to blossom, which is usually about three days. The speed of the growth, as seen by the spectator, is thus magnified about from six thousand to nine thousand times the actual growth of the flowers. So faithfully has the camera performed its task that even the loosening of the petals can be counted one by one, and in one picture, where two buds of a poppy are shown, the growth of one is far enough ahead of the other to show its shattered petals wither and drop while the companion is left in its magnificence. In another picture the water in the glass is seen to evaporate to one fourth its quantity before the flowers have fully blossomed.

As a fitting climax, to excel in gorgeousness the pictures of the flowers, there were retained until the last a series of pictures of a battle “unto death” in an aquarium between water-beetles and a magnificently marked snake. It almost passes the imagination to see the distinct preservation of the many and varied colors of the snake as it writhes and twists among the rocks on the bottom in its endeavor to loose the hold of the beetles. The thought is delayed too long, for soon after the bottom is reached one of the beetles finishes his well-planned attack, and the neck of the snake is shown where these vigorous little insects of the water have chewed it half-way through. Vanquished, the snake gives up the battle as its lifeless form is stretched on the rocks at the bottom.

[Illustration]

THE YOUNG HEART IN AGE

BY EDITH M. THOMAS

Let fall the ashen veil On locks of ebon sheen; And let Time’s furrowing tale On once-smooth brows be seen.

And let my eyes forego Their once-keen shaft of sight; Let hands and feet not know Their former skill or might.

Take all of outward grace, Ye Aging Powers--but hold! Touch not the inner place, Let not my heart be old!

Then, Youth, to me repair; And be my soothéd guest; All things with you I share Save one,--that wild unrest!

[Illustration]

HER OWN LIFE

BY ALLAN UPDEGRAFF

She paid the landlady five dollars from a plump little purse of gold mesh.

“And I’m expecting a--a gentleman to see me within the next half-hour,” she said.

“Certainly, ma’am; I’ll show him right into the drawring-room and call you. I hope you’ll like the surroundings, ma’am; I have nobody in my house but the most refined--”

“Oh, I’m sure I shall. Good day.”

She sat on the edge of the bed in the furnished room she had just rented, and her face had the look of the girl’s face in a little autotype of “The Soul’s Awakening through Books” that hung on the wall opposite her. At last _her_ soul was awake; she could hear it whispering, whispering in her bosom. Or was that sound merely the exultation of her excited heart?

At any rate, her soul was awake. She knew it, she could feel it, and it made her tingle. At last she had broken her bonds, she had proclaimed herself a real person in a real world. Her doll existence and her doll-self were further behind than the doll’s house she had left. She was free--free to be herself, free to live her own life as her own desires decreed.

“Free! free!” she repeated under her breath. “Free!”

Her very presence gave a glamour to the shabby little room, so palpitating with life was she, so dainty and pretty and sweet, and so palpably young. The coils of her bright-brown hair were smooth and artfully simple, as only the fingers of an expert hair-dresser could have made them; her clear-skinned, brunette coloring showed the fine hand of nature given every chance to produce its best; the delicate, dark curves of her eyebrows, the carmine bows of her lips, the changing, liquid velvet of her gold-brown eyes, were masterpieces of the same supreme artist. She was as fair as an April morning that has somehow strayed into the luxuriance of June.

Suddenly she realized that the air in the little room was close, that the single tall window was closed top and bottom. With a quick rustle of silken draperies, she fluttered over to it and threw it wide. The sounds that came in were not the metallic tenor shriek of the “elevated,” the rumbling of wagons on cobblestones, the whining of surface cars: they were voices of the world. She held out her arms to them before returning to her perch on the bed.

There was such a dazzling host of things to be done that she could not begin to do anything. Her two big cowhide suitcases, standing in rather disdainful opulence beside the shabby chiffonier, invited her to unpack; but she dismissed the invitation with a toss of her head. How could she desecrate her first hour of freedom by putting clothing into bureau drawers? A mote-filled streak of sunshine, oblique with late afternoon, offered more congenial occupation. She let her eyes rest on it, and dreamed. It was pale golden, like hope, like the turrets of castles in Spain, like the wealth awaiting claimants at the foot of a rainbow. For a long time she looked into it, and her face put off its first flush of exultation for the wistful doubtfulness of reverie.

There was a knock at her door.

“Yes?” she answered.

“Your gentleman friend is a-waiting for you in the drawring-room, ma’am,” announced the landlady’s voice from outside.

“All right; thank you. I’ll be right down,” she said.

She arose in a small flutter of excitement, and patted her faultless hair before the mirror, turning her head this way and that. Gone was her doubtfulness, her wistfulness; she had brightened like a mirror when a lamp is brought into the room. The warm color in her cheeks deepened, and her eyes felicitated their doubles in the mirror. Lightly she fluttered down the broad stairway to the tiled hall below. At the entrance to the parlor she paused a moment, then swept back the heavy curtain with such an air as one might use in unveiling a statue.

A man, sitting in the big Turkish rocking-chair between the front windows, rose hastily to his feet. He was a compact, short-statured, middle-aged man, with a look of grave alertness behind the friendly set of his face.

“Mrs. Wendell?” he murmured, coming forward.

“And so you,” she said, still poising between the curtains, “are Ames Hallton!” Immediately she laughed. “That sounds like melodrama,” she exclaimed. “I’m very glad to see you.”

They shook hands. Her eyes continued to regard him with the puzzled interest that wonderful objects frequently inspire when seen closely. There was a faint shadow of disappointment on her face, but she did not allow it to linger.

“It was kind--it was awf’ly kind of you to come,” she said. “Sha’n’t we sit down? Do you know, I almost thought you wouldn’t come.”

“Your letter was very interesting,” he returned dryly.

“I tried to make it that way--so interesting that you just couldn’t keep from coming.” She folded her hands in her brown-silk lap and gravely bowed her head so that light from the window could bring out the copper tints in her hair. She felt the judicial expression of the gray eyes watching her, and chose the simplest means of making

## partizans of them. “I was quite desperate, and after I’d read your

‘Love’s Ordeal’ I knew you were the one person who could help me.”

“Have you already left your husband?” he inquired.

She winced a little, and her brows protested. “You remind me of a surgeon,” she said; “but that’s what I need--that’s what attracted me to you in your book. It’s all so calm and simple and scientific. It made me realize for the first time what I was--it and Ibsen’s ‘Doll’s House.’ I was nothing but a plaything, a parasite, a mistress, a doll.” She bowed her head in shame. The warm color flooding her cheeks was as flawless as that in the finest tinted bisque.

“What you say is very, very interesting,” murmured Hallton; and she knew from his changed tone that the fact of her beauty had at last been borne in upon him.

With renewed confidence, almost with boldness, she lifted her head and continued: “You see, I was married when I was only eighteen--just out of boarding-school. I was already sick of hearing about love; everybody made love to me.”

“Of course,” said Hallton, slightly sarcastic.

“I couldn’t help that, could I?” she complained, turning the depths of her gold-brown eyes full upon him.

He lowered his own eyes and pursed his lips.

“No, of course not,” he admitted. “And then, when you realized that you were--inconveniently situated, you decided to imitate _Nora_ in the ‘Doll’s House,’ and get out? Is that it?”

“Well, yes; but--”

“So you explained to your husband how you felt, and left him?”

“I didn’t exactly explain; my thoughts seemed to be all mixed up: I thought it would be better to write, after I’d thought a little more.” Again she allowed the glory of her eyes to be her best apologist. “I was going to write as soon as I’d had a talk with you. You see, I came away only two hours ago, and Harry--my husband--will just think I’ve gone to visit somewhere.” Her beauty made a confident appeal that he would sanction her position.

But Hallton looked out of the window.

“And what do you expect to do to earn your living,” he asked, “now that you’ve decided to quit being a parasite?”

It was cruelly unfamiliar ground, this necessity he put upon her of answering questions with mere words; she had become accustomed to use glances as a final statement of her position, as a full and sufficient answer for any question that a man could ask her. Nevertheless, she drew herself together and addressed Hallton’s unappreciative profile:

“My husband will give me an allowance, I’m sure, until I decide on some suitable occupation; or, if he is mean enough not to, there’ll be alimony or--or something like that, won’t there?” Her eyebrows began to arch a little as Hallton continued to look out of the window, and her lips lost some of their softness. “That is one of the things I wished to speak to you about,” she explained. “I thought perhaps I might take up writing, and I thought you might tell me the best way to begin.”

Hallton put one hand to his forehead.

“However, of course the most important thing,” she resumed steadily, “is for me to live my own life. That’s what I’ve come to realize: I must express myself, I must be free. Why, I didn’t know I had a soul until I found myself alone a short time ago in the little room that I had rented myself, all for myself. I’ve been a chattel--yes, a chattel!” Her voice quavered; she hesitated, waiting for at least a glance of encouragement.

“I hoped you’d understand, that you’d advise me,” she murmured. “I’m afraid I’m frightfully helpless; I’ve always been that way.”

“My God! yes, madam!” he exploded, facing her; “I should think you were!”

She made no reply; she did not even show surprise by a change of expression; she simply sat up very straight and faced him with the look of clear-eyed intelligence that she had found best suited to situations utterly beyond her comprehension. She waited, calm-browed, level-eyed, judicious-mouthed, for him to explain, to apologize.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

Her silence demanded more.

“I was rather overcome; I was about to take a cheap, narrow view of your--your dilemma,” he explained. “I was about to say that your troubles were as common as dirt, and that you were wrong to take them so idealistically, and not to realize the simplest fundamentals, of--. Women are going through a period of readjustment just now, of course. Your troubles probably aren’t much greater than those of any woman, or man, who goes out to hunt a job. You don’t need to smash things, to kick up a row.”

She watched, with the penetrating gaze of a Muse, his half-disgusted attempts to be polite. She had not the slightest idea what he was driving at; she merely understood that only his regard for her beauty and womanhood kept him from saying wild, irrational things. It occurred to her that he might be mentally unbalanced; geniuses often were.

“Look here,” he continued, growing increasingly excited under her look of beautiful, understanding aloofness, “wouldn’t it be a good thing if you decided, before beginning to live your own life, just what sort of life your own life is--what you want to make of it? You’re breaking away from a beastly artificial environment; aren’t you afraid you’ll have as hard a time as, say, a pet canary turned out to make a living among the sparrows? Besides, canaries are quite as useful as sparrows.”

“I hardly think,” she said with great determination, “that I can be compared to a pet canary; and I’ll have to ask you to be more considerate in referring to my husband. He may not understand me, but he is kind, and as good as he knows--”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Hallton, putting his hand to his forehead; “but I have no recollection of referring to your husband at all.”

“You spoke of my breaking away from him,” she said, “and you called him a beastly artificial--I won’t repeat what you said.” The delicate curves of her cheeks warmed with the memory of the unfamiliar appellation, with faint doubt as to her first idea of its value. “However, that’s neither here nor there. I wish to ask you a simple, straightforward question, Mr. Hallton: do you, or do you not, think it is right for persons to live their own lives?”

For a moment she thought she had succeeded in bringing him back to a humble consideration of her case; he looked at her with something like consternation in his face, his alert, gray eyes blinking rapidly. Light from the window made her massed hair a soft, golden glimmer above the sweet, injured, girlish seriousness of her face; her lips softened, curved downward, like a troubled child’s.

But Hallton turned from her to look out of the window.

“Your own life, your own life!” he exploded again. “Why, you great, big, beautiful doll, that’s your own life--a doll’s life! When is a doll not a doll?” He got out of his chair and jerked his coat together at the throat. His lower jaw protruded; he looked through rather than at her, and his eyes were sick and tired. “Even your talk is the talk of an automaton; you haven’t an idea without a forest of quotation-marks around it,” he said. “If you weren’t so good-looking, you’d be a private in that big brigade of female nincompoops who write their soul-troubles to the author of the latest successful book. Your beauty removes you from that class--at least as long as I look at you.”

He bowed to her, with an expression slightly resembling a sneer.