The writer's monthly (Jan-June 1916)

THINKS AND THINGS 125 the first essential to a successful picture." Mr. Johnston adds that the three men who put the story together were especially delighted over the fact that they had been given sufficient time in which to work it out properly before starting production, "which preparation, " he concludes, "is essential to any picture with a good story. You cannot expect much from a story which is written overnight, because the salary of an expensive star begins the following morning; nor from the story of a picture rushed along to catch a release; nor from a picture padded out to make footage. These fatal mistakes have been made partly because the story has been considered inconsequential, and partly because of too hasty organization and a good deal of insincere production. " AH of which, I say again, is excellent sense and a good example of the trenchant way in which this very able editor writes. Most photoplaywrights feel that the. day has passed when they need hesitate to say, with pride, that they are photoplaywrights. The earnest and hard-working scenario writer can now feel that he is a member of just as distinct and worthy a profession as is the novelist, the poet, or the dramatist. But does the fact that — barring an occasional re-issue, such as is being done with some of the old Griffith Biographs — your play will only be seen for a comparatively short time on the screen cause you to leave out any of the "soul stuff" that might, if it were a novel or a legitimate drama, make it live — even, perhaps, live after you? If you do, and if you are not giving your work — your screen story — the very best you have to give, you are building a reputation which must inevitably be but transitory and, rightly considered, fruitless. The writers whose names are remembered are the ones who write because they have a message, who write because they feel that they must write, and who put into everything they write something of themselves — of their better selves. One Sunday afternoon last month I sat in the Hudson Theatre, here in New York, as one of several hundred who were attending a memorial to the late Charles Klein, who, with Charles Frohman and other notable men of the theatrical and literary professions, perished on the ill-fated Lusitania. Mr. Augustus Thomas presided, and beside him on the stage sat John Philip Sousa, Percy Mackaye, William Courtleigh, Margaret Mayo, Daniel Frohman, Howard Kyle and J. I. C. Clarke. Not far from me sat John Drew, Arthur Byron, Channing Pollock, Bayard Veiller and scores of other notables of the theatre, all gathered together to pay tribute to the memory of a big little man who, starting out as a rather indifferent actor, found his life work in the dramatist's profession, and having found his work, went at it cheerfully and with a purpose, putting into it the stuff that has caused millions of people all over the world to laugh and cry with him. His plays, "The Lion and the Mouse," "The Music Master," "The Third Degree," "The Daughters of Men," and twenty-nine others — a notable list — stand as monuments to the memory of a man who worked hard and faithfully in the face of serious handicaps, and whose own big-hearted optimism and desire to help his fellow-men is apparent in every line he ever wrote. In a day when so many writers are working only for the checks they receive, it is well to keep in mind