1913 - Theater, Film

Theater, Film

Theater: Vladimir Mayakovsky—A Tragedy by Russian playwright-poet Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, 20, who performs in his own play at Moscow; The Poor Little Rich Girl by Eleanor Gates 1/21 at New York's Hudson Theater, with Ashtabula, Ohio-born actress Grace Griswold, 40, Washington, D.C.-born ingénu Alan Hale, 20, 160 perfs.; Romance by Edward Sheldon 2/10 at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York, with Doris Keane, 160 perfs. (it will open at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, 10/6/1915 and run for 1,099 perfs.); The Adored One (Legend of the Old Bailey) by James M. Barrie 4/19 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, New York-born actor Godfrey Tearle, 32, William Farren; Jane Clegg by Belfast-born playwright St. John Ervine, 29, 6/19 at London, with Sybil Thorndike, 30; Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw 9/1 at the St. James's Theatre, London, with O. P. Heggie, Ben Webster, Leon Quartermaine, 52 perfs.; The Temperamental Journey by Leo Ditrichstein (who has adapted a French play) 9/4 at New York's Belasco Theater (to Republic 9/29), with Ditrichtstein, Cora Witherspoon, Oakland, Calif.-born actor Lee Millar, 25, 124 perfs.; The Seven Keys to Baldpate by George M. Cohan, who has adapted a novel by Ohio-born Boston author Earl Derr Biggers, 29, 9/22 at New York's Astor Theater, with Cohan, Albany-born actor Wallace Eddinger, 22, Philadelphia-born actress Gail Kane, 26, 320 perfs.; The Misleading Lady by Charles W. Goddard and Chicago-born playwright Paul Dickey, 31, 11/25 at New York's Fulton Theater, with Forestville, N.Y.-born actor George Abbott, 26, Worcester, Mass.-born actor Lewis Stone, 34, Portland, Me.-born actor Everett Butterfield, 28, 183 perfs.; The Things That Count by Chester, Pa.-born playwright Laurence Eyre, 32, 12/8 at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York, with Brooklyn-born actress Louis Muldener, 59, 224 perfs.; The Passion Flower (La Malquerida) by Jacinto Benavente 12/12 at Madrid's Teatro de la Princesa.

New York's Palace Theater opens March 24 at Broadway and 47th Street. Other vaudeville houses have a top price of 50¢, the Palace charges $2, and B. F. Keith of Boston and his partner Edward F. Albee in the Keith Circuit's United Booking Office present a bill that includes a wire act, a Spanish violinist, a one-act play by George Ade, and Philadelphia-born comedian Ed Wynn (originally Isaiah Edwind Leopold), 26. The Palace has no success, however, until May 5, when Sarah Bernhardt opens for a 2-week engagement that is extended for another week and a half. Philadelphia-born pantomime juggler W. C. Fields (originally William Claude Dukenfield), 33, joins the act in May, having begun his career at age 14 and played a command performance before England's Edward VII in 1901.

Actors' Equity Association is founded May 26 at New York's Pabst Grand Circle Hotel with Francis Wilson as president, Henry Miller, now 53, as vice president. Actors' Equity will set up contracts under whose terms actors are employed, will maintain a benefit system for its membership, but will not obtain recognition as the trade union of the acting profession until its members strike in August 1919.

Films: Joseph A. Golden and Edwin S. Porter's The Count of Monte Cristo with Irish-born stage actor James O'Neill, 63, whose son Eugene has been released from a tuberculosis sanatorium and will enroll next year in George Pierce Baker's 47 Workshop at Harvard; Colin Campbell's The Spoilers with Boston-born actor William Farnum, 37; Mack Sennett's Barney Oldfield's Race for Life with Sennett, Mabel Normand; George Loane Tucker's Traffic in Souls with Jane Gail, Ethel Grandin (produced by Carl Laemmle, the five-reel feature has cost $5,000 and clears nearly $500,000).

Charlie Chaplin signs a contract for $150 per week with movie maker Mack Sennett, who has discovered English actor-dancer Charles Spencer Chaplin, 24, at New York.

Paramount Pictures has its beginnings in the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co. founded July 15 by vaudeville producer Jesse (Louis) Lasky, 32, his Polish-born brother-in-law Samuel Goldwyn, 32, and Ashfield, Mass.-born playwright Cecil B. (Blount) DeMille, 31, who has selected Hollywood for making The Squaw Man, partly because California has an abundance of sunshine (and partly to escape the restrictions of the 5-year-old, New York-based Motion Picture Patents Co., which refuses to supply equipment to uncooperative filmmakers and exibitors while terrorizing independent producers). Goldwyn (originally Schmuel Gelbfisz) is a glove maker whose business has been ruined by the new Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act, which has lowered duties on imported gloves (see Astoria film studio, 1919; Paramount, 1932).