1918 - Theater, Film

Theater, Film

Theater: Seven Days' Leave by Walter Howard 1/17 at New York's Park Theater, with H. Cooper Cliffe, English-born actor Percy Ames, 33, New York-born actress Evelyn Varden, 24, Cleveland-born actor Edwin Forsberg, 45, 156 perfs.; Seventeen 1/22 at New York's Booth Theater, with Brooklyn-born actor Paul Kelly, 18, Wollaston, Mass.-born actress Ruth Gordon, 21, in a play based on Booth Tarkington's novel, 225 perfs.; Schoolmaster Kleist (Rektor Kleist) by Georg Kaiser 1/26 at Königsberg's Schauspielhaus; Deburan by French playwright-actor Sacha Guitry, 32, 2/9 at Paris, with Guitry himself (matinées only, since Paris is under bombardment by German cannon); The Copperhead by Augustus Thomas 2/18 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Lionel Barrymore, New York-born actor Raymond Hackett, 15, New York-born actor Chester Morris, 17, 120 perfs.; Sea Battle (Seeschlacht) by German physician-playwright Richard Goering, 30, 3/3 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater; A Woman's Sacrifice (Das Frauenopfer) by Georg Kaiser 3/23 at Düsseldorf's Schauspielhaus; The Man Who Stayed at Home by Lechmere Worral and J. Harold Terry 4/3 at New York's 48th Street Theater, with Amelia Bingham, John L. Shine, Louise Muldener, 109 perfs.; Three Faces East by Chicago-born playwright Anthony Paul Kelly, 21, 8/13 at New York's Cohan and Harris Theater (to Longacre Theater 2/17/1919), with Emmet Corrigan, London-born actor Herbert Evans, 36, Cora Witherspoon, 335 perfs.; Lightnin' by actor-playwright Winchell Smith, now 47, and Marysville, Calif.-born actor-playwright Frank Bacon, 54, 8/26 at New York's Gaiety Theater, with Bacon as Lightnin' Bill Jones, 1,291 perfs.; The Unknown Purple by Roland West and Carlyle Moore 9/14 at New York's Lyric Theater, with Richard Bennett, California-born actress Marion Kerby, 41, 273 perfs.; Abraham Lincoln by English playwright John Drinkwater, 36, 10/12 at Birmingham's Repertory Theatre; Three Wise Fools by San Francisco-born playwright Austin Strong, 37, 10/31 at New York's Criterion Theater, with Harry Davenport, Helen Menken, 632 perfs.; Mystery Bouffe (Misteriya Buff) by Vladimir Mayakofsky 11/7 at Petrograd's vich Communal Theater; Fire in the Opera House (Der Brand in Opernhaus) by Georg Kaiser 11/16 at Nuremberg's Stadtheater; The Crowded Hour by Edgar Selwyn and Channing Pollock 11/22 at New York's Selwyn Theater, with Jane Cowl, 139 perfs.; Gas by Georg Kaiser 11/28 at Düsseldorf's Schauspielhaus; The Moon of the Caribees by Eugene O'Neill 12/20 at New York's Playwrights Theater; East Is West by New York-born playwright Samuel Shipman, 34, and Nashville, Tenn.-born playwright John B. Hymer, 42, 12/25 at New York's Astor Theater, with Fay Bainter, 680 perfs.; The Invisible Foe by Walter Hackett 12/30 at New York's Harris Theater, with H. Cooper Cliffe, New York-born actor Robert Barrat, 29, 112 perfs.

Playwright Frank Wedekind dies at Munich March 9 at age 53; playwright Harry J. Smith is killed outside Murrayville, British Columbia, March 16 at age 37 when his chauffeur-driven car is hit by a train while he is on an expedition to collect sphagnum moss for use in surgical dressings in France (the chauffeur survives and says he did not hear the train because he was listening to his passenger); playwright Edmond Rostand dies at Paris December 2 at age 50.

Warner Brothers Pictures is incorporated in California by Polish-born cinematists Harry Warner, 36, and Albert, 34, with their Canadian-born brother, Jack, 26, and their Baltimore-born brother, Sam, 31. All are sons of cobbler Ben Warner (originally Eichelbaum), who came to America in 1883, settled at Youngstown, Ohio, and opened a butcher shop-general store; Harry and Albert grossed a handsome return last year filming Ambassador James W. Gerard's book My Four Years in Germany, produced at New York's Vitagraph studios but will have little success in Hollywood until 1926.

Louis B. Mayer Pictures is organized at Los Angeles by Russian-born movie theater operator Louis B. (Burt) Mayer, 33, who was brought to St. John, New Brunswick at age 3, went into business at age 8 pulling a little red wagon loaded with junk, expanded his junk business to ship salvage, relocated to Boston, fell in love with the flickering images at nickelodeons, acquired a small theater at Haverhill, Mass., in 1907, refurbished it and installed an organ, opened it on Christmas day with a hand-tinted film of a passion play, built up a chain of theaters, acquired a Boston distributorship that supplied product to theaters throughout New England, made a fortune before he was 30, and in 1915 bought New England rights to D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation for an unprecedented $25,000, earning a lot of money. Deciding to make his own films, Mayer joined with a group a showmen 3 years ago to start Metro Films, and he will play a leading role in transforming pictures from freak attractions to one of the world's leading industries (see M-G-M, 1924).

Films: Charles Chaplin's Shoulder Arms with Chaplin; J. Gordon Edwards's Salome and When a Woman Sins, both with Theda Bara; Edwards's A Pair of Silk Stockings with Constance Talmadge; F. Richard Jones's Mickey with Mabel Normand; Scott Sidney's Tarzan of the Apes with Elmo Lincoln, Enid Markey; Winsor McCay's The Sinking of the Lusitania (feature-length historical cartoon).

Technicolor is pioneered by Massachusetts-born physicist Herbert T. (Thomas) Kalmus, 36, and his wife, Natalie, 40, who began their work 6 years ago and this year film The Gulf Between outdoors in Florida. They will organize Technicolor, Inc., in 1922 and move to Hollywood in 1927.

Louella Parsons loses her job at the Chicago Record-Herald when William Randolph Hearst acquires the paper but starts a new gossip column in the New York Morning Telegraph that catches Hearst's eye (see 1914; 1925).