EDISON THINKS THE STAGE IS DOOMED

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 31, 6 February 1913, Page 11

EDISON THINKS THE STAGE IS DOOMED

RESULT OF NEW TALKING PIC TURES. Thomas A. Edison said on the 6th January that he believed the end of the present legitimate stage at. hand as a result of his newest invention, the talkiug motion-pic-ture machine, called tho kinetophone, which proved successful in a demonstration held a few days before. The inventor explained why he thinks the present two-doll&r show must give way to a cheaper form of amusement, which he declared will give almost as much as the other for one-twentieth of tho price. There will be no more barnstormers either, because no one will be willing to pay for secondclass acting when the foremost stars are perfecting for the "Taleuies" and can be seen and heard for a dime. The invetitor said, at the Edison plant in West Orange, N.J. : "We want democracy in our amusements. It is safe to say that otily one out of every fifty persons in the United States has any real right to spend the price asked for a theatre ticket. What chance has a workingman for amusement whose income is from two to three dollars a day ? No chance at all, except at the motion pictures, and the fact that 15,000,000 a day see motion-pictures in tho United States shows the poor realise this. "Actors wilt have to leave the legitimate I stage to work for the 'movies' in order to j get any money. This is all the better for them. They can live in orie place all the year round and barn-storming will coase automatically when no one waftts to pay several times the aniouhfc of a movieß show for some inferior production of , a stale play. „ "They will b& able to lead ft normal homejife. I can see nothing in the futura but big studios, centralised perhaps in New York, employing all the *otors all the year round and at a better figure than they now get.''

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