STALLS GOSSIP.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 March 1916, Page 3

STALLS GOSSIP.

MUSIC, MIMES AND MOVIES. Mr. Edwin Geacli, who has been on a holiday visit to the Dominion, returned to Sydney last week. Miss Ethel Barrymore has just signed a contract to appear in four pictures oacli yeair for four years, receiving £BUOO for each picture. Miss Ethel Dane has sailed for America. Her original contract with Beaumont Smith was for three months, and she stayed eighteen. Allen Raine's "A Welsh Singer" lias been filmed by Hepworth, in five reels, with Florence Turner as Mifawny, Welsh scenery figures in what is described as a fine production. The other day at Los Angeles, the place the films come from, Sir Herbert Tree, as Fagin, Miss Constance Collier a» Nancy, and Mr. Charlie Chaplin as the Artful Dodger, played a Bcene from "Oliver Twist 1 ' for the benefit of the Red Cross Fund. In Australia there is being shown a film entitled "Her Triumph." In this picture Mdlle. Gaby Deslvs plays the lead and her chief support is given by Henry Pitcher, who for some time was her dancing partner on the vaudeville stage. Miss Minnie Everett, who has figured so prominently in the success of X C. Williamson pantomimes and other musical productions in charge of the arranging of the ballets and dances, lias left for America. Miss Everett is to search out the latest ideas in connection with .T, C. Williamson future productions and the next Christmas pantomime. It is said that Mr. Ashmead Bartlett draws £IOO per night from J. and. N. Tait for each of his war lectures. The lecture is illustrated by maps, diagrams and actual pictures of the fighting, taken by Mr. Bartlett himself. The Sydney season was so successful that the date of the Melbourne appearance had to be delayed. # # # Latest reports from America, dated early in January, state that Charles Chaplin's engagement with the Essanay has run out, but that nothing is known of the future —whether he will go back to the Keystone, stay with the Essanav, or go into a parnership with his brother, Syd. Chaplin, who was reported recently as burning to enlist. George W. Anson, a comedian perhaps more fondly remembered than any other visiting humorist by playgoers who saw him as Eceles and in fifty other parts during the Brough-Bouei-cault season from 1885 to 1592, has just celebrated his 50th anniversary as an actor. This event (says the Sydney Morning Herald) took place at Spokane, U.S.A., last December, when he was entertained by the members of "The Lie" Company, and presented with a silver loving-cup. The death of.-Miss Ada Rehan in America on January S is announced. Miss Ada Rehan was one of the most prominent players on the American stage in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and she was received as a brilliant actress both in New York and London. During the past ten years she had bee.n ailing, and three or four months ago she was compelled to enter a hospital. Her death followed an operation. American manufacturers have labored long and hard to produce films that will amuse Oriental peoples, but their success has not been very marked (says a traveller from the Far East in an American paper). No white mind can fathom the Japanese sense, of humor, and the funniest films over there go Hat. Chaplin bores them. But in the midst of a death scene in some dramatic film they will suddenly begin to rock with merriment. There' is a fortune in it for anyone who will locate the Japanese bump of humor, and manufacture picture plays that will hit it." » » » From New York:—There are 950 retail flicker palaces in this city, and in a recent month over 5000 players were represented on the screens. More than 2000 flickers and flickoresses own motorcars and dwell in Easty-street, and how long it is going to last isn't worrying them. Flick has given the legitimate stage a staggering blow in the meantime, and while picture humpies are springing up wherever hope of a dividend leaps in the human breast, real theatres are finding it more and more difficult to drag anyone inside.

Miss Edna May (Mrs. Oscar Lewisohn) has completed her first, and, it is said, her last, engagement as a picture actress, for which she has received about £20,000. She is by no means enamored of the work of a picture actress, and only the offer of such a large sum, which she is giving to Red Cross and other charities, tempted her. The footlights have failed to induce her to return to the stage, but the are lights have definitely decided her against the picture studio, because they affected her eyes rather badly. The hardest part of the work, she says, is sitting hour after hour waiting to go on. It is so trying to the nerves. This is quite true. Not long ago (says a writer in an exchange), I saw a scene taken in a British studio. The work began at nine in the morning, and when I left at half-past six the taking of one scene had not been completed. Two at least of the artists waited seven hours looking on before they were wanted in the scene. I saw the scene afterwards on the screen, and it occupied just three and a-lialf min' utes.