s. To be able to write photoplays that
will appeal to every class of photoplay patron is the supreme test of
the photoplaywright.

These words of a celebrated French novelist and playwright, Ludovic
Halevy, are worthy of attention:

"We must not write simply for the refined, the blase, and the
squeamish. We must write for that man who goes there on the street
with his nose in his newspaper and his umbrella under his arm. We must
write for that fat, breathless woman whom I see from my window, as she
climbs painfully into the Odeon omnibus. We must write courageously
for the _bourgeois_, if it were only to try to refine them, to make
them less _bourgeois_. And if I dared, I should say that we must write
even for fools."

_3. A High Quality of Imagination Demanded_

Another well-known French dramatist, Marcel Prevost, who is a
photoplaywright as well, in a recent issue of the Paris _Figaro_
replied to a question whether motion pictures are harmful to the
legitimate theatre, by stating that, while he likes the pictures,
their authors are lacking in imagination.

That there is a great deal of truth in what M. Prevost says seems to
be proved by the fact that when famous playwrights and best-selling
authors have supplied photoplay plots to the manufacturers, they have
been exceptionally well paid. We refer, of course, to stories
specially written for the photoplay stage, for when a film
manufacturer produces a story by a well-known fiction writer, which
originally appeared in novel or in short-story form, the manufacturer
does business with the author's publishers, unless the author has
specifically reserved for himself all dramatic rights--a practice
which, by the way, is becoming more and more general.

[Illustration: Arrangement of Electric Lights in a Photoplay Studio]

[Illustration: An Actor's Dressing Room in the Selig Studio]

An editorial in _Motography_ says: "The best motion picture dramas
produced today are reproductions of literary classics. These films do
not achieve immortality; they merely further assure the immortality of
the original work. Why cannot a photodrama be produced that is fine
enough to live on its own merit--why must the picture always seem to
be secondary while literature and the drama continue to furnish the
primary motives?

"The answer lies in the peculiar requirements of photoplay
authorship. The writer of printed fiction is a master of _words_. He
revels in artful phrases and u