implest form of marionette performance, and the marionette has a place
in every street in history just as the dolls' house has its corner in
every palace and cottage. The French in particular have had their great
periods of puppet shows; and the Italian tradition survived in America's
Little Italy, in New York for many a day; and I will mention in passing
that one of Pavlowa's unforgettable dance dramas is The Fairy Doll.
Prospective author-producer, why not spend a deal of energy on the
photoplay successors of the puppet-plays?

We have the queen of the marionettes already, without the play.

One description of the Intimate-and-friendly Comedy would be the Mary
Pickford kind of a story. None has as yet appeared. But we know the Mary
Pickford mood. When it is gentlest, most roguish, most exalted, it is a
prophecy of what this type should be, not only in the actress, but in the
scenario and setting.

Mary Pickford can be a doll, a village belle, or a church angel. Her
powers as a doll are hinted at in the title of the production: Such a
Little Queen. I remember her when she was a village belle in that film
that came out before producers or actors were known by name. It was
sugar-sweet. It was called: What the Daisy Said. If these productions had
conformed to their titles sincerely, with the highest photoplay art we
would have had two more examples for this chapter.

Why do the people love Mary? Not on account of the Daniel Frohman style
of handling her appearances. He presents her to us in what are almost the
old-fashioned stage terms: the productions energetic and full of
painstaking detail but dominated by a dream that is a theatrical hybrid.
It is neither good moving picture nor good stage play. Yet Mary could be
cast as a cloudy Olympian or a church angel if her managers wanted her to
be such. She herself was transfigured in the Dawn of Tomorrow, but the
film-version of that play was merely a well mounted melodrama.

Why do the people love Mary? Because of a certain aspect of her face in
her highest mood. Botticelli painted her portrait many centuries ago
when by some necromancy she appeared to him in this phase of herself.
There is in the Chicago Art Institute at the top of the stairs on the
north wall a noble copy of a fresco by that painter, the copy by Mrs.
MacMonnies. It is very near the Winged Victory of Samothrace. In the
picture the muses sit enthroned. The loveliest of them all is a startling
replica of