MARKING TIME The serious students of the motion picture, for they had arrived, were at this time writing many and various articles in the trade papers. Epes Winthrop Sargent was a-saying this: _The Moving Picture World_ more than advocates the ten cent theatre. It looks forward to the time when the dollar photoplay theatre will be an established institution following the advance in quality of the films. But there will always be five cent theatres in localities that will not support the ten cent houses and ten cent houses for those who cannot afford fifty cents or a dollar. It is the entertainment for the whole family. And W. Stephen Bush, the reviewer, this, of a Biograph: “The Battle” is a perfect picture in a splendid frame. I cannot close without a well-deserved word of praise regarding the women’s dresses and coiffures of the wartime period. It is in the elaboration of such details that the master hand often betrays itself as it does here to the last chignon on the young girls’ heads. And an unsigned article is headlined: Will Moving Pictures Save Madison Square Garden? And the late Louis Reeves Harrison in his “Studio Saunterings” in _The Moving Picture World_: I did not meet the mighty Griffith until after I had had an opportunity to study some examples of his marvelous work--he is the greatest of them all when he tries--but I found him to be keenly alive to the future possibilities of the new art to which he has so materially contributed.... His productions show lofty inspirations mixed with a desire to help the world along, a trend of thought that is poetic, idealistic with a purifying and revivifying influence upon the audience that can best be excited through tragedy. The inquiry department of magazines published replies of this sort almost every week: Since the lady is in the Biograph, we premise her name is Jane Doe. ’Tis the best we can do. Or this: No, John Bunny is not dead, report to the contrary notwithstanding. Miss Turner, Miss Lawrence, Miss Pickford, Miss Gauntier, and Miss Joyce are all alive, and there have been no funerals for Messrs. Costello, Delaney, Johnson, Moore, or others. Or this: Questions about tall, thin girls two years old are barred. Keep up to date. Or this: All Biograph players are either John or Jane Doe. So while Biograph players were still nameless, Vitagraph, Lubin, Kalem, Edison, Essanay, Melies, and Selig not only gave out players’ names but offered exhibitors trade photos at twenty cents each, and stereoptican slides of all players. Ambitious actors were getting out post-cards with their photos to send the fans. The flow of Biograph players into the ranks of the Independents left the Biograph Company temporarily weakened. So much so that when “His Daughter” was released in the spring of 1911 a critic said: