Early Stage and Screen: A Two-Way Street

Abstract

We all know-at least in general-what the screen has taken from the stage, and what it continues to take. Perhaps less well known is what the stage began borrowing from the screen, and at an earlier date than you might imagine. Most of this was considerably before 1914 when the playwright Elmer Rice marked official recognition of the individual form of a competitive medium by casting his hit play On Trial in the time-scheme of the present interrupted by flashbacks. This was an innovation in stage narrative, where time normally travels steadily forward. Nicholas Vardac, in his Stage to Screen, has made us conscious of certain elements of nineteenth century staging just waiting to be appropriated by film. the meantime, the stage did not hesitate to raid. Here are instances from around the turn of the century and later. Four examples in the use of depth of stage (or the illusion thereof) form a perfect progression to the take-over by film. 1896 not every stage was equipped to make such an accommodation as the Fairmont Auditorium in Kansas City did. A report on the Fairmont Stock Company's performance of Lyons Mail for four days in July of that year: In the mail coach scene a most realistic effect was obtained, which caused great applause. entire rear of the stage was opened and the real stage coach with four galloping horses came up in full view from over 500 feet to the rear.l Lincoln J. Carter's melodrama Heart of Chicago opened in that city late in September of 1896, which places it chronologically between the Lumieres film Arrival of the Mail Train and the Biograph Empire State Express. After more than a year of touring on the road, it appeared in New York in January, 1898. The scenic and mechanical effects are particularly strong.... climax of the fourth act, where a train is stopped at the very edge of the open draw by the presence of mind of the engineer's sweetheart in setting the danger signals in the nick of time, caused a furor of applause. effect is most deceiving as the engine is supposed to come head on from the rear of the stage. opening of the scene shows a long stretch of railroad track straight ahead. house is darkened while the