Introducing the cast of characters as a printed part of the pictured drama is a comparatively recent improvement in the art of the photoplay.  For many years the picture “fans,” as we have come to call them, were kept in ignorance of the real names of the players who entertained them on the screen.  Then in Great Britain the exhibitors came to realize that the added interest that would come of having the various artists known to the public by name would mean an increase in the box-office receipts, and they began to give out fictitious names for such favorites as Mary Pickford, Florence Turner, and Mary Fuller.  This opened the eyes of some of the manufacturers to the wisdom of giving on the films the names of the players as well as the names of the characters represented by them, and the Edison studio, of which Mr. Horace G. Plimpton was then manager, was one of the first American concerns to give the cast of characters in connection with the pictured story.  Leaving aside the wishes of the public, it was an injustice to the players not to have included the casts sooner, just as the names of actors and actresses are given in a “legitimate” theatre program.

Following the first showing of the casts on the films, different manufacturers began to see the wisdom, as well as the additional artistic effect, of showing the name of the author of the photoplay, and this practice has gradually grown until, today, it is very seldom that the name of the writer is omitted.  There are patrons who feel that, at the present time, the preliminary announcements on most films, especially “features,” are rather overdone, inasmuch as they usually give the names of the author of the story, the writer of the scenario, or continuity, the director, the cameraman, the “art title” maker, and the supervising producer.  However, most writers and actors feel that the manufacturers are quite welcome to go as far as they like in this direction, so long as they continue to give the credit due to those who write and enact the story.

Undoubtedly, one reason why the manufacturers hesitated about giving all this information on the film in the days of the single-reel photoplay was that they had the matter of footage to consider.  With an even thousand feet to a reel, and a reel to a story, no footage could be spared for preliminary announcements without crowding the story-part of the film.  Today, with one-, two-, three-, and a few four-reel pictures, and feature productions of from five reels up, less attention need be paid to the matter of footage consumed by both preliminary statements and the regular leaders and inserts, as further pointed out in Chapter XII.