Page:Star Film Catalogue 1908.pdf/4



''GEORGES MÉLIÈS, proprietor and manager of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, Paris, is the originator of the class of cinematograph films which are made from artificially arranged scenes, the creation of which has given new life to the trade at a time when it was dying out. He conceived the idea of portraying comical, magical and mystical views, and his creations have been imitated without success ever since.''

''A great number of French, English and American manufacturers of films who are searching for novelties but lack the ingenuity necessary to produce them, have found it easier and more economical fraudulently to copy the “Star” Films and to advertise their poor copies as their own original conceptions. This accounts for the simultaneous appearance in several issues of a well-known New York paper of advertisements of the celebrated “Trip to the Moon,” by four or five different firms, each pretending to be its creator. All these pretensions were false. The “Trip to the Moon,” as well as “Gulliver's Travels,” “The Astronomer's Dream,” “Cinderella,” “Red Riding Hood,” “Blue Beard,” “Joan of Arc,” “Christmas Dream,” etc., etc., are the personal creations of Mr. Georges Méliès, who himself conceived the ideas, printed the backgrounds, devises the accessories and acted on the stage.''

''In opening a factory and office in New York we are prepared and determined energetically to pursue all counterfeiters and pirates. We will not speak twice; we will act.''

GASTON MÉLIÈS General Manager.