Tweet Identifying a 1914 Lubin film

This was asked about on another board, and I hadn't noticed this tidbit before so I thought I'd inquire if anyone here has heard of or seen this film.

In anticipation of the Talking Machine Jobbers Convention to be held in June 1914 in Atlantic City, the Victor Talking Machine Company hired Lubin to photograph the inner workings of their plant, including the manufacture of Victor records and phonographs. Victor recording engineer Harry Sooy recalled it thus:

June 19, 1914: We had the recording apparatus all in readiness on the morning of this day, and met the artists at the Ferry, bringing them to the Laboratory in autos. They were photographed upon their arrival at the Laboratory. We then proceeded to the Recording Studio on the seventh floor of Building #15, where pictures were made of the artists rendering the "Sextette" from Lucia for this record.

The artists were-Olive Kline, Marguerite Dunlap, Harry Macdonough, Lambert Murphy, Reinald Werrenrath and Wilfred Glenn.

After making a picture of the artists singing the "Sextette" the photographer then went into the operating room and made a picture of what he and many others thought was the actual procedure of recording a record, but this mechanical work was arranged specially for the motion picture. After this the employees of the entire Plant were photographed marching up Cooper Street, about 10,500 in number.

This motion picture proved quite a surprise as well as educational. It was indeed interesting to the dealers.
The pictures were made by Lubin and Company, Philadelphia, Pa.

(Taken from http://www.davidsarnoff.org/soo-maintext.html)

Was this film ever released commercially? I can't find any 1914 Lubins in the IMDB that seem to answer to the above description, and I'm still less sanguine that anything survives.

Curiously, the Victor files do not show *any* recordings having been made that day. The rendition of the Lucia Sextette that was sung by the combination of Kline, Dunlap, et al. was recorded on 8 and 13 December 1915. Possibly they were simply brought together for the sake of a demonstration.

Does anyone know more, or does the FIAF database contain anything resembling this film?

-HA

I checked the FIAF database, but found nothing that corresponded with this film. I tried variations on the name "Lucia," and looked up each performer individually, but no dice. (The closest I came to a possible hit happened to be two appearances by Harry MacDonough in other films during the 1910s, but it may or may not be the same guy.)

That doesn't mean the Lubin film doesn't exist, necessarily, but there's no sign of it in FIAF.

Thanks for looking this up--it probably never received a wide release and thus never had many copies made, but it would be interesting to watch.

-HA

FWIW, there's a very brief mention of the filming in the round-up of news from Philadelphia in The Moving Picture World of July 4th, 1914:

You might want to try emailing a fellow that used to hang around a.m.s.

He's a Lubin enthusiast by the name of Joe Eckhardt.

The email address in this link might get you to him (I don't know how old it is).

http://faculty.mc3.edu/jeckhard/eckhardt.htm" target="_blank

I've corresponded with Joe on several occasions; he's a great guy.

Steve