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diff --git a/old/66368-0.txt b/old/66368-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 1cd80d9..0000000 --- a/old/66368-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5078 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of That Marvel--The Movie, by Edward S. Van -Zile - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: That Marvel--The Movie - A Glance at Its Past, Its Promising Present and Its Significant - Future - -Author: Edward S. Van Zile - -Release Date: September 23, 2021 [eBook #66368] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: D A Alexander, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The Internet - Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THAT MARVEL--THE MOVIE *** - -[Illustration: - - Frontispiece -] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - That Marvel—The Movie - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - That Marvel—The Movie - - A Glance at Its Reckless Past, Its Promising - Present, and Its Significant Future - - - - - By - Edward S. Van Zile, Litt.D. - - - - With an Introduction by - Will H. Hays - - - - - G. P. Putnam’s Sons - New York & London - The Knickerbocker Press - 1923 - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - Copyright, 1923 - by - Edward S Van Zile - - - - - -[Illustration] - - Made in the United States of America - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - INTRODUCTION - - -TO grasp the past progress, the present significance and the future -possibilities of the motion picture; to express them with restraint and -yet with clarity; and to impress the mind of any reader with the logic, -as well as with the sincerity, of his viewpoint: these are a few of the -qualities in this book which make it interesting and important. Mr. Van -Zile visualizes the motion picture as more than an entertainment -feature; and if his prophecies of its future seem over-optimistic to -some, they need only to recall the flickering, crude apparitions of -twenty years ago and the total cinematic blankness before that. - -If, in twenty years, the motion picture has advanced from an awkward toy -in a laboratory to the marvelous screen art and drama of to-day, who -shall say what are the limits of its progress and its power? - -The other arts are old. Music was born with speech and architecture came -soon thereafter. Literature and sculpture were created when the first -primitive man hacked an image on a bit of rock or bone. Misty ages have -cradled their growth. The art of the screen is new, and yet in its -quarter of a century of life it has produced achievements as valuable in -affecting human thought, as notable as those many great plays and operas -and pictures have produced. - -To the extent that it has grown so rapidly its importance is -intensified. It is better that we should learn to crawl before we walk, -and run before we fly. - -As the representative of leading producers and distributors of American -films, I can say that in no industry or art will be found men and women -more earnest to progress in the right way. With a full sense of our -responsibilities, and an ardor toward perfection, we are at work to do -the best possible things for the motion picture and its world-wide -audience. Mr. Van Zile not only gives us a word of cheer, but he puts -into the public mind some thoughts about pictures which will pay for -their lodging. - - WILL H. HAYS. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - INTRODUCTION. BY WILL H. HAYS v - - I. —THE MOVIE’S NEW SIGNIFICANCE 1 - - II. —THE MOVIE AT ITS BIRTH 19 - - III. —THE MOVIE’S FIRST STEPS 33 - - IV. —THE MOVIE GOES TO THE BAD 45 - - V. —THE MOVIE DEVELOPS A CONSCIENCE 59 - - VI. —THE MOVIE AND THE LIBRARY 69 - - VII. —THE MOVIE’S APPETITE FOR PLOTS 81 - - VIII. —THE MOVIE AND THE CONTINUITY 93 - WRITER - - IX. —THE MOVIE IMPROVES ITS MORALS 103 - - X. —THE MOVIE MAKETH—WHAT KIND OF A 115 - MAN? - - XI. —THE MOVIE AND THE COMMITTEE ON 125 - PUBLIC RELATIONS - - XII. —THE MOVIE AS A PEDAGOGUE 135 - - XIII. —THE MOVIE INTERPRETING THE PAST 145 - - XIV. —THE MOVIE TAKES ON NEW FUNCTIONS 155 - - XV. —THE MOVIE AS A WORLD POWER 165 - - XVI. —THE MOVIE AND THE CENSOR 177 - - XVII. —THE MOVIE AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 189 - - XVIII. —THE MOVIE AS THE HOPE OF 201 - CIVILIZATION - - APPENDIX A—STATISTICS SHOWING THE 215 - SCOPE OF THE MOTION PICTURE - INDUSTRY - - APPENDIX B—THE SCREEN AS A NEW LIFE 218 - GIVER TO LITERARY CLASSICS - - APPENDIX C—WHAT MASSACHUSETTS 221 - THINKS OF MOTION PICTURE - CENSORSHIP - - APPENDIX D—SIGNIFICANT DATES IN THE 222 - EVOLUTION OF THE MOTION PICTURE - - APPENDIX E—WHAT THE MOVIE HAS DONE 224 - FOR A GREAT RAILROAD - - APPENDIX F—FACTS AND FIGURES 225 - SHOWING THAT THE SCREEN HAS - BECOME THE FIRST WORLD CONQUEROR - - APPENDIX G—MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE 227 - ON PUBLIC RELATIONS CO-OPERATING - WITH MOTION PICTURE PRODUCERS AND - DISTRIBUTORS OF AMERICA, INC. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - That Marvel—The Movie - - - - - CHAPTER I - - THE MOVIE’S NEW SIGNIFICANCE - - -_Civilization in Peril—Leaders of Thought give Warning—Mankind Repeats -Old Errors—Needs a Universal Language—The Motion Picture the Only -Esperanto—Can the Screen Save the Race?—Why a History of the Movies is -of Crucial Importance._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER I - - THE MOVIE’S NEW SIGNIFICANCE - - -WITH striking unanimity contemporary writers dealing with the problems -vexing humanity to-day express amazement at the fact that the race has -learned so little from its variegated past, that age after age it -commits, under new conditions and with changes in terminology, ancient -blunders resulting, as they did aforetime, in the tragedies of war, -revolution, famine, epidemics and poverty. As of old, the four horsemen -of the Apocalypse periodically sally forth, to have their evil way with -men; more potent, through long practice, in their iconoclasm, as they -have proved in recent years, than they were in the days of our -ancestors. The individual, unless he be a moron, learns lessons from -experience, avoids committing errors that marred his past and may -become, eventually, worthy the name of a civilized, even a highly -civilized, being. But there are many experts in mob psychology who -despondently assert that, while the individual may demonstrate his -well-nigh infinite superiority to his jungle progenitors, the seeming -progress of the race as a whole has been merely illusory, that mankind -is inherently as savage to-day as it was countless centuries ago. - -But why should not the race at large follow the course pursued by the -average individual and derive from its past errors a mandatory -enlightenment enabling it to avoid those recurrent retrogressions that -furnish the cynic with arguments against the proposition that mankind is -gradually ascending to a higher plane of civilization? Various answers -may be given to this query, but the one to which this chapter calls -attention is to the effect that to the vast majority of the human race -the story of mankind’s struggles and failures, triumphs and defeats, -attainment of high civilizations only to lose them again, is a sealed -book. The individual man can recall every detail of his experience of -life and can pursue a course of safety by aid of the lighthouse of his -past. If this prerogative of the individual could be magnified to -include all mankind might not the time come presently when no generation -would repeat the costly errors of preceding generations? Would not the -mass learn and profit by experience, as does the unit? - -Now, is there any possible method whereby the human race can be induced -to go to school to its recorded past, to the end that our posterity may -establish eventually a civilization permanently safe from the internal -and external forces of disintegration that have destroyed so many mighty -civilizations founded by our forefathers? Is there any way by which men -in the mass may employ mass history in the same advantageous manner -adopted by individuals who use their “dead selves as stepping-stones to -higher things?” Lothrop Stoddard’s recent book, in which he demonstrates -most ably the disquieting fact that contemporary civilization is menaced -by many and grave perils, presents to a public that habitually resents -disturbance of its self-complacent optimism an array of startling data -making the above queries, to put it mildly, extremely pertinent. “Of the -countless tribes of men,” says Stoddard, “many have perished utterly -while others have stopped by the wayside, apparently incapable of going -forward, and have either vegetated or sunk into decadence. Man’s trail -is littered with the wrecks of dead civilizations and dotted with the -graves of promising peoples stricken by an untimely end.” - -But wrecks, whether they be of former civilizations or of vessels lost -upon fatal rocks and reefs, have their value for succeeding nations and -mariners. They serve to point warning fingers away from the shoals of -destruction toward the far-flung deeps where progress and safety are to -be found. It was with this thought in mind, we have no doubt, that Wells -and Van Loon gave to the reading public recently their absorbingly -interesting volumes dealing with the rise of man from the amœba to his -present status as lord of the earth. Both these authors have been -shocked and horrified by the race’s manifestation in recent years of its -tendency to revert at times to the murderous practices of its cave-man -progenitors. That an antidote against periodical returns upon mankind’s -part to the evil practices of the past might be found in the -popularization of histories telling a coherent story of our race’s ups -and downs was a thought that must have come to both Wells and Van Loon -when they essayed the stupendous tasks that they have so worthily -accomplished. But while the basic idea underlying their activities as -historians is sound—for mankind must take cognizance of its past errors -if it is to indulge in hope for the future—the depressing fact confronts -us that the printed book, no matter how great may be its apparent vogue, -reaches but a very small percentage of even the highly intelligent -public. No. If the evils afflicting mankind were to have been cured -through books the race would be free to-day from the major disorders -that threaten the health, if not the life, of existing civilization. - -Upon this point, Frederick Palmer, in his interesting and inspiring -book, “The Folly of Nations,” says: - - Our increasing library shelves are heavy with the records of all - human activities, colossal accumulations of historical and - scientific researches and the literature of imagination and - philosophy—but one who seeks works on how to keep the peace - finds that he has meagre references.... I have before me a list - of the books and pamphlets the Carnegie Endowment of - International Peace has published. If I have found little new in - them, or in any books on the subject, it is _because it may be - needless for me to search among their details for the great - truths I have seen in the vividness of gun flashes on the field - of battle_.... - -The sentence in italics above, in which Palmer asserts that the great -truths that have been revealed to him have come to him not from books -but from the vividness of gun flashes on the field of battle, brings us -to the crux of our argument, and will be used presently as a point of -departure for what may prove to be a constructive suggestion of some -value. If mankind is to be taught to follow the method employed by the -individual in using the errors of the past to ensure a better future -_the race must be enabled to visualize its past_. If it refuses to gain -enlightenment through books some other medium for making history the -savior of posterity must be found. And it has been found. The great -truths that were revealed by gun flashes to Frederick Palmer can find -their way to the hearts and minds of the masses of men if we are wise -and far-sighted enough to make full and intelligent use of a new medium -through which Man may gaze upon the mistakes and shortcomings of his -past, and, forewarned, avoid them in the future. - -The race has found at last its universal language, its Esperanto not of -the ear and tongue but of the eye. The evolution of the motion picture, -developing in a few years from a toy kinetoscope to a Griffith -wonder-worker, has made possible, for the first time in the history of -humanity, an appeal to the heart and mind and soul of man that overcomes -the ancient handicap of the confusion of tongues. After many centuries -the check to human progress given at the Tower of Babel has come to an -end at the entrance to the motion-picture palace. It has been made -possible at last for history to reveal its secrets, and vouchsafe its -warnings, not to the comparatively few who read scholarly books, but to -the millions who, as democracy conquers the earth, have become masters -of the destiny of nations. - -In a brilliant and impressive address delivered last July by Will H. -Hays at Boston, Mass., before the National Education Association, the -speaker presented facts and figures demonstrating the marvellous -progress made of late by the motion picture as a medium for instruction -in both schools and colleges. He said: - - To reflect on the possibilities of the motion picture in - education is to regret that one’s school days were spent before - this great invention came to us as a poultice to heal the blows - of ignorance, but there is consolation in the fact that since - the advent of pictures the whole world, regardless of age, can - go to school. - -“Regardless of age”—yes, and, also, regardless of race, language, -inherited or acquired prejudices, and the hot passions that result in -man’s inhumanity to man. In other words, the human race may now sit -before a screen and learn through the universal medium of the eye those -great truths that have been revealed to Frederick Palmer by the vivid -flashes of the battle-field. - -Dreams, you say? Generalities? A vision that begets nothing but vain -hopes? Suppose, then, that we make a concrete suggestion that, should it -arouse interest and create discussion, might result eventually in giving -to what you call “airy nothings” a “local habitation and a name.” The -insuperable obstacle that has prevented heretofore the establishment -somewhere upon earth of a university designed for the educational needs -of the race at large has been linguistic. In a polyglot world a great -central station for the dissemination of knowledge was impossible so -long as that knowledge could be inculcated only by means of the written -or spoken word. But to-day, as Mr. Hays points out in the address quoted -above, instruction is given, from our primary schools up to our -universities, through the method of visualization; and, furthermore, -repeated tests have shown that students prepared for examinations by aid -of pictures obtain higher marks than examinees whose coaching was -confined to the media of books and lectures. It is almost impossible to -exaggerate the significance of the above in connection with the dream we -have taken the liberty to dream. A world university, a fountain of all -acquired knowledge for the race at large, became practicable the moment -the linguistic problem was solved by the Esperanto of the Eye. No longer -was the vision of a race finding, as do individuals, strength and wisdom -for meeting the perils of the future by contemplating the mistakes of -the past a vague, shadowy mockery, destined to vanish with a return to -common-sense. On the contrary, common-sense had become suddenly -associated with a project that had left the realm of the abstract to -enter the domain of the concrete. For what, in the name of common-sense, -could make so impressive an appeal to the practical man of affairs as -the perfecting of a method whereby the recurrent set-backs to progress -that peoples, and mankind at large, inflict upon themselves can be -reduced to a minimum or, perhaps, rendered permanently obsolete? - -Let us suppose that what we will call, tentatively, our Lighthouse of -the Past had found its Rockefeller or Carnegie, that several hundred -million dollars were available for the establishment of a world centre -of enlightenment wherein all the peoples of the earth could study what -man has done in his dual character of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is it not -certain that the evil influence of the latter would lose its grip -eventually upon a race that is so strangely compounded of the god-like -and the diabolical? Seeing is believing. Show mankind both the glories -and the horrors of the past, let each tribe, nation, race ponder its own -achievements and its own failures, reveal to the pilgrim students -flocking to our lighthouse from every corner of the earth both the -microscopic and the telescopic aspects of history, to the end that they -may return to their respective native lands inspired and eloquent -advocates of a better world, and, lo, the problems seemingly insoluble -to us to-day will be solved through a mass enlightenment that, before -the advent of the screen, was beyond the wildest dreams of the most -optimistic visionaries. - -And where, you ask, shall our Mecca for the pilgrims of progress be -located? For many reasons, there is but one country to-day available for -the project briefly outlined above, and that is the United States. -Geographical, historical, diplomatic, financial, educational and racial -factors interwoven in the enterprise combine to make ours the only land -in which this Lighthouse of the Past, this university of universities, -could stand a fair chance of functioning successfully. Somewhere in our -country there is an ideal location contiguous to one of our great cities -adapted by man and nature to the needs of our experiment in racial -regeneration. Where this location may be is a question to be answered in -the future. Upon this site, however, when it has been chosen, can not -you who have read the foregoing, and have begun, perhaps, to dream my -dream, picture a vast group of buildings, both beautiful and -utilitarian, within which all that mankind has done of good or evil -shall be revealed, year after year, generation after generation, to the -critical but hopeful eyes of the race at large? Give full rein to your -imagination in this connection! Here shall be shown to our Mecca’s -pilgrims all of Man’s achievements in the realms of science, art, -government, industry, commerce, social betterment. Here shall be -revealed, also, the blunders, the failures, the tragedies that were the -price paid for these achievements. - -Here may you visualize the epic tale of Man’s rise from protoplasm to -power, from an amœba to ruler of the earth. Here may a Chinaman study -the past of his people through forty centuries of weal and woe; the -modern Greek glory in the splendors of ancient Athens or appraise his -compatriots’ achievements of yesterday; the Norseman, the Slav, the -Teuton, the Celt, the Anglo-Saxon, the Latin, the Jap, the Arab, the -East Indian learn from the screen what his race, or nation, or tribe has -done for or against—and they have all done both—the cause of advancing -civilization. There shall radiate, if our dream comes true, from this -great centre where all knowledge is visualized a light that shall grow -ever brighter, as the generations come and go, routing the errors of -ignorance and racial prejudice and making possible that for which the -great hearted of the race have so long striven in vain, namely, the -brotherhood of man. - -Let me transpose two sentences from a timely book from which I have -already quoted. Says Frederick Palmer on the last page of his -enlightening volume “The Folly of Nations”: “The world of to-day thinks -through its eyes looking at the screen. Where are our millionaires who -seek worthy objects for their benefactions?” And, from another recently -published book, “The Salvaging of Civilization,” by H. G. Wells, can be -most aptly quoted the following pertinent excerpt: - - It has become clear that the task of bringing about that - consolidated world state which is necessary to prevent the - decline and decay of mankind is not primarily one for the - diplomatists and lawyers and politicians at all. It is an - educational one. It is a moral based on an intellectual - reconstruction. The task immediately before mankind is to find - release from the contentions, loyalties and hostilities of the - past, which make collective world-wide action impossible at the - present time, in a world-wide common vision of the histories and - destines of the race. On that basis, and on that alone, can a - world control be organized and maintained. The effort demanded - from mankind, therefore, is primarily and essentially a bold - reconstruction of the outlook upon life of hundreds of millions - of minds. - -During the past eight years the human race has undergone the bloodiest -ordeal of the ages and, succeeding it, the bitterest disappointment that -mankind has yet been forced to endure. A confusion of tongues that made -European diplomacy helpless at a great crisis rendered a world war -inevitable and the lack of a common medium of enlightenment at -Versailles postponed indefinitely the establishment of permanent peace -upon earth. Had Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Orlando been -obliged every morning at the Peace Conference to spend several hours, -before tackling the affairs of a disordered world, in front of a screen -upon which was depicted before their keen eyes the immediate tragic past -and the deplorable present of the nations of the earth the final outcome -of their deliberations might have been of greater value to the cause of -civilization than it has proved to be. Had the Esperanto of the Eye been -adopted as the official language at Versailles could not the Conference -have avoided a repetition of the fatal errors that crept into its -verdicts as an evil heritage from its century-old predecessor, the -Conference of Vienna? Did not Wilson and Lloyd George fail to take -advantage of a new medium of enlightenment that was denied a hundred -years ago to Metternich and Talleyrand? Is it not even possible that had -the cinema played an enlightening part at Versailles that which is of -real value in the basic idea underlying the League of Nations might be -exercising greater potency in a quarrelsome world to-day than it appears -to be? - -These queries and conjectures are put forward not for the purpose of -stimulating further controversy regarding the details of what I have -called above “the bitterest disappointment that mankind has yet been -forced to endure,” namely, the Versailles Peace Conference. They are -thrown out merely to emphasize the comprehensive fact, recognized by -Palmer, Stoddard, Wells, and many other able contemporary writers, that -mankind, if it is to make use of the errors of the past to avoid the -pitfalls of the future, must find a way to get great truths into the -mind of the race at large not through the lurid flashes of the -battlefield but by means of a universal language. There is, and for an -indefinite future there can be, but one such medium of expression, -namely, the Esperanto of the Eye. Through it, and through it alone, can -Wells, and those who believe with him that civilization may yet be -salvaged, further that “world-wide common vision of the histories and -destinies of the race” that has become of late the one great hope -mankind can to-day reasonably cherish. - -A Lighthouse of the Past, a university of universities, a fountain of -all revealed knowledge inculcated through a medium understood of all -men, a Mecca for the pilgrims of peace and progress from all corners of -the earth, forever adapting itself to the growing needs of mankind for -enlightenment, sending forth, year after year, its polyglot graduates to -carry its teachings, warnings, promises to every tribe and nation on the -planet—is it not a consummation to be devoutly wished, a dream worth -every sacrifice to bring within the purview of reality? If your answer -to this query, dear reader, is in the affirmative, the chances seem to -be that you will find the following chapters of this book worthy of your -earnest consideration. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER II - - THE MOVIE AT ITS BIRTH - - -_Muybridge’s Trotting Horses—Edison’s Kinetoscope—The Problem Eastman -Solved—The Movie as a Universal Language—A Toy for Children that Became -a World Power—The Men Who Rocked the Cradle of a New Hope for the Race._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER II - - THE MOVIE AT ITS BIRTH - - -FOR countless ages Man watched the birds in flight, realized his own -motor handicaps, and relegated his hope of flying to a life which he -might eventually lead in the world of spirits. An insect or an angel -might have wings but the lord of the earth was by nature debarred from -the air. Then somebody somewhere invented a kite, and for another series -of centuries Man played with a toy whose ultimate significance he failed -to grasp. He had not as yet sensed the picturesque truth that the -world’s most potential inventions have come to us, by a process of -evolution, from children’s playthings. The laboratory had its beginnings -in the nursery. The cave-man’s children taught him progress. - -Through suggestions from the kite, the Wright brothers made air -navigation possible. From another toy, Edison’s kinetoscope, has come -the cinematograph. And even its inventor, possessing, though he does, -the creative imagination, failed to realize until recent years the -startling possibilities imbedded in the plaything with which he -entertained the cosmopolitan throngs that flocked to the World’s Fair at -Chicago in 1893. - -When Edison recently made a visit to the General Electric Company’s -plant at Schenectady, N.Y., to recall old memories and to forecast the -future possibilities of electrical devices, he found there still -standing two insignificant old sheds by the river bank, the modest plant -of the original Edison Machine Works of 1886. In amazing contrast to -this relic of the past there stretched away in every direction factory -after factory, covering an area of 523 acres, and vouchsafing to the -Wizard of Menlo Park a concrete manifestation of the fact that in this -age of progress even the wildest dream may eventually come true. But the -contrast between Edison’s work-shop of 1886 and the General Electric -plant of to-day, astounding as it is, is, in its outward aspects, a -local phenomenon. To visualize it, you must go to Schenectady, N.Y. The -difference between Edison’s kinetoscope of thirty years ago and the -moving picture of the moment can be appreciated, on the other hand, by a -mere effort of the memory and the imagination combined. The kinetoscope -has been relegated to the attic but the moving picture has acquired as -its domain not merely the earth but the starry heavens and the realms of -space. Eventually the very outer edge of the physical universe is -destined to be screened. - -Before recounting presently the amazing and romantic story of the -evolution of the motion picture from a plaything to a medium unrivalled -for the promulgation of both good and evil, a Frankenstein created by -Man’s ingenuity that must be given a soul to make it safe for the world, -it may be well to pause at the outset to answer the query, frequently -put to the writer, as to why what seems to be merely a popular form of -amusement should be taken seriously as a factor in the struggle modern -civilization is undergoing to save itself from destruction. Perhaps no -better answer to this question can be given than is furnished by certain -facts and figures presented by Will H. Hays to the National Education -Association in session at Boston, Mass., in July, 1922, in the following -illuminating words: - - In a little over fifteen years the motion picture has grown from - a naked idea until to-day it is the principal amusement of - millions. It has become one of the greatest industries in - America, having an investment of $1,250,000,000, with - $75,000,000 paid annually in salaries and wages, and - $520,000,000 taken in annually for admissions. In the United - States, in the big cities and in those ample-shaded towns and - villages which comprise America, there are perhaps fifteen - thousand motion picture theatres and in those theatres more than - seven million seats. Taking into account at least two - performances a day, and applying the collected statistics, we - estimate that every seven days between Maine and California, - fifty million men, women and children look for an hour or two at - the motion picture screen. - -Nothing further need be said in regard to the importance of the general -subject we have under consideration. A medium for expression which makes -its imprint weekly upon the minds of approximately one half of our -population is worthy of the closest study by the people of this country. -Its origin, its early growth, its present status and its future as a -universal language, destined, perhaps, to be the greatest civilizing -medium the race has known, are topics the timely importance of which can -hardly be overrated. To paraphrase an old political truism, as goes the -screen so goes the country—and, possibly, the race at large. - -Briefly the early history of the cinematograph is in substance as -follows: By the revolutionary achievement of the Frenchman Daguerre, who -discovered a method whereby sunlight could be made to fix a permanent -image of an object upon a sensitized surface, a door was opened showing -the way to the marvellous triumphs that the last century has vouchsafed -to the camera. But impasse after impasse checked the progress of the -pioneers of photography. When Daguerre began his historic career as the -first photographer, an exposure of six hours—more than twenty thousand -seconds—was required to obtain a permanent impression of the object -photographed. Instantaneous photography seemed at that time as remote a -possibility as photography in colors appeared to be but a short time -ago. But the time came when Chemistry, the mother of modern marvels, -solved the problem confronting the early photographers. The laboratory -found a surface so sensitive to light that it could take and retain a -picture perfect in detail in less than one thousandth part of a second—a -feat which in Daguerre’s time would have required an exposure twenty -million times as long. How important in connection with the eventual -advent of the motion picture was Man’s mastery of the time-element in -photography is tersely explained by Frederick A. Talbot, an authority on -the early history of the cinematograph, as follows: - - The wonderful achievement of instantaneous photography assumed - at first a scientific rather than a commercial value. Many a - “snap-shot” is taken which does not betray whether the plate has - been exposed for six hours or only one-thousandth of a second; - but, on the other hand, a “snap-shot” of a quickly moving object - may seize upon and fix an interesting characteristic motion. It - was this fact which led certain ingenious minds to perceive in - instantaneous photography a valuable means of analyzing motion. - If a single photograph reproduced the exact posture of a moving - object at any given instant of time, they argued that a series - of such photographs, if taken in sufficiently rapid succession, - would form a complete record of the whole cycle of movements - involved, for instance in the jump of a horse or the flap of a - bird’s wing. - -Thomas A. Edison, in an interview given to Mr. Hugh Weir and recently -published in _McClure’s Magazine_, enlightens us regarding Mr. Talbot’s -proposition. Asked what first suggested to him the idea of the -motion-picture camera, Mr. Edison said: - - The phonograph. I had been working for several years on - experiments for recording and reproducing sound, and the thought - occurred to me that it should be possible to devise an apparatus - to do for the eye what the phonograph was designed to do for the - ear. It was in 1887 that I began my investigations, and - photography, compared with what it is to-day, was in a decidedly - crude state of development. Pictures were made by “wet” plates, - operated by involved mechanism. The modern dry films were - unheard of. I had only one fact to guide me at all. This was the - principle of optics, technically called “the persistence of - vision,” which proves that the sensation of light lingers in the - brain for anywhere from one-tenth to one-twentieth part of a - second after the light has disappeared from the sight of the - eye. - -In other words, the fact that the human eye is a photographic camera -possessing memory may eventually save civilization from the cataclysm of -which contemporary prophets warn us, _in that it has made possible a -medium of communication for the race at large denied to us by the -tongue_. - -Posterity will owe a great debt of gratitude to Thomas A. Edison for -various revolutionary inventions but it begins to be apparent to -optimistic observers that perhaps his chief claim to the thanks of -mankind will be due to the initial impetus he gave to the motion -picture, vouchsafing to a bewildered race the universal language of the -eye, by which, possibly, the brotherhood of man may eventually function -to overcome the evils that have darkened our past. Says Edison: “I do -not believe that any other single agency of progress has the -possibilities for a great and permanent good to humanity that I can see -in the motion picture. And these possibilities are only beginning to be -touched.” - -Will it not repay us, then, to examine the “possibilities” to which Mr. -Edison refers, to the end that we may take the screen more seriously -than heretofore, may regard motion picture theatres more attentively and -hopefully as being, perhaps, civilization’s one best bet? Unless, -however, we get a somewhat comprehensive view of the variegated past of -the movies “the permanent good to humanity” that they can accomplish -will not be apparent to us. Let us, therefore, get on with our story. - -The early history of the cinematograph presents a study in international -rivalry. The United States, England and France wrote names on the scroll -of fame upon which the scientists and promoters who rendered motion -pictures possible make their bid for immortality. Edison and Eastman, -Americans, Daguerre and the Messrs. Lumière and Sons, Frenchmen, and -Muybridge and Robert Paul, Englishmen, are the leading names among the -_dramatis personæ_ who took part in the first act of a drama that began -as an amusement for children but which now promises to develop into a -miracle-play regenerating the human race. - -Scientific technicalities have no place in a book designed to tell the -story of the movies from what is called in newspaper circles “the human -interest standpoint,” but it is necessary to apportion credit here for -what the three nations above mentioned did respectively toward solving -the initial problems confronting the pioneers who raised photography -from a tortoise to a bird, giving it pinions that defy time and space. -To change the metaphor, Daguerre, a Frenchman, rocked the cradle of -photography, Muybridge, an Englishman, taught it to run, and Edison, an -American, gave it wings. Behold here, at last, a triple alliance that is -changing the face not merely of a continent but of a planet. The -mountains were in labor and brought forth not a little mouse but a -marvellous creature whose dynamics for both good and evil can not be -over-estimated. - -The claim that England can put forward for furnishing first aid to the -movies bears the date 1872 and is summarized as follows by Mr. Edison: - - An Englishman of the name of Muybridge, who was an enthusiast on - two subjects—cameras and race horses—was visiting, at his - California farm, Senator Leland Stanford, who was also something - of a “crank” on the subject of blooded trotters. During the - visit the merits of a certain horse, owned by the Senator, came - under discussion, Stanford contending for one fact, and his - guest arguing for another. To settle the dispute Muybridge - conceived an ingenious plan. - - Along one side of the private race-course on the farm he placed - a row of twenty-four cameras. Attached to the shutter of each, - he fastened a long thread, which in turn was carried across the - track, and then, to make sure of obtaining sharp exposures, he - erected a white screen opposite to serve as a reflector. When - all was in readiness the race horse was turned loose down the - track. - - As it dashed past the rows of cameras the various threads were - snapped, and a series of photographs, establishing each - successive point in the “action” of the horse, were - automatically registered. When they were developed they revealed - for the first time a complete photographic record of the - minutest details of a horse in actual motion, and Muybridge had - the satisfaction of using them to win his argument. - - He would have laid the pictures away in his private collection, - but someone suggested trying the effect on a Zoetrope (akin to - the Kinetoscope) apparatus. The result was so startling that it - created something of a public sensation. But, except as a - novelty, there was little practical benefit gained. To have made - an actual motion picture, lasting even for the space of a single - minute, at the rate of twelve exposures per second, the minimum - for steady illusion, would have required, under the plan of - Muybridge, seven hundred and twenty different cameras. - -Half a century has passed since that historic day when Muybridge -demonstrated that he had a better eye for trotting horses than Senator -Stanford and put California on the map as a prominent centre of motion -picture progress, a position which that State has most brilliantly -maintained. During the fifty years from 1872 to 1922, the period from -Muybridge to Griffith, the scientific problems confronting the pioneer -inventors of the cinematograph, and they were many and difficult, were -solved; and from the crude pictures of a trotting horse in motion were -evolved the screen marvels of to-day. The high lights of that crucial -half century in the development of the movies, a development that is not -only interesting in itself but full of encouragement to the optimist who -believes that the new and universal language of the eye may be employed -to warn the race against repeating the errors of the past, will be -considered in the following chapters of this book. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER III - - THE MOVIE’S FIRST STEPS - - -_The Movie Learns to Walk—George Eastman’s Great Achievement—The -Kinetoscope Goes to England—John W. Paul Throws Motion Pictures on a -Screen—London “Bobbies” See the First Movie Ever Shown—America, England -and France the Triple Alliance of the Screen._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER III - - THE MOVIE’S FIRST STEPS - - -NO story of the evolution of the motion picture from an experiment in -photography to a factor in the daily lives of millions of people would -be complete without a passing reference to the impetus given by George -Eastman, of Rochester, N.Y., to what was at the outset a toy for -children—destined eventually to challenge the untried resources of the -laboratory. Thomas A. Edison says: “Without George Eastman I don’t know -what the result would have been in the history of the motion picture.” -For a long time after Muybridge had demonstrated the possibility of -photographing objects in motion any real advance in what was practically -a new art was impeded by the weight, fragility and general inadequacy of -the glass plates employed in camera work. Gelatine, transparent paper, -and other substitutes for glass, were tried in vain. How Eastman finally -solved the problem by the use of celluloid is explained tersely and -clearly by F. A. Talbot as follows: - - In the early part of 1889 experiments were being made to - discover a varnish to take the place of gelatine sheets. One of - his chemists drew Mr. Eastman’s attention to a thick solution of - gun-cotton in wood alcohol. It was tested to prove its - suitability to take the place of the gelatine, but was found - wanting in practical efficiency. However, Mr. Eastman recognized - the solution as one which might prove to be the film base for - which he had been searching. He had had such a medium in mind - when engaged in his first experiments in 1884, which resulted in - the production of the stripping film. He decided to utilize this - solution of gun-cotton in wood alcohol and fashion it into the - foundation for the sensitized emulsion, so that stripping and - other troublesome operations of a like nature might be avoided. - He was moved to this experiment because this solution could be - made almost as transparent practically as glass. Accordingly he - set to work to devise a machine to prepare thin sheets such as - he required from this mixture. _Success crowned his efforts, and - in 1889 the first long strip of celluloid film suited to - cinematograph work appeared in the United States._ - -Thus had George Eastman removed for Thomas A. Edison the one obstacle -that had hitherto made the latter’s projected kinetoscope impracticable, -and celluloid had become the “Open Sesame” to that wonderland in which -the movie fans of to-day delight to wander. - -Like the telephone which was, in its early days, looked upon as an -interesting scientific toy not destined to play an important part in the -daily lives of the people at large, Edison’s kinetoscope was not taken -seriously by the crowds who found it but one of many novel features -combining to make the Chicago World Fair of 1893 a success. They flocked -to see it, marvelled at its ingenuity, but failed, as did Edison -himself, to realize that the world had been enriched by not merely a new -plaything but by a novel medium for influencing the destinies of the -race, the ultimate stupendous significance of which we, even thirty -years later, can only vaguely estimate. It is amazing but true that, so -little did Edison appreciate the fact that he had invented not an -ephemeral toy but the only universal language yet vouchsafed to the -race, he neglected to obtain patents for his kinetoscope outside of the -United States. His oversight in this connection had far-reaching -results, the most important of which historically gave to England -instead of the United States the honor of throwing upon a screen the -first “movie,” as that word is understood to-day. - -That a Yankee notion should fail to realize its own possibilities and be -forced eventually to thank an Englishman for placing it upon the heights -from which it was to win world-dominion is not an agreeable reflection -to the ultra-patriotic American, but our story of the evolution of the -movie must now take us across the Atlantic and introduce to us Mr. -Robert W. Paul, electrical engineer and manufacturer of scientific -apparatus, whose workshops were located in Hatton Garden, London. -Reversing the process of the “star of empire” it was Eastward that the -movie, in its search for development, had taken its way. Cradled in -California, it had learned to walk in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and -Rochester, New York, and was now to realize its youthful possibilities -in the British metropolis. - -Two peripatetic Athenians, one of them a toy-maker, had seen, admired -and coveted the Edison kinetoscope at the Chicago World’s Fair. They had -the European market in mind for the new plaything and acted at once -without looking into the question of patents. To Paul, at Hatton Garden, -London, came the Athenians with a kinetoscope they had obtained in the -United States, urging him to manufacture duplicates with which they -might supply the English, and possibly the Continental, market. Paul, -however, had read his Virgil and heeded the old poet’s warning against -Greeks bearing gifts. Supposing, of course, that Edison had protected -his invention by English patents, Paul rejected the proposition of the -Greeks. Later, however, he discovered that, so far as the English Patent -Office was concerned, he was free to manufacture kinetoscopes for the -European market and presently went at it with a will and with -considerable success. - -But Paul was a live wire with a vision, as, years ago, I clairvoyantly -called Will H. Hays. He realized that the kinetoscope was, like our dead -selves, but a stepping-stone to higher things. It furnished a motion -picture to only one observer at a time. What Paul wanted, and what the -world has proved that it craved, was a device whereby thousands of -spectators could gaze at a movie at one and the same moment. Muybridge -had solved the first problem in motion photography, Edison the second, -Eastman the third, and Paul was confronted by the fourth, perhaps the -most difficult of the quartet. - -How this resourceful Englishman managed to render the peep-hole of a -kinetoscope obsolete and replace it by a screen upon which countless -eyes might gaze is a matter of technical and scientific interest, out of -place in the story we are telling. Suffice it to say that what he -achieved in overcoming the obstacles confronting him has given him a -high place on the list of inventors who, one by one, and in widely -separated corners of the planet, made possible, during a half century of -effort, the motion picture of to-day. - -We get from Frederick A. Talbot a side-light on an historic episode in -London that was the turning-point in the career of Robert W. Paul, and -of even greater importance to the human race than any but a few -far-seeing movie enthusiasts have yet realized. Says Talbot: - - About three o’clock one morning, in the early months of 1895, - the quietness of Hatton Garden was disturbed by loud and - prolonged shouts. The police rushed hurriedly to the building - whence the cries proceeded, and found Paul and his colleagues in - their workshop, giving vent to whole-hearted exuberance of - triumph. They had just succeeded in throwing the first perfect - animated pictures upon a screen. To compensate the police for - their fruitless investigation, the film, which was forty feet in - length, and produced a picture seven feet square, was run - through the special lantern for their edification. They regarded - the strange spectacle as ample compensation, and had the - satisfaction of being the first members of the public to see - moving pictures thrown upon the screen. - -Unfortunately the law-abiding fervor that animates the soul of the -London “Bobby” did not get into the camera on that epoch-making night. -Had it done so, the early career of the motion picture might have been -less objectionable to the guardians of morals on both sides of the -Atlantic. But that’s another story—to be told in a later chapter. It is -only just to say here, however, that it was not the fault of Robert W. -Paul that in their early years the movies went, more or less, to the -bow-wows. - -Of Paul and his sensational achievement as the father, or, rather, the -step-father, of the movie there is much interesting data extant, the -leading features of which are destined to hold a permanent place in the -history of the newest of the arts developed by Man’s genius. How, in -partnership with Sir Augustus and Lady Harris, he made of the Olympia -Theatre in London the first picture palace in the world, catching the -popular fancy with what he called his “theatograph”; how he was -eventually in control of eight London theatres showing motion pictures; -how his contract with the Alhambra Theatre for two weeks of pictures in -March, 1896, was stretched eventually to cover four years are part of -the early records of the screen and account for the name “Daddy Paul” by -which this ingenious and daring Englishman is known in movie circles -across the water. - -But even Paul’s early successes with motion pictures in the London music -halls did not open his eyes, or the eyes of his colleagues, to the -possibilities and permanency of the new form of entertainment they had -given to the world. Both Paul and Sir Augustus Harris believed that the -fickle public would soon tire of what seemed to be to them merely an -ephemeral novelty, to be soon relegated, as had been countless -vaudeville innovations, to the over-flowing theatrical lumber-room. One -of the strangest features of the history of the motion pictures during -the period of their early youth is that hardly one of their scientific -or commercial exploiters, from Edison down, had anything like a full -appreciation of the future that awaited the screen, of the marvellous -power for growth that lay in the germ from which the toy kinetoscope had -sprung. - -There are those who assert that the ultimate salvation of modern -civilization will be accomplished by a triple alliance established by -the United States, England and France. Those who make this prediction -have in mind, of course, a trio of fighting nations who, by force of -arms, will eventually compel an unruly world to come to order and accept -the point of view cherished by the conquerors. But is it not possible -that America, England and France, having worked together as a triple -alliance to perfect the motion picture, have given to the race a medium -for enlightenment that may make another world war in defence of -civilization unnecessary? Is it not, at least, conceivable that these -three nations, whose inventive and progressive genius made, through -Daguerre, Edison and Paul, the motion picture possible may find, in time -to save humanity from a hideous cataclysm, that the screen, in a -democratic world, may so strengthen the influence of peace-making -diplomacy as to render eventually armies and navies practically -obsolete? - -And in this connection, it is interesting to note that the claim of -France to a high place in that triple alliance which made the movies a -tremendous power for both good and evil in a perturbed world does not -rest wholly upon Daguerre and his invention of the daguerreotype. No -account of the evolution of the motion picture would be complete without -reference to the impetus given to the new industry in “Daddy” Paul’s -halcyon days by the Messrs. Lumière and Sons, of Paris, France, -manufacturers of photographic apparatus, dry plates, etc. The Edison -kinetoscope had come within their purview in 1893 and they had realized -at once, as had Paul, that a motion picture that could have but one -observer at a time was merely a butterfly in the chrysalis. The Messrs. -Lumière solved ingeniously, and in their own way, the problem that had -confronted Paul and are entitled to a part of the glory that goes to -those who changed the kinetoscope from a peep-show for one to a screen -display for hundreds. - -It was the French machine that brought Edison’s one-eyed toy back to the -country of its birth raised to the dignity of an amusement for adults. -Through the energy and far-sightedness of Richard G. Hollaman, head of -the Eden Musée, of New York, the Lumière apparatus, in the Fall of 1896, -created something of a sensation in the American metropolis. To the Eden -Musée, known to fame for its presentation of historic personages of the -past, belongs the honor of making the path to glory easy to the -celebrities of to-day. Fame was now to discard stuffed effigies as a -reward for greatness to use the screen to bring the exalted of the earth -down to the masses. The movie had been finally launched upon a career -that was to lead it toward heights from which to-day it can see a future -that, unless the human race wantonly commits hari-kari, will be -unimaginably glorious. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - THE MOVIE GOES TO THE BAD - - -_The Era of Fly-by-Night Speculation—The Mushroom Movie Craze—The -Screen’s Youthful Indiscretions—Stupidity and Cupidity as Partners—The -Degradation of a New Art-Form—Boy-Made Scenarios—The Stage Versus the -Screen—A Future for Both._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - THE MOVIE GOES TO THE BAD - - -WHOEVER asserted that “you can’t indict a whole nation” made a sweeping -generalization that was both historically and psychologically accurate. -In what I have said, and am about to say, regarding the evil influences -affecting the early years of the movie, I do not wish to do an injustice -to those early promoters in the new industry who refused to degrade the -screen, or to treat it as an ephemeral, wild-cat speculation. There were -producers, at the very outset of the industry, who builded perhaps -better than they knew, and who, because of their refusal to take the -path of least resistance, are now, after a quarter of a century of film -exploiting, the most successful and influential factors in the industry. -They prevailed where those whose pernicious activities threatened the -rise, perhaps the permanency of the movie, fell by the wayside. - -It is regrettable, nevertheless, that the childhood of the movie was so -deeply influenced by various pioneers who could not realize its power -for good nor foresee its future greatness both as an art and as a -moulder of public opinion, morals, and enlightenment. But the screen in -its early years was dominated largely by get-rich-quick exploiters, -adventurers out for the easy money flowing into the coffers of the movie -“palaces,” less admirable in most ways than the hard-boiled -treasure-seekers who flock to newly-discovered gold-fields. There is -something of the romantic and heroic in the Argonauts who developed -California, the South African diamond mines and the Klondike. They -risked their lives in a great game of chance and won or lost in a -dramatic struggle in which the winners had displayed necessarily certain -sturdy, sterling qualities. - -The gold-bearing realm of the movies, on the other hand, was invaded at -the outset by a good many speculative fortune-seekers who staked upon -their ventures nothing but their craftiness and their audacity. They -were about as admirable as a bucket-shop gambler who, by expending a -minimum of money and energy, hopes for a movement of the market that -shall make him rich over night. The movie, as an anonymous writer in -Collier’s Weekly says, was, in its early days, - - nothing that could justifiably attract a big investor, or a real - novelist, or a good actor. The first movie-actors were for the - most part of the old-time chorus-girl and spear-carrier type; - the great scenario-writers were the shop-girls or office boys - who were told of the sudden need for stories, with no real - training or knowledge of writing—with here and there a newspaper - cub or magazine embryo who stumbled into a new gold vein where - stories written in an hour could be sold for fifteen dollars; - the first investors were the clerks or advertising men or born - gamblers, usually in touch with the cheap end of the theatrical - world, who had a little money to invest in a new scheme, - provided it “looked good” and “wasn’t too big.” - -It is a safe bet that the majority of my readers can remember the time -when they looked upon motion pictures with a mingling of contempt and -impatience, realizing vaguely, perhaps, the promise the screen suggested -of better things but disgusted with its seemingly stubborn adherence to -cheap claptrap, crude melodrama, and unspeakably vulgar farce. My -personal experience in connection with the movies is, I imagine, typical -of that which has come to thousands of Americans during the past quarter -of a century. I can still remember the thrill I experienced when I first -gazed upon human beings in motion screened by a camera. What the -photographed puppets did was not, at the moment, of great consequence. -The mere fact that they came and went, walked, ran, danced before my -eyes was startling enough. I was fascinated by a scientific achievement -that was of itself sufficiently interesting to warrant my presence in -that audience of long ago. - -But my subsequent activities as a movie fan in embryo were of short -duration. Like thousands of my fellow Americans, I came, I saw, but I -did not conquer—in fact, I was repelled. For years thereafter I avoided -the movie palaces, realizing that I was temperamentally unfitted to -enjoy optical contacts with adultery, murder, theft and sudden death. -Nor was my sense of humor of a kind that found anything to laugh at in -squash-pie farce. - -But even the cupidity and stupidity that had their effect upon the -screen in its earlier years could not kill the goose that was destined -eventually to lay something better than golden eggs. Though ignorance, -avarice and vulgarity for many years influenced, to too great an extent, -the movies, they could not destroy its inherent power of regeneration, -nor the cumulative force exercised by the higher type of producers which -eventually made that regeneration possible. How the screen was saved -from becoming the exclusive property of the underworld by the survival -of the fittest, or the most enlightened, of the early promoters, will be -told presently, but it is interesting, at this juncture, to discuss for -a moment the question as to why its earlier career was so deplorably -reprehensible. - -Reference has been made to the fact that in the United States, England -and France the first exploiters of motion pictures were under the -delusion that this new form of entertainment was of merely ephemeral -value, that its drawing-power as a theatrical novelty would soon pass -away. Thus it was that in this country small men, of small means, -hastened to “take flyers” in the latest get-rich-quick device, and -throughout the United States was observed a mushroom growth of “picture -palaces,” financed on a shoe-string and designed to collect “easy money” -before it became uneasy. There were those among the pioneer promoters of -motion pictures who had read of the tulip craze in Holland, or of the -Mississippi bubble in France, and imagined that the bottom would some -day suddenly fall out of the “movie boom,” ruining those who had not -“cashed in” in time. They failed to realize that humanity could not -afford to lose an inestimable boon that had come to it, namely, a new -method for the telling of stories. - -There had existed, before the movie’s birth, but four media for the -dissemination of narratives—the tongue, the play, the printed story, and -the printed poem. In the childhood of the race, tale-telling was -confined to word of mouth. Later on, the stage came into existence, and -mankind’s craving for stories was partially satisfied by the drama. The -invention of the printing-press gave to a soul-hungry race the book, -with its infinite capacity for telling tales, old and new, to the -grown-up children of the race. - -But from Gutenberg’s time to Edison’s Man had found no new medium -through which his eternal craving for stories could be assuaged. -Literature and the drama, despite the impetus vouchsafed to them by the -printing-press, are of aristocratic origin and have failed to adapt -themselves wholeheartedly to the broadening tendencies and demands of -the age. Democracy needed a new approach to the romance of existence, an -approach that the millions could make without too great a sacrifice, -and, lo, the movies blazed the way to it, despite the fact that their -advance guard was for the most part unworthy of the high mission that -chance had thrust upon it. These pioneers had in their hands the fifth -device which Man has found for satisfying his soul’s appetite for -inspiring tales, more universal in its appeal than the tongue, the play, -the novel or the poem, and many of them degraded it, alienating in the -beginning those conservative, constructive forces in the community which -have only recently come to the assistance of the screen. - -Wells and Van Loon, each in his own interesting way, have told us -recently the tragi-comic story of Man’s evolution from slime to -Shakespeare. On a large canvas it is the same picture that the movie -presents in miniature from grime to Griffith. The great weakness of the -motion picture industry throughout its formative years, a weakness still -too much in evidence, is at the top and not at the bottom. The movies -for years lost the support of the more enlightened classes of the -community not because camera-men, carpenters, electricians and stage -hands were not competent but because the powers in control of the -completed output, the “bosses” of the new industry, failed to make the -best use of the power that had come to them. Says the producer who -recently made his public confession through the pages of _Collier’s -Weekly_: - - The directors were hard to deal with. They reflected the one - greatest fault of the entire industry: they knew not that they - knew not. Without adequate background, for the most part, - without adequate training or knowledge of human character, - without even a rudimentary philosophy or idealism, or sense of - real values, to qualify them for leadership, they were given - money and authority and power and told to make films for the - multitude. Surrounded by minor sycophants, they soon came to - believe themselves almost above criticism. A sincere critic was - more apt than not to be regarded as an enemy. - -There is something grimly ludicrous in the fact that for years after the -screen had proved conclusively that the race had finally found an -effective new method of telling stories more widely appealing, more -direct in its methods than the play, the novel or the poem, the courts -of last resort dominating the output of the films were composed largely -of men without sufficient education to appraise the value, or lack of -value, of the scenarios upon which, in the last analysis, depended the -success or failure of their ventures. They seemed to be ignorant of, or -indifferent to, the illuminating generalization to be adduced from the -history of literature that there is nothing too good for the masses, -that that which survives in letters the blue pencil of posterity is the -best, not the mediocre or the worst. Had they found themselves several -centuries ago in the Mermaid Tavern at London, they would have turned -their backs upon Will Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and hurried out to the -inn-yard to hobnob with the stable-boys. And the tragic feature of the -situation lay in the fact that for a long period the autocrats of the -screen failed to realize that a scenario can not rise higher than its -source, that you can’t get blood out of a stone, nor a screen -masterpiece out of a cub office-boy. - -But though these powers behind the films were for a long period blindly, -and often disastrously, indifferent to their highest interests in -connection with the sources from which they obtained the stories their -new tale-teller told to the millions, they displayed an enthusiastic -admiration for astronomy. They studied the stars. Would a given matinee -idol “screen well?” Would a certain popular actress endure the searching -ordeal of the camera? If they would, the public would flock to the -movie’s box-office even though the scenario-writers had done their -worst. Followed an era of star-gazing upon the part of the movie fans -and of slow but certain enlightenment upon the part of the directors and -producers. The latter discovered after a time that the fame of an actor -is no safeguard against the destructive influence of a structurally poor -picture-drama. They gradually had glimmerings of a basic truth, -knowledge of which in the past would have saved countless theatrical -managers from bankruptcy, namely, that, as Shakespeare sapiently -remarked, “the play’s the thing!” The telling of a story either on the -stage or on the screen is a justifiable venture, as a very wise and -rather jaded public knows, only if that story possesses certain elements -that make it as a tale worth while. Even Douglas Fairbanks would score a -failure in a dramatization of the multiplication-table. - -But ordinary horse sense was acquired only slowly by the movies. It is -an amazing story of stupidity, reckless expenditure of money, emphasis -in the wrong place, exploitation of stars out of their legitimate orbit, -appeals to the lowest passions in human nature; of tragic failures and -inexplicable, actually laughable, successes, of cities built and -abandoned, of fortunes made and lost, of a new, marvellous, mysterious -art in the making—this tale of the kinetoscope in search of its kingdom. -But it is worth telling for many reasons, not the least of which is that -the coming of the screen into its own has had, and is having, a -disintegrating effect upon the commercialized stage. What the ultimate -outcome of this iconoclastic influence of the movie upon the stage is -likely to be is a subject that must be reserved for a later chapter, but -it is enlightening, in connection with the foregoing review of what may -be called the fly-by-night era of the films, to glance at what has been -happening to the American theatre during the years in which the picture -palaces have been rising from the slums to the avenues. - -Walter Pritchard Eaton in _Scribner’s Magazine_ for November, 1922, -says: - - As a means of supplying drama to America as a whole our - commercialized professional theatre has broken down. The reasons - need not concern us here. They are many, no doubt. One, of - course, is the rise of the motion pictures, which are cheaper to - present and to witness, and which enable the local theatre - manager to keep his house open six or seven days in the week. - Another reason is the increased cost of transportation. Another - reason is the complication of modern life, even in the - “provinces,” so that the theatre, having to compete against - other attractions (or distractions), no longer appeals so - universally, or at any rate no longer finds all the people with - the surplus cash to patronize it at the excessive modern scale - of prices. - -Later on in the essay quoted above its author speaks of himself as one -of those “who love the drama and believe the movies a mean and -stupefying substitute for its imaginative and intellectual appeal.” If -Mr. Eaton’s opinion of the screen, as thus forcibly expressed, is based -upon its past, the past of a Prodigal Son utterly unworthy of the fatted -calf, it is not, as the reader of what I have thus far written will -admit, without reasonable justification. But is not the present of the -movies encouraging, is not their future promising? Succeeding chapters -of this book will, I hope, go to prove that Mr. Eaton is too hasty in -assuming that eventually the screen may not atone for any seeming damage -it may have done to the stage. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER V - - THE MOVIE DEVELOPS A CONSCIENCE - - -_Grows up in the Slums—Used and Abused as a Money-Getter—Goes from Bad -to Worse—Will Hays Called to the Rescue—Pulpit, Press and Playwrights -Thunder Against it—The Responsibility of the Public—The Light in the -Darkness._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER V - - THE MOVIE DEVELOPS A CONSCIENCE - - -NOT long ago the good people of Stratford-on-Avon, England, arose in -their might, held a great mass meeting, and decreed that Shakespeare’s -birthplace should not be desecrated by the movies. Lacking sufficient -clairvoyance to realize that possibly the motion picture of the near -future, with its natural colors and its synchronization of movement with -the tones of the human voice, may be destined to give Shakespeare a new -lease of life and a larger public than he has hitherto possessed, the -Stratford-on-Avonites were not without justification for the protest -they registered against the more or less disreputable pictures that -threatened to invade a shrine hitherto dedicated to the loftiest -achievement the realm of the drama can boast. But Shakespeare’s -birthplace will see the day when its inhabitants will repent of the -narrow-mindedness they have shown as regards the movies. - -It is not for us Americans, however, to jeer at Stratford-on-Avon for -its aggressive conservatism. Our immediate ancestors blocked the wheels -of progress in many mischievous, if not laughable, ways. The School -Board of Lancaster, Ohio, adopted in 1826 the following resolution: -“Such things as railroads are impossibilities and rank infidelity. If -God had designed that His intelligent creatures should travel at the -frightful speed of fifteen miles per hour by steam, He would clearly -have foretold it through His holy prophets.” The advent of the bath-tub, -destined to be one of the crowning glories of America, was denounced by -our medical men as a menace to the public health. Philadelphia, Pa., in -1843, endeavored by ordinance to prohibit all bathing between the months -of November and March. Boston, Mass., in 1845, made bathing, except when -prescribed by a physician, unlawful, and, at about the same time, -Virginia put a tax of thirty dollars a year upon every bath-tub in a -commonwealth that can claim to be the cradle of American liberty! - -Whatsoever is new under the sun must fight for its place in the sun. For -centuries the printing-press had to struggle for freedom against -powerful restrictive influences that looked upon it as “an agent of the -Devil.” The telegraph, telephone, bicycle, automobile and wireless have -all had their bigoted opponents, who feared that the broadening of -humanity’s contacts would become an increasing menace to their own -narrow beliefs and habits. Is it strange, then, that the movie, a new -form of art qualified to make an instant appeal to both the good and the -bad in human nature, should have had, at the outset of its career, a -hard struggle to justify itself to the more conservative elements of the -community? Bad boy that he was in his earlier years, the movie made it -difficult for a public largely puritanical in its origins and tendencies -to believe that the youngster could be reformed, that he had in him -untried and unmeasurable powers for upward progress, that he was a -prodigal son of Art and Science fated to exercise a controlling -influence upon the destinies of the race. - -However, there is an element in the make-up of the American people that -leads it, even at the eleventh hour, to institute reforms whenever an -institution seemingly worth saving must either be heroically treated or -permitted to go completely to the dogs. There came a time when negro -slavery must be destroyed if our Federal Constitution was to survive. At -an enormous cost of life and treasure, the blacks were freed and the -Union preserved. It became apparent recently to the American public that -there were destructive influences at work within our three most popular -forms of amusement, that our stage, our base-ball diamond and our movie -screen were in jeopardy from internal perils, as were our governmental -institutions in the early sixties. - -What Judge Landis is endeavoring to do for our national game and -Augustus Thomas for our stage is, in a general way, what Will H. Hays -has been called upon to effect in the field of the motion picture. For a -quarter of a century the movies in America, if not going from bad to -worse had shown no marked signs of repentance for their early -indiscretions. Cut-throat competition had long exercised its evil -influence upon the industry and the law of the jungle had prevailed in -its financial affairs. How this new commercial activity, despite its -unbusinesslike methods, its apparent disregard of the economic laws that -are said to underlie all competitive industries, and its seemingly -happy-go-lucky indifference to the multiplication-table actually forged -its way upward until it placed itself high on the list of the business -enterprises of this country is a marvel and a mystery that only -financial wizards could explain. - -When Will H. Hays resigned as Postmaster General of the United States to -enter, in a position of commanding influence, the motion-picture field -he became an important factor in an industry whose growth has been one -of the marvels of the world’s commercial history. It was no longer a -peripatetic gambler, out-at-heels one day and affluent the next, but a -vast business enterprise sufficiently prosperous to afford the luxury of -a general house-cleaning. It is easier for the well-to-do to be -respectable than for the down-and-outs, and the movies had reached a -point financially when, without disastrous monetary sacrifice, they -could essay the task of shortening their list of sins of omission and -commission. - -Going to the root recently of the new influences at work in the motion -picture realm, and of his official connection with them, Hays said: - - There has been some query as to just what this effort which the - industry is making at this time is all about. It is simply that - those men who make and distribute pictures have associated - themselves to do jointly those things in which they are mutually - but non-competitively interested, having as the chief purposes - of such association two great objectives—and I quote verbatim - from the formal articles of association, which have been filed - in the office of the Secretary of State at Albany, N.Y.: - “Establishing and maintaining the highest possible moral and - artistic standards in motion picture production and developing - the educational as well as the entertainment value of the motion - picture.” - -Later on in this book, we shall have occasion to refer in detail to what -Hays and his colleagues have accomplished in their efforts to improve -the tone of the movies. But just here it is well to direct the course of -our narrative into the two channels referred to in the clause of the -producers’ agreement above quoted, following the flood of movies devoted -to mere amusement for awhile with searching eyes, and later on making a -survey of the rapidly broadening stream of pictures designed for -educational purposes. From the latter, perhaps, it may be expedient for -us to go forward with some confidence toward a more minute consideration -of the dynamics lurking in the screen for the furtherance of a method of -world-wide enlightenment that may eventually save civilization from the -disintegrating forces by which, both externally and internally, it is -menaced. - -“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” is a sweeping -generalization intended by the poet to be a compliment to motherhood. -Whether it is a compliment or a condemnation depends wholly upon one’s -point of view regarding the world. If the world is worth saving, the -hand that rocks the cradle is worthy of all honor; if it isn’t, then -motherhood has been unjustifiably glorified. Believing, personally, that -the human race is not without many reasonable claims to salvation, we -turn curiously to the movies in their capacity as a public amusement to -see whether, leaving their educational function for further -consideration, they display as a pastime anything that looks like a -gleam of hope for the regeneration of the race. - -Have we, in fact, cause for optimism regarding the future of the -amusement screen? We find to-day the press, the pulpit and the -playwrights denouncing the shortcomings of the movies, chastising their -secret faults and their open transgressions; editors, preachers, -dramatists posing as Savonarolas at a spiritual crisis in the career of -a young but alarmingly potent world power. These are portents in the sky -that promise well for the future of the screen. If our leading thinkers, -writers and publicists, yes, and picture producers, were indifferent to -the sins of omission and commission attributable for a quarter of a -century to the movie its case would be hopeless. But it is worth saving, -as the best minds in our country well know, and the criticism that it is -always undergoing is a most encouraging phenomenon. - -The regeneration of the movies must be both through external and -internal sources. A producer who recently relieved his over-burdened -soul in _Collier’s Weekly_ puts the whole matter in a nut-shell when he -says: - - We must have better pictures. And to get them we need these two - things: inside the industry, the higher standards and leadership - that can only come in with intelligent capital; and outside the - industry, the support and encouragement of such good pictures as - are already made. We of the motion-picture industry who stand - for more intelligent pictures can only provide them if you on - the outside, in addition to criticising in no uncertain terms - the stupid films that offend you, will take the trouble to hunt - up, and go to see, and boost, the photoplays that are good - enough to merit your interest. When you do that we can have - better movies. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER VI - - THE MOVIE AND THE LIBRARY - - -_Its Rise from Mush to Masterpieces—Its Debt to D. W. Griffith—“The -Birth of a Nation”—A New Way to Tell Old Tales—“The Three -Musketeers”—“The Count of Monte Cristo”—“The Four Horsemen”—How -Book-Worms May Renew their Youth._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER VI - - THE MOVIE AND THE LIBRARY - - -DR. JEKYLL has begun belatedly to make his elevating influence felt in -the movies. Press, pulpit, producers, are backing him in his fight -against Mr. Hyde. But the latter seems to be a psychological cat with -nine lives. The power which he has exercised for evil in the realm of -the photoplay for a quarter of a century he refuses to relinquish -without a fight, and an immediate and complete victory for Dr. Jekyll -only the most optimistic dare to predict. - -Look at a list of movie titles recently compiled by a somewhat cynical -observer desirous of proving his proposition that for one photoplay -worthy of approval the screen shows a score whose appeal is only to -either the depraved or the unintelligent: “Only a Shop-girl,” “The Lure -of Broadway,” “More to be Pitied than Scorned,” “The Darling of the -Rich,” “Deserted at the Altar,” “The Woman Gives,” “Thorns and Orange -Blossoms,” “The Curse of Drink,” “How Women Love,” “From Rags to -Riches.” Month after month, year after year, the type of mind that -considers Laura Jean Libbey’s novels admirable dominates too large a -percentage of the output of the movie studios. The dime-novelish taint -that was placed upon the screen at the outset of its career has been -until recently only a shade lighter than it was in the beginning. - -An old fight is being waged upon a new battleground. Generation after -generation the so-called “elevation of the stage” has been a project -dear to the hearts of many worthy men and women. The scope of the -age-long engagement between the powers of darkness and the powers of -light to dominate the drama has been vastly enlarged, and while the -adherents of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are still in conflict for -possession of the stage, their multiplied cohorts are also fighting -tooth and nail to put good or evil, God or the Devil, progress or -retrogression, civilization or its opposite, in control of the screen. -In other words, both the stage and the photoplay are outward and visible -signs of an inward and spiritual combat the outcome of which is to -determine the question whether mankind’s future course is to be upward -or downward. For this reason the screen, appealing to a larger clientèle -than is influenced by the stage, and one more in need of the uplift that -may save humanity from a return to barbarism, becomes logically an -object worthy of the most earnest consideration and study by all those -of us who believe that Man does not live by bread alone, that the soul -of the race can be saved if the various media for impressing it are -purged of their evil influences. If it is true that there are sermons in -stones, it follows, as the night the day, that there may lurk within the -dynamics of the screen the possibility of divine revelations. For be it -said right here, the first universal language will be capable ultimately -of a saving grace to the race only if it finds a message to deliver to -humanity that is not of the earth earthy. It’s the man behind the gun -who wins battles. It will be the prophet and seer and poet behind the -screen who may eventually bring about the triumph of mankind over the -powers of darkness. But when? That is the question. If those in control -of the screen to-day should see a group of seers, prophets and poets -invading their stronghold there would be something doing most -detrimental to the dignity of the interlopers. The camera might, in -fact, catch a film, to be subsequently entitled “High-brows Bounced from -a Studio,” that would tickle the eyes of millions of groundlings. In -short, the real power and glory of the screen are still concealed in the -womb of Time. But their advent and their triumph are inevitable. -Otherwise, a polyglot world would be doomed to go eventually to the -dogs—a racial cataclysm too horrible to be contemplated. - -Let us look more in detail into the data which furnish reason for the -hope expressed above that the screen may eventually fulfill its loftiest -mission to mankind. What is there in the phenomena at present manifested -in the realm of the movies that justifies our optimism? Suppose we turn -first to D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation,” recently dubbed by a -noted critic “a celluloid _Peter Pan_ which will never grow old.” Year -after year this early and revolutionary achievement of a far-sighted -producer finds a new and enthusiastic public, opening the eyes, as it -did at the outset, of despondent doubters to the possibilities of the -screen as a dignified and uplifting interpreter of significant crises in -the history of a people. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” was also the -birth of a new era for the screen. - -I have taken the liberty above to refer to my early inclination to -become a movie fan, to my disgust and revolt as the screen for years -failed to show regard for its higher possibilities, and to my -comparatively recent renewal of a hope that had been almost destroyed by -the photoplay’s youthful indiscretions—to use a term rather mild and -inadequate. I am sure that I shall speak of an experience that came to a -large number of Americans, who had given up the movies as hopeless, when -I say that “The Birth of a Nation” revived in me the conviction that the -screen has before it a great future, a splendid mission, a message to -deliver to humanity that may atone eventually for its juvenile sins of -omission and commission. For the first time, so far as I was concerned, -this Griffith picture revealed to me a fact, of which I had long been -vaguely conscious, that the screen was not inherently a medium for -pandering to the grossest passions in human nature, for visualizing -merely the social phenomena that years ago gave to the Jack Harkaway -stories and the _Police Gazette_ their vogue. D. W. Griffith had put -into concrete form a conception of the movies as a vehicle of combined -entertainment and enlightenment that had, for the first time, made all -things worth while possible to the screen. In that corner of the Temple -of Fame dedicated to the real benefactors of the latest, and probably -the last, method of telling great stories to a tale-loving race, to the -names of Muybridge, Edison, Eastman and Paul must, in all justice, be -added the name of Griffith. And there are other producers worthy of -mention in this connection. Rex Ingram, who gave us “The Four Horsemen” -and “The Prisoner of Zenda”; William de Mille, whom we have to thank for -“Clarence” and “Grumpy”; Fred Niblo, who screened “The Famous Mrs. Fair” -and “Blood and Sand,” come to mind as among those who have seen, as has -Griffith, the higher possibilities of the movie. - -Of course, we have with us always the carper and the skeptic, the -pessimist who argues that one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and that -Will H. Hays, capable of organizing victory for the Republican Party and -of improving our Postal Service, is essaying an impossible task when he -endeavors to widen and make permanent the loftier scope that Griffith -and other praiseworthy producers have given to the screen. But these -atrabilious knockers, short-sighted, narrow-minded, and unimaginative, -have failed to take a bird’s-eye view of the varied influences and -enterprises now in action with the avowed purpose of perpetuating the -impetus given to the better type of photoplay by the permanent success -of “The Birth of a Nation.” - -Cannot even the most uncompromising pessimist admit that from those -pioneer days when a crude scenario written by a cub office-boy was -screened, for want of better material at hand, to the present moment -when there is nothing too majestic in the imaginings of -master-fictionists to deter the camera, become a dramatist, from making -use thereof, there has been an upward trend of the movies that is not -merely encouraging but intoxicating? There may be, here and there, of -course, a man of letters, not sufficiently broadened by his wide -reading, who considers the screening of an immortal novel by Dumas, -Dickens, Victor Hugo, or other wonder-worker in narrative literature, a -kind of sacrilege which he will always refuse to countenance. To him the -Robin Hood of song and story is a revered personage upon whom Douglas -Fairbanks has cast of late something of a slight. Let Alfred Noyes write -musical verse about the picturesque bandits of Sherwood Forest, but, in -the name of the Great God of Letters, don’t allow the new art that the -screen has made possible lay profane hands upon a hero whom Literature -adopted long ago! - -Little good will it do to their ridiculous cause, of course, for -lettered reactionaries at this late day to attempt to protect the -library from the scenario-writer. The screen has an insatiable maw for -dramatic tales, old and new, and more and more, as time passes, will the -telling of tales in the universal language of the eye become a factor in -race-enlightenment. - -Nor is the screen really committing sacrilege in making use of the -literary achievements of master tale-tellers. Since the movies first -began to present photoplays based upon the world’s great novels, there -has been a constantly increasing demand at our circulating libraries for -the works of worth-while authors possessing the narrative gift. The -telephone actually increased the vogue of the telegraph. The wireless is -enlarging the working-field of the telephone. By the same token, the -screen is not narrowing but broadening the realm of letters. The appeal -that it makes to countless millions who have been hitherto indifferent -to, or ignorant of, the outstanding achievements of our great -imaginative writers is a new and potent factor in the intellectual and -spiritual life of the people. - -Furthermore, the movie, in its traffic with the best in fiction, is of -service to the man of letters who is sufficiently open-minded to welcome -new contacts with old masterpieces. The screen does not merely bring -great stories down to the masses, it frequently revivifies the -enthusiasm of the aging and jaded book-worm for great stories. Is it -disloyalty to my degree of Doctor of Humane Letters to confess that -within the year my youth has been temporarily renewed for a few hours as -I watched the screen telling me in a new way Dumas’s stories of “The -Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo”? Would I not be a -hopeless literary snob if I refused to admit that I derived pure and -unadulterated joy from the unfolding before my eyes of half-forgotten -tales which had been among the keenest delights of my romance-loving -boyhood? If this be treason, at all events it’s honesty. I have acquired -the habit of late of patronizing the theatre that advertises a -picture-play derived from some novel, old or new, and recounts, by means -of the silent drama, a story worthy of repetition. - -While on this phase of my general subject, I find that I can go -conscientiously further than I have above and assert that the screen -may, in certain instances, present an author’s narrative with even -greater impressiveness than his printed book was able to compass. “The -Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” was, to the minds of many competent -critics, a much overrated novel. It displayed not only the merits of -Ibañez as a story-teller but also his grave defects. His tale was rather -clumsily developed, and its interest was not cumulative. It is hardly -going too far to say that the author narrowly avoided handicapping his -achievement by an anti-climax. - -But the screen presentation of “The Four Horsemen” was absolutely free -from the shortcomings above ascribed to the novel. Not only was it -marvellously effective in its appeal to the eye, but the logical and -dramatic unfolding of the basic story was a striking revelation of the -valuable service that an expert scenario-writer may render, now and -then, to the professional writer of novels. For the many outrages that -fictionists have received at the hands of the film-makers some atonement -is offered at times, and “The Four Horsemen” as a photoplay proves that -the pot may sometimes be unjust in calling the kettle black. - -The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The screen may commit—yes, -frequently has committed—mayhem, assault and battery and actual murder -upon the revered form of some great masterpiece of narrative literature; -but you who are well-read, you who love the “old melodious lays that -softly melt the ages through,” and the tales told by the great -romancers, pause before you recklessly indict a new art, groping its way -toward a full realization of its possibilities and powers. By turning -your haughty back upon a photoplay made from some famous novel, you may -conceivably lose an opportunity for drinking again from that Fountain of -Eternal Youth which you, more fortunate than Ponce de Leon, discovered -one day in a library when you were still a boy. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER VII - - THE MOVIE’S APPETITE FOR PLOTS - - -_Ravenous for Screen-Food—A Ghoul Exhausting the -Grave-Yards—Contemporary Novelists Fail to Supply the Demand—A New Art, -a New Technique and a New Possibility—Scenario-Writing To-Day and -To-Morrow—Will the Screen Beget its own Hugos and Barries?_ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER VII - - THE MOVIE’S APPETITE FOR PLOTS - - -THE need of motion-picture producers for new raw material for the screen -grows apace, and is constantly harder to satisfy. Otherwise, the camera -would not at present be endeavoring to make pictures of Einstein’s -Theory of Relativity. It is rumored that Bergson, Freud and Coué have -been approached by hard-pressed producers on the subject of their movie -picture rights. The dilemma confronting the photoplay promoters is more -serious than that which for generations past has worried the theatrical -managers. The appeal of the dramatist is to tens of thousands of people, -that of the scenario-writer to millions. It doesn’t require much of a -head for mathematics to realize that the food-supply of the screen is -much more quickly exhausted than that of the stage. - -In so far as the libraries are concerned, the movies have begun to -exhaust the resources vouchsafed to them by the writers of the past. -Their fate is like that which menaces our nation in connection with our -forests. For many years we have been cutting down our trees without -taking thought for the morrow by providing for a new growth of forest -where our improvident axe has had its wanton way. The screen has -recklessly leveled both its giant sequoias and its scrub-oaks and finds -itself in sore straits for timber that will stand the strain it puts -upon it. - -The younger generation of fiction-writers are not furnishing the studios -with material with which to repair the gaps made as the romances of the -past are, one by one, fed to the capacious maw of the hungry screen. -Mark Twain asserted that there were only seven original stories in -existence—or was it thirty?—and inferred that the latest novel by the -most original of contemporary writers must be, of necessity, a variation -upon one of these ancient, basic yarns. There still exists the suspicion -that our greatest humorist was “spoofing us,” as an Englishman would -say. But the output of fiction to-day, both in America and Europe, leads -to the conclusion that our imaginative writers were not born to the -purple as master plot-makers. They repeatedly shock us, sometimes -disgust us, often interest and amuse us, constantly furnish us with food -for reflection and apprehension, and once in awhile startle us by their -brilliancy—but, for the most part, their novels do not “screen well.” -They lack, as a class, the absorbing narrative interest that makes tales -like “Monte Cristo,” “Les Misérables,” “Lorna Doone,” “A Tale of Two -Cities,” and many other masterpieces of the older generation of -romancers, effective on the screen. They seem to be influenced by the -fear that Mark Twain was right in his depressing generalization, and -that it is better to put forth a novel with little or no plot than to be -accused of employing modern methods for telling an ancient tale. - -From these modern fictionists the screen asks for bread and they give it -a stone—sometimes a precious or semi-precious stone, but not what the -newest and hungriest of the arts needs for its continued sustenance. -This is the more remarkable because of the fact that we are living in an -age more stimulating to the imaginative mind than any of its -predecessors. We are called upon to rebuild a shattered world, to -salvage what was of value in a dethroned civilization and to reconstruct -the affairs of mankind upon new bases. - - It is no figure of speech [remarks President Harding, in his - recent message to Congress], to say that we have come to the - test of our civilization. The world has been passing—is to-day - passing—through a great crisis. The conduct of war itself is not - more difficult than the solution of the problems which - necessarily follow. - -In other words, the human race since 1914 has been going through -unprecedented experiences which of necessity furnish material for the -teller of romances, the builder of plots, the novelist, the dramatist, -the scenario-writer, richer, more varied, more illuminating than has -been hitherto vouchsafed to imaginative genius. But, as Virgil once -grumbled, “the mountains were in labor and brought forth a little -mouse.” Science is going forward to-day from one startling triumph to -another, the creative imaginations of its greatest minds rising to -adequate control of the new and splendid opportunities recent progress -has brought to them. But Art, especially that field of it reserved to -the origination of dramatic tales, seems to be suffering under a blight -that forces it to give birth either to monstrosities or to weaklings, -and to clothe its worthless offspring in garments fashioned to delude -the weak-minded into believing that what is offensive to common-sense -and good taste is necessarily a child of genius. The screen, with fame -and fortune to bestow upon the teller of tales, is forced to become a -ghoul haunting old graveyards at night because the living are unworthy -of a great opportunity, because the fictionist of to-day goes far afield -in quest of strange gods instead of worshipping at the eternal and -inspiring altars which gave inspiration to the master-romancers of the -past. - -The situation confronting the photoplay producer at this moment, as -outlined above, bids fair to become worse rather than better, unless -some radical solution of the problem dealing with the constant renewal -of worthy dramatic material for the screen can be found. The most -disreputable type of movie drama has fallen into a permanent condition -of innocuous desuetude, in so far, at least, as the vast majority of -picture theatres are concerned. It has been replaced by photoplays of a -much higher order, until to-day the screen is engaged in giving to the -public splendid presentations of great masterpieces of fiction and drama -entitling it to approval and sympathetic encouragement. But you can’t -eat your cake and have it too. You can’t feed an audience of several -millions daily with the cream of the world’s imaginative literature -without shortly resorting to skimmed milk and eventually coming to the -end of your lacteal resources. - -The point toward which we have been driving is this: The movie, with its -stupendous resources of capital, its enterprising and ambitious -personnel, its right to believe, through its experiences of a quarter of -a century, that no obstacle can check its triumphant progress, is like -an army that can conquer the world only on the condition that its -commissariat solves the problem of food-supply. It is possible, of -course, that when the screen has fully mastered the technique involved -in color reproduction and the synchronization of voice and action the -photoplays now attracting the movie public may receive a new lease of -life. We who have enjoyed, for example, “The Count of Monte Cristo” on -the screen, despite the fact that neither color, sound nor perspective -assisted the development of Dumas’s absorbing story, would be inclined -to give it our attention again when Edmond Dantes is no longer clad in -black-and-white and has found his voice. But it is best to let the -marvels of the future take care of themselves. For the present, we must -confine ourselves to the screen as it is, and as it seems likely to -remain for an indefinite time to come. - -However, there must come a crisis in the future, under present -conditions, when the movie producers will be hampered by a lack of -screen material unless they have been far-sighted enough to provide -against this contingency. There are among them forward-looking -exploiters of the latest story-telling medium who have formulated, in -rather a vague and general way, a possible solution of the problem -confronting them. They are encouraging writers possessing imagination -and originality to take part in the development of a new form of the -dramaturgic art which makes direct rather than indirect use of the -screen. In other words, the movie displays a growing tendency to demand -from creative minds its own special requirements; to turn, so to speak, -away from the libraries to the librettists. Eventually, it is safe to -assert, there will come a day when scenario-writers will not spend a -large part of their time listening to echoes for inspiration but will -beget screen plays from internal instead of external impulses. In a not -distant future, it is reasonable to predict, the movie will, of dire -necessity, develop its own type of dramatic story-tellers whose -fecundity may make Mark Twain’s assertion, quoted above, seem more than -ever humorous rather than accurate. The movie must do this or run out -eventually of screen material, for the dead tale-tellers have little -more to offer it, and contemporary novelists have not, from the picture -producers’ standpoint, risen to a great opportunity. - -Of course, the future of the movie, no matter how glorious it may be, -must be, of necessity, circumscribed, as are fiction and the drama, by -the basic limitations applying to human passions. Love, hatred, loyalty, -jealousy, ambition, generosity, cupidity, philanthropy, selfishness, and -the other dominating motives impelling men and women to beget the raw -material of drama will not be increased in number because the screen has -developed a new method for telling tales to a story-loving race. While -the widely-accepted generalization that human nature never changes may -not be true, it can not be questioned that the scenario-writer of the -future will be forced to deal with the same manifestations of Man’s -psychic make-up which engaged the attention of Æschylus, Sophocles, -Molière, Shakespeare, and the lesser dramatists. But as the nations -to-day are striving to find a new way to pay old debts, so is the screen -seeking a new way to present the eternal dramatic clash of old passions. -As the kinetoscope thirty years ago begot a novel form of amusement, so -is its successor, the movie screen, bringing into being a new type of -dramatic technique. The scenario-writer is something besides a -combination of story-teller and playwright. He is experimenting in a -youthful artistic medium, whose resources and possibilities are as yet -only partially revealed, and he has become a pioneer in a realm that -belongs to a kind of specialist bearing resemblance to both the novelist -and dramatist but differing from them in ways peculiarly his own. - -The future welfare of the screen, in so far as it is confined to the -amusement field, depends largely upon how stimulating to men and women -possessing creative imagination this new method of tale-telling, rapidly -developing its own technique, may prove to be. Will the movie produce -its own Hugos, Sardous, Stevensons, Barries,—perhaps, its -Shakespeare—who, fascinated by the most democratic method yet devised -for genius to appeal to the masses, shall eschew the old methods for -telling new tales and reach immortality by means of the photoplay -scenario? If you who have read the preceding chapters of this book, -believe, as does the writer, that the only universal language yet -devised by Man is the most important contribution to the spiritual -resources of the race that has been made for centuries, you will be -inclined to hope that scenario-writing for the screen may become an -occupation worthy, in succeeding generations, of the exclusive devotion -of many imaginative creators. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - - THE MOVIE AND THE CONTINUITY WRITER - - -_The Screen Demands the Inevitable—Movie Audiences no Longer Easily -Fooled—They can Tell a Hawk from a Hernshaw—The Value of the Screen as a -Mirror of Life—Man’s First Universal Means to Self-Knowledge._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - - THE MOVIE AND THE CONTINUITY WRITER - - -WAS it Brander Matthews, Henry Van Dyke, Richard Burton or Clayton -Hamilton who asserted that any given novel must be placed in the -category of either the Impossible, the Improbable or the Inevitable? -Whoever it was, he helped to clarify the thinking of any writer who may -find himself dealing with the topic of screen tales and tale-tellers, of -the movie drama and the continuity writer. Every art has its own special -sins of omission and commission. The poet who tells a story in verse may -take liberties denied to the novelist relating the same story. The -continuity writer who places this tale upon the screen enjoys certain -prerogatives denied to either the poet or the novelist, but he is also -bound by limitations and restrictions inherent in the medium through -which he is working as a raconteur. - -It is not easy to fool a movie audience in regard to the Inevitable. -Jove may nod now and then when he is engaged upon an epic poem or a -romantic or realistic novel but he must remain wide awake when he is -writing scenarios for the screen. Scott, Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Read, -Dumas, Victor Hugo, Thackeray may “get away,” to use a slang phrase, -with a lapse of memory, an injected anachronism, even the reintroduction -of a character who has been killed off in an earlier chapter. The -impressive flow of their narrative, their charm of style, and the -tendency of a reader to forget minor details in what he has already read -of a tale, have enabled the great story-tellers to commit strange, -almost unbelievable, blunders in the unfolding of their narratives -without seriously marring the value of their work. But when a -tale-teller is employing the movie screen he can not afford to take -liberties with the basic proposition that seeing is _not_ believing -unless there is the logic of the Inevitable in the sequence of the -events portrayed. - -The above is asserted under a full realization of the fact that for -years the story-telling films tried to the breaking-point the patience -of their more enlightened supporters by frequently sacrificing the -Inevitable to the Expedient, allowing the logic of events to go to the -bow-wows because a reel must be cut, or a movie star exploited, or a -scene over-emphasized for the sake of its advertising value. Lincoln -asserted that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but at one -period it seemed as if the screen were stubbornly endeavoring to perform -this miracle. A picture-play, whatsoever might have been its origin, -succumbed, as a rule, to a tendency to underrate the general -intelligence, the power of memory, and the knowledge of life and human -nature possessed by the average movie audience. - -But times have changed. Continuity—that is, the spinal-column of a -picture-play,—manages, for the most part, to keep the cervical, dorsal -and lumbar vertebræ of the narrative in a normal juxtaposition, with the -result that dramatic monstrosities are gradually disappearing from the -screen. It is still possible to fool some of the people all the time, -but it no longer pays, so far as movie audiences are concerned, to throw -common-sense into the discard when the screen essays to tell a dramatic -story. Recently in a small city within a hundred miles of New York the -proprietor of a motion-picture theatre spoke to me of a great change -that he had observed of late in the attitude of his audiences toward the -silent drama. - - They won’t stand for many things they overlooked a short time - ago. They demand both logic and accuracy in our pictures. South - Sea scenes must be taken in the South Seas and African wild - beasts must be filmed in their native habitat or our patrons - revolt. At the present rate of progress, the next generation, - through the aid of the screen, will become so worldly-wise that - even county fairs will be made safe for the farmer. - -There is much that is worth serious consideration in the above quoted -opinion of one whose professional welfare depends upon the keenness of -his judgment regarding the trend of public opinion in connection with -the screen. Somewhat quaintly he gives expression to the conviction that -the movie and its clientele react upon each other and that the general -tendency of this mutual action and reaction has been toward the -elevation of the screen and the enlightenment of its patrons. In this -elevation of the screen the continuity writer has, of course, played a -leading part. The time has gone by when he could recklessly substitute -the Impossible or the Improbable for the Inevitable and retain his -professional standing. That he has been guilty of sins of omission and -commission, has shown at times a lack of imagination, and has frequently -failed to conform to the axiom that a story, no matter through what -medium it is told, must, to be effective, preserve to the end the -element of suspense is undoubtedly true. The fact is that the ideal -continuity writer is, as is the poet, born not made. The technique of -scenario writing can be acquired by anybody with average intelligence -but to employ it for the highest possible purposes of the screen is to -show the possession of something akin to genius. Such being the case, -the law of the survival of the fittest, working out in the studios, has -decreed that though many are called to continuity work but few are -chosen in the end to lead the film drama toward the heights to which it -is destined to attain. - -Suspense! Ah, there’s the rub! To tell a dramatic story by means of -pictures to a miscellaneous collection of movie fans, wise in the -niceties of this new method of narration, in such a way that the -interest of the on-lookers is won at the outset, maintained throughout -succeeding scenes, and intensified as the climax is reached, is to -accomplish a feat requiring a combination of technical skill and -imaginative inspiration that places a real triumph of the continuity -writer’s art high upon the list of worth-while creative achievements. - -That such a large percentage of picture-plays have failed to satisfy the -demand of audiences for drama that stresses the Inevitable, conforms to -the logic underlying real life, and preserves to the final -screen-curtain the suspense that it is the mission of dramaturgic art to -beget is not strange, therefore, when we take into consideration the -natural and acquired powers demanded of the ideal continuity writer. -Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that the scenario-maker has been, -and will continue to be, blamed for shortcomings of the screen that -cannot be justly laid at his door. He is more or less at the mercy of -the director and the film-cutter, a victim frequently of exigencies -against which his devotion to the underlying principles of dramatic -exposition cannot prevail. A picture play that may be effectively -complete when presented in a metropolitan theatre may be so eviscerated -for provincial use that the continuity writer, lauded in the cities, is -often forced to undergo unjustified suburban censure. But, as is -suggested in another chapter, the comparatively new art of the -continuity writer is bound eventually to overcome its earlier handicaps -and, in its bestowal upon the race of a novel medium through which -creative genius can manifest itself, will beget a type of -super-scenario-maker to which the screen’s future splendid achievements -must be, of necessity, largely due. - -The meaning of life Man doesn’t know. Art is, and always has been, Man’s -testimony to the fact that he believes that life has a meaning and that -his quest for that meaning is not destined to be forever futile. -Recently the race came into possession of what seemed to be at first a -new toy, not to be taken too seriously, but worthy, as it presently -appeared, of development as a most fascinating addition to our -recreational resources. But of late the public has begun to realize -vaguely that the screen is becoming something of more vital importance -to mankind than merely a plaything that serves only as a time-killer. -The fact to which the provincial manager above quoted called my -attention, namely, that movie audiences are constantly emphasizing their -demand for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth -possesses a significance that is entitled to the most earnest -consideration. Is it possible that Man has come finally into possession -of an art-form enabling him to come nearer to solving the riddle of the -Sphinx we call Life than has been hitherto possible? - -There will be those among my readers, I fully realize, who will feel -that my inclination all through this book has been to take the screen -too seriously, to overrate its psychical dynamics and to underrate its -gross materialism, to prophesy for it a future that could be made -possible only if producers became archangels and movie patrons pilgrims -to a shrine where the soul of the race became no longer of the earth -earthy. Well, so be it. Perhaps, as regards the subject in hand, I am -allowing my naturally optimistic liver to dominate my habitually -pessimistic brain. But neither I nor my critics will live long enough to -know which of us was in the right. A conviction, nevertheless, has come -to me of late out of which I am sure that I shall never be -shaken—namely, that when Man recently found a way to stop living, now -and then, that he might look at life, he took the greatest step forward -that he has ever taken toward becoming a philosopher. He pauses -periodically in these days before a screen and sees, as he never did -before, what manner of creature he is. By so doing, he must eventually -attain to a self-knowledge such as he has hitherto craved but has not -known how to acquire. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER IX - - THE MOVIE IMPROVES ITS MORALS - - -_War and Love Degraded—The Crook and the Vampire—Pursuers and -Pursued—The Box-Office Finally Vindicates Dr. Jekyll—The Photoplay’s -Marvellous Future—Booths and Barrymores Pass, Shakespeare Remains—Survey -of the Screen as an Amusement Concluded._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER IX - - THE MOVIE IMPROVES ITS MORALS - - -FOR ages the interest of the individual in dramatic episodes in real -life was in direct ratio to his propinquity to the locality in which -these episodes occurred. Until recently, a civil war in China seemed to -be of less significance to the average New Yorker than a Tong outbreak -in Chinatown, just as to his ancestors Aaron Burr’s treasonable schemes -were of greater moment than Napoleon’s efforts at world-dominion. But -the New Yorker has learned, since 1914, that what happens in Peking or -Canton may affect him more vitally than anything which may occur in Mott -or Pell Street. Against his own volition he has become, perforce, a -citizen of the world and is compelled to subscribe to Terence’s dictum, -sensationally delivered to the Romans centuries ago: “_Homo sum, humani -nihil a me alienum puto._” - -This change in the mental attitude of the average American toward what -may be called the real perspective of current events, a change that has -had an effect upon the screen as a peripatetic journalist by making it -constantly more cosmopolitan, has not as yet revolutionized its -activities in its earlier and more important rôle as a photoplay -producer. As a medium for drama the screen is only just beginning to -break away from the influences that controlled it when it first set out -on its career as a pioneer in a new art, namely, the silent presentation -of plays and stories. It is still necessary for us who enjoy a photoplay -of real merit to exercise care at the entrance to a movie theatre lest -we be confronted presently by a screen drama unworthy the attention of -intelligent observers. Why this deplorable situation continues to exist -it is worth our while to consider. - -There are those among the erudite who assert that the oldest of the arts -is Poetry. Like Lord Byron, mankind “lisped in numbers, for the numbers -came.” Homer and his brother bards, Latin, Teutonic, Norse, twanged -their lyres, harshly or majestically, as the case might be, in -glorification of only two themes, namely, War and Love. And so was it -later on with the troubadours and minnesingers, they harped and sang the -splendors and the mysteries of combat and of passion. Long ago was Man’s -belligerency set to word-music and the martial hero owes to the poets -the false and misleading radiance that throughout the ages has -surrounded his name and deeds. And when they sang of love it was the -love of a Lochinvar for a maiden not of a Lincoln for a people. - -The youngest of the arts, like the oldest, has confined itself -practically to war and love. But the screen drama has been more -reprehensible than poetry in that, in its youth, it has chosen to -glorify the kind of warfare that is least worthy of public exploitation, -namely, the eternal conflict that goes on between the lawless and the -law-abiding, between the crook and the constable, between the underworld -and the upper. Realizing that the scenario-writer, like the playwright, -must base a dramatic story upon some kind of clash or combat, our -photoplay producers for nearly a quarter of a century have permitted the -screen to concern itself too often with a crude type of melodrama that -was untrue to life and offensive to good taste, obtaining the clash -essential to its being by the same methods employed by the -dime-novelists of fifty years ago. - -And as the screen depicted, in its quest for drama, a type of ignoble, -petty warfare, so did it indulge in a debasing use of the passion of -love in its early efforts to make financial hay while the camera -clicked. The rake and the vampire, the seducer and the siren, the -vicious and their victims deified in the movies official sociological -statistics and gradually led a large percentage of the public toward the -belief, subconscious, perhaps, that the respectable element in our -communities is wholly negligible, that the world is made up almost -entirely of the pursuers and the pursued, with illicit love as the -motive force. The Eighteenth Amendment to our Federal Constitution -informed an amazed generation that we Americans are strongly influenced -by an inherited puritanical strain; but while, as a nation, we were -adopting Prohibition, we were flocking daily by the millions to gaze at -photoplays sufficiently shocking to draw our forefathers protesting from -their graves. Consistency is not a jewel possessed, as has been -repeatedly proved since Cromwellian days, by the Puritan. When, in our -beloved country, he gave up winking at the bar-tender he betook himself -to the movies and winked at the bar-sinister. But his conscience -troubled him, and presently he began to talk to his fellow-Roundheads -about the shortcomings of the screen. The Puritans had triumphed -recently over the saloon. Would it not be possible for them, they asked -each other, to eliminate presently from the movie the debasing features -that have disgraced its youth? - -But where does liberty end and license begin? At what point does free -speech change into unlawful utterances? How many, and how drastic, -should be our sumptuary laws? Where lies the golden mean between -ultra-socialistic paternalism and that extreme of individualism for -which the anarchists strive? These queries, all of which exercise a -disquieting influence upon our national life, are of the same class to -which the problem now confronting the producers of photoplays belongs. -That the screen must repent and reform, must see to it that its maturity -is less censurable than its youth, is a proposition accepted by both the -producers and the public. But where shall the scenario-writer draw the -line in his effort to make the second quarter-century of the movie less -reprehensible than its first? It is a question hard to answer, but there -is one illuminating fact that is gradually having its influence upon the -output of the studios, namely, that a clean and decent photoplay is more -likely to become a financial success than one which appeals to the baser -passions of the public. - -In this regard, history is but repeating itself. The most successful -American plays, from the box-office standpoint, have been, for several -generations past, those which eschewed the licentious and the immoral. -And, by the same token, it is safe to predict that the movie fans of -this country will continue to prefer Douglas Fairbanks in “Robin Hood” -to Nazimova in Oscar Wilde’s “Salome.” Leaving ethics wholly out of the -discussion, and placing the problem strictly upon a business and -financial basis, there seems to be overwhelming evidence to the effect -that an investment in clean pictures is safer than in soiled. - -Of course, the regeneration of the photoplay must be, of necessity, a -slow process. We must look facts and figures in the face and admit at -the outset that the millions of Americans who daily attend movie -theatres are not, on the average, highly intellectual, nor over-prudish -as critics. They pay their money to the box-office to be amused, not -instructed nor uplifted, to get recreation rather than rescue. A stream -cannot rise higher than its source, nor can a picture-play win success -if it soars above the head and heart of the average movie fan. Until -recently, the producers, as a class, underrated the intelligence of that -head and the responsiveness of that heart to the highest that is in -mankind’s complicated make-up. One of them said to me recently that that -cross-section of our American civilization represented by the young men -drafted for the World War had proved, as statistics showed, that the -percentage of illiteracy in this country is so great that a -movie-manager who produced a really high order of photoplays was surely -destined to “go broke.” That his rivals in the screen drama have -successfully controverted his proposition by replacing, to their own -advantage, the old salacious and nonsensical picture plays by screen -dramas of a much higher type he would not acknowledge. His mind is of -that pessimistic kind that despairs of the republic—and of civilization -as a whole—because Tom, Dick and Harry, Fritz, Tony and Ivanovitch for a -whole generation patronized unprotestingly the sort of mixed sentimental -slush and moron-made melodrama which he, and his kind, served out to -them. He failed wholly to realize that, despite the high percentage of -illiteracy in the United States—nay, on account of it—it was his sacred -duty to endeavor to raise the average of intelligence in our country -instead of sending out photoplays that dragged it down to a lower level. - -And “the play’s the thing!” as Shakespeare remarked long ago. The screen -idol, like the old matinee idol, has been exploited and advertised and -flattered, foisted upon an easily-misguided public, at the expense of -the drama itself; and more than one short-sighted producer has lived to -regret the day when he hitched his wagon, containing all his worldly -goods, to a movie star instead of trusting his welfare to his -scenario-writers. That there is light in the darkness a close observer -of the present tendencies of the screen, so far as drama is concerned, -must admit, but it will be a long time before photoplay producers as a -class grasp the underlying and immensely illuminating fact, broadly -applicable to both the screen and the stage, that, while Booths and -Barrymores come and go, Shakespeare goes on forever. In the last -analysis, the screen and the stage are media for the telling of dramatic -stories and their well-being, in the long run, depends not upon -shooting-stars but upon planetary playwrights. - -In approaching the conclusion of the first half of this series of -articles which has given, inadequately and sketchily, a bird’s-eye view -of the past and present of the movie as a purveyor of amusement, the -writer finds himself turning to other fields of endeavor in which the -screen is pushing forward as a pioneer with the hope in his heart, -amounting to a certainty, that the screen drama in America is upon the -threshold of a great and glorious future. Revolutionary changes in the -photo-drama are being brought about by methods arousing intense -scientific and technical interest. It has seemed best to postpone their -consideration until later on, when we turn from the studios to the -laboratories, from the scenario-writer to the surgeon, from the movie -hero to the captain of industry in our effort to visualize the wide and -growing field that the screen is conquering for its own. And the realm -of movie endeavor into which we are now about to enter is, to my mind, -of greater interest and significance than that which we have been -hitherto investigating. Mankind’s toys do not possess for us the -fundamental importance of our tools and our test-tubes. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER X - - THE MOVIE MAKETH—WHAT KIND OF A MAN? - - -_Pictures that Combine Instruction and Amusement—“Nanook of the -North”—Passing Phases of Life Preserved for Posterity—African Big Game -Screened for our Descendants—President Harding on the Movie’s -Possibilities—Visualization Civilization’s One Best Bet._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER X - - THE MOVIE MAKETH—WHAT KIND OF A MAN? - - -BEFORE going on to a discussion of the utilitarian as contrasted with -the recreational functions of the movie, it seems advisable to consider -for a moment a type of screen presentation that is both entertaining and -educational, fascinating the observer by its dramatic presentation of -the adventurous spirit that has forever urged mankind to dare the perils -of the outlands while, at the same time, it preserves for posterity -phases of wild life that may conceivably become obsolete in the near -future. “Nanook of the North,” depicting, as it does, the primitive but -heroic existence of an Eskimo endeavoring to find shelter and sustenance -for his family in the Arctic regions is an outstanding achievement in -this bifunctional form of screen-picture. If, as Stefansson asserts, the -far North is destined eventually to lure to its cold but stimulating -embrace a much higher civilization than has hitherto existed near the -Pole, Nanook and his kind are fated to succumb, despite the sterling -qualities they have displayed in overcoming the handicaps of their cruel -environment, to adventurous pioneers from the South, bringing with them -a greater menace to the Eskimos than that with which old Boreas has -vainly threatened them for ages. - -Belatedly, but with thrilling efficiency, the camera is giving to us and -to our descendants pictures of savage and half-savage life against which -the irresistible power of the regnant races of the earth has issued a -decree of annihilation. The polar seas, the islands of the Pacific, the -deserts, mountain-tops, jungles, are shown to us on the screen as they -are to-day, as if this generation were frantically endeavoring to assure -itself that this romantic planet of ours is not really doomed to become -eventually as prosaic and uninteresting as Main Street. - -In illustration of the above, permit me to quote here from an article of -mine in a recent number of _The Independent_: - - The call of the wild and the rattle of a Ford car are strangely - incongruous sounds, but they have been dramatically brought - together of late. Adventurous dare-devils in various parts of - the world are using the camera to rescue from oblivion the - vanishing fauna of the outlands. The defiant jungle surrenders - unconditionally to the tin Lizzie. I recently spent an enjoyable - and enlightening evening watching H. A. Snow hunting big game in - Africa with his gun and his photographic apparatus and - repeatedly looking death in the face that posterity might - possess a picture of the animal life under the equator that is - destined presently to become obsolete. The lion, rhinoceros, - elephant, giraffe, zebra, hippopotamus, wild buck, ostrich, - baboon, camel, gnu were ours for a time to study at close range, - revealed to us in their native habitat without the necessity - upon our part of spending months in constant peril from heat, - snakes, carnivora, fever, and other enemies which war against - the white man in African wilds. - - As I watched the screen that evening, my memory went back nearly - half a century. It brought to my mind the picture of a boy - curled up in a library chair and absorbed in the pages of Paul - du Chaillu’s book “Under the Equator,” a book whose revelations - of wild life in Africa subjected the author to a period during - which he was suspected of being a Baron Munchausen, or, as we - would say to-day, a Dr. Cook. There were skeptics who bluntly - asserted that the French explorer had evolved the gorilla out of - his own inner consciousness. - - Eventually, of course, du Chaillu’s veracity was established; - but, victim as he was of the limitations of his generation, he - could not at first furnish to the public convincing proof that - his tales of adventure and discovery in the African jungle were - founded upon fact. To-day the explorer, arctic or tropical, - returns to civilization as to Missouri—prepared to show all - scoffers that their incredulity is ridiculous. Defiantly he has - turned a crank while sudden death from a polar bear or a jungle - elephant is close at hand; and eventually the imminence of the - peril, the suspense of a tragic moment, are within the power of - the screen to transmit to wide-eyed audiences safely seated - twenty thousand miles away from the scene of the thrilling - episode! - - As the camera is more thorough and convincing in its revelations - of the drama of the jungle than is the pen so is it more - extravagant in its use of the material that makes the wild life - of the outlands interesting to the untravelled public. There may - remain untamed animals in Africa that the Snows have not - effectively screened, but a fair acquaintance with equatorial - fauna leads me to the conclusion that the camera can afford now - to rest upon its laurels in so far as the creatures of the - jungle are concerned. - - Omnivorous, insatiable, the screen is sending out its camera-men - to all the corners of the known and the unknown earth, to the - end that you and I may learn eventually every secret that our - planet has hitherto concealed. The truth, the whole truth, and - nothing but the truth—that’s why Man, who has become a - peripatetic photographer, is venturing to lands afar. And the - public is glad to confer applause, and more material rewards, - upon those who mirror for us some dramatic phase of life upon - earth to-day especially if, as is the case with the big game of - Africa, it bids fair to pass presently forever out of existence. - -President Harding, whose present exalted position gives him unequalled -facilities for observing the potential tendencies of the day, has become -an enthusiastic believer in the uplifting possibilities that the screen -has begun to manifest. Much of what we study in our youth, says the -President, might be - - made dramatically interesting if we could see it. Next in value - to studying history by the procedure of living through its - epochs, its eras and its periods, would be to see its actors and - evolutions presented before our eyes. If we are to understand - the present and attempt to conjecture the future, we need to - know a good deal about the backgrounds of the past. The Europe - of the later middle ages, of the period just before and at the - beginning of the Renaissance, could be wonderfully portrayed in - a series of pictures dramatizing “The Cloister and the Hearth.” - I do not know whether anybody reads “The Cloister and the - Hearth” any more, but I am sure that one family with which I am - pretty well acquainted would be glad to patronize a combination - of picture serials and really intelligent talks with this story - as the basis and with the purpose of giving a real conception - and understanding of the Europe of that epoch. - -Mr. Harding has grasped fully the significance of the motion picture in -connection with the past, present, and future of the race. He has -suggested the screening of Wells’s “Outline of History” and of Van -Loon’s “Story of Mankind,” and has called attention to the possibility -that, under the direction of the Federal Bureau of Standards, films -might be taken illustrating the fundamental principles of the science of -geology. Realizing, as he does, that ignorance is the enemy democracy, -in order to survive, must overcome, and that the surest safeguard to our -institutions is enlightenment, President Harding has thrown himself -wholeheartedly into that growing movement which is destined eventually, -if Fate is kind to us, to make the motion picture worthy in its -achievements of the splendid possibilities that are within its grasp. - -That potent, pushing, perverse offspring of the printing-press, the -newspaper, has begun to realize that it can be no longer exclusively -typographical but must become in part photographical. It is following in -the footsteps of the screen in making use of the only universal language -the ingenuity of Man has yet devised. A recent editorial in the New York -_Tribune_ says: - - The _Tribune_ was the first newspaper to adapt for journalistic - purposes the printing of the half-tone photograph. The - innovation started the rising flood of news-in-pictures which is - so distinctive a feature of the American press of 1923.... Some - of the events of the day’s news can be visualized for the reader - simply by the printed word. Others need the aid of a picture. - Others still find presentation possible in a picture alone.... - The universal appeal of pictures can be taken advantage of for - sound informative and educational purposes, instead of for - scandal and filth. Indeed, it should be so used, as the London - _Times_ and other conservative newspapers have realized through - their daily pages of pictures. - -“The universal appeal of pictures!” Mankind from the days when our -ancestors sketched reindeer upon the walls of their caves has felt their -appeal, but only recently has its universality become of crucial -significance to the race. The printing-press, as we realized -despairingly in 1914, has failed to save civilization from its recurrent -attempts at suicide. Men read and talked, and, then, as had their -illiterate progenitors, grasped their weapons and went to fighting. -Neither from books nor from debates has mankind in the mass grasped that -enlightenment which often comes to individuals but which is not -sufficiently wide-spread and compelling to defend the race from constant -reversions to brutish manifestations. - -And now comes visualization—in movie theatres, in newspapers, in -schools, colleges, churches—to mould, for good or evil, the plastic soul -of Man. What will the harvest be? Who can say? Francis Bacon asserted -that “reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an -exact man.” Something more, as the centuries have proved, is necessary -to make the human race what it should be. Is it not barely possible that -some Bacon of the future will exultingly exclaim: “The screen maketh a -civilized man!”? - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XI - - THE MOVIE AND THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC RELATIONS - - -_The Screen Wins Powerful Friends—Societies Representing Sixty Million -Americans Endorse it—Its Power for Good Recognized by Altruists—The -Movie’s Allies Mobilized—The New Art is Backed by Old Philanthropies._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XI - - THE MOVIE AND THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC RELATIONS - - -THE conviction expressed at the end of the preceding chapter that in the -screen civilization has finally found a medium through which Man’s -loftiest ideals, hopes, dreams, visions and good resolutions may find a -way to fulfillment has been vouchsafed a new _raison d’être_ of late, -the importance of which can not be overrated. The existing reasons for -the belief that the movie is to be a weapon wielded in the cause of -righteousness against the powers of darkness were greatly increased in -number and force when representatives of sixty national civic, -educational, social and religious organizations functioning in this -country met, at the invitation of Will H. Hays, in June of 1922, to -discuss with him the problems of the motion picture industry and to -devise ways and means for bringing about a better situation therein. The -outcome of this gathering was the formation of the Committee on Public -Relations, for “the establishment of a channel of intercommunication -between the agencies instrumental in forming and interpreting public -opinion and the motion picture industry.” This committee, coöperating -with the organization known as the Motion Picture Producers and -Distributors of America, Inc., is wielding the influence begotten of a -combined membership of 60,000,000 people, scattered throughout the whole -country, in behalf of - - the increased use of motion pictures as a force for good - citizenship and a factor in social benefit; for the development - of more intelligent coöperation between the public and the - motion picture industry; to aid the coöperative movement - instituted between the National Education Association and the - motion picture producers for the making of pedagogic films and - employing them effectively in schools; to encourage the effort - to advance the usefulness of motion pictures as an instrument of - international amity by correctly portraying American life, - ideals and opportunities in pictures sent abroad and by properly - depicting foreigners and foreign scenes in pictures presented - here; to further, in general, all constructive methods for - bringing about a sympathetic interest in the attainment and - maintenance of high standards of art, entertainment, education - and morals in motion pictures. - -Not the least important of the appendices to be found at the end of this -book is that which gives a list of the national organizations composing -this Committee on Public Relations. It is in effect a record of a great -mobilization of the uplifting agencies of the nation on the side of -righteousness and progress in a struggle between good and evil for -control of the newest and most powerful of the vehicles at man’s -disposal for influencing his fellowman. As has been demonstrated in -another chapter, the screen has become the most effective and -wide-reaching of all the media yet devised by human ingenuity for -influencing the heart, mind and soul of the race. Realizing this, the -organizations referred to above (listed with approximate fullness in the -appendix), representing more than half the entire population of the -United States, have thrown the weight of their enormous influence upon -the side of those builders of a better civilization who are striving to -make the motion picture more worthy of the important place it has so -recently assumed in the life of the world. Never before in the history -of the race has such a unification of effort by the great altruistic -organizations of a nation been made in times of peace, and for the -purposes of peace, as that which was begun a year and a half ago by the -Committee on Public Relations. What the screen could do to improve the -social order was recognized at the very moment it was seen what the -social order could do to improve the screen—and, lo, there came about an -alliance that, to those who grasped its full significance, stood -revealed as one of the greatest forward steps civilization has ever -taken. The organized powers of uplift and enlightenment had seen that a -new, untried, undisciplined force, pregnant of both good and evil, had -come into the world and they had rallied to its assistance at the -psychological moment, to the end that the future of the screen, and -therefore of the human race itself, might present a more satisfactory -aspect than it has hitherto exhibited. - -Says Mr. Jason S. Joy, Executive Secretary of the Committee on Public -Relations: - - I am often asked the following three progressive - questions—First, why are the organizations affiliated with the - Committee on Public Relations interested in the motion picture? - Second, why are they working with the motion picture people - rather than against them? Third, why do they coöperate with the - so-called “old-line” companies rather than exclusively with - independent companies? - - I am able to answer these questions to my own satisfaction. - Admitting that motion pictures exercise a powerful influence for - good or evil, it is to the selfish interests of these - organizations to make motion pictures an influence for good. As - to the second query, let me say that constructive coöperation is - capable of greater results than destructive criticism, - particularly when it is accompanied by a willingness to - privately but fearlessly condemn evil practices when they are - found to exist. It seems to me wholly foolish and futile to cry - out against any practice unless at the same time you are able to - suggest a solution or at least an attempt at a solution of the - problem. I am convinced that one of the most harmful habits of - our day is the one which has been adopted by certain amateur and - professional reformers who with half truths loudly condemn the - motion picture industry and everybody connected with it. My - answer to the third query is this: The Committee on Public - Relations is working with the so-called “old-line” companies - because these companies have demonstrated their ability to make - the kind of pictures the public has hitherto demanded and have, - therefore, manifested their knowledge of the technique and - business methods of making pictures; because, also, they have - demonstrated and expressed their desire to attain the ends for - which the Committee is working, and because they have asked the - Committee to coöperate with them, and are coöperating with the - Committee. Within parenthesis, let me say, that there pass by me - at the cross-roads where I sit no end of Sir Galahads rushing - forth to conquer the world. These persons are usually - well-equipped with ideals and enthusiasm and often with money, - but because they lack the technical ability which results from - long experience they come back with little to show for their - efforts except a trail of broken promises, unpaid debts, and - lost ideals. Our best and only hope for the future lies with the - well established companies who have proved their ability in - their profession. - -The human race moves forward and upward through the efforts of those who -know how to perform the miracle of hitching their wagon to a star while, -at the same time, they keep their feet upon the earth. Taking at random -a few of the sixty organizations comprising the Committee on Public -Relations we come upon such sharply contrasted bodies as the Society of -Colonial Dames and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs; the Academy -of Political Science and the Salvation Army; the Girls Friendly Society -and the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World; The National Council -of Catholic Women and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association; the American -Federation of Labor and the Boy Scouts of America, etc. Now all these -societies, fraternities, sororities, or whatsoever they may be, helping -by their membership to make up the 60,000,000 Americans who have come -officially to the support of the motion picture industry, have, each and -every one of them, reached a position of power and success by wasting no -time in endeavoring futilely to put salt on the tail of the millennium -but by combining loyalty to high ideals with practical efficiency in -dealing with this world as it manifests itself to the worker who dreams -and the dreamer who works. In other words, our great altruistic -organizations discovered at the outset of their respective careers that -the ideal and the practical are necessary to each other but, to produce -results, must plan how to make constant compromises with each other for -the sake of actual progress. - -The motion picture producers have gone through, as an organization, the -same experience that has come to the Colonial Dames, the Salvation Army, -the Boy Scouts, or any one of the organizations holding membership on -the Committee of Public Relations. They have learned by experiment that -progress is made possible only through a working adjustment between -idealism and realism. If idealism is allowed to become rainbow-chasing, -or realism to become revolting, the balance that assures a steady -movement in the right direction is destroyed and disaster results. Every -earthly institution that survives has been forced to fight its way to -permanency against the disintegrating influence of its own extremists, -its ultra-conservatives and ultra-radicals. In the long run, it is the -middle of the road that leads nations and institutions into safe -environments. - -The great question at issue in connection with the motion picture -industry, as it is with any given line of human endeavor, is this: Is -its course upward or downward, will its future be free from the -shortcomings of its past? Let me say here, very frankly, that had I not -felt months ago that an affirmative answer to these queries was not -merely justified but had been made imperative by facts and figures this -book would never have been written. But as the work has progressed, and -I have been obliged to look at the motion picture field through both a -telescope and a microscope, I have been convinced by an overwhelming -mass of evidence that the general trend of the newest of the arts is, in -spite of all that I have said about its youthful indiscretions, in the -right direction. - -It can never attain perfection—nothing that is man-made can hope to do -that. But the movie, whatever may be said against it by its detractors, -is constantly making progress toward a commanding position where, it is -conceivable, it may eventually confer upon mankind the inestimable boon -of which the author, as stated in the first chapter of this book, has -had the audacity to dream. And be it said just here that if the full -dynamics of the screen as a world-civilizer are completely developed, -eventually both producers and public will owe a great debt of gratitude -to the Committee on Public Relations. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XII - - THE MOVIE AS A PEDAGOGUE - - -_The Entertainer Becomes an Instructor—Schools and Colleges make the -Screen a Professor—Visual Instruction more Effective than -Text-Books—Educational Films as Teachers of History—The Screen an Ally -to Historical Accuracy—Can it Save the Race from a Threatened -Cataclysm?_ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XII - - THE MOVIE AS A PEDAGOGUE - - -THE utilitarian evolution of the movie has been as remarkable as the -recreational—though much less spectacular. The screen seems to have come -like a poultice to heal the blows of ignorance, of worn-out methods in -schools, hospitals and laboratories, and to act as a tonic upon all the -movements and enterprises that make for the betterment of the race. -Modern scientists, philanthropists, statesmen, educators, sociologists, -uplifters of all kinds, may appropriately paraphrase Robert Burns by -exclaiming “a screen’s amang ye takin’ notes.” - -Visual education—that is, intellectual stimulus through motion -pictures—has made amazing progress in our schools and colleges during -the past few years. It has been proved by statistics, based upon the -results of examinations, that students instructed by screen-pictures -obtain higher marks than those who have been seeking knowledge on a -given subject only through text-books. - -Evidence upon this point has become of late cumulative and conclusive. -Data to show that the Esperanto of the Eye is a more efficient -instructor than either the spoken or the printed word is ours in -abundance, but only one or two striking proofs of the proposition will -suffice for our present purposes. Two years ago Professor Joseph J. -Weber, of the University of Kansas, conducted a series of enlightening -tests in Public School No. 62, New York City, with the following -results: - -Four hundred and eighty-five pupils in the school were examined as to -their knowledge of geography. It was found that their average rating as -a class was only 31.8. Oral teaching, without the aid of correlated -motion picture films, raised this average presently to 45.5, a gain of -13.7. The films were then used after the oral lessons and an average of -49.9 was obtained, a gain of 18.1. By the employment of the films before -instead of after the oral instructions the average percentage was -increased to 52.7, a gain of 20.9. - -At about the same time, Professor J. W. Sheppard, of the University of -Oklahoma, made an experiment in visual education at a high-school in -Madison, Wis. Abstract and concrete subjects were taught to a group of -pupils of ordinary intelligence by means of the films only, to a second -group by a superior instructor only, and to a third group by an average -instructor only. In a searching examination subsequently the pupils -taught by the films scored an average of 74.5, those taught by the -superior instructor an average of 66.9, and those by the inferior -instructor an average of 61.3. In this game of twenty questions the -screen had won the pot by a safe margin. - -The significance of the above is revealed in its entirety when we -realize that even the movie as a purveyor of amusement has not wholly -neglected its obligations as a pedagogue. The millions of Americans who -daily watch the screen in quest of recreation are, willy nilly, obliged -to absorb something in the way of added knowledge. Geography, -history—both ancient and contemporary,—botany, astronomy, physics, -ethnology, archæology and other educational sources are tapped, even in -the least pretentious movie theatres, to stir the imaginations and -enlarge the general knowledge of their patrons. It is safe to say that -the American people, even though our schools and colleges had not -welcomed the film as an aid to education, would have vastly increased -their information regarding our planet and the history and achievements -of the human race merely through the homage that the amusement screen -has paid, perforce, to erudition. - -But what the recreational screen has done casually and inadequately for -the dissemination of general knowledge, is, of course, negligible -compared with the influence that has been exerted by the educational -films whose use in the class-rooms of our schools and colleges has been -for some years past constantly on the increase. The growing importance -of the film as an adjunct to instruction is shown by the fact that its -progress has not been left to chance, as was the evolution of the -recreational movie. The realm of visual education has been taken over by -men and organizations whose qualifications for the task they have -assumed assure to the screen in the class-room a great and splendid -future. Concerning this matter, Will H. Hays recently said: - - The Society of Visual Education contains thirteen presidents of - colleges, six of normal schools, three representatives of large - foundations, seventy-six professors and instructors in colleges - and universities, nine state superintendents of public - instruction and seventy-one city superintendents of schools. - There are other groups of educators in the motion picture - field—notably the National Academy of Visual Instruction and the - Visual Instruction Association of America. An incomplete list - shows twenty-eight colleges and universities which have - organized departments for the distribution of films. At least - seventeen of our largest educational institutions are giving - courses to their students on the use of the motion picture for - visual instruction. Columbia has courses which teach photoplay - writing and the mechanics of production. The University of - Nebraska has erected a film studio on its campus, and the - Universities of Yale, Chicago, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, - Oklahoma, Illinois and Utah have started the production of their - own motion pictures. - -Let us confine ourselves for the moment to what the educational films -are doing in the realm of history, leaving their achievements as -pictorial aids to the study of astronomy, physics, ethnology, -palæeontology, geology, and other sciences, for later consideration. If -the Esperanto of the Eye is to be instrumental in giving to this and -coming generations an accurate picture of our race’s past, it is -essential that our films dealing with history should be accurate in -detail. A falsehood exploited by the screen can do more damage than a -misrepresentation imbedded in a text-book. It is encouraging, therefore, -to those of us who believe that educational films are destined -eventually to exercise an influence for good upon mankind that may save -it from a return to barbarism to realize that the screen as an adjunct -to the teaching of history is receiving valuable assistance from our -most eminent professors in this field of study. - -There is much data at our disposal to prove that the Olympian heights of -erudition are deeply impressed by the obligations which the enlightened -gods owe to films fashioned to instruct lesser and more ignorant -mortals. It will suffice for our present purpose, however, to prove the -existence of a general and praiseworthy trend in visual instruction by -giving, in some detail, an account of an enterprise, sponsored by the -Department of History of Yale University, that is of importance in -itself, but, more than that, significant in the promise it gives of a -splendid future for the educational film. - -In a despatch from Chicago, Ill., under date of Tuesday, August 1, 1922, -a correspondent of the New York _Evening Post_ says: - - History was rewritten here to-day, shorn of its romance and - amplified by facts, by the Yale University Press. To do this, - mediæval sailors, dressed in gayly colored tights and jerkins, - with huge knives in their belts, clambered through the rigging - of the Santa Maria off Jackson Park, and Christopher Columbus - leaned over the rail, crucifix in hand, and gazed at the - receding shores, while two camera men kept grinding away at - their machines. All this was done that the popular idea of - history might be revised and the school children of America - might have accurate information, uncontaminated by the legends - and myths which have grown around the discovery of America - during the last 400 years.... The Yale University Press is - making a series of historical pictures for school use which the - History Department of the University asserts will be as accurate - as research and study can make them. On board the Santa Maria - there were mutinies and troublesome times. Martin Alonzo Pinzon, - a Spanish gentleman who owned the Santa Maria, commanded the - Pinta, and furnished the cash for the expedition. Much more is - made of Pinzon in the film than of Queen Isabella, the - Professors of History at Yale being inclined to doubt the legend - that Her Majesty ever patronized a pawn-shop to give assistance - to the dare-deviltry of Columbus. - -What visual instruction in history is to become presently is a -fascinating subject in dwelling upon which the imaginative optimist, -reading the signs of the times, can not but take keen delight. The past -is to be to the student no longer a graveyard, in which he rambles -confusedly, reading ridiculous epitaphs upon monuments whose comparative -impressiveness is misleading, but a series of dramatic performances, -appealing to the senses, the mind and the soul, in which the _dramatis -personæ_ will present history as a serial-play in which the latest act -is one in which he himself is taking a minor part. - -Never before, in the history of the race, has mankind taken so deep and -wide-spread an interest in the past of mankind as it exhibits to-day. -There appears to be a world-wide feeling that, unless the race can learn -the lessons that the great catastrophes that have repeatedly overtaken -civilization teach, the outlook for the future is appallingly dark. On -New Year’s Day, 1923, a body of prominent American educators issued an -appeal to the public in which the following striking sentences occur: - - The present situation in international affairs, involving as it - does the imminent peril of war, must give concern to every - thoughtful observer. After a devastating conflict which has cost - millions of lives, created immeasurable hatred and piled up a - debt of $50 for every minute of time since Christ was born, the - nations of the earth, apparently having learned nothing and - forgotten nothing, are once more playing the old game of - competitive imperialism and competitive armament. - -The above, startling but unanswerable as it is, has a direct bearing -upon the subject we have just had under discussion, namely, the teaching -of history through visual instruction. The advantages of this method for -schools and colleges, conclusively proven though it has been, will be of -no permanent and uplifting value to coming generations unless the screen -as a pedagogue finds a way to give to a race that is constantly -repeating old and fatal errors a message and a warning that shall -influence the young men and women who are to mould the world’s future to -avoid the disastrous errors of their progenitors. From this point of -view it becomes apparent that to those into whose hands has been placed -the dissemination of educational films has been vouchsafed a great -opportunity to benefit a race that is in sore need of guidance, of some -impetus that shall make its future less deplorable than its -blood-stained past. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XIII - - THE MOVIE INTERPRETING THE PAST - - -_Philip Kerr vs. H. G. Wells—Is the Race Doomed to Commit Hari-Kari?—The -Failures of Diplomacy—The Screen Revealing Man to Himself—History the -Best Bet of a Warworn Race—Teaching the Young Idea How Not to -Shoot—Peace Via the Film._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XIII - - THE MOVIE INTERPRETING THE PAST - - -WHETHER the first antidote the race has discovered against polyglot -poison can save civilization before it is blown to pieces by high -explosive shells is a problem that assumes new significance daily, as -diplomacy continues to commit, in its blind and fatuous egotism, its -historic blunders. The head-lines in the newspapers furnish a sad -commentary upon the present status of the collective wisdom of mankind. -The average intelligence of the race as it is manifested in -international affairs is below the standard set by a day-nursery, where -a singed child, it is confidently assumed, will avoid the fire. The high -cost of war in life and treasure has been demonstrated to the race in -recent years by a world-wide conflict that threatened the very -foundations of civilization with destruction. Did mankind learn the -lesson taught by this titanic struggle? If it did not, if it continues -to provide itself with new and deadlier weapons for the waging of -unimaginably awful combats, what can be done at the last moment, as this -may prove to be, to save civilization from ruin as it totters upon the -very edge of a fatal precipice? - -The tragic importance of this query may seem, at first sight, to throw -into comparative insignificance the topic we have under discussion, -namely, the teaching of history in our schools and colleges through -visual instruction. But our pointed question and our general theme are, -as will presently appear, closely related to one another. - -Philip Kerr, for five years confidential adviser and secretary to Lloyd -George, is among those who hold that we who indulge the hope that the -screen may eventually act as a poultice to heal the blows delivered by -diplomacy against the peace of the world are but chasing another rainbow -that has at its end not a pot of ointment but a gigantic pile of -dynamite. At Williamstown, Mass., last summer, Mr. Kerr said, to an -audience of scholars and statesmen of international prominence: - - If we look back through history we shall see that what has - happened in the last eight years is not a unique nor isolated - phenomenon. For example, there was a world war for the first - fifteen years of the last century, ending with the battle of - Waterloo. We can trace back through the ages an ever-recurring - procession of devastating wars engulfing the whole of the - civilized world, followed by peaces of exhaustion, which in turn - gave way to new eras of war. The question I have been asking - myself for the last two or three years has been this: Have we as - the result of the terrible experiences of the late war, and of - the victory of the Allies, any real security against a - repetition of a world war. To this question I have to answer, - No. - -To this deplorable and hopeless conclusion Mr. Kerr comes because he -finds that mankind does its thinking not in terms of humanity, but of -states; that the world, in so far as international problems are -concerned, is as parochial as it was a generation or a century ago. -“Life,” remarked a flippant pessimist, “is just one damned thing after -another.” To Mr. Kerr’s despondent eyes history seems to be just one -devastating war after another, with no end to the infernal succession -now in sight. But is it not barely possible that history, gaining from -the screen a new method of exposition, a new way of approach to the soul -of Man, may eventually convince the human race that there is a more -sensible solution to international problems than through bloodshed? - -It is through the study of history alone that Man can, in the opinion of -H. G. Wells, find his way toward higher planes of existence out of the -mire in which he is now stuck. In his book “The Undying Fire,” Wells, -speaking through the hero of his story, says, in explanation of his plan -for the improvement of society: - - I want this world better taught, so that wherever the flame of - God can be lit it may be lit. Let us suppose everyone to be - educated. By educated, to be explicit, I mean possessing a - knowledge and understanding of history. Salvation can be - attained by history. Suppose that instead of a myriad of tongues - and dialects all men could read the same books and talk together - in the same speech—think what a difference there would be in - such a world from the conditions prevailing to-day.... This is a - world where folly and hate can bawl sanity out of hearing. Only - the determination of schoolmasters and teachers offers hope for - a change in all this. - -Philip Kerr and H. G. Wells examining, as they do, the same historical -data, shocked, as they both are, by mankind’s constant repetition of -ancient and easily avoidable errors, reach, from the same premises, -diametrically opposite conclusions. Kerr denies that our race can obtain -from a study of its past any hope for its future. Wells, on the other -hand, holds that history can be made the handmaiden of progress and that -those who teach it can become, if they are worthy of their sacred -mission, the saviors of an imperilled race. - -At the present moment, of course, it is impossible to determine whether -the pessimism of Kerr or the optimism of Wells is entitled to the -verdict of the court. The evidence is not all in, and, from present -appearances, the case seems destined to a long and tedious life, going -down on appeal, as it must, from one generation to another. But would it -not be a hopelessly mad world which, on the issue involved in this -contention, backed Kerr against Wells? Imagine the race abandoning -itself to despair, admitting that it can find within itself no safeguard -against its impending doom of hari-kari, turning heart-sick and hopeless -from futile peace-conferences and gazing in sullen silence at the -mobilization of new armies under old catch-words in various parts of a -blood-soaked planet! Even if Wells shall prove to be in the end a -dreamer of dreams and chaser of rainbows, defeated in his effort to put -salt on the tail of the millennium, is it not more reasonable to take a -gambling chance on his possible victory as an idealist than to give -abject surrender with Kerr to the evil influences that for countless -ages have made of our planet a recurrent shambles? - -Common-sense, then, forces us to the conclusion that, in the perturbed -world in which we at present find ourselves there is no feature of our -complicated modern life more entitled to earnest consideration than the -screen as historian. In schools, colleges and movie theatres, with films -depicting significant episodes in Man’s past or illuminating events of -to-day, a mirror is vouchsafed to this generation in which it can see -both itself and its progenitors in a light that now for the first time -clarifies our sight. The regeneration of the individual through -religious influences is effected in large part by means of a -self-revelation that begets repentance and reform. To employ a bit of -slang to illustrate the point, all sinners come from Missouri and refuse -to be rescued blindly. They must be shown. The wicked, war-soiled, -wantonly selfish nations of the world have never had, so far as the -masses of the people are concerned, the truths of history visualized to -their startled eyes. Is it not possible that when the errors, the -tragedies, the cumulative horrors of the past are revealed to them, when -the majority of men and women turn to the evidence of their senses -rather than to gossip, rumor and hearsay for historical enlightenment, -Mankind, horrified at his scowling face and bloody hands, as he sees -them for the first time in a mirror, will take an oath to remove the -brand of Cain from his brow, the blush from his cheeks as the screen -shows him what man’s inhumanity to man really means? - -The late Viscount Bryce, just before his regrettable death, delivered -eight lectures in the United States on “the large subject covered by the -term International Relations.” “It is History,” says Bryce, “which, -recording the events and explaining the influences that have moulded the -minds of men, shows us how the world of international politics has come -to be what it is. History is the best—indeed the only—guide to a -comprehension of the facts as they stand, and to a sound judgment of the -various means that have been suggested for replacing suspicions and -enmities by the co-operation of States in many things and by their good -will in all.” But Bryce, than whom no publicist of our times has held -higher place as a seer and prophet, speaks not in an optimistic vein in -his last published utterances. - - The great lesson of the war, that the ambitions and hatreds - which cause war must be removed, has not been learned, and if - this war has failed to impress the lesson upon most of the - peoples, what else can teach them? This is why thoughtful men - are despondent, and why some comfort must now be sought for, - some remedy devised at once against a recurrence of the - calamities we have suffered. - -Bryce is in agreement with the leading minds of to-day striving for a -solution of international problems. They see no way out of the -difficulties and perils confronting the race unless some new and -hitherto unknown method be found to prevent mankind from repeating the -scarlet sins that have disgraced and incarnadined the past. Arbitration, -conciliation, alliances, treaties, congresses, leagues, peace palaces -and palaver—what have they accomplished that can be cited to confute the -pessimism of Philip Kerr or to suggest the remedy the necessity for -which James Bryce, with the clairvoyance of a dying man, acutely -realized? What the race needs at this critical hour is both a message -and a medium, a warning and a way, a revelation and a road, with a light -from the past shining on the pathway just ahead. - -And Man has at his command this way, this medium, this road, upon which -gleams a radiance that might easily save the race from destruction, if -he had sufficient sense to learn from his past just a few elementary -lessons in common-sense, just a few basic truths that, once grasped, -would change history from a record of recurrent crimes to an epic tale -of Man’s triumph over himself. - -History as told by the screen in the class-room—is it not possible that -the destiny of mankind is thus to be decided? The plastic minds of the -young intrigued by the story of Man’s rise from protoplasm to poet, from -amœba to aeronaut, from cave-man to lord of creation may be so -impressed, within the next few generations, by the tragic absurdity of -civilized man’s periodical reversions to savagery that some divine day -the enlightened youth of the world will go out on a universal strike -against old idiocies and cruelties, and to the screen that taught -history will be given the glory of bringing mankind at one bound within -striking distance of the millennium. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XIV - - THE MOVIE TAKES ON NEW FUNCTIONS - - -_Solves Many Problems—Becomes Actor, Artist, Singer, Scientist, Teacher, -Drummer—As a Hamlet Shows Mother Earth Two Pictures—Will the Race Go Up -or Go Down—The Screen Possibly a Savior._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XIV - - THE MOVIE TAKES ON NEW FUNCTIONS - - -HAS a race harassed, well-nigh hopeless, forever committing old errors -under new incitements, found in the screen both a pedagogue and a -peacemaker, potent for rescue if its possibilities are grasped in time? -The query may seem fantastic, the hope it suggests quixotic, the promise -at which it hints premature. But the question is, perhaps, the most -important before the world to-day and upon its answer may depend the -future of the race. - -In an address before the National Civic Federation at Washington, D. C., -on January 17, 1923, Elihu Root said: - - The manifest purpose of the great body of voters in democratic - countries to control directly the agents who are carrying on the - foreign affairs of their countries involves a terrible danger as - well as a great step in human progress—a great step in progress - if the democracy is informed, a terrible danger if the democracy - is ignorant. An ignorant democracy controlling foreign affairs - leads directly to war and the destruction of civilization. An - informed democracy insures peace and the progress of - civilization. - -At this crisis in the career of humanity there is but one medium by -which the democracies of the world can be given the information -necessary, in the opinion of Mr. Root, to avert the cataclysm -threatening humanity, and that is the motion picture screen. That this -medium is becoming, by leaps and bounds, better equipped for its -gigantic task of world-salvation is apparent to even the most careless -observer. During the short time that has elapsed since the author wrote -the first sentence of this little book, the movie has enlarged its -scope, possibilities and actual achievements in a startling and -bewildering way. To illustrate this point, which is of crucial -significance in connection with the topic now under discussion, let me -quote a few head-lines culled at random from the metropolitan press of -recent date. - - “Revolutionary Talking Movies—Widespread Changes Predicted if - New Invention is a Success.” “‘Color Film Great,’ says C. D. - Gibson. Artist at Private Exhibition Finds Effects Wonderfully - Reproduced.” “Ditmar’s Film Gives Life to the Prehistoric. Zoo - Curator Presents Real Live Monsters.” “Talking Movie Hailed in - Berlin by Scientists as Great Success.” “New Method Gives - Perfect Color to Motion Pictures. First Film a Riot of Color but - Not at Expense of Reality.” “Stereoscopic Film Indicating Depth - Shown Here.” “Scientist Brings Talking Film. Prof. de Forest - Here with Device Whereby Even Operas May Be Produced on Screen.” - “Modern Wizards Bewilder Edison. Watches Voice Filmed.” - “Einstein’s Relativity Theory in Pictures. Fascinating, - Ingenious and Revolutionary.” - -The above list might be greatly prolonged, but it serves the purpose we -have in hand as it stands. It means that the possibilities of the screen -are being realized at an amazing rate of progress, that the Esperanto of -the Eye, which found its alphabet when Edison invented the kinetoscope, -has now become a universal method of expression fitted to reveal -eventually all human knowledge to the race in such a manner that it can -be sensed, if not comprehended, by even illiterates and morons. There -are, of course, technical problems connected with color, depth and the -synchronization of voice and movement which it may be impossible for the -ingenuity of man to solve, but the year 1923 will appeal to the future -historian of the movie as a period in which the screen entered a domain -possessing hitherto undreamed of facilities for intensifying the potency -of the playwright, actor, scientist, educator, statesman, philanthropist -and salesman. - -The last-mentioned beneficiary of the screen, commonly called “drummer,” -is worthy of a moment’s attention just here as helping to prove our -general proposition that there is no field of human activity that has -not been, or that will not be, influenced and perhaps greatly changed by -the growing vogue of the movie. A recently-published editorial in the -New York _Herald_ says: - - The power of the screen to divert trade from one country to - another is a subject that has been hitherto little discussed. An - article in _Commerce Reports_, the weekly survey of foreign - trade issued by the United States Department of Commerce, - however, declares that the motion pictures displayed in foreign - countries influence the consuming public in the choice of - markets. In fact, so great has been the influence of the motion - picture in diverting commerce to the United States that foreign - newspapers have already cautioned their film producers not to - ignore the opportunities for commercial expansion that are - inherent in the drama shown on the screen. - -As Terence remarked long ago, so might the movie remark to-day: “Nothing -that is of interest to mankind is outside of my sphere of endeavor.” In -an address delivered last year at the University of Pennsylvania, Sir -Auckland Geddes, British Ambassador to the United States, said: - - It is hard to find ground upon which our civilization can - certainly and safely stand in the future. As one looks around - the world to-day and sees in country after country the power, - the direction of force, passing from the hands of the people who - have long held that power, sees wealth being destroyed, sees all - the surplus margin of wealth disappear, one realizes—not - immediately but looking forward into the future—that we have - cause to take steps to spread the appreciation of research, so - that no shift of political power can possibly take place that - will not keep it in the hands of those who understand the - importance of research. - -Research! From generation to generation, mankind has been engaged in -making investigations and discoveries that have constantly enriched and -enlarged the treasure-house of human knowledge. But research, by which, -as the British Ambassador asserts, civilization may save itself from -destruction, has been hitherto an affair of specialists, not of the -multitude, an activity carried on in laboratories or in desert solitudes -or on lonely mountain-tops, and its results have been made manifest only -to the erudite few. But, lo, through the screen the movie theatre -becomes at one moment a laboratory, at another a desert solitude, at -another a lonely mountain-top. Audiences of millions become -experimenters in all realms of research, temporary astronomers, -physicists, chemists, travellers, hunters, entomologists, -ornithologists, archæologists—what you will. Erudition is fed to the -masses in small quantities, and the more they eat of it the more they -crave. “Know thyself!” cried the old Greek Philosopher to the individual -man. “Know thyself!” exclaims the screen to the race at large, and -proceeds to show to mankind the way to that universal self-knowledge -that, if it comes to man in time, may protect his future from the -blunders, crimes and tragedies that have disgraced his past. - -The screen may well be represented to our mind’s eye as a modern Hamlet -who says to a blood-stained Mother Earth: - - Look here upon this picture—and upon this! I show you to - yourself as you have been—and to yourself as you may be. Look - here at the horrors and devastation, the cruelties and crimes of - yesterday and to-day. Then turn your eyes upon the world of - to-morrow as I shall reveal it to you in its splendid - possibilities—a new world, peaceful, industrious, contented, - going forward from one great triumph in progressive civilization - to another, differing from the earth that was and is as light - from darkness, as day from night! I show you the way, I reveal - to you the decision that you must make. If yours be the baser - choice, if you continue to repeat, generation after generation, - the old blunders, the old crimes, I shall not be to blame. I, - the screen, show you two roads, the one leading upward, the - other downward. You may, by seeing your racial soul in the - mirror I hold up to you, go to Heaven or to Hades. Your - journey’s end depends not upon me but upon you. - -What does Man crave—what has he always craved? Freedom. Freedom from -what? From avoidable ills—preventable diseases, unnecessary poverty, -unjustifiable wars, preventable accidents, every ill, in short, that not -only darkens his life but offends his intelligence. - - The history of mankind [says Louis Berman, M.D.] is a long - research into the nature of the machinery of freedom. All - recorded history, indeed, is but the documentation of that - research. Viewed thus, customs, laws, institutions, sciences, - arts, codes of morality and honor, systems of life, become - inventions, come upon, tried out, standardized, established - until scrapped in everlasting search for more and more perfect - means of freeing body and soul from their congenital thralldom - to a host of innumerable masters. Indeed, the history of all - life, vegetable and animal, of bacillus, elephant, orchid, - gorilla, as well as of man is the history of a searching for - freedom. - -At last, through his own astounding but too-often misdirected ingenuity, -Man has found that which alone could remove from his limbs the shackles -that have held him captive throughout the centuries. He has discovered a -universal language that may conceivably bring about the brotherhood of -the race and the reduction to a minimum of the ills that flesh is heir -to. But with the coming of the Esperanto of the Eye the salvation of the -race is not assured. While the screen may minimize eventually the evils -that spring from a world-wide confusion of tongues, it can permanently -eradicate those evils only by the dissemination of a message that shall -exert an uplifting influence upon the perturbed soul of humanity. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XV - - THE MOVIE AS A WORLD POWER - - -_Its Enormous Audiences—It Speaks to all Men—What Message Does it -Carry?—The Race at the Parting of the Ways—Have International Marplots -Won Control of the Screen?—The Fate of Civilization in the Balance._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XV - - THE MOVIE AS A WORLD POWER - - -IN a very important particular the title first chosen for this little -book was a misnomer, a fact that grows more apparent to the author as he -approaches the end of the task he has essayed. “A Biography of the -Movie,” the name I had selected for my projected volume, implies, at -this period of the evolution of the picture screen, either too much or -too little—too much if it suggests a comprehensive history of a life -that has but recently begun, too little if it fails to show that the -facts and figures available regarding the development of the motion -picture demonstrate the dynamics of the screen as a medium for racial -intercommunication. There came, of course, to the writer the temptation -to dwell in detail upon the romantic story of the rise of the movie from -insignificance to world-dominion, from poverty to affluence, from a -plaything to a power, to mention names made famous by the screen, to -maintain, in short, the same attitude of mind toward the cinema and all -its works that impelled Merton of the Movies to idealize the new art and -industry whether he looked at them through a telescope or a microscope. -That a work based upon the more personal aspects of the movie’s -evolution can be both readable and timely has been proved of late by the -success achieved in book form by the personal reminiscences of one of -the leading producers in the motion picture realm. But had I succumbed -to the inclination to give what may be called the lure that lies in -gossip to this little volume, I should have taken merely the path of -least resistance and have left wholly undone the real task I have -essayed, namely, that of getting an idea, a prophecy, a promise, a -possibility—whatsoever you may be pleased to call it—into the minds of -my readers, to the end that the project referred to in the first chapter -of this book may receive eventually the consideration to which I, with -all due modesty, believe it is entitled. - -In other words, I have been endeavoring to explain briefly how the toy -kinetoscope of a quarter of a century ago by becoming a universal medium -of expression has made what men and nations say to each other in this -new world-language of crucial significance to the future of -civilization. - -Now just here we come face to face with the most significant, the most -tragically important, feature of the tremendous subject with which we -are dealing. Is Man, triumphant at last over the evils that befell him -at the Tower of Babel, possessing for the first time in his racial -career a universal language, actually in possession of soul-stirring -truths that, reaching the race at large, shall overcome the powers of -darkness menacing our modern civilization? Let me repeat the concluding -sentence of the preceding chapter: “While the screen may minimize -eventually the evils springing from a world-wide confusion of tongues, -it can permanently eradicate those evils only by the dissemination of a -message that shall exert an uplifting influence upon the perturbed soul -of humanity.” - -Shall Christ or Cæsar, idealism or materialism, altruism or animosities, -progress or reaction dominate the screen? The importance of the answer -that the future makes to this query can not be conceivably -over-estimated. To repeat an assertion I made in a preceding chapter, -Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are struggling for domination over the soul of -the screen and the issue of the conflict is still in abeyance. - -A timely truth finding lodgment in the perturbed souls of men might -conceivably save the race from destruction. By means of a modern -invention an idea, opportunely dropped from the clouds by heroic airmen -behind the German lines, destroyed the morale of the cohorts of reaction -and brought victory to the Allied arms. Two things were here essential -to success—the message itself and the medium for its dissemination. Of -the two, the message is, of course, infinitely the more important. But -Wilson’s words, at that special crisis, would have been futile had they -not been given wings by Wright. - -Civilization stands in sore need of a message of a unifying and -peace-begetting nature. The screen offers it a medium whereby such a -message could be carried to the ends of the earth, to be known of all -mankind through the Esperanto of the Eye. But whence shall this message -come? By what authority, by what sanction, shall it force itself upon -the minds and hearts and souls of all men? If the screen falls -eventually wholly into the control of demagogues, a medium for -enlightenment that might save the race from the threatening evils of the -future will not merely fail to fulfill its highest mission but will -become the most powerful weapon of those who would undermine and -presently destroy existing civilization. - -As an uplifting, educational, civilizing force, the movie appears to be -approaching the parting of the ways. As has been shown in preceding -chapters, it has vastly enlarged its scope and possibilities as an -influence, direct or indirect, upon the daily lives of millions of human -beings. It has of late solved the major mechanical problems that -confronted it. At its present rate of progress, the cinema will soon -become more powerful as an influence upon the minds of the masses than -are the newspaper, the novel and the play taken together. - -For the sun never sets upon the screen! Day and night, in all parts of -the civilized, and an increasing portion of the uncivilized, globe the -motion picture is making its imprint upon the minds and souls of -countless millions of men, women and children. It has taken possession -of a polyglot world and is speaking daily to the human race in a tongue -that is understood as readily on the Congo as at Cambridge. But what is -it saying? “Ah, there’s the rub!” Is the screen merely a mirror in which -Man looks upon his own face and turns away heedless of what his -countenance might have taught him? Has the race finally found a way to -that self-knowledge which might mean its eventual salvation only to -misuse, as its wont has been, its newest medium for advancement? Can -nothing be learned from the screen by the restless, harassed, -apprehensive millions of the earth that shall make this first universal -method of communication worthy of the possibilities for world-wide -uplift that it possesses? - -The answer to these queries depends largely upon your personal point of -view, upon the philosophy of life which dominates your mental processes. -If you are influenced by that widely-accepted generalization to the -effect that “human nature never changes” you will not be inclined to -take seriously our contention that by forcing Man to observe and study, -by means of the screen, the blunders, idiocies, crimes and tragedies of -his past he may be forced eventually to repent and reform, to make of -his future something less reprehensible than his past has been. But -human nature is not fixed—it is fluid. It has changed, and it is always -in the process of changing. In fact, the time may not be far distant -when not only the individual but the race at large, hitherto at the -mercy of endocrinal glands, will find in the laboratory methods whereby -thyroids and pituitaries and adrenals and the other chemical arbiters of -the fate of men and nations may be so dominated by science that human -nature will not merely change with heartbreaking slowness for the better -but will spring at a bound into its supermanhood. - -The above fantastic possibility is not, at this stage of the new -biology, to be taken very seriously, but the suggestion thrown out -serves, at least, to call attention to the fact that never before in the -history of the race has Man been more concerned in his destiny than he -is to-day, more inclined to turn away from old methods of solving the -riddle of his being, methods that have long played him false, and to -turn hopefully to new teachers, new sciences, new hopes, new horizons. -And, lo, at this great moment, when, as never before, Man craves all -knowledge that he may know himself, chance—if such there be—has -vouchsafed to him the one thing needful for a racial self-revelation, -namely, a universal language. - -As I wrote the above, this morning’s newspapers were making the -following announcement to their readers: - - Plans for carrying on the work toward international peace by the - Carnegie Endowment in Europe, Inc., became known yesterday when - Justice Guy of the New York Supreme Court approved an - application for the incorporation of that organization. Among - the objects to be attained by the corporation are: To advance - the cause of peace among nations, to hasten the abolition of - international war, and to encourage and promote peaceful - settlement of international differences. In particular to - promote a thorough and scientific investigation and study of the - causes of war and of the practical methods to prevent and avoid - it. To diffuse information and to educate public opinion - regarding the causes, nature and effect of war, and means for - its prevention and avoidance. To cultivate friendly feelings - between the inhabitants of the different countries and to - increase the knowledge and understanding of each other by the - several nations, etc. - -Praiseworthily lofty and noble as the projects outlined above may be, it -is no disparagement of their promoters to assert that there is nothing -startlingly new in the design they have at heart. In all generations -there have been altruists who envisaged a world freed from war, but -always has it happened that they have been aroused from dreams by the -thunder of the guns. From one point of view at least, the saddest of -countless sad sights in Europe after August 2, 1914, was the Peace -Palace at the Hague. - -But if there is nothing especially novel in what we may call the -Carnegie creed as above worded, there is this to be said for the peace -promoters of to-day that they have one great advantage over all their -predecessors, even over those of ten years ago. A new medium for -preventing Man from repeating his former errors and crimes is, by leaps -and bounds, reaching a marvellous state of development. There is every -reason to believe that the message above referred to, which a -blood-stained race sorely needs, is that which the Carnegie Foundation -is desirous of bringing to the minds and souls of men. But have the -powers of evil and unrest, the promoters of international jealousies and -hatreds, selfish demagogues craving always more power that they may make -the worse appear the better reason, out-generaled the forces of -righteousness and placed the screen in bondage to their pernicious -designs? If they have, and the Esperanto of the Eye is to speak for Mr. -Hyde instead of Dr. Jekyll, then has another great calamity befallen a -race that had no need of more. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XVI - - THE MOVIE AND THE CENSOR - - -_The Movie Ran Wild for Years—Not Threatened with Censorship Until too -Old to Need it—What Christ Thought of Pharisees—History and Common-Sense -Against Censorship—Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis Denounces it—Tories vs. -Freemen, Yesterday and To-Day—American Constitution Doomed if Censorship -Prevails._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XVI - - THE MOVIE AND THE CENSOR - - -WE Americans are forever boasting of our sense of humor, but we have a -deplorable way of exhibiting a complete lack thereof at certain crises -when its saving grace alone could rescue us from ludicrous -inconsistency. When in the early life of the movie it most needed -supervision and restraint it was allowed to run wild at its own free -will, and at once became a naughty, mischievous boy, covered with mud. -As it grew in years and achievement, developing gradually new and higher -ideals, its need for parental discipline automatically decreased, and it -exhibited internally those guiding, corrective powers that have made it -constantly more worthy of the sympathy and support of the best element -in our civilization. And then came to pass a manifestation of belated -Pharisaism upon the part of certain narrow-minded influences in our -community that would have been laughable had it not been fraught with -serious consequences to a novel art-form struggling to find its -appointed place in the life of the world. Where was America’s boasted -sense of humor when the demand for movie censorship waxed loud—for -minorities always make a great noise—long after any reasonable excuse -for such a censorship, if such excuse there could be, had forever passed -away? What would be said of a father who had allowed his son to indulge -in every kind of youthful indiscretion until the latter had almost -reached his majority and then, when the boy had shown signs of -repentance, reform, regeneration, confined him forcibly to his room and -fed him physically upon bread and water and mentally upon the old Blue -Laws of Connecticut? Neither the heart nor the brain of such a father -would appear to us as sound. - -In the eleventh chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke, Christ is -quoted in ringing, uncompromising denunciation of that reactionary, -tyrannical exercise of usurped authority which, through varied methods -and media, has checked the progress of the human spirit toward -enlightened freedom throughout all the centuries: - - Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as - graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not - aware of them. - -And again he cries: - - Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens - grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens - with one of your fingers.... Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have - taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, - and them that were entering in ye hindered. - -“Ye have taken away the key of knowledge!” The crime of crimes, the -unforgiveable sin! In this indictment that He brings against -professional hair-splitters and obstructionists, selfishly standing in -the way of human progress, the Christ gives divine sanction to Man’s -efforts to satisfy the irresistible craving in his soul for light, ever -more light, in the darkness through which he gropes. The fruit of the -Tree of Knowledge is not, as in the old Eden legend, accursed, but is -proclaimed by the Savior as food essential to that spiritual growth -without which there could be no hope for our race. - -The late Andrew D. White, in his great book dealing with the obstacles -against which Science has had to struggle in its effort to enlarge the -diameter of Man’s knowledge, paints a vivid picture of the tragic -effects wrought by various forms of censorship upon the pathetic, -heroic, Christ-sanctioned efforts of the human race to employ freely the -key of knowledge to the end that we may always use “our dead selves as -stepping-stones to higher things.” Prison, the stake, massacre, war—what -weapon has not been used by the foes of enlightenment that they might -check mankind in its rise toward heights upon which the ancient, -unhallowed prerogatives of a few reactionaries could not survive? And -always, in some form or other, censorship has been the most serviceable -weapon, both in times of war and times of peace, by which relentless -unprogressives could break the spirit of those who strove to loosen the -shackles of ignorance from the human spirit. The marvel is not that Man -knows so much to-day as the fact that he has won what he knows against -almost insuperable odds. - -There came to New York from somewhere in the West a year or so ago a -loquacious fanatic who loudly asserted that the earth is flat. The -metropolis refused to take this peripatetic crank seriously, gave him a -passing glance and laugh, and went on its busy way, momentarily -astonished, perhaps, at the amazing stubbornness displayed by outworn -errors in refusing to remain dead and buried. It is seldom, of course, -that the call of the past, the urge to ignorance and reaction, is so -blatantly and audaciously sounded, but Dowie of Zion City differed only -in degree and not in kind from those frequently well-intentioned but -always misguided busybodies who believe that the screen can be kept -decent not by public opinion and commercial common-sense, but only by -groups of three, or five, or seven individuals wielding the arbitrary -power of censorship. - -The advocacy of official censorship of the movies is based upon a -fallacy. Where the misguided men and women urging censorship make their -chief error is in their attitude toward the rank and file of motion -picture patrons. They base their demand for censorship upon the sweeping -generalization that the majority of the millions of Americans who daily -attend the movies crave salacious pictures and must be forcibly -prevented from getting what they crave. This shows not merely ignorance -of the psychology of the American people, but is an exhibition of -indifference to the teachings of our national history that would be -ridiculous if it were not so pernicious in its practical results. -Furthermore, it is in essence the astounding proposition that there are -millions of our countrymen who flock daily to the support of an -institution that is openly undermining our most cherished ideals, -brazenly attacking the home and poisoning the minds of our youth by the -inculcation of ideas subversive of our existing civilization. Can not -the fanatics who are demanding censorship realize that if the motion -picture producers did not understand the American people, and our -inherent and inherited inclination for cleanliness and decency, better -than do the censor advocates the movie industry would have gone to -financial smash long ago? Furthermore, if the American public is not to -be trusted to choose its own amusements, and to automatically censor -them at the box-office or the park gate, is it competent to make its own -laws, elect its own executives, in short, to carry the American -experiment in government by the people to the splendid success that -awaits it? This query is searching and fundamental. Advocacy of -censorship in any form for the people of this country is a manifestation -of un-Americanism that is as surely foredoomed to failure as was George -III’s attempt to enforce a tax upon our ancestor’s tea. In truth, -censorship, both fundamentally and historically, springs from power -usurped and not from an altruistic regard for the moral welfare of a -community. Its beneficiaries centuries ago learned how to camouflage -their love of tyranny behind an assumed regard for the welfare of the -public. But the people of the United States, as becomes daily more -apparent, are too well informed, too sensitive to the unceasing efforts -of old tyrannies to gain new victories, too jealous of the heritage of -freedom that was won for them on hard-fought battlefields, to surrender -their priceless liberty of thought and speech and educational and -recreational choice to an outworn and discredited form of supervision. - -The significance of a recent election held in one of our historic -cradles of liberty, the State that can boast of Concord, Lexington and -Bunker Hill, in connection with the subject under discussion can hardly -be over-estimated. In 1921 the legislature of Massachusetts was induced -to pass a censorship law. By petition it became a matter for referendum, -and on November 7, 1922, the electorate of the Bay State voted upon the -question whether or not they desired a censorship of the motion picture. -The people defeated the measure by a vote of 553,173 to 208,252, a -majority of 344,921 against censorship. Again had Massachusetts given an -outward and visible sign of her inward and spiritual detestation of -Toryism not essentially different in kind from that which she displayed -when “a snuffy old drone from a German hive” was endeavoring, by force -of arms, to hold her in leading-strings. What intrigues, if it does not -startle and perplex, a thoughtful historian in connection with the above -is that to-day in this country there is a clash, affecting the lives of -every one of us, between the ideals which a century and a half ago -placed George of England and George of Virginia in opposite and warring -camps upon certain basic propositions connected with the subject of -human liberty. But it is inconceivable, of course, that the spirit of -George the Thirdism can have anything but a temporary influence in the -United States in the twentieth century, despite the noise now made by -short-sighted, misguided or actually unprincipled champions of movie -censorship—a censorship that, were there nothing else to urge against -it, is an unnecessary and expensive luxury in light of the fact that the -States and cities of our nation are adequately provided with laws and -ordinances protecting the amusement-seeking public from indecent and -immoral exhibitions. - -The Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., -one of the ablest, most eloquent, scholarly and influential divines in -this country, referring in a recent sermon to matters touched upon in -this chapter, said: - - The descendants of the Puritans and the Dutchmen, whose fathers - rebelled against the censors of the James I era, dictating to - them what creed and government they must accept, find it hard, - after three hundred years of freedom of press and speech, to go - back to the very thing from which their ancestors fled. Long ago - the historians said that the American Republic was the vision of - John Milton in his plea for the liberty of the printing-press, - set up in code and constitution. The genius of our Republic is - personal responsibility, individual excellence. A father and - mother must rise up early and sit up late to teach their boy and - girl to think for themselves, using their intellect; to weigh - for themselves, using their judgment; to decide for themselves, - using their own conscience and will. - -“Hell is paved with good intentions.” The tragedy that we call human -history is made more understandable by these depressing, revelatory -words. The fussy, the futile, those whose hearts are kindly but whose -brains are weak, whose motives are praiseworthy but whose methods are -inept and inadequate, have, from the beginning of time, made life harder -than it need be for their fellow-men. When these well-intentioned but -badly-balanced busybodies combine with stronger characters whose motives -are reprehensibly selfish to mould men in the mass to their own narrow -pattern, denying to the individual that freedom of choice regarding his -own affairs that is one of the essential bulwarks of Anglo-Saxon -civilization, an internal menace has come to American institutions more -threatening than any external peril now within our purview. - -But censorship of the movies will be, in all probability, only a passing -and more or less localized phase of our national tendency to indulge in -mischievous experimental legislation. If not, however, if censorship -should ever become both national and permanent, then would be sounded -the doom of those emancipatory institutions which have made of our -American experiment in self-government the one great hope, the one -burning beacon-light, for an over-governed, over-burdened, over-censored -world. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XVII - - THE MOVIE AS A WORLD LANGUAGE - - -_The Esperanto of the Tongue—Its Rapidly Increasing Vogue—All Countries -Taking It Up—Its Inferiority to the Esperanto of the Eye—Together They -May Save the World—“The Covered Wagon”—Its Success as a Picture—Rheims -Cathedral and a Prairie Schooner Symbols of Man’s Balanced Fate—Will the -Race Choose to Construct or to Destroy?_ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XVII - - THE MOVIE AS A WORLD LANGUAGE - - -IT would be inexpedient, I believe, for me to bring this inadequate, -but, I hope, more or less illuminating, investigation of the origin, -present status and future possibilities of the screen to an end without -going more into detail regarding what I have called the Esperanto of the -Eye. That many of the ills to which flesh is heir, especially those -springing from misunderstandings between races and nations, might be -avoided, in great part, at least, by means of a universal language is -far from being a recent idea. Like most seemingly modern -generalizations, such as the theory of evolution, the law of the -conservation of energy, and other apparently recent forward steps, the -possibility of a tongue that should be understood of all men had come -within the purview of the Greek and Roman writers of the classic period. -But the intervention of the so-called Dark Ages, delaying Man’s upward -progress by a thousand years, extinguished many a light which “the glory -that was Greece” had given to the world, and it was not until -comparatively recent times that any effort of a practical and promising -nature had been made to provide the race with a poultice for healing the -blows inflicted upon it at the Tower of Babel. - -To-day, however, the universal language known as Esperanto, a survival -of the fittest from several tongues designed in recent years for general -use, is making real progress in various parts of the world. The report -of the General Secretariat of the League of Nations for 1922 says: -“Language is a great force, and the League of Nations has every reason -to watch with particular interest the progress of the Esperanto -movement, which should become more wide-spread and may one day lead to -great results from the point of view of the moral unity of the world.” - -The astonishing progress of Esperanto in its conquest of a polyglot -globe is dealt with by John K. Mumford in a recent most readable article -in the New York _Herald_, in which he says: - - Since 1920 on an average a new book in Esperanto has appeared - every other day. Text-books and dictionaries exist in French, - English, Arabic, Armenian, Czech, Bulgarian, Danish, Esthonian, - Finnish, German, Greek, Welsh, Hebrew, Spanish, Dutch, - Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Georgian, Catalonian, - Chinese, Croat, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, - Rumanian, Russian, Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Slovakian, - Slovenian, Turkish and Visayan (Philippine Islands). Many - millions of these books have been distributed. - -Whatever may be one’s attitude toward the League of Nations, the -advocacy of “the moral unity of the world” by that organization must -meet with approval by the vast majority of right-thinking men. Through -moral unification only can the human race reach that plane of -civilization upon which freedom from the major ills which now afflict it -can be attained. And that the Esperanto of the Tongue, a universal -language that is rapidly enlarging the scope of its influence, can -perform a mighty service in the cause of peace and progress can not be -doubted. But compared to the Esperanto of the Eye, the universal -language sprung from the screen, its conquest of the earth is painfully -slow, and its final complete triumph would still leave the -world-language of the eye more potent in many ways than the -world-language of the tongue. - -To illustrate the above, let me quote again from Mr. Mumford, who, in -discussing the benefits bestowed by Esperanto upon commerce, says: “In -Esperanto a business concern can get out a circular setting forth the -merits of a washing machine or a face lotion so that even an Eskimo -woman can read it, provided she has taken six months lessons in the -universal language.” But in the twinkling of an eye this Eskimo woman -could learn from the screen what it might take her half a year to glean -from the advertising circular. Furthermore, for many years to come, the -Eskimos, not to speak of the more highly civilized races, are more -likely to be in constant touch with the Esperanto of the Screen than -with the Esperanto of the Printing-Press. - -Of course, what men or nations say to each other is essentially more -important than the vehicle which they use for saying it. Neither the -Esperanto of the Tongue nor of the Eye can be of great service to the -cause of civilization unless they disseminate enlightenment rather than -confusion, good rather than evil, love rather than hatred, unless they -tighten rather than loosen the bonds that hold the nations together in -times of peace. - -But what Man may do ultimately with his new media for world-wide -intercommunication can be, at this juncture, only a matter for vague, -though, perhaps, hopeful, conjecture. There is one fact, however, that -stands out in startling significance as we contemplate the progress -which mankind is making toward the final removal of all barriers toward -racial self-knowledge—namely, that humanity seems, for the first time in -its career, to feel that the Sphinx whose other name is History is -presently to reveal the secret which, throughout all the ages, it has -managed to conceal. The disappearance of the last frontier, the solving -of Earth’s ancient mysteries, the coming of the wireless and the -Esperanto of the Tongue and of the Eye seem to presage some new -revelation to the soul of Man that shall remove forever from the -entrance to the Garden of Eden that angel with the flaming sword. - -Strange, is it not, that close study of the movie and all its works, -both good and bad, should intensify the optimism of one who only a few -short years ago had abandoned all hope that civilization could ever -again be given the opportunity to regain its higher self and fulfill the -promise it had once vouchsafed to the race? One foggy morning in the -Autumn of 1917 I found myself, in company with a fellow -newspaper-correspondent, representing an English daily, on the French -front, in the shell-torn square in front of the grand old cathedral at -Rheims. That very morning high explosives from the German lines had done -further damage to this ancient glory of Gothic architecture, and torn -and shattered, defaced and despoiled, it limped toward Heaven, sadly -crippled but forever sublime. As I stood gazing, awe-stricken and -depressed at the desecrated façade, the outward and visible sign of -Man’s inhumanity to God, my English companion approached me, stuck his -monocle into his eye, gazed at the ruin before us, and drawled, “My -word, but it has been knocked about a bit, hasn’t it?” - -Yes—and so has our modern civilization been knocked about a bit, to -state the case with typically British reserve. As with Rheims cathedral, -so with the social structure Man has patiently and painfully erected -through recent centuries; it must be repaired, strengthened, and, above -all, defended from the iconoclasm that may menace it in the future. And -for this renaissance of civilization, and its protection from the -internal and external foes by which it was recently so nearly destroyed -and by which it is still threatened, the cinematograph can, if God is -willing and Man is wise, be of greater service than the majority of -people yet fully realize. - -Not a day has gone by recently when I have not come upon some new proof -that the pessimism which overwhelmed me as I gazed in 1917 at the -outraged façade of Rheims is not unreasonably to be replaced by an -optimism begotten of the movie. I saw Man in those dark days on the -French front in his iconoclastic mood, wantonly destroying the proudest -relics of the creative genius of his forebears. To-day I find the screen -achieving wonders in conserving, for the sake of posterity, the memory -of epic, epoch-making deeds of derring-do that not only glorify our past -but inspire us with hope and courage and ambition for the future. - -In illustration of this, let me say something of a recent motion picture -destined to win new friends for an art-form which has only of late been -recognized by the more conservative of our intelligenzia as worthy of -their interest and regard. The screening of Emerson Hough’s historical -romance “The Covered Wagon,” which deals with the heroic achievements of -the pioneers who blazed a trail, in their quest of California gold, -across the prairies and the Rockies, thus conferring a priceless boon -upon a nation in the making, is one of the most important milestones in -the progress of the movie upward toward its highest plane of endeavor. -Says Jesse L. Lasky, of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, speaking -of his organization’s splendid contribution not merely to movie fans but -to those who believe that by the visual study of his past Man may find -both warnings and inspirations for his future: - - We did our utmost to make this the picture of a decade—a living, - moving, historical spectacle which would be of great worth to - the world. For the reason that we feel that our efforts have - been successful we are therefore going to offer prints to the - Smithsonian Institution for preservation in the archives of that - institution. Probably never again will a real buffalo hunt be - staged, and it is doubtful if any producers will again undertake - the immense task involved in “The Covered Wagon.” - -Before the actual screening of the story was begun, scouting in search -of an appropriate site for the project was carried on in the states of -California, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico -and Arizona. A location was finally chosen in Utah, ninety miles from -the nearest town and railroad station. As the instant popular success, -combined with the historical importance of “The Covered Wagon,” have a -direct bearing upon the prophecy and suggestion which I made in the -opening chapter of this book, I shall quote at some length from Mr. -James Cruze, to whose energy, enthusiasm and skill as a director the -triumphant screening of Mr. Hough’s stimulating novel is largely due. -Says Mr. Cruze: - - Did you ever sit on the edge of a volcano expecting an eruption - any instant? That was my position. Our camp was not patterned - after Fifth Avenue, and I never knew when something might not - break loose. One of the difficult problems was the rehearsing of - the Indians for the attack on the wagon train. This had to be - well timed, so that nobody would be hurt. But the Indians got so - excited, whether or not the cameras were grinding, that we could - hardly restrain them. - - The breaking of the steers to yoke was another exciting job. - Quite a number of the cowboys with us would not tackle that - work, so we had to get special men. They finally accomplished - this by yoking the steers together and leaving them for - twenty-four hours, and then they were usually willing to stand. - - Then that buffalo hunt on Antelope Island, in Great Salt Lake! I - shall never forget that. It was thrilling, too; at least Karl - Brown, the camera man, thought so. He wanted a close-up of a - charging bull buffalo. He had photographed such gems as a - hippopotamus, a rhinoceros and several other animals, even an - elephant; but he found that a bull buffalo bears a distinct - aversion to the camera, or something of the sort. - - We had a stockade built to protect the camera men, but Brown had - to get outside for this particular shot. He got it, but only a - narrow shave prevented the buffalo from getting him. One of the - cowboys fired in time and we had buffalo steak that night. Some - people told me that Brown felt a little delicacy in the matter - and would not eat any. - - We forded the Kaw River with our wagon train and our horses and - cattle. We—yes, we got them across. It was a frightful scramble, - and all I know is that we reached the other side. In the end I - was thankful, as any one can imagine, when the picture was - finished. They tell me it’s good. It ought to be. - -What can not Man learn eventually through the Esperanto of the Eye? -History is the tale of his conflict between two elements in his nature, -the constructive and the destructive. The picture whose evolution is -presented in detail above preserves for posterity a thrilling record of -our forebears in their Herculean task of winning a continent from -savagery for civilization. It is a representation of Man under the -influence of his eternal constructive impetus. Were I drawing an -illustration for this chapter, I should depict Rheims cathedral -shattered by high explosives beside a prairie schooner drawn by oxen and -ask my readers to judge between them, to say which sketch gave us the -higher opinion of humanity. Is our race to permit eventually its -constructive or its destructive inclinations to dominate its fate? This -is the crucial question agitating mankind to-day, and upon the answer -given to it the future of all things worth while in the world depends. -Who dare assert that that answer is not more likely to be what it should -be because the movie is constantly displaying a fuller appreciation of -the lofty mission upon earth that has been assigned to it? - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XVIII - - THE MOVIE AS THE HOPE OF CIVILIZATION - - -_Buried Civilizations—They Perished from Lack of -Intercommunication—Civilization now World-Wide—Its Salvation Depends on -Mutual Understanding—The Screen the Only Universal Tongue—How it can be -Made to Rescue the Race—A Dream that Should Come True._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER XVIII - - THE MOVIE AS THE HOPE OF CIVILIZATION - - -NO conscientious writer begins the final chapter of a book that has -engaged his energies for a considerable period of time without a feeling -of mingled regret and apprehension. He lays aside reluctantly a piece of -work which, at its inception, seemed worth doing, and whose doing has -given him real pleasure; and, at the same time, he is haunted by the -fear that for the attainment of the purpose which he has had in view he -has left something of vital importance unsaid, has failed to marshal his -facts, figures, suggestions and arguments to the best advantage, and may -have allowed at times his own enthusiasm for the subject he has had in -hand to repel his less sympathetic readers. This latter possibility is -especially disquieting to a writer who has endeavored to stress the -significance of the movie, in its constantly multiplying manifestations, -as a new but possibly determining factor in the struggle of modern -civilization to save itself from the many foes besetting it. It is hard -for “the man on the street,” a clear-headed but rather unimaginative -being, for whom, among others, this book is written, to admit that what -has seemed to him for years past to be but a more or less interesting -form of amusement, too much given to errors of taste and judgment, has -become, of late, through an amazingly rapid process of evolution, a -world power, the influence of which upon the lives of individuals and of -nations can not easily be over-estimated. But the business, politics and -international affairs of the world are dominated for the most part by -this same man on the street, and it is imperative, for the sake of his -own ultimate welfare, as well as for the good of the race at large, that -he be made to realize that the screen as an entertainer, educator, -drummer, possessing a monopoly of the race’s only universal language, is -worthy of his most earnest attention. - -In a letter recently written by President Harding to President Sills of -Bowdoin College is to be found the following interesting prophecy: - - We shall from this time forward have a much more adequate - conception of the essential unity of the whole story of mankind, - and a keener realization of the fact that all its factors must - be weighed and appraised if any of them are to be accurately - estimated and understood. I feel strongly that such a broader - view of history, if it can be implanted in the community’s mind - in the future through the efforts of educators and writers, will - contribute greatly to uphold the hands and strengthen the - efforts of those who will have to deal with the great problem of - human destiny, particularly with that of preserving peace and - outlawing war. - -This recently accepted broader view of history which, as President -Harding says, is an influence making for peace, a new ally to the world -forces struggling for a higher and better civilization, can not be -implanted in the minds of the public, as I have demonstrated in the -first chapter of this book, through educators and writers employing only -the old media for the dissemination of their teachings. Neither the -book, the rostrum, the pulpit, the printed word, nor all of them -combined, have made, nor can they make, that kind of impress upon the -much-too-illiterate public which will compel the race to cease -committing its habitual crimes and blunders. - -But, strangely enough, at the very moment when the enlightened minds of -all nations, through the words of contemporary statesmen, scholars and -writers, have become convinced of the “essential unity” of human history -there has been granted to mankind a medium for the universal -dissemination of new ideas, discoveries, facts and generalizations that -has in it the power to perform for the race a service the necessity for -which President Harding has eloquently demonstrated. Scientists and -historians have of late served as continuity writers for the great -picture drama of man’s past, and, lo, the story of the race reveals -itself not as scattered, unrelated incidents but as a majestic, -coördinated tale, but partially told, whose dénouement may be more -splendid than we have hitherto dared to hope it could be. - -No student of world affairs can fail to be impressed, despite the -cataclysm that overtook the race in 1914, by the pathetic but hopeful -and inspiring fact that mankind, by a reasonable and not too difficult -confinement of his energies to civilized, peaceful, constructive -activities, could raise itself to a much higher plane of civilization in -a comparatively short time from the slough of despondency in which it -now finds itself. All that is necessary to give Man the buoyancy, -courage and incentive necessary to overcome the evils that beset the -world is the assurance that the iconoclasm that periodically destroys -his own handiwork, the destructive mischievousness of an evil spirit -that he has not as yet exorcised, shall never again be allowed to -function, that wide-spread wars shall be permanently relegated to the -bloody, accusatory past. The osteopaths assert that a slight -maladjustment of even a small bone in a man’s skeleton may doom him to -death from some fatal malady seemingly unrelated to the framework of his -body. Whatsoever may be the truth in this assertion, it serves to -illustrate the point I am making, namely, that the cause of war—any war, -small or great,—appears to be almost always ludicrously insignificant -compared to the damage it does. We are always face to face with the -hideous fact that any slight dislocation of the bony structure of modern -civilization might, as was shown by the recent war of wars, bring about -its complete annihilation. Surely it is incumbent upon us, if we are -not, as a race, madmen or morons, to take full advantage of any new -medium or method that presents itself for the safeguarding of peace on -earth, for the furtherance of good will to men. - -Since that red day in June, 1914, when the assassin Gavrilo Princip -fired the shot that not only echoed around the world but almost -overturned the very pillars of civilization’s temple, two antagonistic -tendencies upon the part of mankind have displayed themselves with -unprecedented impressiveness. Man’s destructiveness has been raised to -the nth power, while his constructive ingenuity has been exhibited in an -amazing and encouraging way. The laboratories of the world to-day are -solving problems the solution of which places the human race absolutely -in control of its own destiny. It may, if it so chooses, commit suicide -through high explosives or poison gas, or it may devote itself -successfully to the overthrow and annihilation of the Four Horsemen of -the Apocalypse, War, Famine, Poverty and Disease. - -Now what bearing has all this upon the subject-matter of this book, what -has a biography of the movie got to do with the choice mankind must -presently make between a higher civilization and a return to savagery, -between the call of the millennium and the lure of the jungle, between -science making earth a paradise and science making earth a hell? If my -preceding chapters have not supplied a convincing answer to this query, -let me, even though I repeat myself, endeavor, before I bring this labor -of love to a close, to formulate a concise, but comprehensive and -convincing, answer to a question that future generations may consider -the most important that the soul of Man ever asked of the physical -universe. Is it not conceivable that posterity will laud us of to-day -for inventing the Esperanto of the Eye and marvel at us because we -failed to make full use of it to attain that enlightenment which is the -_sine qua non_ of our race’s salvation? May not our descendants revere -us for inventing the screen, while, at the same time, they mock at us -for our delay in taking advantage of its highest possibilities as an -ally to progress, as a defense against racial deterioration? - -In various parts of the world of late, in the Arctic regions, in South -and Central America, in Mexico and New Mexico, in South Africa and -Egypt, in Asia Minor and elsewhere, archæologists have, through -excavations and allied activities, brought to light the remains of -prehistoric civilizations so remote in time and so high in character -that a new aspect has been given to various periods in the progress of -the race from the cave and jungle to Paris and New York. It is -unquestionable that Man during the countless ages that have passed has -attained at times in various localities a condition of cultured -enlightenment that appears admirable from our modern point of view only -to lose it again either through internal or external foes, or through -both combined. The outstanding and highly significant fact is this, that -the human race, no matter how splendid a development it might display -sporadically and locally, could make no general and permanent progress -until the nations had devised some method of wide-spread -intercommunication. The earth is a graveyard of great cities and great -peoples who were forced to pass into oblivion without revealing to the -outer barbarians of their time the secret of their greatness. Nor was a -highly civilized people in one part of the world able to form ties with -some equally advanced people far afield—and so, though they both -possessed the key to the higher knowledge, they were ignorant of each -other and both were doomed eventually to perish. - -To-day civilization, so far as its surface manifestations are concerned, -is not a localized but a world-wide phenomenon. It can not be completely -buried, as have been so many of its miniature predecessors. The Congo -has its telephones and the Arctic region its wireless. But in so far as -modern civilization is more comprehensive than the Babylonian or the -Egyptian, is not provincial but cosmopolitan, so would its downfall be -more tragically appalling than any catastrophe that has yet afflicted -the human race. And from all parts of the world come to us the voices of -observant men and women who, alive to the warnings vouchsafed to us by -the recent war of wars, are imploring humanity to look not with passion -but with reason at the situation of the world to-day and to take -measures at once that shall drag us back from the edge of the precipice -we have reached. - -Has the Esperanto of the Eye, the only medium the race has ever devised -for universal intercommunication, come too late to rescue mankind from -impending doom? Not if rulers, law-makers, teachers, preachers, -diplomatists, statesmen, all men and women who influence the heart, mind -and conscience of human groups, small or great, realize in time that in -the screen the race has found a medium which, rightly used, could mould -for it a future infinitely superior to its deplorable past. - -There will be, I fully realize, those who will jeer at the basic idea -underlying the contention that I have made in this little book, ridicule -me for believing that, although a man cannot raise himself by his -boot-straps, mankind at large can elevate itself by means of the -regenerated, ever-increasingly-potent movie. Nevertheless, as I have -been describing in some detail the evolutionary steps that have raised -the screen from a toy to a world power, have broadened its scope from a -plaything to a sleepless influence affecting the destinies of men and -nations, I have been constantly more convinced that the suggestion -regarding a great world centre for the enlightenment of mankind through -visual instruction, made in my first chapter, becomes every month more -feasible, as it also, as the days pass and the world appears to go from -bad to worse, grows more imperatively necessary. The screen is a mirror -in which the race can see itself as it has been and as it is, and a -tongue, comprehended of all men, that might, if it rises to its great -mission, bring salvation to the world. - -“A lighthouse of the past, a university of universities, a fountain of -all revealed knowledge, inculcated through a medium understood of all -men, a Mecca for the pilgrims of progress from all comers of the -earth,”—that is my dream, and, for having dreamed it, I know that I am a -better man. By the same token, the human race would become a better race -if it possessed the foresight and common-sense to make my dream come -true! - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - APPENDICES - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - APPENDIX A - - STATISTICS SHOWING THE SCOPE OF THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY - - - Motion picture theatres in the United 15,000 - States - - Seating capacity (one show) 7,605,000 - - Average weekly attendance at picture 50,000,000 - theatres - - Admissions paid annually $520,000,000 - - The average number of reels used for one 8 - performance - - Average number of seats in picture 507 - theatres - - Number of persons employed in picture 105,000 - theatres - - Persons employed in picture production 50,000 - - Permanent employees in all branches of 300,000 - picture industry - - Investment in motion picture industry $1,250,000,000 - - Approximate cost of pictures produced $200,000,000 - annually - - Salaries and wages paid annually at $75,000,000 - studios in production - - Cost of costumes, scenery, and other $50,000,000 - materials and supplies used in - production annually - - Average number of feature films produced 700 - annually - - Average number of short reel subjects, 1,500 - excluding news reels, annually - - Taxable motion picture property in the $720,000,000 - United States - - Percentage of pictures made in 84% - California (1922) - - Percentage of pictures made in New York 12% - (1922) - - Percentage of pictures made elsewhere in 4% - United States (1922) - - Foreign made pictures sent here for sale 425 - (1992) - - Foreign made pictures sold and released 6 - for exhibition - - Theatres running six to seven days per 9,000 - week - - Theatres running four to five days per 1,500 - week - - Theatres running one to three days per 4,500 - week - - Lineal feet of film exported in 1921 140,000,000 - - Lineal feet of film exported in 1913 32,000,000 - - Percentage of American films used in 90 - foreign countries - - Film footage used each week by news 1,400,000 - reels - - Combined circulation of news reels 40,000,000 - weekly - - Number of theatres using news reels 11,000 - weekly - - Amount spent annually by producers and $5,000,000 - exhibitors in newspaper and magazine - advertising - - Amount spent annually by producers in $2,000,000 - photos, cuts, slides, and other - accessories - - Amount spent annually by producers in $2,000,000 - lithographs - - Amount spent annually by producers in $3,000,000 - printing and engraving - - Hospitals and charitable institutions in 7,000 - U. S. equipped for showing motion - pictures, Jan. 1, 1923 - - The number of schools and churches in U. - S. equipped for showing motion - pictures, Jan. 1, 1923, almost equals - the number of theatres. - - Practically every State and Federal - Penitentiary, Penal Institution and - House of Detention in the U. S. shows - motion pictures regularly to their - inmates. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - APPENDIX B - - THE SCREEN AS A NEW LIFE GIVER TO LITERARY CLASSICS - - -The following quotations are culled from recent reports made by -librarians in various parts of the United States: - - “The filming of books always causes a great demand for them. A - call comes immediately after the advertisement appears in local - newspapers and lasts months, and, in cases where pictures are - extraordinarily good, years after the film has been shown. - Before the exhibition of the pictures, ‘Peter Ibbetson’ stood on - the shelf. Dumas was read by few, and interest in ‘The Four - Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ lagged. Since the films have been - shown here, these books are circulating constantly. - - “Not only do the films increase the demand for a particular - book, but interest is aroused in the time and setting of the - story. For instance, after ‘The Three Musketeers’ was shown, - calls came for the life of Richelieu and the history of the - reign of Charles First. Dumas is now in great demand. ‘Orphans - of the Storm’ brought calls for the life of Danton and the - history of the French Revolution. ‘Passion’ overwhelmed us with - demands for the life of Dubarry and the life of Louis XIV.” - - _Walnut Hills Librarian, Cincinnati, Ohio._ - - - “I can say, most emphatically, that the filming of literary - classics does have a very noticeable effect upon the reading of - the books filmed. The increase in the demand and use of these - books is noticeable from the very moment they are announced. - ‘Robin Hood’ is on here now, and long before it first appeared, - every scrap of our information on Robin Hood was out in use. - Recently this was true of ‘The Prisoner of Zenda,’ a subject - which has been dead for quite some time in library circulation - and all at once it was revived with a tremendous demand. Not - long ago we had a sudden call from many parts of the city for - material about ‘Fanchon the Cricket’ and later learned that the - film had been running in an obscure community moving picture - house.” - - _Charles E. Rusk, Librarian, Indianapolis, Ind._ - - - “In some cases there is a demand for the books in foreign - languages such as Italian and Hungarian, and the showing of ‘The - Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ brought requests for the book - in the original Spanish.” - - _Librarian of Public Library, Cleveland, Ohio._ - - - “Very often not only the story filmed is called for, but others - by the same author. In the case of ‘Monte Cristo,’ it has led to - a great demand for all the works of Dumas. ‘A Connecticut Yankee - in King Arthur’s Court’ has revived the interest in others of - Mark Twain’s works.” - - _Report by a New England Librarian._ - - - “The screen creates a new demand on the part of those who have - not themselves seen the picture. A middlewestern librarian tells - me that many of their calls for the book come from those who - have seen the advertising of the picture, or who have heard - their friends talk about it, or who assume that a book which has - found its way into motion pictures must be out of the ordinary. - By way of anticipating and satisfying this demand, that - librarian has kept a display rack of books in constant - circulation by placing the sign above them: ‘These Books Have - Appeared in the Movies.’” - - _Ralph Hayes._ - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - APPENDIX C - - WHAT MASSACHUSETTS THINKS OF MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP - - -In 1921, the legislature of Massachusetts was induced to pass a -censorship law. By petition it became a referendum matter and on -November 7, 1922, the public of Massachusetts voted upon the question of -whether or not the people desired a censorship of the motion picture. -The people defeated the measure by a vote of 553,173 to 208,252, a -majority of 344,921 against censorship. - -It was the first time the public of any State had ever been given the -opportunity to register its opinion on this important subject. -Massachusetts is a conservative State. Its people are conservative -people. They rejected censorship by a vote greater than that given to -any candidate on the ticket or to any issue. Their voice at the polls -was based upon a thorough understanding and consideration of this issue. -In this work of enlightenment, the newspapers of Massachusetts performed -a tremendous service to the motion picture. Ninety-two per cent of them -stood staunchly upon the principle that freedom of expression upon the -screen is just as essential to its further development as freedom of the -press is essential to the continued enlightenment of mankind. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - APPENDIX D - - SIGNIFICANT DATES IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE MOTION PICTURE - - -Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mandé, of France, inventor of photography, born - 1789, died 1851. - -Desvignes, of France, devised apparatus for animated photography, 1860. - -Du Mont, of France, formulated scheme of chronophotography, 1861. - -Muybridge, an Englishman, photographs a trotting horse in motion, - California, 1872. - -Jansen’s photographic revolver for recording the transit of Venus, 1874. - -Dr. E. J. Marey’s photographic gun for studying the flight of birds, - 1882. - -Stern filed patent in Great Britain for chronophotographic apparatus, - 1889. - -Roller photography invented by Eastman and Walker, 1885. - -Eastman, an American, invents celluloid film, 1889. - -Edison, an American, exhibits his Kinetoscope at Chicago World’s Fair, - 1893. - -Robert W. Paul, an Englishman, throws first movie picture on screen at - his studio in Hatton Garden, London, early in 1895. - -Paul shows movies at the Royal Institution, London, Feb. 28, 1896. - -Paul and Sir Augustus Harris win success at the Olympia Theatre, London, - with the “Theatograph,” 1896. - -Richard G. Hollaman, an American, exhibits the cinematograph at his New - York Eden Musée, 1896. - -Charles Urban installs his new projector at the Eden Musée, 1897. - -First topical film—the English Derby of 1896—was shown by Paul at the - Alhambra, London, 1896. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - APPENDIX E - - WHAT THE MOVIE HAS DONE FOR A GREAT RAILROAD - - -A little over two years ago, the loss and damage bill of the Illinois -Central Railroad, on carload and less-than-carload shipments, averaged -more than $2,500,000 for a single year. - -Seven months after motion pictures were adopted to educate employees in -proper methods of freight handling, in connection with a vigorous -campaign to improve the record, that expense was reduced a cool million -dollars! The reduction has averaged approximately fifty per cent for the -year. Best of all, the bill is still on the down-grade. - -In addition to reels on “Loss and Damage,” the Illinois Central Railroad -has produced other films on methods of engineering and switching. Its -“visual education department” boasts a collection of 6000 slides, in -addition to nearly half a million negatives of still photographs. - -There are likewise motion pictures made expressly to educate farmers -along the road’s right of way in modern scientific methods of poultry -raising, soil treatment, dairying, potato culture, and packing produce -for shipment. A force of industrial agents maintained by the railroad -holds farmers’ meetings at which talks and films are the order of the -day, and conducts field days and other get-together affairs where “the -movies” constitute an always dependable attraction. - - _Visual Education, March, 1923._ - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - APPENDIX F - - FACTS AND FIGURES SHOWING THAT THE SCREEN HAS BECOME THE FIRST WORLD - CONQUEROR - - -Buenos Aires, Argentina, has 128 motion-picture theatres, with 2,250,000 -paid admissions per month. - -Montreal, Canada, supports over sixty motion-picture theatres. - -Santiago, Chile, has twenty-three motion-picture theatres, and a new one -is now in process of construction which will seat 2,500 people. - -American films depicting exciting serial dramas and boisterous comedies -are popular in China. Shanghai has 20 motion-picture theatres; Canton -15; Hongkong 8, Peking, Tientsin and Hankow 7 each. - -The first motion-picture drama produced in China with a native cast was -screened July 1, 1921, at the Olympic Theatre, Shanghai, by the Chinese -Motion Picture Society. - -In Greece there are about 40 motion-picture houses, 9 of which are in -Athens. - -In India, Burma and Ceylon there are about 168 motion picture houses, 16 -of which are in Calcutta. - -In Java there are 250 motion-picture theatres. American films are the -most popular. One of the largest theatres seats 2,000 Europeans and -2,500 natives. - -In Japan there are about 600 motion-picture theatres giving regular -performances and about 2,000 more giving occasional performances. Tokyo -has about 50 houses, Osaka 30, Kobe 15, and Kyoto 10. These theatres -seat between 500 and 1,500 people. - -There are in the Netherlands 170 licensed film theatres, with more than -50 other theatres, town halls and society rooms where films are -occasionally shown. - -Bergen, Norway, a city of 100,000 inhabitants, has seven motion-picture -theatres, with a combined seating capacity of 4,000. Seventy-five per -cent of the films shown are American. - -Lisbon, Portugal, has 3 motion-picture theatres with a seating capacity -of 800 persons each, and thirteen smaller houses seating about 400 each. -There are about 120 motion-picture theatres in all Portugal. American -picture films are rapidly increasing in popularity. - -The largest motion picture theatre in Bucharest, Rumania, has a seating -capacity of 1,200. - -Sweden is better supplied with motion picture theatres than any country -in the world. With a population of 6,000,000 it has over 600 cinema -houses. Stockholm, with a population of 500,000, has 75 picture -theatres. - -Great Britain has about 4,000 motion-picture theatres. The largest and -best appointed cinema theatres in the United Kingdom are found in the -provincial towns of England such as Manchester, Bradford, Leeds and -Liverpool. - -France has about 2000 picture theatres, Denmark 250, Belgium about 800. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - APPENDIX G - - MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC RELATIONS COÖPERATING WITH MOTION - PICTURE PRODUCERS AND DISTRIBUTORS OF AMERICA, INC. - - - The Nat’l Society of the Sons of the American Revolution - National Society Colonial Dames of America - National Health Council - Boys’ Club Federation - American Historical Association - The American Sunday School Union - Chautauqua Institution - National Safety Council - American Home Economics Assn. - The Nat’l Community Center Assn. - Community Service - American City Bureau - Central Conference of American Rabbis - Safety Institute of America - Child Welfare League of America - Playground and Recreation Association of America - Commonwealth Club - Actors’ Equity Association - The Woodcraft League of America - American Federation of Labor - Jewish Welfare Board - Girl Reserve Department of the Y.W.C.A. - Russell Sage Foundation - Camp Fire Girls - The Council of Jewish Women - National Committee for the Prevention of Blindness - Nat’l Assn. of Civic Secretaries - Cooper Union - National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations - Associated Advertising Clubs of the World - Girl Scouts - American Country Life Assn. - Nat’l Tuberculosis Association - American Child Health Assn. - National Education Association - Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America - General Federation of Women’s Clubs - The Academy of Political Science - National Child Labor Committee - American Civic Association - International Federation of Catholic Alumnæ - Nat’l Catholic Welfare Council - War Dept. Civilian Advisory Board - Young Women’s Hebrew Association - The Girls’ Friendly Society in America - The Nat’l Assn. of Book Publishers - The Nat’l Security League - Daughters of the American Revolution - The International Committee of Y.M.C.A. - N.Y. Child Welfare Committee - Daughters of the American Revolution - The Salvation Army - Young Men’s Hebrew Association - Nat’l Council of Catholic Women - Girl Scouts - American Museum of Natural History - National Council of Catholic Men - Dairymen’s League Co-operative Assn. - National Board of the Young Women’s Christian Associations - International Federation of Catholic Alumnæ - American Library Association - National Civic Federation - Boy Scouts of America - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - ● Transcriber’s Notes: - ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. - ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. - ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only - when a predominant form was found in this book. - ○ Text that: - was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THAT MARVEL--THE MOVIE *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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