Cinema News and Property Gazette Technical Supplement (1924-1925, 1943, 1946)

Supplement to THE CINEMA NEWS AND PROPERTY GAZETTE. October 2, 1924. TOPICS OF THE TIMES. BY THE MAN WITH THE OIL RAG. Oogh ! I've been reading in the Sunday papers all about the 'orrible German film plot, and it fair made my flesh creep. I can picture that secret underground vault somewhere in Wardour Street. Dim, eerie lights emanating from bottles of unknown gas produced by the chemical master-minds of the Fatherland, add to the mysterious gloom, while the secret passages and corridors leading to the subterranean Council Chamber are guarded by grim-visaged Uhlans, camouflaged as film travellers. The mystic tappings and knockings, the comings and goings of the conspirators — the Herr film magnates, and the Herr Kolossal oof-magnaten, assume the proportions of a veritable nightmare of fright fulness in my unstrung imagination, and I feel like unto a blanc-mange into the composition of which an excess of water has been introduced. SAILORS DON'T CARE. Even a section of the trade Press seems to be losing its head about the new German menace. The only unperturbed factor is the picturegoer. He, or she, does not care a sub-title about conspiracies and plots other than those projected on the screen. Give them a good picture, and they're on it, whether it be American, German, or any other origin — bar British, perhaps — but show them a "dud " and all the " putting over " balderdash in the wide world will leave them cold. That's gospel — and the showman knows it. WHY NOT A BRITISH PLOT? 1 wish some of our own financial big-wigs would start a British Film Conspiracy. I know of a wonderful underground vault in Soho ; redolent of conspiratorial atmosphere — to say nothing of garlic — that can be got for a "mere song — or a one-reel comedy if preferred. I will gladly instal the mystic lights, the secret doors, the invisible traps, and all the paraphernalia of a secret assembly free of charge, and join the merry band of plotters, too, if they will but give British film production the fair chance and real financial backing that it deserves. Have America and Germany all the brains, all the technical skill, all the resources, financial and otherwise, and all the claim to British support and British sympathy? Have they h — < — WARMING UP. Believe me, I love a good American film just as I love any work of sincere artistry ; but I do not, speaking quite personally, believe that it is good for us that American sentiment, American ideas and ideals, and American corruption of what was once English language, should hold 90 per cent, of the world's screen influence. Look at the tradition and dignity of our Courts of Justice, and then compare it with the judicial proceedings of our trans-Atlantic cousins, where, if report be true, counsel in a celebrated murder trial warms up to his subject with such zeal that he has to divest himself of coal and waistcoat to keep his temperature at something approximating to normal. BUGHOUSE. Has English language no beauty, no poetry, no tradition worth preserving, and passing on to the rest of the world? To-day, in our ordinary conversation, we no longer appreciate the expressive value of our mothertongue. We talk of " punk," " the bunk," and "phoney." AW icier to our fellow men as "guys," and when we want to say that we have accomplished some desired end we say we have " put it over." But in the welter of verbal inelegancies we have not yet, thank Providence, descended to the use of " Bughouse as a substitute for the English word insane. And when we do, let us apply it to ourselves. " TEDDY " GOES BACK. There will be few — if any — who will not share with me extreme pleasure at the tidings that " Teddy " Lyons, of the Biocolor Circuit, has gone back to the General Council of the C. E.A. At a recent meetingr of the London and Home Counties Branch he was unanimously elected delegate to General Council, a position for which his wide experience of the problems and needs of the exhibitors eminently fits him. A man of marked foresight, cool reasoning, and able expression, he has the attributes of a sound administrative representative. He is outspoken and open-minded to a degree that sometimes carries him to the verge of unconstitutiohalism ; that is the worst fault that can be alleged against " Teddy " even by his enemies — if he has any. VALE. It is difficult to realise that the news of poor Rowland Fisher's tragic death can be true. I met him but a few days before the fatal accident, and he was then in his usual cheery mood and looking forward to the pleasure of motoring down to Yarmouth to join his wife and boy, who were spending holiday there. Among the most warm-hearted, kindly, and straightforward of men, his loss will be felt no less keenly bv the trade as a whole than by Australasian Films, with which he was associated. On the junior side of middle age, he was but 45 years old, the tragedy of his untimely end is the greater. My deepest sympathy extends to his devoted wife and their little son. Vale !