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From Hollywood 21 lvc given a most salutary jolt to our merican producers. Many of these com- ercial companies who have long con- liered the "motion picture art" to con- st merely in turning the crank and king in the money, are now bestirring emselves to do something better for ie movie's tomorrow than they have Dne for its yesterday. Even the "thrillers" are now coming from foreign shores! Four solid pages ': crimson advertisement announce "The iistress of the World," a four-volume rial—Paramount Pictures—tremendous, >ectacular, stupendous, etc.—time and oney—fifty thousand in the cast—eighteen onths t'o make — past achievements :>w insignificant—Arabian Nights tame r"will make box office records which i-ver can be broken," etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam. Then—if you scan the ad closely—you will note on each of the four pages a tiny "U F A Production" in- serted with careful inconspicuousness. Doubtless a clause in the "rights" con- tract compelled this insertion or it would have been omitted entirely. As it is most of the great movie public, to whom the initials of the great German firm connote nothing anyway, will pay their money, take their thrill, and think Famous Play- ers-Lasky have done another wonderful picture. "The Mistress of the World" will prob- ably have no influence upon the award of the "artistic" palm to European mo- tion picture achievement but it promises to worry somewhat the American film- builders whose ambition is to keep the "sensational" palm in this country. From Hollywood Conducted by M. T. O. REMEMBER seeing once, on some vaudeville stage, an absurd skit which | held up to ridicule the tricks of the leatrical trade. It wound up in a grand ig-waving finale which gave the chief laracter opportunity to observe sagely, There's many a bum show been saved y the American flag." The motion picture producers call that >rt of thing—all the old, familiar de- ices for holding interest—by the all-em- racing term "hokum," and as such it Mds a definite and important place in ictures. You know by heart the laugh- roducers in the average comedy. You »ok for them, and—you must admit it— hen they come, you laugh. You hold our breath during the flitting progress f the melodrama, while the heroine races nth the limited train to snatch from eath the little toddler on the track. You 'an heavily on the arms of your ch.iir 'hile the hero fights six bandits single handed and comes up smiling and in per- fect sartorial trim after the fray. You exult with the small citizen behind you— though not so audibly—when through the rifts in the battle' smoke you glimpse the Stars and Stripes, infallible sign that we have met the enemy and he is ours! This sort of thing grips you. It in- duces, according to its kind, laughter, tears, outbursts of applause. And that is what the producer knew that it would do, for it. is "sure-fire stuff," the thing called "hokum." There are few pictures which do not depend largely on these devices for their popularity. They belong with the tra- ditions of the stage, and crossed over very naturally to a similar place in mo- tion pictures—if the latter may be said to have traditions. But "sure-fire stuff" is going out of style. You are tired of it. You have