Motion Picture Magazine (Feb-Jul 1919)

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Letters to the Editor Does any producer wish to properly picturize Boston girls? Here's a handy hint: Dear Editor — As a reader I find your Magazine interesting, original and clever. Your method of presenting talented players to a fanciful American public is especially interesting. Will some one explain why those who are responsible will pose Bostonian girls on the screen with manners not unlike the antics of a frantic puppy? I do not mention any special presentation, because I am not writing with the intent to be critical. I greatly admire the perfection of detail so nearly attained in this (to me) new and delightful world of creative artists. Truly Bostonian types are very distinct. Their exclusiveness leaves them misunderstood — if not altogether unknown in the theatrical world. Flirtatious, cuddling creatures without a chaperon, all jerks and angular movements, skipping among the shrubberies with sweethearts no more resemble Boston girls than do Chinamen. Since Chinamen are shown in filmland true to type and color, then why not the Boston girl? In a gracious mood she is a really charming personality and in contrast with more lively types she would make an interesting study for the best screen productions. I know whereof I "speak, inasmuch as 1 have lived much among them (tho not being one of them). In Boston humanity reaches the climax of frigidity — B-r-r-r-r — ■ — Socially Bostonians are the coldest caste on earth, and, as you know, this good old world is a big world with plenty of frosty places and peoples to beat. Ever had the east wind there cut thru you? or attend a social function within a set wherein you had not been born and bred, cultivated and cultured all your days? Try it. I'll venture that unless you are blessed with being a social lion, a prince, or the like — ■ a second attempt is unlikely. Nor will your imagination, no matter how highly developed, picture to you a hopping, skipping, giggling Boston girl ! No, sir ! Young children there express gentle breeding, dignity and good manners, veritable little reproductions of their Bostonian grown-ups. It has been truly said that a Boston child knew everything but childhood. The incorrect thing simply is not done. Attend a play in New York (referring to the spoken stage), then attend the same show in Boston and half the wit of it is gone. Why? Bostonians will not permit themselves to be shocked ! Temperature, not temperament, decides the issue — one blames the climate. Dress in Boston town is simplicity itself ; again we blame the climate. The human element instinctively harmonizes with the sombre hues of the east; nature all along the northeastern Atlantic shores favors dusky greys, shadowy green hills with rare glints of pinkish purple granite for color, and the race naturally trails to the hill tops to behold the sun rise. Travel westward nearer the sun with all its warmth and glory of color and you find humanity corresponding in variety and action as unconcerned concerning conventionality as nature is of her blending brilliance of color. All along the Pacific shores one is invited to view their beautiful sunsets. Here we look for the sunshiny, cheerful types, but the Boston girl, like Boston town, is more often than not cold and frigid outside of the pale of her own social world and perfectly proper therein. Very truly, I. M. R. 132 W. 16th Street, New York City. A dissertation, somewhat deep, which deserves thinking over: Dear Mr. Editor — Many a good thing has been said by readers of your Magazine in letters published by you, and I have always relished them. In fact, those letters from the public are the first thing I am looking for upon purchasing your esteemed Magazine. I venture that even some of the film manufacturers derive valuable suggestions from the contributions of your readers, and this assumption causes me to put forth an advice regarding one of the most annoying features of the industry, or to be more exact, accompanying the showing of the pictures. Must all the wails about the deadly reader of subtitles in the theaters be in vain? Why, oh, why is all the mental energy spent on uttering wild curses about this pest, why is all the stifling wrath throttling . our breath wasted away, daily anew? There is a remedy. Let the manufacturers, instead of informing the world of the startling fact that Mr. Smith was the indispensable fellow turning the crank of the camera, or that Mr. Smearer is responsible for the continuity ■ — I say, let the manufacturers give twenty feet of film to the printed request to the audience to kindly refrain from making their neighbor's life an unbearable burden by reading out loud the titles, either with creaking voices or with much feeling. I predict that there will be a day when some patron of the less insipid sort will, with a wild and weird howl, leap upon the scoundrel who has just uttered, in accordance with the screen, the magic words, "the dawn of a new day," murdering him mercilessly. And the jury will render an unanimous verdict of "not guilty," and the liberator, bless him, will be elected President of the United States of the World. Did you ever notice, in real life, that while speaking, folks push their eyebrows up and down?. You did not? Neither did I. Why then do some of the actors insist upon performing that exercise? Petrova does not, and still they roast her for being unnatural on the screen. Let the readers think it over, they will have to admit, that, quite on the contrary, she is one of the very, very few actresses who act in pictures just as any normal human being would act in real life. Few people are prejudiced against her by thoughtless critics who call her "'cold," and who cannot see that she avoids exaggeration ; that exaggeration to which said critics have became used in the past, and the lack of which they interpret as lack of temperament. Compare her acting — no, not acting, her portrayals ! — compare it with the mannerisms of the cuties who invariably snatch the first place in popularity contests ! Behold, for instance, Pearl White. She is one of the most beautiful women of the screen, but her acting — horrible. Or Margarita Fischer, She gives me the blues. Or that impossible June Caprice. Why is William Fox? Has there ever been a time when he has put out pictures of merit? The word "mediocre" has been created, without doubt, by . some ancient philologue who had a premonition that there would be, some day, a great coun 12