Motography (Jan-Jun 1918)

BLAINE McGRATH Managing Editor NEW YORK OFFICE: 1022 LOHGACRE BUILDING, Forty-second Street and Broadway Telephone Bryant 7030 CHARLES W. BRENNAN, Advertising Managor LOS ANGELES OFFICE: 6411 HOLLYWOOD BLVD. MABEL C0N00N, Western Representative NOTICE TO ADVERTISERS Changes of advertising copy should reach the office of publication not less than fifteen days in advance of date of issue. Regular date of issue every Saturday. New advertisements will be accepted up to within ten days of date of issue, but proof of such advertisements can not be shown in advance of publication. ^777, THE MOTION PICTURE TRADE JOURNAL PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY ELECTRICITY MAGAZINE CORPORATION E. R. MOCK, President and Treasurer PAUL H. WOODRUFF. Editor in Chief. E. M. C. Publication MONADNOCK BUILDING CHICAGO, ILL. Branch Telephone Exchange: Harrison 3014 Entered at Chicago Post Office as Second Class Mail Matter. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE Per Year $3.00 Canada Per year $4.00 Foreign Per year 5.00 Single copy .15 NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS Remittances — Remittances should be made by check, New York draft or money order in favor of Motoqeaphy. Foreign subscriptions may ba remitted direct by International Postal Money Order. Change of address— The old address should be given as well as the new. and notice should be received two weeks in advance of the desired change. This publication is free and independent of all business or house connections or control. No manufacturer or supply dealer, or their stockholders or representatives, have any financial interest in Motography or any voice in its management or policy. Volume XIX CHICAGO. JANUARY 12, 1918 Number 2 The Indispensable Picture WHEN President Wilson, on December 17, 1917, created the "Division of Foreign Picture Service," he conferred upon the motion picture art an acknowledgment of essentiality that will be envied by many an industry self-regarded as more important. The picture business is so calloused to compliment and so wrapt in its own devices that it is not thrilled by its advantage over other kinds of human acticity. A Vanderlip, lecturing on thrift from the platform of a private car or behind a seven dollar banquet plate, may thoughtlessly urge his hearers to abandon their picture shows. But the President, in an executive order, recognizes their necessity. The order reads: I hereby create, under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Public Information, heretofore established by Executive Order of April 14, 1917, a Division of Foreign Picture Service for the purpose of stimulating interest in the war and furnishing entertainment and instruction by means of motion pictures to American soldiers at home and abroad; also to lend similar aid to the armies and citizens of our allies through the medium of the Young Men's Christian Association and other agencies of like character. The narrow-visioned devotee of the business-is-business method will say that pictures for soldiers do not buy gasoline for the home exhibitor's Ford. He overlooks the fact that a harassed government driven by conservation necessities, might have declared him superfluous in the industrial and social scheme of the hour, and deprived him altogether of his line of effort. Many a business man who likes to go to picture shows has regarded them as pleasant but non-essential compared with his own business — whatever that might be. But the government has proven pictures essential. It has decreed that they be supplied to the armies at the front, along with food and clothing and such other bare necessities as may find room in the hold of scanty shipping. When films can compete successfully in the executive mind with the thousand other commodities that are crying for cargo space, their position in the catalog of war requirements is established. With such a criterion, there will be no further disposition to set the neighborhood theater aside as a non-essential. Only those queer spirits who regard gloom as the natural and appropriate state of mind would voice a proposal so depressing to the already sober throngs necessarily left over here. The exact words of the epigram have gone the way of many a brilliant saying; but it has been remarked, in administrative circles, that if Germany could choose for elimination between our army system abroad and our publicity system at home, she would unhesitatingly strike at the latter. For that which comprises our publicity system is our list of thousands of loyal and devoted newspapers and magazines; a formidable defense against enemy propaganda that holds its influence with every soul of our hundred million. But for all the might of this vast form of patriotic type, the might of the picture is