Motography (Apr-Dec 1911)

December, 1911. MOTOGRAPHY 271 Anderson called off the picture for the day, but Miss Fisher would not hear of it and insisted on working in the three remaining scenes in order that the picture could be released before Christmas. She then mounted the coach which had been set upright again and drove the horses in the following scenes of the runaway, which will be seen in the picture. After the film was completed, Miss Fisher was forced to go to the hospital to recover from her injuries. "A Bird in the Hand," the Essanay New Year's story, is the tale of an elusive New Year's dinner. Jim Smith and his wife are despondent because they have no turkey for their New Year's dinner. Jim, after losing a chance on a turkey raffle, goes to a pawn shop, sells his suit and goes home shivering in his overcoat, but radiating joy, for he has the turkey. In the meantime, Jim's wife has had a brilliant idea, and has sold Jim's "other suit," buying a turkey with the proceeds. With two turkeys on their hands they individually seek to dispose of one of the birds and while Jim gives his to the janitor, Mrs. Smith, not knowing of Jim's transaction, gives her bird to the Salvation army. They are in hysterics when they learn of the loss of the dinner, which they had obtained with such sacrifices and are wildly mourning when a box arrives from mother. The box contains all sorts of good things, including a fine turkey. Jim is not satisfied until the newly arrived bird is nailed to the kitchen table, after which he takes a rusty old gun and mounts guard. Children and the Picture Show By Edward H. Chandler1 WE ARE always trying to teach children how to act and yet we have constantly hindered them from anything like acting. This is attempting to learn to swim without going near the water. The dramatic instinct in children is merely the attempt to reproduce action, to put ideas into visualized form and set them to work. All children have always made this attempt. No one can grow up into mature life without making it. Yet we seem to have the impression that the discovery of the dramatic instinct is something of new and epoch-making importance. Long ago the educator laid hold of this instinct and in the kindergarten made free use of it. In the games the children are birds or animals. They actually represent the cobbler or the carpenter or the farmer. They act out in miniature the life of nature and of the human world of honest toil. But why stop with the kindergarten? Would it not be equally worth while for the growing child to represent in succeeding years the larger conceptions of life into which he enters? The history of the past can be visualized in pageantry. Contemporary life can be enacted. The greatest literature is in dramatic form. The church has always depended upon the dramatic impression even though it has frowned upon the actor's profession. The greatest pageants have been religious and there have been no greater actors than some preachers. It's a sorry bungle that the church has often made with its children by exploiting their self-conscious cleverness in speaking pieces and singing songs. But meagre and unimaginative as most Sunday school exercises are, they all bear witness to the ever-present dramatic instinct and the power it may have as an active force in presenting truth. The trouble is that this natural and most valuable instinct has not been trained to serve in the development of character. Until a very few years ago children's acting was hardly conceived of as an educational factor. And quite naturally the commercialized theater gave little attention to educational values. Its plays are seldom intelligible to children, >and its influence has often been demoralizing rather than helpful in the years of childhood's deepest impressions. Then came, less than five years ago, the remark *From Religious Education. able invention of the moving picture. Almost by magk there began to be displayed on the screen every form of action which a child could both understand and delight in. At first the mere novelty of seeing things move on the screen was fascinating enough. Then there began to be displayed cavalry regiments in full gallop, locomotives under full steam, athletes running races, action of every sort. Following these in rapid succession came the story pictures, humorous, thrilling, grotesque, historical — all within easy reach of a child's mental faculties. It did not take long for children to develop a theater-going habit. Today the testimony of settlement clubs and schools reveals the fact that nearly every boy and girl under fourteen years of age attends the popular theater or moving picture show regularly and that more than 10 per cent go as often as once a week. A single theater of this class in one of the outlying wards of Boston reports over a thousand admissions of children on a single Saturday. The city of Boston has provided a total seating capacity of 510,000 per week at this class of theater alone. A writer in World's Work estimates that the present daily attendance in the United States is four million in 13,000 theaters. The range of dramatic action exhibited in picture form forthe entertainment of these multitudes is infinitely wider than has ever been possible in any other form. For the first time in the history of the world the theater, in this form, has become established and supported by the mass of the people, and they have accepted it as an essential social factor. So extraordinary a development could not have come without attendant evils. At first the makers of films, in their eagerness to grasp the outstretched dimes and nickels of the public, began to pander to human weakness, reveling in the details of crime and in various forms of vulgarity. Two forces have acted to check this evil. The process of natural selection by which the public soon began to demand elaborate productions led to the crowding out of what was merely cheap and suggestive. But even more important was that sagacious move of public-spirited citizens in New York City who with marvelous tact persuaded the manufacturers and producers themselves to submit to a censorship which, operating at the fountain