Moving Picture Age (Jan-Dec 1921)

January, 1921 MOVING PICTURE AGE 17 theater because the building is too large to permit placing it clear at the back. No one except those authorized is ever given access to the booths and what they contain. The shows in the hospital theater are well attended. Everyone who can be moved at all is brought and the good these exhibitions do for the sick boys can hardly be estimated. We have few cases of sickness too serious to move, so that the percentage deprived of this pleasure is so small as to be almost neglible. The Hospital Corps Training School has recently been moved to this station and the boys in attendance there make up a good share of the audience at these shows. Movie night in the other three theaters is much the same as it is in the main theater except that the attendance is not so large. Most of these theaters have been fixed up by the boys themselves. The main theater is equipped to take care of any kind of a production, either legitimate or vaudeville. The stage, the scenery, the drops and the other theatrical appurtenances were all built and are all manned by sailors. These boys have become real experts in the various branches of the backstage professions. The Navy Department and the Commandant here at Great Lakes co-operate with us in every possible way. In fact, a good share of our audiences consist of officers and their families. It is evident that the Naval Authorities fully realize the value of good, wholesome amusement as a prime factor of building up the morale of a large body of healthy, active, clean-living young men. This is especially true here at Great Lakes because most of our boys are fresh from home and are prone to draw comparisons which magnify their hardships. They may even be afflicted with that most distressing oldfashioned ailment — home-sickness. Boys in that state of mind are most impressionable, and if we can take their minds off their imagined troubles until they become acclimated to Navy life, we do them personally a great service. By the time their months of training are up they are satisfied with the Navy, even enthusiastic about it, and are ready for the next move. Movies are a great factor in tiding the boys over this rather critical time. Movies are in the Navy to stay. They are now as much a part of it as the watch cap and the ditty box. I might almost suggest that the famous Naval recruiting slogan could profitably be amended : "Join the Navy ; see the world — and the movies." "Fathoms Deep," an Undersea Picture HITHERTO many of the undersea screen attractions have been largely a matter of exhibits rather than human tensity, animate photographs of sharks and other deep sea monsters. In "Fathoms Deep," a new J. E. Williamson undersea novelty, a play of human impulse and complication, with love its leading rider, is staged instead, and this literally along the ocean's floor, with the dramatis personam shown in scenes of adventure and conflict. The production was staged in its undersea as well as land phases by Ralph Ince. It is Ince also who plays the principal part, that of a reckless wanderlust who becomes embroiled with a strange group of sea rovers. These latter have stolen an undersea craft and are privateering and pirating the high and low seas as they will. Every passing craft within their moving zones is prey. But "Fathoms Deep" is not all undersea footage. A great measure of the play passes either on land or on the surface of the ocean, with its plot so entwined that it merges into its submarine incidents liquidly and powerfully, according to observers of the advance showing. The'mm PORTABLE" MOTION PICTURE PROJECTOR A Standard Machine — not a makeshift! Approved and listed as a standard machine by the Underwriters' Laboratories of the National Board of Fire Underwriters, August 20, 1920. FOR UNIVERSAL USE because Ms SAFE-SIMPLE-SOUND-SURE! Robert C. Bruce, creator of Scenics Beautiful for Educational Films, is said to be the only scenic artist in the world who actually cuts and titles his own pictures. Please say, "As advertised in MOVING PIC The "ZENITH PORTABLE" has universal motor; alternating or direct current; high or low voltage; stereopticon attachment. Each part and every machine is honestly built and fully guaranteed. The "ZENITH" meets every Projector requirement in the World! We can use a high-grade dealer in a few uncontr acted territories Fitzpatrick & McElroy SOLE REPRESENTATIVES of the and the "ZENITH PORTABLE" PROJECTOR 202 South State Street, Chicago TURE AGE," zvhen you write to advertisers.