The Moving Picture Weekly (1920-1921)

14 THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY A Message from Lord Nortkcliff e UANDS-across-the-sea stuff has become so common of late years as to be incapable of exciting the re-action which once followed an international meeting of minds and mouths at the luncheon board. But there took place at the Astor Hotel last Tuesday an event which is worthy of and bound to receive space in every newspaper in this country and Great Britain. The heads of the film industry, several bankers who are not yet in, as well as many who are, and many newspaper men sat down together to join in welcoming an ambassador to the film Empire of America. He was not accredited from The Court of St. James, but from a mighty important part of the Fourth Estate of Great Britain, the Northcliffe Press. "Ambassador" Faulkner is in every sense Lord Northcliffe's personal representative to the Film Industry. This luncheon is truly an event both in film history and in the history of Anglo-American relations, as Arthur Levey, who has associated himself with the Northcliffe Mission, stated in introducing the toastmaster, Mr. Mel♦ville E. Stone. No man has kept England more thoroughly stirred up for its own good for the last five years than Lord Northcliffe. No set of papers in the world has so fully recognized the significance of the motion picture or given it such whole-hearted support and extent of space as the Northcliffe papers. In a most diplomatic and cordial speech Mr. Faulkner called attention to this fact and in his speech stated that it was because Lord Northcliffe was thoroughly convinced that the screen was the most potent force in the world to-day — ^not excepting the printed word. Lord Northcliffe's message as read by Mr. Stone, is as follows : THE TIMES 1785. A MESSAGE TO MY AMERICAN FRIENDS. "In asking my friend Faulkner to cross the Atlantic, I had in my mind the creation of a better understanding in the film worlds of our country and yours. "My personal interest in films is frankly educational — not in the dull sense, but largely in the sense of accuracy of detail. "Some American films, beautiful in conception, that include reels depicting English life, are occasionally spoiled by little but damaging mistakes which make the public disregard the fine -creative and accurate portion of such films. "For example, I saw in Edinburgh what would have been a very popular film— American made— in which one scene was laid in an English country house. There was a butler and a footman. In an English country house the servants do not wait at breakfast. The guests help themselves from the sideboard, as everyone in the audience knew. Incidentally, the whole party were drinking icewater, which is a luxury that we have not attained to in this country, byt which, I understand, has been very plentiful in your country since the Thirsty-first. "Such errors hurt filmland as badly as false news hurts newspapers. They make people doubt the accuracy of all films. "A good understanding between the film people of our countries is the more essential because the development of cheap private projectors will produce such an increase in the manufacture of films and the desire to see films, that for every film put on the screen to-day, I venture to predict that there will be a hundred produced in ten years' time. "I find that my own private projector has increased the desire of my household and circle of friends to go to all the neighboring picture theatres. "This new development has infinite possibilities. In Great Britain we are not sufficiently awake to the fact that the moving picture is absolutely the greatest instrument of recreation and education that the world has ever known. "In the United States I found during my residence there two years ago, that there were plenty of people even in that country, which is the home of the film who did not realize the possibilities of 1925 in filmland. "My friend Faulkner goes to you with a message of good will from all of us here, and especially to say that any efforts in the direction of accurate and elevated production will meet with very warm support from the Northcliffe Press." (Signed) Northcliffe. London, 14th Jan. 1920. William A. Brady replied to Ambassador Faulkner and speeches were made by Louis Tracy the novelist and W. W. Irwin. I am tke Motion Picture Camera J AM the motion picture camera. I am worth a little more than $2,500 all equipped. There are thirty-five of my brothers here at Universal City, six of them with Universal expeditions in distant places of the earth, and ten of them in New York. Oh, I am a member of a very wealthy family. In fact, the family is worth just $127,500 on the hoof. But I am essential to this infant industry. I make it possible for a lot of moon-faced people who couldn't earn their salt by working, to get millions of Carl Laemmle's and Adoiph Zukor's money and for lots of people who would otherwise be selling sugar at war prices to be Captains of Art. There is an old wheeze that a camera can't lie. Pooh! and a couple of baa's. We cameras are the best liars since Homer smote his lyre and said that his tune was original. I can make a chicken look like a hard boiled hen and a leather-faced old booze lapper look like a million dollars. Of course, something depends on the man who operates us, but we can all make a straight line look like a peeved tomcat's back and a square look like a profiteer's soul. Without me there would be no moving pictures. I put the move in movie and the sin in cinematography. Four hundred feet of film is placed on my well shaped head every morning. In an hour or so another magazine of film is substituted for the first and my daily rations sometimes exceeds two thousand feet of film. If the day's film is not good the cameraman can always discover something the matter with our insides upon which to blame his foozling of the film. As a diagnostician the average cameraman is a knockout. A brother of mine was thrown from a cliff recently. They picked him up in a basket and found enough debris to build two flivvers. To young cameras I have always said: Eat lots of film and don't ogle the ingenues. I am the Motion Picture Camera.