Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1919)

To the motion picture the government, through its divers and sundry bureaus, departments, committees and such, said in etJect; "This is our war and we will take our own movies. Begone!" If the printing art was only twenty years old, or thereabout, like the motion picture, the newspapers would have no more rights than an alley cat at a Madison Square Garden dog show. The newspaper is run as a business enterprise and is looked upon officially and governmentally as a c^uasipublic institution, sharing the public rights because it serves that public. The motion picture is also run as a business enterprise, and it gets about the same official and governmental treatment as the liquor trade and the burglar's union. Yo ur Pi You have been in the motion picture business for about a year — that is, if you are a citizen of these United States. It is very possible that you did not realize it, but to whatever extent you may find yourself enjoying a partnership in the national government you have been a partner in a concern engaged in the making, compilation and marketing of films. Vou have been renting pictures to the theaters for hire and you have been more or less operating a big selling machine for the purpose. Mostly this participation of yours in the film industry has been through the Division of Films, a part of the much-discussed Committee on Public Information. By the time that you read this, according to the indications observable as it is written, you will be out of the film business, with the dissolution of the Division of Films and the winding up of its affairs. You will still own a lot of films but you will have no wholesale and retail picture company. So it may not be entirely inopportune to discuss with you at this time some of the aspects of your enterprise. It may be of value to you in the event you should go into the business again sometime. According to unofficial reports, but probably just as accurate as any you might ever get in the film business, your picture venture is going to show quite a profit on the books. However, there are a number of items of cost in production and marketing that will not appear in the accounts. It seems that the United States Army did most of the photographic work and that a lot of patriots donated a great deal of advertising. In fact there are a number of aspects of this venture of yours that a simple, plainthinking man can speak his mind about much more clearly now than in pre-armistice days. One phase of the matter deserves some special attention — that curious monopoly that the managers of your film enterprise declared fci' the benefit of their — I beg your pardon — for the benefit of your 44 1918 The United States Government in the film business. business. You see, all of your pictures were war pictures and \ery largely, so far as the picture business was concerned, it was the private war of the Division of Films. It is fair also to go farther and say that so far as the American pubUc was concerned, also, it was a private war — exclusive photographic rights to the Division of Films. Which leads to the passing observation that when you went into the film business you overlooked a very big opportunity in a closely related line that ought to have been just as goocl, perhaps e\en better — the newspaper business. With the very excellent and spectacular war making the raw material over there in France, assuming that your managers had been as capably alert and aggressive among the papers as among the pictures, you could have put over a fine side-hne by declaring another monopoly on war news and using it in the issuance of your own war newspapers. There would have been no question but that if you had had the monopoly on the war news your paper would have attained quite a circulation and might very well have shown a profit, if as ardently sold as your pictures were. We would all have had to buy your government-exclusive war newspaper if we were to know how the war was going on and what the score was. It might have been a httle hard on the existing publications which had been serving you rather faithfully for a good many years, and it is just possible that they would have made it pretty hard for you to freeze them out of the war news business. It might also be remarked as we go along, too, that unless you had done better with your newspapers than you did with your pictures, by way of service, you would not now know that the war was over. Also many would not know that there ever had been a war. All of which is to say that the United States government in dealing with the war and motion pictures did some astounding things, possible only because the picture business in its relative youth does not know its rights, possible only because the nation was in a state of war with a public and a picture industry committed to a policy of "'my country right or wrong." It is also true, laying aside the war phase of the thing, that to all effective intents and purposes the motion picture as an institution has no rights clearly established in the public mind.