Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1919)

CLOSE-UPS EDITORIAL EXPRESSION AND TIMELV COMMENT ax. Capital and Income Tax rAAH GAWD e-1 Fll^ MEN 5 P€EM fcATiM' HEAM c Financiers, bond-holders, landlords and heirs who pay a large income-tax pay just that — an income-tax. Artists who pay a large income-tax pay, in reality, a capital tax. The income ot a great established business, or a great properry. is profit, not capital. But the product ot a creative artist — barring his savings — is the only capital he has. It is the product ot a unique ability or a unique popularity'. It is productive high tide tor its possessor, whether that pv^ssessor is old or young, tor the records ot achievement show that the human harvest years — except in the most extraordinary cases — are numbered, and he who swings the sickle of celebrity in his twenties will live upon stored bounty in his forties. The talent ot the triumphant older artist compares directly to the economic edifice reared by the sound and successful business man ; both are capital, created and nurtured by years of intense application and preparation. But there is this ditference: the man of business may change his capital, the fruit of his life, into many things, and it will still be capital; whereas the artist cannot transmute the fruit of his life into anything visible or ^_:.^^____.^_^_^^ tangible unless he „ ,>;.., turns it into a thing called income. One well beloved and tremendously industrious artist of the screen, a man nearing fifty, has just ended a year in which the capital ot this, the summit of his career, represented more money by far than he ever had in his life at one time. Seventy-two percent of this sum is listed as income and sur-tax. niicni: A Solomon Among Censors. Very recently a member of the executive staff of the Famous Players-Lasky corporation appeared before the motion picture committee of the leading woman's club, in an important cit>'. TT»e club favored local censorship. And it considered that censorship would be rightly placed in the hands of its own committee. The speaker rather astonished the club by ottering no visible oppositiiMi to their ideas. "I presume" — he spoke as if their Soviet were already established — 'you would distinctly oppose the screening of Coppee's'ThcGuilry Man'.'" A moment of silence, and then one woman said, determinedly: "No — I shouldn't." Cries of dismay and violent dissent rang around her. "I say that I should not oppose it," she repeated, staunchly, "I tell my children everything. The only way to shun evil is to be able to recogni:e it!" "Preposterous!" exclaimed another woman. "The work has its place as a book for adult reading, and for adult patronage in the theatre, perhaps. But before the absolutely indiscriminate audi^ncesot the movie houses — never!" "You're both wrong," chimed in a third seeress. " 'The Guilty Man' could be shown carefully edited, perhaps slightly rearranged — " And the tumult increased, until their interrogator suddensspoke again. "Ladies," he said, " there are scarcely more than a do:en ot you in this small room. You believe and announce that you are fully competent to select the screen entertainment for more than half a million people, of all ages, conditions of intelligence, religious belief and material surrounding. You represent not only one class, but one circle in that class, whose diversions, tastes and beliefs are very much alike. I mention just one play and behold — you cannot agree among yourselves! You have demonstrated what 1 think of censorship." a A few years ago editor Robert H. Davis, the beloved friend and patron ot the whole school of present-day American letters, wrote an advertisement for R. Hck &. Sons, called "I am the Printing Press." The moilest brochure was Introducing the Great "I Am."