Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1916)

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18 How They Have Changed erally were ! To his left, there would probably sit a man of pungent Latin extraction, whose love of self-betraying vegetables was annoyingly apparent. On his right there sat, perhaps, a squalling infant, who preferred to place his feet in the visitor's lap, rather than that of the totally unconscious mother. Fate would generally place our enthusiast immediately in front of a pair of sight-seeing shopgirls, whose audible enjoyment of their chewing gum was only interrupted by such erudite remarks as "Ain't it grand," ''Some dress that," or "Pipe the eyes on that guy, Josie." Above the chorus of infantile wails there arose at times the violent protests of a helpless piano, which seemed to be lifting its strident voice in protest at the manhandling which it was receiving from a heartless brute. Or, if our enthusiast went to a vaudeville theater to seek amusement, he suffered equally, if not similarly. At the end of the stage portion of the performance, when the lowly film was announced, there was a stampede of those who seemed to make it a point of never being caught in the act of looking at the "shiftin' pichers," as they were eruditely called by one devotee. If our enthusiast determined to see the films, despite all comers, or goers, he generally drew his feet up under him after the third or fourth person had trod upon them, and then began frantically dodging back and forth in a wild endeavor to catch at least a fleeting glimpse of the screen between the scurrying forms of the departing spectators. Then, just as something of unusual interest appeared on the screen, some large woman, with a plume-bedecked hat, would surge up out of her gallery seat, and the picture would be obscured by the shadow of her finery. By the time that the woman had moved, the interesting scene was gone, and he found even his own determination baffled. How different is the situation to-day, when there is scarcely a big theater in any city that has not been given over to motion pictures at one time or another. The palatial Strand Theater, in New York, with its seating capacity of over three thousand, is a striking example