Reel and Slide (Jan-Sep 1919)

24 REEL and SLIDE "Square Deal for His Wife," Production Based on Domestic Story By Harry Levey (General Manager, Industrial Department, Universal Film Manufacturing Co.) Managing one's home as one would one's office is not the simple procedure the ordinary business man would conceive it to be, according to the theme of "A Square Deal for His Wife,'' a recent picture distributed by Universal and produced by the same. The Western Electric Company, one of the largest and best-known concerns of its kind in the world, has adapted the motion picture in one of the most interesting educational phases possible in this two-reel subject. Domestic dramas are numerous ; this film, advertising electrical household apparatus, presents a new domestic tangle, and its remedy. The husband-hero awakes one gloomy day to the fact, that his charming wife has lost much of her looks and charm of manner in recent months. She attributes it to the drudgery of her housework and the care of her six-year-old daughter. He maintains that his household can be operated with the same smoothness that characterizes the activity of his business office. When the wife becomes suddenly ill, and Mr. Business Man faces the job of keeping house himself, he is brought to realize its futility. He burns his trousers with the flatiron; scorches his fingers and his food on the gas range; burns his toast; boils his coffee too long; wrenches his back sweeping the living room; and in other ways meets with discouragement and failure. The Western Electric Company knew of a way to offer this husband and his wife relief. Its executives had told of this way in printed word, sales talks and in letters. There remained but one certain method to place before the thousands of other husbands and wives the solution. The company turned to motion pictures, and through this medium, with the aid of its many branches, agencies and dealers throughout the country, spread the gospel of the use of electricity in place of human effort. "A Square Deal for His Wife" is built upon this theme. The tired, bedraggled. wife is sent away for a rest in the country, and the husband equips his home with all the electrical apparatus required for the daily services his house demands. He cooks his breakfast, presses his trousers, toasts his bread, boils his coffee, sweeps his floors and heats his bathroom with electricity. The Western Electric Company, in an entertaining manner, has brought before the people a triumph in modern advertising. It has realized that the American playgoer will not stand for commercialism; that it demands quick, sustaining interest. The sharp contrast drawn in this picture between the old methods and the new methods of keeping house is placed before the audience in the clearest possible manner, a manner that the printed word, the sales talk and the dealers' letter can never equal. The entire strength of an advertising campaign is confined to the few minutes required to unwind two reels of film. And the company has found a medium by which its advertising can be placed before the people in the most highly intensified form possible, and at the same time a medium in which its dealers, agencies and branches can lend a strong supporting hand. In fact, the motion picture is the best medium in the world where the dealer or agency is concerned. It is one way in which the dealer can operate for his own advantage as well as that of the parent company. Universal's staff of experts devotes much of its time, for this reason, to the interests of the dealers who handle the products of its clients. Pictorial presentation of an argument, if done in a manner which will have interest and entertainment value, leaves the strongest impression. The motion picture is this art in its supreme form. Military Motion Pictures to Make Rounds of School Motion pictures depicting various phases of military training will be shown in Chicago schools beginning at the Wendell Phillips High School, where reels showing discipline and military courtesy will be shown. The reels are government made and were released by the War Department recently. They will be shown in the interest of the department of military training of the schools under the direction of Capt. F. L. Beals. Department of Interior Film Bureau to Circuit 1,000,000 Feet of Roads Film The "good roads movie" idea, which figured more or less prominently in the Illinois $60,000,000 bond issue campaign, is to be taken up by the United States government. As an item of propaganda for highway development officials of the visual instruction section of the department of the interior are working out plans for an international distribution of films depicting road building activities and the benefits to be derived therefrom. 'Arrangements have already been perfected for distribution of these films in twenty-five states," reports F. W. Reynolds, associate director of the educational extension division of the department, "and we are rapidly adding to the number. In the war department archives there are now some 1,000,000 feet of film negative presenting every phase of America's participation in the war, little of which has yet been released. "We are now making a topical digest of this material. Thus in the case of highway development we can first show road making in France under fire, the difficulties of transportation, etc., and then branch from that into road construction as carried on in the United States, with 'cut-ins' showing the results of road improvement as interpreted by the eye, the surest educational sense we have." The government pictures will be supplemented with films loaned by the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce and other organizations which have developed good roads movies and will be available to any community that wants them, free of charge. It is also planned to establish a highway reel exchange system, with governmental bureaus in Great Britain, France and other countries. Class Room Cinematography (Continued fro?n page 23) bit of difference whether you apply this rule to a Bible story film or the wild west picture. The incentive is the same. Your own personal make up and tastes determine which you prefer to see. The spoken word belongs to the far distant ages ; the printed word belongs to yesterday — the motion picture belongs to today, and it will stay until possibly the airship will become cheap enough as a carrier to take us to the actual sites of our dreams. Does this mean that we shall do away with the platform and the book? No, but we may expect them to lose their yesterday's usefulness, at least in a large measure. We should not foolishly oppose the inevitable. We should view the movie as a blessing, for such it is. Were you or I to attempt reading all the literature that comes to our library table we would spend considerably more than our life's allotted span. Read that which can not be pictured — the subjective matter that interests you and leave the movies to take care of the objective material. You can read several books a day via the movie route. As to whether they be good or not that has nothing to do with the secret lure the movie does possess. There are bad books and good books; there are good lectures and bad lectures; and I have sometimes noticed that there are good sermons and bad ones — they are all man-made in a great measure. I am sure of one thing, namely, if the movies are left to the gentle guidance of the ordinary exhibitor he will put on such pictures as fill his purse, which will be such ones as fill his house. Eyesight — the Master Sense If we leave the riffraff to fill his house we need not complain of the riffraff pictures. Some ministers preach the gospel because their congregation demands it ; some preach other things for like reasons. It is the congregation usually that makes the preacher rather than the reverse. Were it not so we would have fewer denominations. Why should not the same rule apply to the movies? There is another side to this question that must be left until another time. Namely, do our young people prefer the objectionable pictures to the better ones? I think not, and will try to point out what I learned along this line after conducting a motion picture theater in our school auditorium for two years. If anyone asks you what is the lure of the "movies" tell him it is the lure of the master sense, eyesight. Pity the blind and likewise pity those who are so narrow minded as having eyes see not. What a blessing it is to have the usefulness of this master sense enhanced so infinitely by the invention of motion photographs and moving diagrams. Motion pictures have become such an important item in the Y. M. C. A. program in Russia that an urgent cable has been sent from Vladivostok to the "Y" National War Work Council requesting that 200,000 feet of up-to-date English comedies and dramas and an enormous repertoire of Russian-titled films be rushed to that port in addition to 725 reels of committee on public information educational films. 1^2