Motion Picture Magazine, July 1914 (1914)

102 MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE brought to bear in every-day life on the people of this community. T here was the usual corner saloon, as well as several other bar- rooms on the main street, some of them orderly places, but sev- eral of them veritable dens of vice and filth, allowed to run, no doubt, by proper pulling of the strings which operated the political head of the community. There were also several billiard and poolrooms which were frequented and usually crowded by the younger men and high-school boys. I entered these places many times for purposes of observation, and found the usual atmosphere of cigaret- smoke and profanity, attended in many instances by boys of very tender age. There was a dance-hall of a very degrading nature, in charge of people of questionable character, and this place was patronized by many of the young people in search of an even- ing's amusement. Near the dance-hall was a Moving Picture show—one of the cheap variety, veneered outside with gaudy, colored placards and posters, often of a vulgar and suggestive type. The interior of the theater was in keeping with its slovenly outward appearance; narrow, confining, dark, damp and poorly ventilated, filthy and foul- smelling, could all be truthfully ap- plied to it. The music, furnished by a piano and violin, gave vent with a tin-pan crash to all the ragtime pieces which were known as popular among the people who visited the place.. I found that many of my young boys at the playground were frequenters of this pleasure resort; in fact,.some were veritable "regulars" in 'attend- ance, being willing to do almost any- thing to get the required nickel which admitted them to the . place,. This naturally led me to make personal in- quiry regarding the place, and on in- vestigation I found that the apparent ■;;■. a degeneration which permeated the whole theater also had its effect on the screen. The manager of the theater was evidently trying to ap- peal to a certain low class or type, in his choosing of the films which the distributor had to offer, and reel after reel rolled off the stories of bloodshed and murder, of dissipation and dissolution, the settings being, in most cases, Western barrooms and gambling-dens. Tales of pseudo romance and love, immoral in their very essence, and unhealthy for the young women as well as the young men who frequented the place, were among the popular presentations of the photoplay. Children who flocked to the place were of an age when their ideas had not yet taken definite form, and these were subject to the evil sug- gestions offered by the manager, who sought to attract the public by appeal- ing to their lower, more animal-like natures. The deeper that I looked into the matter of this Moving Picture theater, the more apparent were its effects on the people of the neighborhood. Taking the neighborhood as a unit, it readily could be seen that this theater contributed, along with the environment of the poolroom, the saloons and dance-hall, to its degenera- tive state. That the neighborhood favored degeneracy could not be doubted; its state or condition had fallen below normal, morally and in other respects. This condition in which the people lived, a sort of lax- ness or low state of ideals, was, of course, a state of mind of the people as a whole, and this state of mind, I think that I have the right to assume, was greatly influ- enced by this Moving Pic- ture' theater. Even tho every one, in the neighborhood did pot attend the theater, its influence upon ; IT. C