Motion Picture Magazine, July 1914 (1914)

/ 104 MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE He conferred with me and helped me promote the Boy Scout movement by showing films of Boy Scout movements both in this country and in Europe. I had a talk with him one day, and he had many good arguments to back up his idea of educating the public to better things. "Of course," he said, "I am in the business for the money, but I can make it in a way that will benefit my patrons. Unquestionably, the Moving Picture is the most direc* appeal to the understanding. T.j printed page and the spoken words are tortuous paths to learning as compared to the royal road provided by the moving film. As a developer of intelligence, the contrivance can- not be highly praised, but as a direct and immediate appeal to the under- standing it is the last word. Nothing that we have today can surpass it in its power to make plain either a mechanical process, an acted plot, or scenes in unknown lands. Moving Pictures of the right kind may be made a highly valuable element in education, amusement and general upliftment. These are facts that a thinking man or woman will not deny. There is a hue and a cry against the Moving Picture theater from one end of the land to the other, and the reason can be seen in this very neighborhood. Why is it that we hear, from juvenile, divorce and criminal courts, constant blame for wayward deeds laid on five-cent shows? The answer is greed—all managers are looking for the maxi- mum possible profit. The only way that children and women can be guarded from the influence of evil pictures is by careful regulation of the places of exhibition. A rose will never grow from ashes. An act of law should be back of the exhibitor, giving him power to refuse or return a film which is not what it should be— and, of course, the exhibitor should be a man who will refuse to take de- grading films from the booking agent; hence, the film manufacturers will be acted upon and forced to put out bet- ter films, and the general embettering effect on the people will in time be noticeable. I am trying merely to educate the public of this neighbor- hood to choose between good and bad, and I think I am succeeding." Other business men in the neighbor- hood, particularly the owner of the rival theater, prophesied a complete and rapid failure of his project, as it was not, according to their belief, ap- pealing to the tastes and desires of the r.eople of the vicinity. Indeed, it seemed as tho this was to be the out- come for the first few weeks, but then it soon became easily observable that his idea was beginning to take hold. In fact, it was discovered to be a com- paratively easy matter to educate the neighborhood to the higher standard. The two pipe-organ solos every evening became a strong drawing- card. I was told by the minister of the large church near my playground that, altho he disliked to see a pipe- organ desecrated by being played in a Moving Picture theater, it was really bringing more people to appre- ciate this kind of music, and hence bringing them to his church. The minister was soon won over by pic- tures of the Holy Land, accompanied by lectures in the new theater. The poorer people soon began to appreciate the cheap means of travel afforded by the evening travelogue, as they were advertised, and I often heard them convers- ing about the different places they had seen at the "movies," as if they had actually been there. The scenes of Ire- land, when ad- vertised on the