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Therefore we predict that not only the neutral nations of Europe, but also the warring nations to whom we can ship our films will not only reopen their theatres as a matter of policy, hut will clamor for pictures — even to the extent of relaxing existing bars against American or other pictures.
To keep open, theatres must have product. The three great production centers of Europe are at present England. France and Germany — three nations now at war. Their studios will in all probability be closed — if they are not already closed — ‘‘for the duration of the war.” No other nation in Europe can produce motion pictures in sufficient quantity , or of sufficient quality to supply their theatres. That task is strictly up to Hollywood.
We do not want to suggest, or appear to suggest that Hollywood and its motion picture industry could be so heartless as to wish to fatten on the misery of Europe’s millions. Indeed, we know that Hollywood can be generous and sentimental to a fault. But when foreign audiences, not directly impoverished by war’s devastation, clamor for entertainment, and are willing to pay for it, we would be less than human if we refused to supply it and reap the rewards.
A thoughtful glance at the past will substantiate this reasoning. In 1914 the American motion picture industry faced a very similar problem, with the exception that several European countries — notably France and Italy — were at that time the unchallenged leaders in film production. Then came the great war — to American eyes fully as inevitable and fully as sense
less as the present conflict. European production died on the battlefields. American production was called upon lo supply the theatres of the world. Charlie Chaplin, Bill Hart, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks gave emotional relief and entertainment to audiences in London, Manchester, Paris and Marseilles as surely as they did to American audiences in New York and Keokuk.
When America entered the war — an experience which we all hope will not be repeated, but which must none the less be remembered — we found it our patriotic duty to keep on making pictures “to keep up the morale of our own people and our allies.”
When the war ended. American movies were unquestionably supreme throughout the world. Profits bad reached new peaks; salaries had skyrocketed dizzily. Where a player was receiving $150 a week before the war, he was now receiving close to a million a year, and still paying his producer a handsome profit. Where before the war a super-picture might cost a hundred thousand dollars, after the war a genuine million-dollar budget was profitable. As all of us have seen, not even the introduction of talking pictures nor the creation of artificial nationalistic barriers have served to halt the march of success which followed.
Were not prophets — but history has a way of repeating itself, and the stage certainly seems set for a repetition now'. Perhaps the present nearpanic will do some good in the elimination of some of the present obvious inefficiency in production, and in awakening our producers to the pos
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