The art of sound pictures (1930)

22 THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES What has been the most recent picture success in Great Britain? That sad, tear-drawing thing of A1 Jolson’s, The Singing Fool, which is about as sexy as the Encyclopcedia Britannica. Box-office receipts have smashed some records over there. At date of this writing, nearly $3,000,000 has been paid by the English to weep over the picture; and more than 2,000,000 records of the theme song, “Sonny Boy,” have been sold for home phonographs. Here we see reflected the curious conglomerate of humanity which makes up the world’s picture audience. Most of its members are young people, many of them children under twelve years of age. The latter do not respond violently to sex appeal. And the adolescents respond unpleasantly to it, on the whole; they are just growing into sex life, and it sets up “growing pains.” Frank, suggestive pictures embarrass some boys and girls between the years of twelve and eighteen. This is partly a by-product of Puritanism, at a time when profound psychic changes are taking place. Now enters still another factor to block the normal interest in sex appeal stories. The motion picture house is a family gathering place. It has, in a sense, taken the place of the ancient town meeting and the less venerable corner grocery. In it, all sorts and conditions of human kind foregather. And each variety acts as a restraining influence on all the others. The restraint is exceedingly subtle. It resembles that vague embarrassment which occurs so often when many men and women, all strangers to one another, are brought together at a dinner or dance. They are ill at ease. And for the best of primitive reasons. They do not know how the other guests will