The art of sound pictures (1930)

THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES 38 large number of highly competent performers. If produced in a Hollywood studio, the cost of sets would run very high. And if produced in Madrid or Havana, the expense would still be prohibitive. In the opinion of the editors, the story was not great enough in its appeal to justify risking such a huge sum of money. Three excellent stories were all turned down in quick succession for no other reason than the fact that they depicted the underworld of Chicago, a grim prison scene or two, and the minute details of an ingenious burglary. Two issues were involved here. In the first place, the public, in the autumn of 1929, is pretty well fed up on stories of crime and the underworld. It wants a change. In the second place, the detail with which the successful consummation of burglary was presented is considered contrary to the public policy, as you will notice in the censor’s regulations in Chapter IV. Next on the list of the doomed comes a story described by its own author as “a picture of modern youth in its innocent quest for sensation in the dance, in liquor, and in petting parties.” In it, everybody gets drunk as often as possible; men, women, and children lie around on the floor in bathing suits, and a highly artificial moral ending is tacked on. It is a significant fact that this story was not rejected by the editors because it was badly handled, but rather because it was insufferably dull and oldfashioned. Stories of the jazz age are hopelessly out of date. The jazz age, in its original virile characteristics, is no more. It came with the War, and it was gone in or about 1926, when even young people themselves became bored to death with it. The younger generation, namely, boys and girls who had been mere babes in arms during