Camera (May 1922-April 1923)

Why not a Little Picture movement? THIS is addressed to those conscientious objectors to motion pictures who flock to the theater en masse should a title savor of the suggestive, and whose leisure time is devoted to writing scathing letters and articles or to making scalding comments from club platform or pulpit. Dear Folks : If motion pictures as they are being produced and exhibited do . not meet with your approval (and of the most enthusiastic of us, who does approve of everything?) why not do your bit? If you have worthy ideas, use them in making pictures. Experiment. Find out where you are wrong — or maybe wake up the world ! The field is clear for you. Persons with ideas are valuable to motion pictures. We want you and them. Organize a Little Picture movement in your community. Take .some of the funds that are squandered on expensive bridge parties and the dansants. Instead of paying, princely fees to a long-haired mystic holding the torch of a new aestheticism, invite some practical film men and women to talk to you. Engage studio space and a working stafi^. Use professionals or your fellows. Work out your own ideas, learn what the producer with artistic ideals is up against — and if you can do the things he can't, do them. We acknowledge thanks to the New York Telegraph for the suggestion : Is a little theater movement to flourish among the motion picture fans? Broadway is being convulsed by "The Torch-Bearers," a play for and about those who have been trying to uplift the drama these many years. And, simultaneously, Ben Turpin is bowling over lovers of comedy with one of the best films he ever made — "Home-Made Movies." A Johnny Jones comedy recently released and called "Making Movies" is very similar. With all of this talk about what's wrong with the motion pictures, it is surprising that some of our progressive society and club women have not started out in dead earnest to reform the films by making and acting in them themselves. Would it not be a splendid opportunity for idle women killing time who really feel that they have a mission in art? It will probably be much easier to photograph film drama in the home than it has been to stage Ibsen and Tolstoy at the Century club rooms. Especially in the small towns should the home-made movie have a wide popularity. Potential Mary Pickfords and Nazimovas, who would never have a bona-fide screen debut, can make their own opportunities in the home-made scenario. Resultant close-ups might be more awful in their effect than some of the manifestations of the Little Theater movement described in "The Torch-Bearers." Interesting statistics might be gathered, too, about what sort of motion pictures the public really wants. Would the eternal triangle be eliminated? Would every leading man be expected to act like Rodolph Valentino? What actresses would be copied most often? Here is an excellent way of finding out just what is wrong with the motion pictures. Let the public work it out themselves. Sees the light Dr. G. A. Briegleb, pastor of the Westlake Presbyterian church, will not carry out his proposed plan to head the Lord's Day Alliance in a great movement favoring blue laws, with censorship as one of the main objects. We believe that Dr. Briegleb, like many other good but mistaken persons, has seen the light. Therefore he will remain in his pulpit and attend faithfully, we believe, upon the spiritual welfare of his flock. When Dr. Briegleb entered the limelight at the national conference of his church by denouncing motion pictures almost as a whole, his knowledge was somewhat limited as to motion pictures. Since that time he has been fair enough to study the subject at close range, and to discuss pictures with film men of equal -wisdom. As a result, we believe that the good doctor has discovered that he had seen too much evil in places where it did not exi.st and, incidentally, was gratified to find that the industry itself was doing its own uplift work in a manner which should be entirely satisfactory to all fair-minded men of the gospel. If it be true that Dr. Briegleb has discovered that he had done many good people injustice in his first attacks, and that he is more needed in his pulpit than in the field of ovcr-ultraism, we are genuinely happy of the fact and would not ascribe any other motive to his change of heart. TED TAYLOR