Canadian Moving Picture Digest (May 1926-Apr 1927)

TORONTO 2, ONTARIO. Boston Transcript Devotes Two Columns Editorial Comment Harvard Lectures “Newest of Arts Into Oldest of Universities.” Today at Harvard Business School Joseph P. Kennedy closed a course of lectures that has brought the newest of the arts into the oldest of the wniversities. Ten leaders of the motion picture industry have spoken before the students at the school. Fourteen hundred appliwho are in their second and final year cations to attend the lectures have been refused. The class that has heard them as part of the regular course of business policy is composed of about four hundred young men. They have heard the story of the movies told by the men who have seen, in a few years, the processes of organization, financing and improvement of methods that normally require several generations. They have had a chance to ask questions of Lasky and Zukor and Fox and Loew and Warner and Kent and Giannini and Cochrane and Hays. While Harvard Business School has been thus engaged in examining an industry that entertains ninety millions of people per week, an announcement has come from Harvard that motion pictures deserve recognition as part of the cultural development of the country and must be considered in any serious historical and technical study of art. Therefore, the department of fine arts at Harvard, in association with the Fogg Museum and the University Library, plans to establish immediately a library and archive of films which will record the evolution of the motion picture and select annually those films which are considered worthy of preservation as works of art. In order to constitute and operate this archive a committee of the Harvard faculty, after gathering films of the highest quality of the past, will select each January the films of the preceding twelve months that, in its judgment, should be included in a library of this character. The announcement of its selections will be made public on March 1 of each year and the first announcement is expected on March 1, 1928. The fine arts department has been unofficially interested in motion pictures for a long time; the business school only recently. In the fine arts department Chandler R. Post, professor of Greek ‘and fine arts, had, for one, kept his own record of the artistic progress of the movies. The story of the events that resulted in the announcements of the business school course and the fine arts program is interesting and has not been told. Last December Mr. Kennedy, whose lecture today on the future of the motion picture industry closed. the business school course, met Wallace B. Donham, dean of the Harvard Business School. Mr. Kennedy is president of the Film Booking Offices of America, Inc., and a graduate of Harvard, class of 1912. Dean Donham asked him how the motion picture business was and Mr. Kennedy said something about its importance and they talked for a while. A month later, in a note, the dean asked Mr. Kennedy to see him when next in Boston from his headquarters in New York, and Kennedy, in a few days, paid a visit to Harvard, where Dean Donham asked him if he would consider giving a series of lectures on the industry before the business school. Kennedy modest, alert and Archives and Library of Fine Films to be Established. The following story of our Industrys experience at Harvard was written by W. A. Macdonald, for the Boston Transcript. The article covered over two columns of that most conservative paper and commented about “younger art, old college in happy union.” It is so good, that we are republishing all of tt and I hope that all of it will be read by our readers. Significant among the comments is the’ paragraph which reviews William Fox’s address as follows, “He talked before his class like an emotionalist whose emotions all passed through his head. In one kind and another his confreres made a similar impression.” This is the sum total achievement towards which our Industry should strive. Its art, which is first emotional should pass through the brain of its artists, for art which is brainless, reveals ttself as “talent” only; and after this transmutation the finished production should pass through the showman’s emotional showmanship vision, and then on to the Brain of the Industry's Finance. This is the order of procedure. First, the art of the picture, then its financial handling to create a market of profits. It may be contended that the Finance Should step in first. If it does, it will “kill the goose that lays the golden egg.” Give the art and showmanship angles of our Industry the creative chance. Then get down to The Brass Tacks of Finance.--Eprror. thoughtful, said that he would be glad -to do it, but that he thought it would be better to get the leaders of the industry — it would be possible to find the men who had seen the _ business through from its beginnings. He would be glad to make the arrangements. “Line it up” may have been his phrase. The dean. was glad, he said, to leave it in Mr. Kennedy’s hands and back to New York went Mr. Kennedy, there to talk on the telephone to the Pacific coast with Will H. Hays, with Jesse Lasky, Cecil de Mille, Milton Sills, Marcus Loew, and, in New York, with Zukor, Fox, Dr. Giannini, and Warner. He told them what he wanted and they were all unwillingly willing to come. They had their notions about Harvard; they had done their share of public speaking, perhaps, but Harvard was something out of their experience. Harvard was an old and dignified university; they were the newest of the great industries. Anyway, there was talk from coast to coast, for the movies use the telephone in the grand manner without thinking much about it. Google Page Thirteen In the meantime, James Seymour, who is secretary for publicity and alumni affairs, and who had met Kennedy through Dean Donham, proposed to Professor Paul Sachs, one of the directors of the Fogg Art Museum, the notion that if films, past and present, could be got, they might be of value to the museum and the fine arts department. Dr. Sachs thought there were great possibilities, also that, the plan ought to be put up to a group potentially interested which included beside himself, Edward W. Forbes, co-director of the Fogg; Dean George H. Chase, of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and professor of fine arts; A. C. Coolidge, professor of history and director of the library, andChandler Post. Here was something that deserved to be chronicled to the world: the professors of fine arts, of Greek and history proposed a meeting to discuss the movies which are a matter of international concern and business importance and general criticism. No one who ever knew the Yard at Harvard has ever subscribed to Harvard’s fictitious failure to subscribe to the currents of the time; but this was a demonstration. The luncheon was given on January 14 to the group proposed and, in the same week, George H. Edgell, professor of fine arts and dean of the faculty of architecture, was consulted, and the opinion of the whole group was one of unqualified enthusiasm and they wanted to know what the president would think, so Sachs and or the fine arts saw him in a few days and he said all right. Then Sachs, Forbes and Chase invited Kennedy to luncheon, that being the nationally accepted moment for discussing almost anything, and the luncheon was at the home of Professor Sachs, four or five days later. At that luncheon they formulated a plan and drew up a letter to Will Hays to submit to the motion picture industry. It was signed by three men and posted to Hays in New York, and he wasn’t in New York, but Kennedy telephoned to him in California, and Hays took the matter of the fine arts interest up with the movie men then on the coast. Here was the old red brick college at one end of the line and the magnificence of the industry in California at the other. The movie men who were talking were the upgrowth of an industry that has been accused of everything uncomplimentary in sensationalism; the Cambridge men who were interested have been charged institutionally with most of the terrors of a proudly lowbrow nation. They were getting together. It was very strange. It was even sensational. Some telegraph correspondence followed, and Mr. Hays suggested the drawing of a plan by Harvard for the producers to conform to. Then, on Friday, February 11, Professor Sachs and Mr. Seymour happened to be in New York and Mr. Hays, informed of their presence, asked them to an informal discussion. The detailed plan in which Mr. Hays was interested was in the meantime being drawn up at Harvard, largely by Mr. Post, and in time Harvard gave the plan to Mr. Kennedy, who forwarded it to the motion picture organization. Then, on the fine arts, the thing waited for Hays to come to Boston, and on March 15, at Mr. Forbes’, after a meeting of the fine arts and business groups, the story of the archive was given briefly to the public. Kennedy had completed the arrangements for the business lectures in the meantime and on March 14 lectured at the business school himself, his subject (Continued on Page 14)