The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

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THE EDUCATIONAL SCREEN Editorial Section vol. I November, 1922 No. 9 The Dawn of an Idea THE Motion Picture may be said to be twenty years old. For the first fifteen years, or thereabouts, the great American audience, which thinks so fast individually but so slowly in mass, watched the picture mileage mreel with an amiable tolerance born of the novelty of the thing. The pic- ures did not need to be intelligent, they were novel. During this period there vas, to be sure, a fairly large fraction of the public which had its look at he pictures—possibly two looks—and did not want another. But the masses emained faithful, and their nickels, dimes, quarters, and finally their dollar bills made "the fifth industry of the world." It was this avalanche of money that demoralized the movies. The men it the top of the business were not big enough to stand it. Doubtless never Defore in commercial history was so much money handled by such little men. Fhey are now reaping what they sowed and do not understand the crop. Five years ago, say, a change in the situation began to take place. The :houghtful element of the public began estimating values. A few started it, nainly those who rarely attended the shows. They managed to wake up a ot of their fellow absentees, and they all went back to look more closely. They reached the conclusion—which had been equally true from the beginning, only H had not been reached—that the pictures were pretty bad. They spoke their ninds emphatically, desperately, but the industry did not listen. As long as ;he box-office clink kept up, the little men in the big chairs thought they could gnore all other sounds. Hence the "intelligent public"—the movie magazines ire now saying it is 10 per cent of the whole public—were powerless to affect :he pictures. Recently, say three years ago, disaffection began to appear in the ranks of :he faithful, the 90 per cent. Even they sickened at the inanities of their beloved (*een. They did not rant or write. They merely stayed away, and the box- office torrent threatened to become a trickle. Here, at last, was argument the little men could understand. Their one measure of their "art" was the cur- rency-test, and when that failed they knew that something "must be wrong." Yet what it was that was wrong they could not be expected to understand; hence, anxiety, consternation, panic, and Will Hays! 279