The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

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11EATRE ARCH1TECT UKE 319 apidly advance beyond the garish dis- play which multitudes of our regen- erated theatres now affect. They are parish because the kind of people who Bost resort to them like that sort of ing. When people cease to like it, ind begin to like something different, iheatre managers will respond; in no ield has response to popular demand oved, on the whole, more prompt ind complete. Sleeping cars, and other railway coaches, were once orilled and frilled and frescoed in the elusion that passengers like to be ransported in palaces of the most )lalant new-rich standards. On some )f the branch lines of New England, ind even in the Middle West, one oc- sionally encounters "parlor cars" of this type still creaking on their way. Utility, sanitary science, relative econ- omy of construction have conspired with increasingly refined taste of the public to produce the immeasurably more chaste and serviceable type of railway coach and sleeping cars now operating at least on main lines. The fewer grills and frills to catch dust the better. Railroad managements know that, and a public educated in sanitary science, and also in chaster tastes in decorative art, are not less sensible of % the great improvement in passenger rolling-stock. After similar fashion, theatre man- agers will discover that grinning and scowling gorgons and griffons and furies and clowns, sticking out from friezes and pilasters, and from the surfaces of every wall, hooded and festooned with dust, are not demanded by the refined taste of today, however traditionally associated with theaters such emblems may be. The movie is creating a new kind of histrionic tradi- tion, and it will ere long develop a decorative art harmonious with its genius. Managers are now catching the wary human night-flies by their glaring lights at the theater entrances. A better educated public will soon en- able them to dispense with these crude devices. The theater center of New York, about Times Square, grows more garish every year, and the for- tunes consumed in flash and flames are doubtless enriching the Edison Electric Light Companies. But we shall pass the divide some of these early days, and real art, and the grati- fication of refined tastes, will occupy the better-counseled tricksters who now lavish fortunes upon bizarre movie signs. Money expended upon art is well spent. The higher refine- ments will call for the expenditure of money, even more, perhaps, than is now squandered upon cheap and prim- itive passions, but a more refined pub- lic will get more values from its money. We are making progress, wonder- ful progress. Several of the outstand- ing new motion picture theaters are marvels of grace and beauty, and ar- tistic chastity is being preserved in numerous reconstructions and new constructions in smaller centers. These are evidences of refinements in popu- lar taste over which our educational forces should unreservedly rejoice.