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April, 1925
197
THE EDUCATIONAL SCREEN
(Including MOVING PICTURE AGE and VISUAL EDUCATION)
Vol. IV, No. 4 Editorial Section April, im
The Movie Industry Speaks for Itself
AN editorial, from one of the four principal trade organs of the motion picture industry, illustrates the strength of movie editorial-writing in its frank statement of facts, and its weakness also in the strangely twisted interpretation of those facts.
"The motion picture audience, in the aggregate, lacks stability. Business may be good today, but who knows what it will be tomorrow night? People go to motion picture shows on an altogether haphazard schedule. It is largely a case of, 'Well, if there isn't anything else to do tonight, let's go to the movies.' " This is an exceedingly accurate statement of fact. And the climax of its truth lies in the last sentence. But the deep significance of it all seems lost upon the writer of the editorial.
It means, in general, this. The average movie audience lives life on a haphazard schedule, hence needs stopgaps to fill up its time. The movie is its supreme stopgap, (which is a sad commentary on the real quality of the entertainment) . The intelligent public as a whole does not go to the movies, for it has ample use for all its time and needs no stopgaps. Least of all does it need so unintelligent a "filler" as is afforded by the average motion picture.
Better pictures would gradually lift the movie out of the stopgap class for the present movie audience, and make it more and more an entertainment end in itself. This would develop the desired "stability" in present audiences, for better pictures would have more chance of competition with "anything else to do." Better pictures would even in
crease that audience gradually by attracting a considerable number of the intelligent public who could easily enjoy motion pictures if they were less stupid and vulgar. The editorial-writer, however, waives all this and puts his finger specifically upon one great cause of the mischief.
"Right now, radio is furnishing several millions of people with a forceful inducement to stay at home. They have to stay at home to hear the radio programs . . . It is time to quit squawking and to begin working on this very definite problem, viz : The radio has stolen a substantial part of our audience. How are we going to replace what we have lost and when?"
Here again the editorial commentator misses a highly significant point. The "home" is an exceedingly good place for people to be. In keeping them there the radio is performing a very valuable service to American life. The radio is practically clean — even if quite stupid at times — and clean and harmless entertainment in the home is vastly more wholesome than cheap and vulgar entertainment in the theatre. No thinking American wants to see the movies get back the "lost fans" unless it be for entertainment as sane and healthful as the radio is furnishing wholesale to the country. If the movies will clean up, and put more brains and less bombast into the pictures, the lost fans will come back and a lot more with them. But note the editor's conclusions from his facts!
"When the brand of salesmanship you are using won't sell your goods, there is something wrong with the goods or the