The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

April, 19)9 Page 121 Motion Pictures — Not For Theatres By ARTHUR EDWIN KROWS Editor of "The Spur," New York City Comes Part Eight. The World War ends and non-theatricals begin their peacetime adjustments in many departments, with strenuous efforts made to salvage organiza- tions originally formed for emergency service. OR was it the third May Irwin film that Carlyle Ellis produced for Universal ? When Ellis read the allegation in the paragraph hefore this that he had done the second, he wrote me from Hollywood, where he lives to- day, to say that, according to his recollection the second was really pro- duced by J. L. Bernard: "shot with portable lights in one of the Universal offices at 1600 Broadway," although he adds, "I did direct her in a brea<I-making reel for Fleischmann's Yeast. . . . "When I went to Universal," he con- tinues, "it was first to work for Jack Cohn as title writer on the Universal Weekly. Levey borrowed me to drama- tize canned shrimps or something, and then there was a laugliable feud between him and Jack for possession of me. Levey, of course, won, much against my will; so my gratitude to Rufus Steele for dragging me away to war work was monumental." In the same letter Ellis presents in- teresting sidelights on "The Yanks Are Coming," the Universal film which was halted by the Committee on Public In- formation: "It was a commercial for the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company (not the Wright-Dayton Company), and I went out to Dayton to direct it. There was one full reel of flying stuff and the rest was manufacturing. It was boiled down a lot and released after awhile; and much of the flying stuff was used. "It might well be. I induced the surviving Wright brother to get out the second Wright plane, had the factory tune it up, and Mr. Wright flew it for us all about the place, making a landing right up to the camera, and a semi-closeup of him stepping down. We also sent it on a sidc-by-side takeoff with the first American DeHavilland. and showed how the warplane could out-climb it. Also, I had my cameraman and his camera strapped into a DeH. to shoot the first (I think) tailspin from the spinning plane ever photo- graphed. "But afterwards we found that the Marines were shooting some beauti- ful air stuff down in Florida at the same time, I think, with Roxy's supervision or something, so there are doubts about several 'firsts.' Seems to me this stuff was com- bined with ours in the final release, but it is all very vague now ..." Not so vagtie, though, as the torch race of recollection kindles from the circumstantial information of such an admirable start. For example, when I showed Ellis's interesting letter to Frank One of America's most interesting pion- eers in educational production, distri- bution and exhibition, Maurice Ricker's work has been all behind the scenes. A. Tichenor, who in those days was the chief of the General Film Corporation, he remarked that he, himself, was the one who caused the banning of "The Yanks Are Coming." He saw a pre- view of the film in the office of Charles Hart, he explains, and, noticing that the manufacturing processes shown were all of English DeHavillands, ad- vised that the subject would be found too discriminatory for American ac- ceptance as helpful "preparedness" prop- aganda. Hart evidently agreed. But our present point is the ap- propriateness of Ellis for hfs place with the Committee on Public Information; and enough has been told, I am sure, to show that when his name was suggested to Rufus Steele as that of a possible assistant, it indicated a man who had had a short but severe schooling in the very sort of knockabout, self-sufficient work which was needed. It was Ellis who edited and arranged the material in the two first feature-length pictures issued by the Government to promote the First Liberty Loan—"Pershing's Crusaders" and "America's Answer." "Under Four Flags" was the third long U. S. Government film in this series, released in November, 1918. New Uses For Old Films But, as far as the non-theatrical field IS concerned, the great service of the Government during the war period was to marshal the miscellaneous material produced outside the regular studios and to build up an organization to distribute it. There was almost no legitimately made film which could not find place in Community Service and the Inter- national Y. M. C. A., reaching as they did, all recognized wartime welfare agencies throughout the world. The picture made long ago by the local factory owner, to soothe his own vanity, might now be used for broadening knowl- edge of trades; another, made for pro- motion of a new dentifrice, might be- come a feature on a health program presented to benighted people in the Far (last. The list was long and the appli- cations ingeniously many. The most inept subtitles on the screen could be used for teaching English to foreigners; casual views of prosperous American farms might become of high importance in impressing backward communities with the efficacy of modern agricul- tural machinery. It was a notable service to the non- theatrical field because it laid a founda- tion upon which peacetime activities might arise. The original intent, to be sure, had been an emergency structure; but those concerned in it, as in all similar groups, were loath to let it go when the armistice was declared. Nor was their hope of a certain continuance in vain, for the world which dawned with peace was entirely new and entirely well disposed toward regenerative ef- forts. No account of the period immediately following the World War can be com- plete without considering the changed economic and social background of the United States. Industry had learned much about giant organization; stan- dardized products and fairly recent in- ventions—some the result of patents pooled in the late emergency by rival manufacturers intent upon helping their Government to win—had made life com- paratively luxurious in even remote I)arts of the country; returning soldiers had acquired a cosmopolitan point of view—they had "seen the world"; there was an unprecedented development of women's clubs and Rotary Clubs and Chambers of Commerce. Most of the last-named activity was due to the wartime responsibility when men had joined for Liberty Loan drives and women to roll bandages for the Red Cross. The women, especially, only a short time before admitted to nationwide suffrage, appreciated their earned place in a new freedom and did not intend to relinquish it. The various wartime groups were reluctant to lose their identity and, in this new time, they tried to find reasons for continuing. To make their meetings attractive, common recourse was had to motion