The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

June, 1942 Page 223 tion to be performed by a small founda- tion. His benefactions all had taken that form. A large foundation, he be- lieved (and history seemed to bear him out), was most valuable for testing pur- poses, and generally too expensive and unwieldy for that original investigation which the small foundation could un- dertake safely and effectively. The Har- mon Foundation, which had many in- terests other than motion pictures, was running at that time in fairly smooth routine under Mary Beatty Brady, a faithful, intelligent and conscientious assistant. She was the daughter of a missionary who had become governor of Alaska. Her formal education had been conspicuously at Vassar and the Columbia University School of Jour- nalism. She had begun with Harmon as his secretary. But routine, even in such generally able hands, was scarcely sufficient for an investigation program, and Miss Brady, with all her intelli- gence and willingness, could scarcely save the picture phase from becoming simple routine just then because she had had no especial film experience elsewhere, either. She could choose and follow worthwhile precedents, but, in the circumstances of the time, she could scarcely be expected to originate new departures. Harmon realized this; so did she. Therefore, various persons who might be presumed to know were consulted on how to proceed with different phases of the project. Wellstood White was one who advised on distribution and exhibition. Miss Brady and Dr. Samuel McCune Lindsay called at the De Vry office in New York to examine pro- jectors, and there met F. S. Wythe, who was working on De Vry's Neigh- borhood Motion Picture Service and the De Vry school program. Thus Har- mon learned that churches were having encouraging results with the programs supplied by the De Vry Corporation to promote sales of its projectors. Pres- ently he invited Wythe to visit him. Wythe came, and did not begrudge in- formation and advice. Concerning pro- duction, on which point Harmon was then most an.xious, Wythe advised the making of programs more stimulating to audience attention than the usual church reels which had so little imag- ination about them that they merely showed lilies, for instance, in driving home the hackneyed lesson of lilies of the field. In other words, he urged the production of films having some human attractiveness instead of curate cant. Harmon saw the point and was ap- preciative. Wythe had been providing films for De Vry on these principles, not by production—which, as useful as that might be, was scarcely justified by the system in point of expense—but by editing existing material; and he told Harmon that the same sort of thing could be done for his intended testing purposes. Harmon commissioned Wythe, No films made prior to Dawley's first Harmon production realized more fully a churchman's idea at that time of what the screen should do for him. therefore, to make about twenty reels for the Foundation. For the required material it was arranged through Jere- miah Milbank to obtain the scenario and left-over negative of "The King of Kings." The Hollywood folk did not like this plan at all, being naturally suspicious; but eventually they shipped the film without identifying marks other than production "slate numbers" and camera reports, stating that the scen- ario, which would have given the key, had been lost. To have catalogued and arranged the mass would have been a labor of months, and the expense of making prints for examination would have been prohibitive. Nevertheless, us- ing the camera reports and guessing at their sequence, Wythe made a tenta- tive selection of the "cuts" and, ulti- mately, interpolating shots from some Holy Land scenics, worked out roughly those thirteen reels presenting the life of Jesus of Nazareth in twelve "chap- ters" which have since been used ef- fectively by the Foundation under the general title, "I Am the Way." The Presbyterians In this same period Wythe heard, through the De Vry manager in Phil- adelphia, that an important religious project was taking shape there under the sponsorship of the Board of Chris- tian Education of the Presbyterian Church of the U. S. A. His particular informant was Burke Harmon, son of William S., who was then employed as a salesman by Weil & Company, the Philadelphia De Vry distributor. Burke had found an apparent opportunity to dispose of many projectors at once, but, as the prospect wanted production also, Wythe went to the Quaker City to see what it was all about. There he met a Mr. Robinson, the chief executive of the intended enter- prise. The situation seems to have been that the gentleman who had so brilliant- ly developed the Presbyterian Church's book division, known as the West- minster Press—his own name was, I believe, Oscar Miller—had been per- mitted to take about $100,000 of his re- cent profits to experiment with religious films. The general supervision of the Board was to be chiefly through the Rev. H. Paul Janes, young assistant to Mr. Robinson, who had shown especial enthusiasm over the possibilities of vis- ual education. The Presbyterian Board of publications, it will be remembered, had used Edison films and projectors in 1913. Wythe was received by the Board and, when they found that he not only had had much practical motion picture experience—even recently with church films—and was especially well informed, besides, concerning religious objectives, they planned to have him produce pro- grams which Miller, with his peculiar genius, might sell, and for which the physical distribution might be handled by Harmon's Religious Films Founda- tion. Wythe had proposed this amal- gamation of interests. He introduced Janes to Miss Brady, and Janes took her to Robinson who found her fa- miliar with church problems and other- wise a highly desirable affiliate. In the meantime, the Presbyterian board had formed a committee for the Sunday School development of their enterprise, and Janes, journeying to Cleveland, obtained a vote of approval from the delegates to an important Sunday School convention assembled there. On the verge of starting actual work, Miller was taken ill. He went to a hospital for examination. The doctors found alarming symptoms—and Miller never came out. Accordingly, the pro- ject virtually ended there. Janes, how- ever, continuing at least the spirit of the Presbyterian interest, prepared "set- tings" or "presentations" to guide min- isters in fitting the individual pictures of the "I Am the Way" series into their programs, and wrote a small handbook of practical advice to the clergy entitled. Screen and Projector in {Concluded on page 242)