Exhibitors Herald (Mar-Jun 1919)

EXHIBITORS HERALD AND M O T O G R A P H Y To Hell With Yesterday! A SURVEY OF THE MOTION PICTURE ART-INDUSTRY TODAY AND TOMORROW The Era of Stupendous Star Salaries By Roy L. McCardell Roy T.. McCardell I WAS discussing motion pictures past, present and future with the publisher of the Herald, the discussion being inspired by a turgid, fulsome flubdub article in an esteemed — more or less — contemporary in which "the good old days" of the one and two reeler and the men ivho made them was stupidly slobbered over. "Oh!" I exclaimed, profanely but emphatically meaning what I meant. "To hell with yesterday! Let us consider the problems of today and tomorrow !" "Will you. consider them — will you write your conclusions, from a sane and common sense view, for the Herald?" asked the publisher. "Your opinions will be of a man for years on the 'inside,' but yet enough detached to be of the more value, because your survey tvill be unbiased, and you will write freely and frankly, yet calmly and without abuse. Because, while you are interested through your close connection with motion pictures as a writer of scenarios since the beginning, yet you have none to fear and none to favor, and most likely would not let it prejudice you if you had. "Will you write me a series of truthful and sane articles on the motion picture industry with that as your text — 'To Hell with Yesterday'?" "I will," I replied. And here I begin. "Yesterdays of Flattered Conceit" Frankly, we cannot say, "To Hell with Yesterday !" without at least briefly stating why all the yesterdays of one of the greatest arts and industries of modern times, one that comes closer to the great mass of the world's population than any other art — moving pictures — should have its yesterdays consigned to limbo. To begin, then, we so delegate the perfervid past of motion pictures because they had a fatal success that operated upon many men of limited vision and small souls who were in the art-industry by accident, not as business men, but as side showmen with no ideas above their gainful appeals ballyhooing the easily amused. Make such men near-millionaires in a few short months and the results will be the arrogance of ignorance suddenly become opulent, the egotism of small men suddenly successful. The yesterdays of the motion picture, art-industry are the yesterdays of flattered conceit, press agent puffery, vulgar ostentation and vanity and jealousy that led most of the picture pioneers to ruin and oblivion. Most of these accidental pioneers of moving pictures were men of mountebank antecedents and mountebank minds and ethics; and they found themselves lifted out of the narrow limits of their capacities by a mighty force — the forward movement of a great and popular art. An evolution of a new industry that was to rise and rank, with the money expended on it and from it. in a few short years with all the long established and universal businesses by which the world sustains itself — such as agriculture, mining and commodity manufacturing. Speaking of "Good Old Days" Where are they now, these, as they thought, mighty men of the motion pictures of yesterday? Where are the motion pictures of yesterday? Could these men manufacture and distribute today? Could the crass, crude fiveminute films they produced be shown today in the most benighted community, in the murkiest "jitney" theatre that survives without the beholders hooting them from the screen ? It ill becomes these fatuous veterans that survive to speak of "the good old days." The truth is till such men as Griffith, Ince and others came into their own and had a say in what should be produced for the screen in America, and how it should be produced, the average made-in-America film was a fearsome thing to see ! How many of these old timers took warning from the great and artistic films the Italians first sent us? Had George Kleine not shown "Quo Vadis" to a wondering and appreciative America, had not Harry Eaver staked his all on introducing that wonderful picture from the same artistic foreign sources — "Cabiria," a picture that had intelligence and art in every thrill of its wondrous presentation ; would Griffith have been encouraged from "Judith of Bethulia" to produce "The Birth of a Nation"? We must consider the art-industry of motion pictures as seriously as we consider the other great activities of mankind. What field of endeavor pays any participant who works in it a million dollars a year and more? Rockefeller vs. Chaplin Millions A Bockefeller, a Carnegie or a Schwab may make their millions annually through their great manufacturing industries, but these great increments of theirs is through profit on the toil of thousands of individuals. But Charles Chaplin. Mary Piekford, Douglas Fair 29