Film Fun (Jan - Dec 1917)

will be any riots inside the theater when "The Spy" is shown. Mr. Fox is past grand master in the art of sensational advertising. Naturally everyone will want to see his motion picture expose of how the Kaiser operates and secures inside information, all of which is supposed to be shown in this photoplay by George Bronson Howard. Somehow it seems to me that a combination including such fine figures as William Fox, manufacturer, George Bronson Howard, author, Richard Stanton, director, and Dustin Farnum, screen star, might have collaborated on a "spy" story that could have given us at least one thrill and a small measure of novelty. But "The Spy" has the same hackneyed, conventional plot, with the lady spy and the gentleman spy, each serving a different country. They meet and fall in love and are "discovered," and later the gentleman spy refuses to disclose the whereabouts of the little book containing the names of Germany's secret agents in America, which he has secured by "cracking" a big safe in about the same time he could crack a walnut. Both spies are tortured by being suspended in air and stretched. Still the gentleman spy won't tell. Lady spy is brought in to see her lover tortured — all of which has never been done before ! After far too many feet of film showing Mr. Farnum's torture, with revolting "close-ups" of his agonized face, heavily vaselined to give the appearance of perspiring blood, and scenes of the girl's agony, and their agony together, the gentleman spy makes his final refusal to give up the book of addresses which he has secured for his country. Then they are both taken out and shot. True, he served his country and gave his life in so doing. But can we never have a change? Can we not have a story of selfsacrifice for one's native land with a spiritual note such as the story of Edith Cavell? Must we always have the lady spy and the gentleman spy serving nations at war, and must they always meet on board ship and fall madly in love with each other on the first moonlight night? Cannot some producer give us a photoplay worthy of the awful conflict going on across the ocean, instead of the cheap, banal stuff that has been given us on the war subject since time immemorial? t, ; < ' WHERE MOVING PICTURES EXCEL A cable dispatch to the New York World says that plays in England may have to be staged without scenery. The motion picture manufacturers may well stop and consider that while they have their own troubles, they have many things to be grateful for. This is one of them. Should the demand on the railroads for transport facilities in this country also be too heavily taxed during the war, there is a possibility of our having spoken drama without scenery. But the motion picture reels of celluloid, done up in neat little tins, containing the scenic beauties of our own and other lands, magnificent ballrooms or poverty-stricken hovels, as backgrounds, can very easily be shipped to the far corners of the earth with no appreciable tax on the capacity of any railroad, mail or transport service. The native of Borneo can see the ohotoplays with the exact ' ' sets' ' that we see in the theaters on Broadway And even aside from the war, imagine ever shipping scenery for a play to Borneo or Samburan ! THE TARDY THEATER CURTAIN A note in the daily papers said that the Shuberts gave warning that the curtain would rise at 8:15 sharp, Western Union time, on Wilton Lackaye's presentation of "The Inner Man," at the Lyric Theater, New York, and that during the prologue no person would be seated, even if he brought his own campstool. Therefore I had an earlier dinner hour than usual and hastened to the theater to be on time. With my wrist watch conveniently at hand, I took note of the time. Eight-fifteen came and 8:15 went. Eight-twenty came and 8:20 went, and 8:30 arrived before the curtain went up, and then and thereafter any person with a check for a seat was seated. Why make these statements and then utterly disregard them? It is not fair to those who make the extra effort to be on time. The photoplay advertised to begin at a certain hour begins at that hour. Cannot our theaters presenting drama learn a simple lesson from their humble rival, the motion picture playhouse, and stop this most annoying practice of advertising a time at which the curtain is supposed to rise, and then having the play begin anywhere from a quarter to a half hour later? THE NEWS IN PICTURES The decision handed down by Supreme Court Justice Ordway, when he granted an injunction against a news film depicting Mrs. Grace Humiston, who so skillfully solved the Ruth Cruger mystery, was satisfying even if somewhat of a surprise. Mrs. Humiston's modesty in not wanting to appear in a film is much to be admired. In her case the decision is just. As Justice Ordway concludes, Mrs. Humiston is " not the commander of an army, a visiting ambassador or even a public official, but a private citizen entitled to be protected in her right of privacy." All well and good. But this same judge goes on to mention a similar case recently decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, where the ruling was that "it cannot be put out of view that the exhibition of moving pictures is a business pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit, like other spectacles, not to be regarded, nor intended to be regarded by the Ohio Constitution, we think, as part of the press of the country or as organs of public opinion. ' ' From this I infer that newspapers are not conducted for profit. I know I pay my pennies when I buy them, which, of course, is the very smallest part of the profit of a newspaper. There are newspapers that receive such enormous sums for advertising that in columns remote from the advertising pages a dramatic critic cannot even give an honest opinion. Has Justice Ordway ever seen the educational films that have been shown all over the world? I wish I might have had the wonderful help that school children of to-day can receive from the animal and plant life studies shown on the screen. I had only my dry little text-book of zoology and botany. The motion pictures beat them to death. It costs a cent or two to buy an evening paper with pictures and captions of "Our Boys" marching down Fifth Avenue, and it costs ten cents or a quarter to see the same picture only larger and animated with similar captions on the screen of