The House That Shadows Built (1928)

Record Details:

Title:
The House That Shadows Built
Date:
1928
Publisher:
New York: Doubleday
Volume:
The House That Shadows Built
Leaf #:
000169
Language:
English
Collection:
Hollywood Studio System
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
November 16, 2023
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ZUKOR PLOTS HIS FUTURE 151 tellers crowded Broadway. Some of them, if you made the rewards attractive enough, would learn the trick. This was his working theory; the basis of his plan. It looks obvious now. So, to the mediaeval Spanish peasant or the ancient Irish kern, gazing at the Atlantic, it should have seemed obvious that these waters had a Western shore. . . . But first, you must give this business some dignity; wipe away that contempt in which the American public held the “movie”; kill the slum tradition. In the very institution which had been the vessel of scorn he saw the instrument of rehabilitation — the legitimate stage. If the stage relented, the public would follow. Present some recently successful Broadway drama in film with the original actors, and the prejudice would begin to falter; present a succession of them, and it would die. Stars and dramatists had probably no aversions to the film which money would not overcome. And one night, meditating in his office before a scratchpad, he put down the motto which his banners bore in so many subsequent years of battle — “Famous Players in Famous Plays.” This, however, was to be not a means but an end. He appreciated the subtle difference between stage acting and screen acting. The talent which would make the business great must come eventually not from Broadway but from Fourteenth Street. “Famous Players in Famous Plays” would be merely a bridge