The miracle of the movies (1947)

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD IF you are looking for a book which deals with great films and great film stars of the past, this is not for you. My typewriter cannot conjure up, for a generation who never saw them, the individual magic of Theda Bara, Max Linder or William S. Hart, just as writers about the stage have never been able to make my pulse quicken by their insistence upon the inimitable personalities of Dan Leno, Irving, and Marie Lloyd. Indeed, why writers attempt it with the cinema is inexplicable, for those who are curious to see the stars and the work of the great directors of the past can easily gratify their desire by joining a film society. The stage needs, it tells us, a National Theatre. We of the cinema already have our National Cinema in the National Film Library, where practically every worthwhile film of the past fifty years is preserved. Reams of description of stars and films can be but ineffectual in face of the still existing reality. This book, then, is the story of the cinema's development, the story of how films came into being, of how the electric theatres sprang up, of pictures made in the sidestreets of Croydon and Brooklyn for a few pounds, and how Hollywood, Denham and Elstree emerged from those exciting early movie days, days when producers were as akin to pirates as makes no matter and actors were paid four shillings a day. Ten years ago I wrote a book called The Romance of the Movies. It was serialised and plagiarized. Because it is out of print now, I am reproducing certain favourite passages from it in the present work. My thanks are extended to the many people who have supplied information and allowed me to reproduce treasured photographs, among the chief being Ernest Lindgren, Curator of the National Film Library, Ernest Player of Warner Bros., Aubrey Bustin of RKO Radio Pictures, James Anderson, and R. Howard Cricks, F.B.K.S., F.R.P.S., each and all of them keen enthusiasts about the cinema's past. Leslie Wood. Cookham, Berks.