Modern Screen (Dec 1933 - Oct 1934)

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Big 16x2 O-inch enlargement sent C.O.D. 78c plus postage or send 80c and we pay postage 47 Take advantage of Pa, , thiB amazing offer now. Send your pnotos today. Specify size wanted. STANDARD ART STUDIOS 104 S. Jefferson St. Dept. 1324-K. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 116 Amundsen's trip to the North Pole. The admission charge is a nickel, if you have it. If you haven't, you can come in anyway. The nickels pay for the night's rental of the film which amounts to about two dollars. The audience begins to get there about seven, though the show doesn't start until eight. They sit and talk, and it's pretty deafening. All that is spoken is Yiddish and a few phrases of Russian or Polish, with an occasional burst of Ukranian. It's hard to believe that you're in America, for the people who come here are the real immigrants. Isidore Miller gets up on the platform and there is an immediate outburst of violent "shush-ing." THE old picture flickers into life. Miller speaks. He tells the crowd what the title says about the gallant Norwegian, and then mentions Peary. America always gets its full share of the credit here, for our immigrants have already begun to feel a pride in their new home. You can see the bent shoulders straighten whenever America is mentioned. They like serious problem pictures. Lon Chaney in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," was one they enjoyed. But, even better than the standard pictures, they like films dealing with Jewish life, or containing Jewish characters. With that feeling, it was rather a surprise to know that they had liked Marlene Dietrich in "The Blue Angel." I asked one of the ushers to explain this, for I thought that Hitlerism would have set them against all German stars. "Why shouldn't they like her?" he said. "To them she's just another actress. They don't stop to think whether she's German or not." Harry Houdini's old picture, "Haldane of the Secret Service," got a rousing welcome after Mr. Miller had explained that the great magician was "one of our boys," and another old film, "Just a Mother," touched a high spot for the year. They understand simple tales of family life, butr:p:ent-house parties are alien, dealing with "locales which they will never see and types of people they will never meet. Life in America to them is not a round of parties — it's a serious struggle to keep food in their children's stomachs, clothes on their backs and a roof over their heads. AND now for some comic relief. Let's ■<-""-»■ go to Harlem, where the carefree high-yallers and chocolate browns put on their finery and step out to the Renaissance, premier theatre for the colored, on a Saturday night. The feature is Rudolph Valentino, the greatest lover of the screen, in "Blood and Sand." In the supporting cast are two other old favorites, Nita Naldi and Lila Lee, who enact the roles of his temptress and his wife, respectively. A little colored girl eating an ice cream cone sold me a ticket for twenty cents. A colored usher led me to a seat. Negroes of all sorts surrounded me. Giggling girls, a white-haired couple, a truck driver, wearing a sweater, and a brown Beau Brummel with padded shoulders, carefully balancing a pearl-gray derby on his knee, sat near me. The theatre showed a true cross section of Negro life. A talkie cartoon of Popeye was on when I arrived. The picture was "I Eats My Spinach," and the climax came when Popeye, floored by a bull, quickly crammed a handful of the horrendous vegetable into his mouth and knocked the beast into a string of sausages. "Mm-mm," said Sam, sitting behind me, "see whut spinnidge does fo' you !" "Yeah," drawled his companion, "but is it wuth it?" Then the feature came on. It was old and scratched in spots. You could tell that it had been frequently broken and patched, because there were parts missing which caused various scenes to end suddenly. But it was still a good picture. You didn't miss the voices of the cast, for Spanish phonograph records supplied an acceptable musical background. This particular audience and theatre were much like any other, save for one or two things. For example, all during the showing men selling pop and peanuts wandered up and down the aisles, crying their wares. Also, a half-dozen pickaninnies got into a squabble over some entry blanks in a contest the theatre was running. During intermission, the manager of the theatre made a contest announcement. After getting the audience's attention, he said, "You can win a cash prize by guessing nearest the number of people who attend this theatre in a year. We have 850 seats, and four shows a day, 365 days in the year. Now keep that in mind when you're writing your answers. I don't know what you people are thinking about, because one old woman wrote 'Three bundles' and a man wrote 'A lot of kids and six dogs.' I don't understand it." SAM and Will, the two fellows behind me, had a grand time. When Valentino was playing around with Dona Sol ( Naldi ) a subtitle said, "The last place to hear of a man's amours is his home," and Sam remarked, "Oh-oh ! Does I hope he's right!" Sam, apparently, was something of a sheik. The vamp, though, is definitely outmoded as far as Harlem is concerned. A shot of Miss Naldi reclining on a couch and smoking cigarettes in a long holder while an Indian slave strummed a mandolin brought chuckles ; Rudy's arm around herself when she unrapped resulted in hearty guffaws, and when she bit his hand and he threw her to the ground, where she lay panting with passion, Sam remarked, "Uh-uh. Dat man don't cooperate a-tall!" A bit of superstition cropped up at the end, when Valentino was gored by a bull in the arena, and died. "See," said Sam, "it's bad luck to play dead. They he is, daid on de screen, an a little while later he's daid in his coffin." Another Valentino favorite was "The Sheik," with Agnes Ayres. Now, before we go to the mad house — yes, literally to the insane asylum, for a look at another picture audience, let's consider a few more places where the old films survive. Home movies are one. If you have a projector, costing anywhere from $4 to $400, many of the better known features are yours to command, and can be rented for a few dollars a night. One film rental library lists William S. Hart in "The Grim Gunman," Rudolph Valentino in "The Wonderful Chair," Bryant Washburn and Billie Dove in "Try and Get It," Hoot Gibson in "Home Run Swat." Another lists Harry Carey and Kathleen Collins in "Border Patrol," Alan Hale and Renee Adoree in "The Spieler," and Robert Armstrong and Carole Lombard in "Big News." AND these are only two out of nearly a dozen companies specializing in prints of by-gone features, reissued in smaller size for home use. Down in Georgia particularly, and throughout the South, little cross-road stores push back the cracker barrels of a Saturday night, put some planks across some boxes and convert the store into a Palace of the Cinema. The charge is ten cents a head — no children or colored folk admitted, much like the days of which Mark Twain once wrote. The negroes and kids are allowed to stand