Motion Picture News (Jul - Sep 1926)

J III 1 926 209 Leaders Welcome Murnau to America Significant Reception and Dinner at Ritz for German Director; Fox, Brisbane, Pettijohn Among Prominent Speakers William Fox WILLIAM FOX was host on Wednesday evening to nearly one hundred leaders in American government, finance, business, publishing' and the arts and professions at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, New York City, at a reception and dinner in honor of F. W. Murnau, the German director, whose production of "The Last Laugh" has made his fame international. The dinner took on the aspect of more than a film function, as men prominent in American life paid tribute to the place of motion pictures in world affairs and told the significance of such international moves which proved that art knew no boundaries. The guests were seated in the Crystal Room of the Ritz, which was arranged for the occasion as a sunken garden, with the tallies set in a square. At one side was the guest of the evening, with William Fox at his right and the toastmaster, George Henry Payne, president of the Committee of American Business Men and New York City's commissioner, at his left. The first speaker to be introduced by Mi-. Payne was former Senator Charles A. Towne. Ex-Senator Towne, addressing himself directly to the guest of honor, told how as a youth he had admired German folk Lore. Later in life, as he became familiar with Goethe and the more profound German writers, he said, this admiration increased. Then, however, as German imperialism grew, culminating in the World War, his feelings underwent a change, but now he was once more returning to his first opinion of German art and science, realizing that the war was a necessary struggle between absolutism and democracy, and a direct outgrowth of our own Revolutionary war and the Declaration of Independence, which had effected changes in the governmental systems of the entire world. Turning then to the motion picture, he admitted frankly that there were many things on the screen of which he did not approve, much as he believed in the power anil possibilities of the motion picture. " You cannot present the sordid and the salacious and call it a reflection of life," he said. "Art is not a reflection of life. It is a selection of those things in life which will make men the better for having seen them. The Greeks summed if up centuries ago when they called art 'the good, the beautiful and the true.' It is to men like you, Dr. Murnau, that we must look for the reflection of such ideals fin the screen, and as such I am happy to welcome you to America." Toastmaster Payne then said that since the esthetic and idealistic side of motion pictures hail been so eloquently upheld by the first speaker, he was going to call on an eminently practical man in rebuttal, whereupon he introduced William Fox. head of the iilm organization bearing his name. Mr. Pox plunged into the subject, goodhumoredly, but frankly taking issue with ex-Senator Towne. "I do not agree," lie began, "with everything that the distinguished speaker has said about motion pictures. I do not agree with him that we should reflect only the pleasant side of life. The Senator quoted Shakespere as the greatest of poets. Yet where would the artistry of Shakespere have been had he dealt only with the pleasant side of life? Many of his plays deal with unpleasant subjects, and it is precisely because he mirrors all sides of life that he is greal . "I believe that to show the pleasant side of lite you must show a little bit of the other side; that to show the good in life you must have a little bit of the bad. I believe that if, in our pictures, we said, 'Everyone is good, and there is nothing unpleasant in life,' we would all get a bit tired of it. No, we must tell the truth about life. "The speaker has said that Ave are making pictures primarily to make money. I do not believe that that is true. I don't think that anybody making pictures today is doing so solely to make money out of British Exhibitors in Anti-Block Vote NEWSPAPER reports this week stated that members of the Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association of Great Britain and Ireland had voted overwhelmingly to abolish the block booking system in that country. According to the report, a 71 per cent, poll of the members brought out 1,704 votes against block booking and 198 in favor of it. British film producers contend that they have great difficulty in obtaining play-dates because of the fact that theatres are tied up for a considerable period on blocks of American films. F. W. Murnau them. All of us feel a real affection for the motion picture and we want to give our best to it. I know that in the case of our own organization, whenever we have set out to make a picture solely because we though! it would make money, it has been a failure, both financially and artistically. Every picture we have made which earned substantial profits was something that we started with the hope of making a greal picl nee. "1 believe in the motion picture. I have put my soul into motion pictures — have devoted my life to them — and I feel like a godfather toward the infant that I have helped to protect and nourish. In 1903, when I began, there wrrc perhaps 50,000 persons in this country who were regular patrons at the motion picture theatre, and most of them were foreigners who had no theatre in their native tongue. In those days, if a man beat his wife, the charge was that he had seen it in the movies. It a child stole a purse, the defense was that he had learned to steal from the motion pictures. "Two men went into partnership with me at that time, each putting in sixteen hundred and some dollars. Later, they came to me and said: 'Bill, we're sorry we went into partnership with you. Our v are being ostracized from the society in which they used to travel. People say our business is on a par with running a house of prostitution or a gin-mill. '•Today s 25,000,000 persons attend motion pictures regularly, and perhaps many more throughout the rest of the world. Those millions include not only the foreigners and the illiterate, hut the rich, the poor, the intelligent and the stupid, all classes and types of human beings, and I am proud of that fact. •'It is one of the great thrills of my life to look about me tonight and see this group