Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

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C L A S S I Case V Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, and may it please Your Honor, Mr. Hays, in the August term of Oassic's Open Court the case of the slaughter of silent pictures was taken up by that staunch defender of the late flickers, Charles Spencer Chaplin. Since that investigation a new corpse has been discovered— our old friend, Slapstick Comedy. And now comes the friendly Prosecuting Attorney, Mack Sennett, to lay charge against the talkies, with the microphone as co-defendant, for the death of LowBrow Comedy. It is for you. Ladies and Gentlemen, to decide whether the deceased has met with a timely or untimely death. — Editor's Note. MR.SENNETT: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Public, I, Mack Sennett, dean of low-brow comedies, do now find myself in the curious position of laying before you the case of the slaying of my own brain-child, the Low-Brow Comedy, and it is with mingled emotions I present my arguments to you. A bed, a dresser, and a washstand used to be a boudoir. But today (see right) Mack Sennett's boudoirs are in period furniture Dorothy Manners, Court Reporter Agamst the defendant, the talkies, I bear no grudge oi\ ill will or disappointment, and yet. Your Honor, and Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not hold them entirely blameless in this slaying. Surely, no case has come to you through more open mind than my own, unprejudiced and unbiased, but at the same time finding defects in both the slain and the slayer. Bear with me in a brief resume of the life of the late Low-Brow Comedy. A silly, moronic creature, the talkies found it — and so they killed. And yet, is even a dunce who has brought laughs, and eased away troubles for both young and old alike, so low a creature as to be mercilessly eradicated.^ Silly, and imbecilic as it may have been, there were many redeeming features to our late departed. For one point, it had the gift of vitality and action. True, you may deride the kind of action . . . pie-throwing, trick falls, somersaults, bathing-girl antics ... as silly, foolish nonsense. I do not deny this. Ladies and Gentlemen. I created it. But, withal, it was picture action . . . and we are dealing in the medium of moving pictures. In the old comedies, the wealthy lived in boarding-house style. But today (see left) their salons are, at the least, all to the ultra 36