The Motion Picture and the Family (Oct 1934 - May 1937)

2 THE MOTION PICTURE AND THE FAMILY February 15, 1936 Film Club In Cleveland Has Fine Program Membership of the Cleveland, Ohio, Cinema Club may be small — it is limited to 100 — but the organization makes up in quality anything it may seem to lack in quantity. Many of the most influential workers for better films from such organizations as the Federation of Women's Clubs, the D.A.R., the Public Library, Parent-Teacher Associations and the W.C.T.U. belong, and the organization's sphere of influence is wide. The principal of every school in Cleveland, the bulletin board of every library or branch library in Greater Cleveland, every Y.M.C.A. and every Y.W.C.A., 200 Protestant church workers and about 400 interested individuals receive the bulletin of the club, which carries not only evaluations of films but items of definite interest to the movieconscious. Films are not classified in the usual way, merely according to audience suitability, but are advertised as "Of Historical Interest," "With Emphasis on Music, "From Well-Known Novels and Plays," etc., so that the reader can readily discover the type of film which interests him most. Maintains Speakers' Bureau The club maintains a speakers' bureau and offers lectures on such subjects as Fundamentals of Better Film Work, Motion Pictures and Our Children, Viewing Motion Picture Art Nationally and Internationally, and A Mother Looks to Her Summer Movies. Study courses are also offered, especially one for the training of leaders. Miss Bertelle M. Lyttle, organizer of the Cleveland Cinema Club and editor of its bulletin, has also outlined and conducts a Motion Picture Institute, open to interested groups. The suggested program embraces three sessions, with a forum designed for leaders of young people's groups, to discuss what young people can do for better films; an evening lecture on Motion Pictures : Our Newest Art, and a second combination lecture and discussion devoted to a presentation of the types of work done by various cinema clubs, with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of each. Miss Lyttle is program chairman for the Motion Picture Department of the Cleveland Federation of Women's Clubs, advisor for the Parent-Teacher Association study of short reels and corresponding member of the National Motion Picture Council. Mrs. William J. MacLachlan, the present president of the club, has been actively engaged in motion picture work for the past eight years and has exercised a potent influence in behalf of the support of the finer grade of films. She is a vice-president of the Ohio Motion Picture Council. The Cleveland Cinema Club is 21 years old, a true pioneer group. WHO'S WHO IN BETTER FILMS Mrs. J. F. McMillan, president of the Elizabeth (New Jersey) Council for Better Films, came into the Better Films movement via a committee membership on the motion picture committee of Bondinot Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revo1 u t i o n. Mrs. Leon A. Mclntire, now president of the FinerFilms Federation of New Jersey and chairman of the National Motion Picture Committee of the Daughters of the American Revolution, was at that time state chairman of motion pictures for the D. A. R., and the two began their Better Films pioneering together. The factor which influenced Mrs. McMillan to enter the film movement was her conviction that feature films properly used might be a very vital educational force. She therefore thought it highly important that programs suitable for students should be arranged at regular intervals. Education and patriotism were a twin enthusiasm of Mrs. McMillan's owing to her Revolutionary ancestry and her first activity as a D. A. R. motion picture committee member was to put patriotic trailers into the motion picture theatres and also to have special programs of appropriate character arranged for patriotic holidays. In April of 1933, Mrs. McMillan organized the Elizabeth Council for Better Films, but was unwilling to take the leadership of the new-born film group and devoted her first year to planning programs for the regular Council meetings. Under her energetic chairmanship the Council has made motion pic ture history in New Jersey. It has an active contact committee which sees that lists of current films, with audience ratings, are published each Saturday in the Elizabeth Journal, leading newspaper of that city A detailed list of recommendations as to quality and audience suitability of films approved by the Council is also sent not only to the public libraries but to all the Protestant churches of the city, where it is placed on the bulletin boards. Elizabeth was the second city in the United States to have a motion picture Institute conducted by Mrs. Jeannette W. Emrich, who pioneered in that field with the East Coast Preview Committee Institutes which have become such a conspicuously successful feature of the program of this group. The Council has been very active in stimulating the use of study guides on motion pictures in the public schools and renders a very practical service by purchasing and distributing them to the students. Educated at Sorbonne Mrs. McMillan is a native of West Virginia, was educated at Hunter College, New York City, Columbia University and also studied at the Sorbonne during six years of residence in Paris. She is highly delighted with the current developments in the motion picture field, feeling that they justify her longtime contention as to the value of motion pictures in education. To her mind the most effective work a Motion Picture Council can do, aside from the primary function of contacting the exhibitors, urging them to book films for quality as well as box office appeal and encouraging them to present family programs at regular intervals, is to educate audiences to be selective about their motion picture entertainment and thoroughly apprciative of the vast improvement in the output of the industry. A CLUBWOMAN CHATS ON FILMS FOR THE FAMILY By Mrs. William Dick Sporborg, Chairman, East Coast Preview Committee When the East Coast Preview Committee decided to issue an adult discussion guide on Peter Ibbetson it was frankly an experiment. We were by no means certain that mature clubwomen with a variety of interests would respond as enthusiastically to a discussion of a current motion picture — even one which was based on a literary classic — as students had responded to the various educational study guides which have been issued from time to time. But experience has taught us that enthusiasm is by no means a quality restricted to juvenile minds. Although the study of Peter Ibbetson was approached from a much more mature angle than has been the study of the various films which for the past few years have been discussed in the classrooms of the country, discussions were as vigorous and colorful as those which were participated in by the boys and girls. It is not easy to estimate how many clubs in the country have presented programs based on the Ibbetson discussion guide. (We have sent out thousands of the guides, but some of them have been used not in one club alone but in several.) One of the most convincing evi(Continued on Page 5) Care Of Still Library Like Full Time Job So rapid has been the growth of the film "still" library developed by Mrs. Arthur Goldsmith, Motion Picture Chairman of the Philadelphia Federation of Women's Clubs, and so greatly has the demand for stills increased, that Mrs. Goldsmith distractedly writes that it will soon be a "full time job" to take care of it. As only one phase of her manifold activities, this energetic motion picture chairman has increased her stock of stills on film successes to nearly 3,000, which cover approximately 120 outstanding pictures of comparatively recent date. The greatest demand for the stills comes from the schools, where they are used not only in Photoplay Appreciation classes but in the library, and the art, history and costume departments to illustrate various points of discussion. Eighteen sets of Mrs. Goldsmith's stills are now in use in the Photoplay Appreciation classes in Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia, 21 sets in various departments of the William Penn High School in the same citv and 30 sets in schools in Narberth, Pennsylvania, ranging from primary to junior high. Some of Mrs. Goldsmith's stills, shown by a projection machine, were used to illustrate a talk on motion pictures she gave during a National Education Week observance and stills of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Last Days of Pompeii and The Crusades similarly illustrated a talk before the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae. Philadelphia List Now Reaches 1,000 Groups (Continued from Page 1) sent to the Franklin Institute, by request, for distribution. They are also distributed by a Sunday School superintendent to the people of his parish. A still more ingenious method of distribution has just been evolved by the Press and Publicity Chairman of the Forum, Mrs. Marshall Rahn, who has arranged to have the list placed in every taxi, street car, bus and subway. "Let Your Movie Ticket Be Your Vote for Better Films" is the caption which heads the list. Shirley Buys Second Calf Even the loneliness of a calf touches the heart of winsome Shirley Temple. Last spring children of Tillamook, Oregon, gave the child star a calf which she christened Tillie. A recent visitor from Tillamook called at the Adohr creamery to see Tillie and found her with a playmate. Not wanting the calf to be lonely Shirley had purchased a Holstein for company. The latter is called Dinah.