Motion Picture News (May-Jul 1916)

3376 MOTION PICTURE NEWS Vol. 13. No. 22 I HAS THE gUALlTY CIRCULATION OF THE TRADeI MOTION PICTURE NEWS EXHIBITORS' TIMES Published on Tuesday Every Week by 729 SEVENTH AVENUE, COR. 49TH STREET. NEW YORK. WILLIAM A. JOHNSTON President and Editor HENRY F. SEWALL Vice-President E. KENDALL GILLETT Secretary H. ASHTOX WYCKOFF Treasurer and Business Manager WENTWORTH TUCKER Asst. Treasurer R. M. VANDIVERT Advertising Manager THEODORE S. MEAD Chicago Manager J. C. JESSEN Los Angeles Manager LESLEY MASON Managing Editor WILLIAM RESSMAN ANDREWS News Editor The office of the company is the address of the officers. Entered as Second-Class matter at the New York Post-Office. Subscription, $2 per year, postpaid in the United States, Mexico, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. Canada, $3; Foreign, $4 per year. N. B. — No agent is authorized to take subscriptions for Motion Picture News at less than these rates. Have the agent taking your subscription show his credentials and coupon book. VOL. XIII June 3, 1916 No. 22 " For the Good of the Motion Picture " (Continued from page 3375) board, in so far as it was intended to supplant state boards, as an act of unwarrantable interference in state af¥airs. " We can safeguard the morals of our people ; we don't need Federal assistance. Hands of¥! " That was the substance and spirit of the replies. * * * jV4 R. HUGHES, we repeat, is thoroughly aware of these things. He reveals that in the " extreme unction," so to speak, which he offers the hapless motion picture interests in what he has already vividly pictured as their hour of peril. " In any event," says Mr. Hughes, with the air of a priest consoling a condemned man, " at any rate, the National Board will be considered the leading motion picture commission, and its decisions will carry the weight of leadership." In spite of the gravity of the situation, it is impossible to restrain a laugh. Having built up his beautiful dream of one, and only one, censorship board, our esteemed Congressman, sublimely unconscious that he is making a ridiculous spectacle of himself, shatters it with his own words, and begs the whole question. "VY/ HAT will it profit the motion picture producers that " " the National Board will be considered the leading motion picture commission," if the producers must, in spite of that, go on paying fees to every state that chooses to, set up its own censorship board in defiance of or regardless of the Federal Government? But why expose the fallacies and sophistries of Hughes & Company any further? We do not believe that Congress will pass this or any other censorship law. There must be more than one Dallinger in the halls of the nation ; more than one man who believes that " the regulation of local amusements by na tional legislation is entirely unnecessary and unjustifiable " ; more than one man who sees clearly the unmistakable dangers of establishing the precedent of pre-puhlicity censorship of anything in this republic. * * * C HOULD the unexpected and the highly improbable *^ come to pass and such a law be placed upon the statute books — then our sympathy is entirely with the producers, who have mistakenly (however sincerely) advocated and espoused the measure, and who will discover, to their cost, for what a mess of pottage they have sold their birthright. Strange Bedfellows "COMEBODY is always taking the joy out of life " is a *^ pat phrase of very broad human application. Newspapers as guilty parties are not exempt. No sooner do we arrive at a pretty solid feeling that the motion picture is generally understood for what it really is than we get a savage jolt from some quarter; and most always the jolt comes from our friend the newspaper. * * * """TOBACCO, Drugs and Movies " is a newspaper caption, given wide circulation last week. Just because some prominent officers and stockholders of the American Tobacco Company have entered the directorate of a picture producer it is at once assumed that the move means chains of theatres in combination with the merchandising of drugs and tobacco products. The suggestion, of course, is humorously absurd. The popular conception to-day of the American Tobacco Company is chains of retail stores. When any of its stockholders, therefore, invest in any other enterprise the headline writers immediately assume that the enterprise will be " store-chained " just as when members of the Standard Oil Company invest in any outside concern, the latter is automatically stamped as a trust. There is. of course, quite as much reason for assuming that theatres are to be placed upon street cars just because a traction magnate becomes a stockholder in a picture producing company. * * 4= TT is obviously absurd: But it does a grave business injustice to the producing company concerned which has not the slightest intention of owning theatres in chains or otherwise ; and it tags motion pictures with an outrageous misconception. There is nothing degrading in an association with cigars and packages of pills. But motion pictures are not " movies," nor are they made and sold like cigars and pills, nor will they ever be. Some people who have regarded them purely as merchandise have lost vast sums of money through their false judgment. They have found indeed that the production of pictures has horns, like the drunken farmhand who tried vainly to get a horse collar over a cow's head and exclaimed in desperation : " Why the horse's ears are frozen ! " An Excellent Step Forward p FORGE KLEINE'S " Cycle of Film Classics," recently issued, and which was reviewed in a previous issue, is deserving of more than passing notice. This exceptionally rich and tasteful brochure should do much to crystallize the movement for the genuinely educational picture, a movement always glittering in potentialities, but only now taking form and substance. Eight historical novels are presented, covering, in chronological order, a cycle of nineteen hundred years, and the interesting and attractive volume closes with a citation of three plans by which the pictures may be viewed, as a course of study, by societies and organizations through co-operation with the exhibitor. This is an excellent and practical step forward.