Motion Picture News (Oct 1913 - Jan 1914)

THE MOTION PICTURE NEWS 33 or white jackets, to wear clean linen, in other words, to take care of their personal appearance. Same with the sales-people. The department stores compel their employees to wear certain dresses. It is general all over the country, good manners and neat appearance is the keynote to success. The owners of a big department store "in a suburban town, who are strict on the personal appearance of their sales-clerks, cash-girls and other employees, yielded to the temptation to erect a photoplay theatre on a vacant lot adjoining their stores. They placed a manager who does not seem to know much about appearance, as the attendants of the theatre are a great contrast to the employees of the stores. I don't see why the owners, so strict on the personal appearance of the employees of the stores, do not enforce the same policy on the attendants of the motion picture theatre. It cannot be a question of the price of admission. The patrons paying ten cents admission to see motion pictures are entitled to as much courtesy and clean service as the women who purchase a spool of thread, a paper of pins or a glass of soda. It is, I am sorry to tell it, that the same prejudice exists in the minds of the exhibitors as in the minds of the enemies of cinematography, viz.: Motion pictures are the low amusement of the common people, consequently do not call, for good manners or appearance. This is the whole secret. Too many of our exhibitors, and of our manufacturers, to tell the truth, have this wrong idea, that motion pictures are to be classed with the side-shows of the fairs and circuses, or to be the ornament of the Bowery and of other such thoroughfares. With such a belief, the exhibitors do not see the need of a polite, clean, neat and courteous service. The manufacturers, on their side, do not want good, uplifting scenarios, but on the contrary, they will produce any scenario, no matter how unnatural it can be, as long as it is sensational. Evidently, as every rule has its exceptions, we have a number of manufacturers and exhibitors who are doing their very best to uplift cinematography, but they are few, and some of them in course of time fall by the wayside because they lack faith in a better future for motion pictures. Yes. when men with no means, men who have been known to hide themselves so as to avoid a collector, can brag of making a little fortune by putting out feature films and claim that they never spend over one thousand dollars on a production but get the money by putting out sensational posters, it is enough to discourage the honest manufacturer, who spends thousands on a single negative Unless this manufacturer has a great faith in the future he will fall and imitate the unscrupulous ' little manufacturer by making sensational films to please the passions of the low classes. Same with the exhibitor who tries to uplift the business.' He goes thus far and because he sees his neighbor make an ugly display of posters, give souvenirs, he is tempted to do likewise. The day is coming when this wrong prejudice will make room for a better sentiment, and it is because motion pictures are here to stay that many men are working hard for the uplifting of the industry by investing large sums of money in the building of fine theatres and the production of highclass films. These men, with enough faith in the future, will naturally and gradually push out of the field both the unscrupulous manufacturer and exhibitor. J. M. B. Boosting the Business in Berlin THE Berlin motion picture shows, or "Kinos," as they are called more frequently there, have finally found the panacea which makes the multitude storm the ticket office. Up to a few weeks ago they seemed to belong to the past, for the people did not patronize them any longer. Thirty or more had to close their doors. Then for a while the managers did some thinking and experimenting. They combined a vaudeville show with their theatres, engaged acrobats arid songstresses of whom the audience always was in doubt whether it would not be better if the song birds handle the heavy dumb-bells and the strong man try to sing the "Last Rose of Summer." It was of no avail. The public did not stream en masse, the sheriff finally arrived, unmercifully attached the cash box receipts and closed the doors. And in many instances the kino show ended with a free-for-all fight. Necessity, however, the greatest inventor on earth, finally found the ways and means to change the conditions in favor of the impoverished manager. The great achievement of technical sciences was pressed into service, and to-day the kinos again are overcrowded, and that state of affairs has been reached which the manager in Goethe's Faust dreams of: ''When to our booth the current sets apace, And with tremendous, oft-repeated urging, Squeeze onward through the narrow gate of grace: To reach the seller's box, a fighting host, To get a ticket break their necks almost." You sit in the kino and look at a series of pictures of a detective story. The bloody murderer is chased and jumps in the swiftest touring car that is in existence. The police get in an express train. And now reality sets in. The mad race between the two machines is depicted. The spectator hears the noise of the approaching beasts, the thundering of the heavy locomotive on the steel rails, the whistling of the steampipe and the chug-chug of the auto. The . two monsters draw nearer and nearer. You hear the mewing and spitting and groaning and notice the approaching glaring lights. The noise increases, steam and sparks are emitted into the stage, and finally a rattling and crackling auto and a screeching and squeaking locomotive stop at the stage in front of the dumbfounded spectator. The detectives jump from the machine, the fleeing rogue is caught and the play goes on according to the plot. The melodrama that commenced with pictures is now finished by real actors. So far the people in this nerve-tearing center of over civilization have to go to attract a crowd. But if the teel-tempered thoughts of a new era spontaneously enter the world of imagination, if Thalia is visited by Count Zeppelin, then such a wonderful scene may happen as we had the pleasure of witnessing last week at the open air theatre in little Wannsee. Hebbel's monumental Gyges drama was given in the presence of a small but artistically inclined and appreciative community of connoisseurs. The spectators were deeply moved by the strong prehistorical and mythical play when suddenly, from the distance, near the end of the show, a howling and roaring noise was heard that drew nearer and nearer. Was it old Helios himself who drove up with his several fiery stallions to witness the scene so familiar to him? When the people looked up they saw a big Zeppelin cruiser sweep by at the height of not more than about 300 feet Tt was the most unique demonstration and object lesson of the wonderful development of human genius within 3,000 years. The new era greeted the far past.