Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1912)

A Little Letter to the Inquisitive By The INQUIRY EDITOR We've asked the Managing Editor for the space to write a little letter to those who write us, in the hope that a better understanding of the Inquiry Department will make it possible to handle the ever increasing mass of mail. Last summer, when Mr. Brewster suggested that we take over a department for questioners, we were inclined to scoff at the suggestion that such a department would be of interest to the readers, but the response was so instantaneous that we had to apologize to him, and now the letters are considerably in excess of two hundred weekly, and the mail increases each month. Handling two hundred letters is no child's play, and you can make the work very much easier for us if you will. The most helpful way will be to write your questions on a slip of paper apart from the letter you send. We like to h|ive you' tell us what you think of the magazine, but the Managing Editor wants to see those letters, and if you £ut it all on one sheet of paper, the letter is passed from hand to hand and the question is delayed, because it is at the end of possibly four or five pages of appreciation of the magazine and the players. Write the questions on a separate sheet, with your name and address, and this sheet will come to the Inquiry Department without delay. Some letters are intended for the business office, the Managing Editor, the Inquiry Department, and the Contest Editor, and if it is all run together, some one in each of the four departments must read the entire letter to get at what he needs to know. Send a separate sheet for each and put your name and address on each sheet. Take a paragraph for each question. That helps a lot more than you realize. And be definite. Don* ask the name, of the blue-eyed actor who stands on the lefthand side of the third scene in "Her Boy." To begin with, there are two films titled "Her Boy," to say nothing of "Her Boys." We dont know which one you mean, and if we did, we cant remember back to the third scene for the blue-eyed actor, How do you know he has blue eyes, anyway? We cannot possibly see all the Photoplays. The weekly papers have to have three or four critics to cover the ground, working six or eight hours a day. Ask "Who was Jim in Blank's 'His Last Chance'?" or "Who was the brother in Dash's 'Caught in the Net'?" and we know what you mean. Probably we have the information, or if we haven't, we ask the manufacturer, and he very kindly tells us. We dont guess at it. Either we know or we find out from those who do know. It's easy to be more definite than "That fellow that plays with the girl in the story where she kills a man to save his life," and you are much more apt to be answered. And try and get the right title. If you forget the name of the Photoplay in your interest in the story, look at the billboard as you go out. Our information is filed on cards under titles, and we do not readily find "Two Wolves and a Lamb" when we look for " 'Wolves of Wall Street,' or something like that — I think it was a Vitagraph." You can get the title at a glance on the way out, and you will save us five minutes' useless work. There are between eighty and ninety titles released each week and we cant be expected to remember them all. And dont ask questions just because you want to see your answer in print. The idea of this department is to help satisfy intelligent curiosity, and when we get from ten to twenty questions from one person, we cannot be blamed for feeling that the curiosity is other than intelligent. You are taking up more than your share of the space, anyhow, and that alone bars you out. And dont ask for entire casts or a list of plays in which some favored player has recently appeared. We cannot spend an hour going over the files to locate the latter information. If you will write the manufacturer, he may supply the information. We cannot spare the time for that one question. And we dont think that questions as to the age or nationality of the players belong in this department. If Carlyle Blackwell is a good actor, what difference, does it make whether he is American born, or an English importation? Such questions belong in the same class with inquiries as to whether the player be married or not. It does not affect the merit of the acting, and is the private affair of that person unless, as in the case of Mr. Costello, announcement is made in self-defense. You waste your postage and our time whether you ask "Is he married?" or "Does Mrs. Dash play with her husband in the Blank pictures?" 162