The Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1914)

no THE MOTION PICTURE STORY MAGAZINE a hurtful nature — meaning, by this, anything Buggestive, questionable or of a too blood-curdling nature to be seen by the youth. England seeks to guard her youth, and a photoplay thai would tend to give the young mind a fiery, overdrawn view of any phase of life, especially the criminal, is not Looked upon with favor. The films are, for the most part, such as one Bees in the American Moving Picture theater: quite a lot of tinWild West, tin1 fast and daring riding of cowboys, the Indian war-dance and the redskins' attack upon the white argonauts, and scenes of life on the plains. The French trick film, wonderful bitsof picture legerdemain, are, too. much in favor in the English movies. Travel and historical films being praised by pulpit and religious press, the British picture theater often presents much of this matter, the better class theaters as often as two films to an entertainment. England, as a country, spends more money upon her movies than France, yet the London Cinematograph theaters do not reap the great harvest that they do in Paris. London spends, it is authentically estimated, ahout four million dollars annually on her Moving Picture palaces, while her gay sister, Paris, spends nearly a quarter of a million dollars more every year, and yet London exceeds the French capital in population by nearly two and a half million people. The London Moving Picture shows estimate two visits a week from what they style "the film fiend"j in Other words, the devotee of this chiss of entertainment in London twice a week to such a show. .Most of the Moving Picture theaters are open Sunday8 in London, hut as the greater number give \'vn> entertainments upon this day or recei1 small remuneration from the city for rtaining its poor —\<vy few hut tin Be unable to pay pat ronizing the movies <>n Sunday —the Sunday opening proposition Is not a very profitable affair. Many <>f the better class theaters of th kind do not open their doors on the Sabbath, and nol a few on this accounl gel thruout the week the patronage of the b jtter class theatergoer, who cheerfully pays his pence I twelve cents for an ho show. The London Moving Picture theater seeks to give an hour's entertainment, usually presenting four reels. The movies, however, in England are not, and never will be, in fa voi with such a great army of amusement-seekers as in the United States, and tie reasons — and there are several reasons for it — are the failure of the Britisher to have a uniform price, and thai price a small one. for all his picture theaters — such as the ten-cenl rat. so universal thruout the United States; the fact that the Englishman is n< much on the street after his daily toil is over as Ins American brother — he goes home after work and seldom ventures out again unless obliged to do so; the lack of interest in the English mind for other than the real or, afl call it on this side, the legitimate play. A Londoner, even of the Lower clas^. would rather climb up into the gallery of a playhouse, sit on a hard bench thruout a two-hour production of a Dickens oi Thackeray play — even a Shakespearian drama by an inferior company — for which he must pay three times as much as the price of admission to a Moving Picture show, than go a half-dozen times to a really good Cinematograph theater. lie would, too. prefer, if he is inclined at all toward the Moving Picture play, to see one performance a week at a shilling playhouse than four tine many at a fourpenny house. And despite all these facts, the Moving Picture show is making marvelous strides onward in England The staid, stoical old Britisher, slow to take to the thing new and always luctanl to depart from the thing old. is becoming a Moving Picture theatergoer, and everywhere thruout the British [sles today, even in towi a few thousand, the u Picture Pa! is claiming the people's attention, and their pennies as well. A new nightly diversion has settled down over the [sles.