Moving Picture Weekly (1915-1920)

THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY 11 NOTE— The following was published by a Los Angeles weekly called ''IT" as an editorial. There is food for thought in it for Stars, Producers and Exhibitors. For that reason we reproduce it, FALLING STARS To the Tinsel-draped Motion Picture Stars; In care of their secretaries and "Yes Men" (Personal) Wake up! Your tinsel is unraveling! The handwriting is on the wall — your temperamental days are numbered! Your whims and your arrogance are droning a dirge for your dying pretenses — Motion picture dramatic art is finding itself and in doing so is losing you — UNLESS YOU FORGET YOUR GOOD LOOKS, YOUR GOLDEN CURLS AND LEARN HOW TO ACT— Screen progress during the past year should have told you that you can never be the head of a safe and sane screen drama — that you are but the "cubs" of a great profession — You were safe just so long as the novelty of a pretty moving photograph satisfied the public— but both the patron of pictures and the price of pictures have gone beyond that — every new outstanding picture success emphasizes this fact more and more — In "Humoresque" two talented middle-aged artists carried the burden and the gloiy — the featured star was merely among those present — In "Earthbound" a cast of capable mature players gave a dramatic gem to the screen — In "The Penalty" an actor with neither youth nor beauty, no, not even a lip-smudging mustache, revealed what the screen can achieve when the ingenue and the juvenile are pushed into their proper places — Some of you have profited by the lesson these pictures and others have taught — but most of you are beyond learning — Wally Reid wallowed in the oblivion of "pretty" roles until he forgot his good looks and insisted that he be given an opportunity to act — One or two others have done likewise — Every worth while picture of the past year is a rebuke to you and the whole male and female cutey star system — Authors have grown weary of bastardizing their masterpieces in order to create impossible situations that may revolve about you — The public is sick of seeing its beloved characters of fiction slaughtered to furnish you with a smile or a happy ending for your piffle — The producer is exhausted with scouring the land to find stories that satisfy you — He is fast coming to the conclusion that you are a hindrance instead of a help — That the well-produced picture with an evenly-balanced cast — a real reflection of the world of men and women as it is — is what brings hira profit — And the exhibitor, the mainstay of the industry, is discovering that it is a costly thing to spend his good money trying to bring patrons to look at a pretty though plastic face, for he has tried it and lost— The industry is becoming sane — and you had better join the procession — Yours, EDWARD ROBERTS.