Motography (Jan-Jun 1915)

March 20, 1915. M O T O G R A P H Y 449 MEW TORK OFFICE. 1 022 LONGACRE BUILDING Forty-second Slreel and Broadway Telephone Bryanl 7030 PAUL Hi WOODRUFF Editors: ED J. MOCK, Associate Editors Neil G. Caward Mabel Condon Clarence J. Caine Charles R. Condon Advertising Manager: ALLEN L. HAASE This publication is free and independent of all business or house connections or control. No manufacturer or supply dealer, or their stockholders or representatives, have any financialinterestin Motograpliy or any voice in its management or policy . Entered at Chicago Post Office as Second Class Mail Matter WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE NICKELODEON PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY ELECTRICITY MAGAZINE CORPORATION MONADNOCK BUILDING CHICAGO, ILL. Telephone: Harrison 3014 — All Departments NOTICE TO ADVERTISERS Changes of advertising copy should reach the office of publication not less than fifteen days in advance of date of issue. Regular date of issue, every Saturday. New advertisements will be accepted up to within ten days of date of issue, but proof of such advertisements can not be shown in advance of publication. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE Per year S3. 00 Canada Foreign Single copy FOR SALE AT ALL NEWS STANDS Per year, $4.00 Per year, 5.00 .10c NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS Remittances — Remittances should be made by check. New York draft or money order, in favor of Motography. Foreign subscriptions may be remitted direct by International Postal Money Order. Change op Address — The old address should be given as well as the new, and notice should be received two weeks in advance of the desired change. If Your News Dealer Will Not Supply You — Please Notify Us Volume XIII CHICAGO, MARCH 20, 1915 Number 12 Misleading Literature THE issue of February 20 of the Saturday Evening Post has now gone the way of all ephemeral literature ; and doubtless even its editors would have difficulty in recalling its contents since other issues have superseded it. That particular number, however, contained one feature that gave it a more lasting notoriety in the picture business. We refer, of course, to William A. Brady's story of "Why I Went Into Pictures." To have a story in the Post is quite a literary feat, and one usually coveted by those who write. Mr. Brady is not a professional writing man, but his article is interestingly written — as indeed it must be to make the Post. That, as it happens, is one of its objectionable features; for with the tremendous distribution that paper was able to give it, its mis-statements have become widely disseminated. A letter from a manufacturer's representative, which we print elsewhere, quotes some of the inaccuracies for which the article in question is responsible, and we need not repeat them here. Mr. Brady, as a theatrical authority, is widely known — at least among those who take the problem of entertainment seriously. His utterances through any medium are bound to have great weight. The Saturday Evening Post is popularly regarded as one of the greatest of American periodicals. Its position makes its print responsible. With that combination, "Why I Went Into Pictures" has alreadv done harm to the picture industry by firmly establishing a false impression, or several of them, in the minds of the public. Editors of large, rich and influential publications get big salaries, not only for their ability to select interesting material, but for their responsibility in verifying the statements of contributors before their work is published. But even so, we must carry the burden back to Mr. Brady; for had he been less well known, or had his reputation been made by authorship along general lines instead of in theatrical circles, the editor would undoubtedly have exercised his censorial function. The fame of the writer in his art gave him the right of way in what the editor wrongly conceived to be merely a branch of that art. Promiscuous writing on motion picture subjects, by those who either lack information or deliberately distort facts for their own ends, has already reached distressing proportions ; and there is no apparent means of stopping it. The only suggestion we can make is that the motion picture interests do not neglect to send their emphatic protests to all publishers using that kind of material every time such articles appear. We cannot doubt that editors of responsible publications want only authentic "copy" ; and a series of such protests should have the effect of putting them on their guard and induce them to check up more carefully the statements of even well known contributors. The Too-Realistic Pictures OUR neighbor to the north, that alien but sisterly dominion separated from us by four thousand miles of unfortified, ungarrisoned boundary, is the one representative of the New World that is called upon to furnish men for the great war. Canada's recruiting offices are busy places these days ; and the task of getting men is not always easy, for the New World man is constructive by nature, and war is destructive. The business of recruiting volunteers depends very largely upon the "glory and panoply of war." It is necessary to make men see the glamour, not the grewsomeness ; the patriotism, not the pain ; the heroism, not the horror of war. And so Canada has writ ten "forbidden" across all motion pictures from the seat of war ; the real pictures, that show conditions as they are. No exhibitor in all the dominion must show these films, lest men be overcome by horror and refuse to take up arms against their fellows. The Chicago Tribune, in its intellectual way, thinks the Canadian Parliament has made an error in its psychological reckoning; that the picture-going populace would never patronize an honest and consequently terrible war picture while a neighboring house was showing one of the glamourous, glorious, panoplied kind. The point may be well taken ; no doubt people prefer the pleasanter picture, and select it when