Motography (Jan-Jun 1918)

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1074 MOTOGRAPHY Vol. XIX, No. 23 WHERE is this man? Who shall produce him? Will it be possible to find him? We have no candidate to offer. We have our ideas and perhaps our leanings, but we want to have this matter handled in the squarest, fairest and most able manner. 26 ?£ W E CALL on the industry, therefore, to advise us and through us the industry of their pick and choosing. We want this thing done in the open, in the light of day and not in the secret and suspected conference. WHO is big enough to come forward and name the man? Who will set aside his personal business choice and make an industry choice? It is agreed that we need the National Association or its counterpart — but who is to lead it and express our personal opinion and carry out our ideas to our betterment? G ENTLEMEN of the industry, you have in front of you the question — come forward frankly with the answer — WHO IS THE MAN? Convention, Yes! Exposition, No! AS THE entirely independent trade paper of the motion picture industry, Motography feels in duty bound to ask a few frank questions regarding the Boston party scheduled for July. This is a season of great national stress, a time when every dollar is needed .in patriotic effort and for the payment of taxes levied for the support of our part in the great war. We, therefore, are moved to ask : Why hold a motion picture exposition at this time when neither the manufacturer, the distributor nor the exhibitor can afford the expense? A convention of exhibitors ? Yes, by all means — but why an exposition with the usual macing of the manufacturer out of money for space he doesn't want and doesn't profit by? The only reason we can find for the holding of a motion picture exposition this year is to justify the job of Frederick H. Elliott, the secretary of the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry, and to guarantee the continuance in power of Lee A. Ochs of the Exhibitors' League. As we understand Mr. Ochs is not a candidate for reelection, we are moved to another question — of what real practical use is Elliott to the industry now or in the future? In the calm honesty of reflective thought — it occurs to us that the exposition should be dispensed with until after the war. If we are wrong — let our readers tell us and we shall be glad to record their opinions for the benefit of all the industry. Pictures a War Time Essential THERE is more than one side to the "essentiality" of picture production during war time. A single producer has just sent to the United States Government his first remittance for ten weeks' footage tax — and the check called for more than forty-five thousand dollars. With keen enterprise the Universal company is following up its big payment with a request to the government officials for careful consideration of its significance. It is pointed out that any curtailment of the production for which there is so insistent a demand would at once result in a proportionate curtailment of tax revenue from a source which is demonstrated by this first remittance to be of immense potency. The occasion for this defense of the producing industry arises, the company says, out of a rumor that government investigators are studying picture making from the point of view that it might be possible to operate all existing theatres with films already produced. The author of such a theory might argue that a year's cessation of producing would not work a vital hardship upon the exhibitors. In this connection the company puts forward some interesting figures. Because there are some fourteen thousand theatres those only superficially informed might assume that figure as the possible field of presentation for each film. The Universal's argument is that about eight thousand theatres form the hundred per cent goal, or saturation point, for the ideally distributed picture. The other six thousand houses, more or less, are competitors of some of these eight thousand, and therefore commercially ineligible for the same pictures. These are interesting figures, and worth some study. As for rumors of picture curtailment, stirred up by recent activities of the government in filling its classifications of "non-essential" industries, we are confident that the alarmists will find little to work upon in this field. It is only the idle pleasure seeker, with eyes focussed upon the play side of his entertainment who questions the essentiality of motion pictures. Thinking men and women are wholly agreed that the picture in war time, far from being a non-essential, is more important than at any other time. The administration itself has expressed that very thought.