Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1949)

78 FEBRUARY 1949 ROY W. WINTON, ACL TO Roy W. Winton his job as managing director of the Amateur Cinema League was as much a pledge as it was a position. He believed in principles, as well as payrolls, and he fought for these principles with all the fervor and dedication of a knight on holy crusade. He believed, in the first place, in the decency and dignity of amateur filming. He imparted dignity to this magazine, and he demanded decency of those who would advertise in it. In the subject matter of amateur motion pictures, he expected decency from the beginning, and, as the stature of amateur films grew with the years, he applauded their increasing dignity. He believed, as well, in the unlimited scope of personal motion pictures. From the fireside to the factory, from the traveler to the theologian, he believed no subject was beyond their cognate interest. He saw films as serving humanity, as well as human beings. He believed, finally, in the freedom of amateur filming. He regarded the hobby as a treasured and untrammeled medium of human expression. Those who sought, for whatever selfish or misguided reasons, to regulate or restrict that medium were seared by his anger and turned back by his opposition. Amateur movies today are better, bigger and freer for his being with us. We are much in his debt. THE amateur cinema league, INC. Founded in 1926 by Hiram Percy Maxim DIRECTORS John V. Hansen, President Ethelbert Warfield, Treasurer C. R. Dooley, Vice President Mrs. L. S. Galvin H. Earl Hoover Harold E. B. Speight Philip N. Thevenet Stephen F. Voorhees The Amateur Cinema League, Inc., sole owner and publisher of MOVIE MAKERS, is an international organization of filmers. The League offers its members help in planning and making movies. It aids movie clubs and maintains for them a film exchange. It has various special services and publications for members. Your membership is invited. Five dollars a year. AMATEUR CINEMA LEAGUE. Inc.. 420 LEXINGTON AVE.. NEW YORK 17, N. Y.. U.S.A. League loses pioneer leader [Continued from page 55] became a League member, under the Colonel's dynamic enthusiasm. In 1935, the League participated in the first National Photographic Exposition, at New York City, and, spearheaded by the Colonel's fiery opposition to all pressure-group invasions of the amateur field, defeated an especially vicious licensing bill in the New York State legislature. With 1939 came America's two great world's fairs, and in June the ACL published its gala World's Fair issue of Movie Makers. The ACL Movie Book replaced Making Better Movies. The status of Fellowship in the Amateur Cinema League took its honored place in L940 with the election of five. And then, in 1941. war broke over the United States. Colonel Winton immediately offered his military services to the United States Army (he was fifty eight), but was politely declined as too old. Rebuffed in that effort, lie threw the full energies and resources of the Amateur Cinema League into war work by the movie medium. During the war years, and operating either through its headquarters <-taff or through its members, the League aided the film programs of the Office of Strategic Services, the Air Warden Service, the American Red Cross and the Office of Inter-American Affairs. In June, 1944, the editor of Movie Makers, Arthur L. Gale, FACL, resigned. Faced with the wartime manpower shortage, Colonel Winton added this responsibility to those of his position as managing director. He was to hold the editorship of the League's magazine until November, 1947. Before that time, however, Colonel Winton was involved — over that year's Memorial Day weekend — in a serious automobile accident. Although the crash left him with no visible disabilities, it proved later to mark the beginning of the end. His health declined slowly during that year, more swiftly during 1948, and death came at the end from cerebral hemorrhage. The man who was to guide the destinies of the Amateur Cinema League for a generation was born on August 22, 1883, in Huntingdon, Ind. His father was Joseph P. Winton, a pioneer newspaper man in Kansas, and the family soon moved to Winfield in that state, and later to Guthrie, Okla. The boy's education was in the public schools of those communities, climaxed by a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Kansas in 1904. For two years following graduation he served variously as reporter and editor on midwestern newspapers. Then, with his enlistment in 1906, came his long years of service in the United States Army. Rising ultimately to the rank of lieutenant colonel, Colonel Winton saw duty at western Army posts, in the Philippine Islands and in France during World War I. He took part in four major offensives, was wounded in action and later received the Purple Heart. His retirement from the Army came in 1921. From that year until 1926 he was a field representative of the National Recreation Association. It was from this work that Mr. Maxim called him to organize the Amateur Cinema League. Those who knew Colonel Winton as an individual, rather than as an executive, will remember a gentleman of courtly charm and graciousness. He had majored in college in the Romance languages, and he spoke both French and Spanish with fluency. His taste in art was catholic and informed, but stopped short of the extreme modernists. He was a member of the Grolier Club, a society of bibliophiles, and a founder of the Hajji Baba Club, a small and select group of Oriental rug collectors. But his real love among the arts was for music. He played a sensitive personal piano, favoring such composers as Richard Strauss, Schubert and the simpler Bach. He was for a decade a devoted member of the Metropolitan Opera Club. It has been remarked by many that Colonel Winton lived out of his era. If such was indeed the case, our era and the entire hobby of amateur motion pictures have been vastly the richer for it. — /. W . M.