The Moving picture world (November 1921)

532 MOVING PICTURE WORLD December 3, 1921 'MOVING PICTURE Published weekly by the Chalmera Publishing Company, 516 Fifth Avenue, New York (Telephone: Murray Hill 1610-13). Subscription Price: United States and its possessions, Mexico and Cuba, ii a year; Canada, $3.50 a year; foreign countries (postpaid), $5 a year. Copyright, 1921, by Chalmers Publishing Company. Copyright throughout Great Britain and Colon!., under the provision of the Copyright A.-t of 1911. (All rights reserved.) President, J. P. Chalmers, Sr.; Vice-President and General Manager, J. F. Chalmers; Secretary and Treasurer, E. J. Chalmers; Editor-in-Chief, Arthur James; Advertising Manager, Wendell P. Milligan. Address all correspondence to the company. The offica of the company is the address of the officers. Chicago Office: Suite 1420 Steger Building, 28 East Jackson Boulevard; Paul C. Uinz, Manager. Los Angeles Office: 610-611 Wright 4 Callender Building (Telephone: Broadway 4649). A. H. Giebler, Manager. Cine-Mundial, an original Spanish magazine, covering the motion picture field in Latin-America, is published at 516 Fifth Avenue, by the Chalmers Publishing Company. Yearly subscriptions, $1 Advertising rales on application. Member Audit Bureau of Circulations. Member, National Publishers Association. This publication is dedicated to the service of the moving picture industry in all of its elements. Its foundation is character, its watchword is enterprise, its aim is betterment. GEORGE RANDOLPH CHESTER, an important man in the world of letters, sets a wholesome example in his announcement of his present and future picture policy. He says: "I have never written an unclean line nor put an unclean thought into a picture and I never propose to." There have been fiction writers of great reputation whose success began with the introduction of polite smut into their stories. Magazines builded their circulations high on sale of their sordid wares. Chester has proved that smut is not essential to novel writing and he carries his cleanliness into his screen activities. We congratulate the screen on Chester and Chester's principles. They are at home in this industry. Censorship is stupid in all countries and our good northern sister, Canada, is suffering as much as we are under it. In this issue there is published an account from the Province of Quebec which presents a case in point. "The Birth of a Nation" was passed by the censors there and because of its popularity an additional print was required. This was duly submitted for license as a matter of form but the board of censors promptly forbade its showing. It was, apparently, all right to show one print but two prints were wrong. The copies of the picture were identical. The Montreal Star in a scathing and justified treatment of the situation shows the real spirit of Canada. It is pointed out that the three members in Quebec are a former French Count, a coal dealer and a woman. We assume that the woman was placed on the* board to give it tone and distinction. Of all the vagaries of the censors this is possibly as amusing and as distressing as any. Henry Ford's newspaper has discovered that there are three distinct branches of the moving picture industry, namely : the Production, Distribution and Exhibition branches. Later it will discover that we use a screen and projection machines 'n' everything. It discovers also that Famous PlayersLasky is the biggest individual theatre owner. The only fault to find with this discovery is that it isn't so. No less a man than Charles H. Sabin, head of the board of directors of the Guaranty Trust Company, the largest in stitution of its kind in the world, has made public the result fti his careful investigation of conditions in the business and industrial life of the United States and he reports that we are fast returning to a normal status, with business on the rebound from its post war depression. This is good news from a source that really is authoritative. Our own business shows signs everywhere of a full speed ahead program and every indication of a pre-war prosperity. We believe the year in which we are now entered will surprise the pessimists and put to flight the gloom brewers of the industry. The public is responding more and more to good pictures and there never were so many very good pictures as now. The political disturbances of the business grow less and less important and we are in a phase of a decline of interest in the hue and cry. Oratory and sensation are of such fleeting import that the substantial showmen are attending to their own businesses, realizing that though politics in our business has its allure and its fascinations it is neither nourishing nor sound and it is a great waster of time. All along the line the normal men are refusing to be inflamed by half truths and demagogic speeches by hired orators. Thev have work to do and thev are doing it. Harold Lloyd Puts it Over THE Sailor Made Man is the name of it and Harold Lloyd is the star of it. Lloyd and the rest of it are continuous fun, well presented, most amusing and a thorough, complete and satisfying entertainment. In all the screen's efforts toward comedy there are only a limited few offerings which can be classed as all funny. Mr. Chaplin's recent offerings are of this grade and the Sailor Made Man is also. The action is on land and sea and the mysterious Orient — somewhere in it — is used as a background for much drollery. The picture is expensively made and it looks it. It has warships and yachts and palaces and one well equipped harem, together with native villages and villagers around and through which the action revolves, catapults and somersaults its way on waves of laughter. Having seen this Associated Exhibitors offering during Thanksgiving week we found added reason for being thankful. The attention of exhibitors is especially directed to this picture as a box office number that can be cashed in upon heavily. ARTHUR JAMES.