The Moving picture world (November 1921)

December 24, 1921 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 883 Wid Gunning has made more money for Producers than any other individual Icmttt 9l nl Bnwd Third At* .... MIT Washington Ave. . 'CI ThtM«-nih > * HERE isn't a man in a studio who won't agree with that statement. There isn't a man who ever burned his eyes under the studio glare or labored thirty-six hours in a cutting room for the glorification of some "Vice-President and General Manager" who won't echo that statement. We used to think Wid was crazy in the early days. Pictures weren't made, we thought. They were just thrown together and every once in a while you accidentally got a good one. Then Wid Gunning began to talk about — THE DIRECTOR. Some have talked of— THE PRODUCER. What Wid has always meant was — THE CREATOR. But whatever the title — Wid Gunning fought for the man whose genius was responsible for the creation of better motion pictures. Wid told us there was no financial reward* that could overpay the man big enough to create. Wid told us that the industry's future depended upon its creators. Wid told us that the day would come when the "captains of industry" who bore our grandiloquent titles would pursue the creator. We laughed at Wid Gunning — in the days when directors received one hundred and fifty dollars a week. We laughed at Wid Gunning — in the days when directors began to get three hundred and fifty dollars a week. We laughed at Wid Gunning — and then stopped laughing, when we found that seven hundred and fifty and a thousand dollars a week for a director was only a salary, and that no salary could properly reward the creator, whose genius, art, experience and enthusiasm created the goods we have to sell — the motion picture. And today — Exhibitors don't have to be told what it means to them to see a distributing organization that fosters and inspires the highest of creative ideals, the cleanest and most efficient of business methods, the best of exploitation brains.