The Moving picture world (May 1922)

May 13, 1922 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 153 Take This To Your Local Editor and Ask Him To Print It No. 4 Public Opinion By EVELYN'^ CAMPBELL " ; SCANDAL ! For many days this insidious disease that is more deadly than a plague, has rioted over the country in feverish publicity that feeds the scourge even while it pretends to cure. A community has been struck down so swiftly, so mercilessly, that with a thousand tongues it can find no defense for this unwarranted attack. In regard to the motion picture industry, which is occupying the pillory at the present moment, the answer may be found in a psychology so simple that a child can read and understand. The trouble is not in the manager, the actor, the writer or the stage carpenters who labor in this profession; they are as they have always been, just human beings who eat and sleep and wear clothes — even as you. They are in no wise changed by conditions that have cut salaries and brought gray hairs in these troublous financial times. They have borne their share and not complained too much ! Orgies of spending have been inconspicious in the film colony for a long time ! The trouble is not in Hollywood but in the vast army of theatre-goers instead. I think that we may find the answer without going further afield than the theatre itself. Briefly, the public has been cheated — it has cheated itself — and having broken its toy it now condemns the pieces. Humanity in the mass lives a drab existence, and being pretty decent as a rule, has always looked to makebelieve for its thrills. The greatest dramatists are those who are denied by Nature the art of self-expression. The little boy who turns naturally to "cops and robbers" at play, may grow up to be a deacon and a bank president, but behind his gray propriety the scarlet thread of romance survives. Any book seller will tell you that the prim maiden lady buys the thrilliest love stories. And so it goes. Years ago when pictures ran riot with guns and knives and villian and vamp, these were the folk who sat on the edge of their chairs and chewed their fingers. They loved the ingenue and hated the villain and sighed over the hero. We never heard of the follies of Hollywood then. We didn't ask what our favorites did out of hours. We saw them engaged in such human wickedness on the screen that they could be granted a short leave for goodness and home duties between features. In a word, the mania for thrills and horrors and redblooded romance was satisfied. The shadow men and women lived as realities in tlie imagination; the real men and women were permitted the privacy of living earned by long working hours and hard working brains. But moving picture censorship — carried to an extreme — has changed all that. The picture story must be an innocuous thing, denying all human relationship, all human emotion except prescribed by a censored physician; sin and crime are left to the imagination — which brings the problem to its legitimate close. The public is suffering from starved imagination! In the passion for reform it has enclosed itself by prohibition of this and that until in its nightmare it can only see distorted forms. Imagination deprived of outlet becomes self-hpynotic and in this instance the motion picture and its exponent, through a vast contact with untold thousands of uiJcnown personalities, has become the victim of the craze for sensationalism. It is too easy to transfer the scenes tabooed upon the screen to real lives of those identified with the industry. The avidity with which a lurid bit of publicity is seized upon, alone proves this — the vicarious enjoyment of forbidden fruit in which the mind revels while the sanctimonious eye condemns. It reminds one of nothing more than the silly ostrich and the sandpile. Soviet Government Wins Right to Sue in Higher Court Beaten all along the line, so to speak, in its efforts to "tag" on to Jacques Roberto Cibrario the responsibility for dissipating or converting to his own use $1,000,000 entrusted to him as its agent, for procuring for the Soviet Government of Russia, films and projecting, and other necessary apparatus, for use in motion picture propaganda in Russia, the Soviet Government acquired a "breathing spell" when the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, although it has decided against the radical government, gave it permission to appeal to the Court of Appeals, the tribunal of last resort from the decision of the Appellate Division, which held it had no right to sue for relief in our courts, as it has no status since it has not been recognized by our government. Justice McAvoy of the Supreme Court held that the Soviet Government had a right to sue here, but his conclusion was reversed by the Appellate Division, which now gives the Russian Government the right to go to the highest court in the state for an adjudication. American Films Rapidly Lose Prestige in Chili A year ago the proportion of American films to all others exhibited in Santiago, Chili, was ninety-five to five; today it is sixty-five to thirty-five, says a report filed with the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Washington, D. C. This isn't merely due to the high exchange rate but to the improvement of foreign films and their "wider scope." The United States is being undersold, European offerings selling in Santiago for around $400, while American pictures cost the importers around $800. Projectors are almost exclusively of American manufacture, as our manufacturers of the machines easily lead the world. Carbon is imported from this country and Germany. Santiago has twenty-three picture houses, all doing a good business. Prices range from 13 to 33 cents for seats in the pit. Showings of one and occasionally two films occur three times a day. There are only two purely Chilian producers in the field and their product is so far crude. Censor Loses J oh Mayor Cromwell of Kansas City, Mo., recently sought the resignation of Henry Goldman, city film censor, but Mr. Goldman declined to tender a resignation. So on April 27 Mr. Goldman was notified that his $3,000 services would be dispensed with after that date. James J. Larkin succeeds him, despite a movement by the women to have a woman appointed. Goldman had been censor since May, 1918.