Photoplay (Feb - Jun 1921)

-•-%_•, '2/ >IS^Si^feJ: '^_ '-v^Sa CLOSE-UPS Editorial Expression and Timely Comment % Stimulating Good Music. Since many of the picture theaters have introduced classical music as part of the program, a surprising change has developed in the taste for better music. Time was not long ago when the tired business man would have fought ' like a naughty child before allowing his wife to drag him to a symphony concert. Now he sits through the Beetho\en Fifth silently reverent and applauds from sheer enjoyment at the end. Instead of the music having helped the picture it is the good film which has created the desire to hear finer music. The audiences at the symphony concerts are composed of one third who feel they must attend the concerts because it is part of the social duties; one third for the musical education they gain; and a small third because they truly enjoy classical music and get that indefinite something from hearing it which helps one forget the commonplace of life and lifts one for the moment into the realms of better and higher emotions. In the picture theaters the spontaneous burst of applause at the end of a selection proves unanimous and thorough enjoyment for the music and all it means to the listener. When a large audience, after laughing for fifteen minutes at an animated cartoon, quickly changes its attention to a Salvic interlude and follows it with the compliment of silence, it is a sure sign of appreciation. Many patrons of picture theaters can now speak intelligently when they hear classical selections rendered indifferently and to hear the workingman in the balcony tell you "that guy's a murderin' that piece" — when the piece was a Wagnerian Overture — is encouraging for the growth of the popularity of classical music in America. The Geography A teacher sent down from „i or Atlanta to certain rural ^-^ass* districts in Georgia found dense ignorance. The parents were more uninformed than the children, and the latter, in fact, owed any know ledge of the outside world to an occasional picture show, presenting decrepit but none the less real scenes of other peoples and other climes. The pedagogue, as a first enlightenment, sought to stir his young people's curiosity by telling them of foreign count lies, and about the rest of their own nation. He did this by taking up each section, and describing its specialties and products — by telling what strange and distant lands had contributed to the rest o( the world perhaps, even, sending many of their distinctive products into this particular wilder ness.. Thus, he vividly described the gold of California — the metallic gold which was the •omance and tragedy of 49: and the new gold, w hich is fruit and oil and produce. The school committee came. The teacher lined up his brightest, and put them creditably through their memory paces. "Now, for what" — he asked, presently — "is California noted?" 'Makin' movies!" came as one shout from the screen-loving class. The Hamlets But one cannot, as in the case A 0 . of the Campbells of Scotch Are Coming. ,yric fame fo]low that state_ ment with the old song's "Hurrah! Hurrah!" Hamlet is too difficult a matter, and the actors too uncertain. To be or not to be Hamlet, that is the question, and the answer in actual representation is usually a negative. There have been very few men in dramatic history who sufficiently comprehend the strange melancholy of Shakespeare's profoundest character to give a really great impersonation. Of this small but precious company an American, Edwin Booth, is probably foremost. Since the death of Booth no really consummate performance has been seen upon the native boards. But as "Hamlet" is the Mecca of the serious stage actor, toward which he moves at some portion of his career, it is only natural that the screen, newly ambitious to invade every corner of the dramatic field, should in turn produce its own galaxies of Danish royalty, parading or haunting a vaster Elsinore than was ever built behind a proscenium. No less than three "Hamlets" are said to impend, or stand in planning for the future. The first two are, or are about to be. made. One will come from the tremendously active German film field, and w ill present a woman in the title role — Asta Neilsen. This, of course, will not be the first time a woman has essayed the Prince of Denmark. The second production will come from the house of Rodolphi, in Italy, The third is very much in the future. but it is most interesting of all, for the production is a Famous-Lasky possibility, with John Barrymore as the centerpiece. Not as a matter of local patriotism, but judging artistically on past performance, wc believe that John Barrymore combines those assets of voice and intellect, figure and youth, experience and temperament, which will make him the preeminent Hamlet of our day, and one of the greatest of all time. He is to do Hamlet on the stage next year, and the film version will probably be a co-incidental release. e CL{ ?y •M