Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1919)

CLOSE-UPS EDITORIAL EXPRESSION AND TIMELY COMMENT A Score of Slackers. As these lines are written it is the last week in October, and the motion picture industry in America is doubtfully ornamented by at least a score of slacking leading men who ought to be, and are not, in the service ot the United States. As enlistment is always in a fluid condition, some of the twenty may have listened to their consciences as well as their draft boards by the time you read this. But there seems little prospect of this patriotic consummation. The camouflage that secured them while voluntary enlistments were not only permitted but implored has by now, in all probability, overgrown them like a set of vines. This is not an indictment of the photoplay field as a whole. It is a selective and particular indictment of a certain small number of our genius hero, who love to romp through our projections in immaculate uniforms as much in danger of dirt as a Newport girl's bathing suit is in danger of water. As a whole, the industry has mad a genuine American response; the sons of its magnates are privates or seamen; more than one of its inconspicuous lads has won the cross of war; several of the best (( character men of the business have been in a long, long time; some of the girls are yeomen of the Navy or are in the Red Cross. In the group of leading men referred to there is no man above thirty-five years of age. A dozen or so, under thirty-five, must be omitted for very real dependencies, or, in two instances, for conspicuous service in their respective civil stations. How small, in comparison, is that other list of principal actors, the list of service that contains the names of Forman, Warwick, Pallette, Harlan, Lloyd, Kerry, Oakman, Pickford, Vernon, Lytell And the gold star for Rankin Drew, who died in the air in France. % The Passing Every human advance discomLecturer. modes the few for the conven ience of the many. One of the safe, dignified and entirely worthy human institutions of the last generation was the lecturer. He put a fillip in education, decoded the great cryptogram of history, widened the narrow horizon and provided a caffeineless substitute for the suspiciously stimulating theatre. Altogether, he was a sure though mild tonic with positively no narcotic reaction. Yet the iconoclastic movie has finished this harmless, altruistic gentleman as remorselessly as Thanksgiving finishes the turkey. The relation o( the lecturer and the Bcreen is that ot the stage-coach and the Pullman. Where one sufficed the other has fulfilled beyond expectation, and then has anticipated. The public lecturer today is nearly as extinct as the buffalo, save where the shrewdest of his kind have become the camera's orderly or staff officers. m, «' Such Is A young Western leading man <A Fame. considerable screen prominence was convinced that Griffith had nothing on him as a national acquaintance. Last month he came to New York, was flatteringly received by the trade, and decided — since he had army inclinations — to study French. One of the international beauties of the metropolis was mentioned as a teacher both efficient and interesting! Scorning introductions, the youth addressed her, straight off, in the lounge of a great cafe. He told his linguistic ambition, and she said that she would be delighted to instruct him. They made an appointment. "Is it necessary," he murmured as they parted, "to give you my name?" "Certainly not!" she answered, cheerily. 'You're Mr. Carl Laemmle." The Undiscovered Country. There is such a thing, even in photoplays. This country covers fourfifths of the world's surface. It is the sea. With our grand return to marine supremacy we are not going to become, we are now, a seafaring nation. No land or time possesses the mystery, the romance, the unbridled action of the vast reaches of the ocean. Every folk except the Russians have spread the splendors of their ultimate imaginations upon the water. At the moment, the negotiation of marine locations is practically impossible, but it is hard to understand why our peace-time search for pictorial sensations, which led us out upon the plains, down into the cities, up upon the mountains and back into forgotten wars reached out to the winds and tides so seldom. The motion picture author has fooled a good deal with tiresome fishing-village types that perhaps never existed outside some old-fashioned romancer's imagination, but he has seldom gone beyond the three-mile limit into the trade-winds of deep water imagination. In time of war, prepare for peace. The tale of the plains is about spun. Let us make ready to visualize the everlasting chanties to dramatize the eternal broncho-busters of the deep.