Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1919)

76 Photoplay Magazine a keener audience-conscience in this country. Those districts that are apathetically satisfied with trash will continue to get trash, however altruistic the new system may be. That's the law of supply and demand. Frank. Tinner's In the recent all-star "GamJ-Jope ^°'" "^ ^^^ Lambs in New ' York — this celebrated profes sional club makes merry with a public frolic ih May or June of each year — Mr. Willie Collier and Mr. Frank Tinney could not refrain from a comment on the characteristic "art" of Miss Bara. Mr. Collier: "Who is your favorite movie actress?" Mr. Tinney: "I never had such a favorite as Theda Bara. She always saves her honor." Mr. Collier: "She certainly does, Frank. She's a wonderful actress." Mr. Tinney: "I've seen her twenty -seven times now, and she's saved her honor every time so far." Mr. Collier: "She always just does save it so far." Mr. Tinney: "I'm going to keep right on going to see her." Hints for The professional reformer — the Reformers. ^^^ ^^'^ hitched his wagon to the great national revulsion against alcohol because it gave him a job, a chance to rebuild his neighbors according to his own blue-prints — need not be out of a job just because the saloon is one with Nineveh and Potsdam. The infernal cigarette and that more respectably-clad iniquity, the cigar, are of course on his list for early attention. We suggest tliat he add tea and coffee, insidious stimulants, immediately. Next he can take up the waste of time. Motion pictures waste time dreadfully; further, the lighter subjects of picturedom incline to frivolity, and one should not view life as a frivolmatter. Baseball is a waste of the precious hours of men right in the prime of their business careers. Recesses ought to be abolished at school because school hours are short enough at best. Vacations are absurd, because they are not productive of anything except sunburn and large appetites. Music has probably caused many a promising citizen to idle away his capital years — out with it. Shaving is a sin because it is a perversion of nature — if Nature intended men to be naturally a la Gillette why didn't she make them that way? Reading, except in proper texts for mental improvement, is an extravagant and dissolute habit; further, novels should be prohibited by law because, being fiction, they may set people to telling lies. These are only a tew early hints to practical, persistent professionals. If the reformers will correct the world thus far, this bureau of .sug gestion will meanwhile be at work on other suggestions for mundane improvement. We ask no fee — only credit. Militarism Not There is a most extraordinary Wanted. reaction everywhere against the "war story." This has extended even to the dramatic stories of the Civil War, some of them masterpieces of drama, fiction and production. The public, assert the exhibitors, simply does not want to see a uniform. All of which is a hopeful sign, and a natural one, rather than the expression of any possible ingratitude to our heroic young men — and young women, too — who went across so recently to fight and serve and save. The Anglo-Saxon peoples are not only conscious expressors of sentiments against militarism, and the symbols of militarism, but strongly show the same feelings in their unconscious, instinctive selections of amusement and recreation. We had a mighty task before u^ in the subjugation of military anarchy, and, to fight fire with its own elements, we assumed the military guise in a tremendous and awe-inspiring way. The job is done, and in our discard of even the trappings and the suits of swordly power we are not only getting back to peace, but to the ways of peace, and the ways of ordinary life and labor. % Needed: A Let us quote from a pamphlet Film Library, prepared by the Social Centers committee of The People's Institute, of New York City: "There is more need for a public library of films than there ever was for a public library of books, and for the following reasons: the book is an individual property; it can be read in solitude; the individual can purchase it if he wants it. But the motion picture is essentially a collective commodity. The individual can have a desired motion picture only on condition that a large number of other people want the same picture at the same time. This fact makes it peculiarly out of the question to leave motion pictures entirely to the exploitation of unlimited commercialism. "The public film library, dealing with a sufficiently large number of schools, churches and other agencies, would be able to draw on the world's supply for whatever film it wanted, and to ransack the film output of the last ten years." It may be said that such a library has already been established, for historical purposes, by Edgar R. Harlan, curator of the State Historical Department of Iowa. So many institutions are now writing the New York Library to ask about films of civic interest that for the purposes of this study the Municipal Reference Library has collected much data of this sort, which it is gladly sharing with city officials, civic organizations and municipal reference libraries in other cities.