Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1919)

0/ the .\c't(' Pictures The Shad ow LA>r month this depart mciu .iiiiiin.iiui-<i n> annual review of the years accomplishments in acting ami phptoplaymakinp. the same to be spread out in the particular pages at which you are now looking. Ami then this thought stalked across our critical right-of-way: photoplays, like the dramas of the theatre, are not made for critics, but for the public. Therefore, why not give the public at least an occasional expression of its own feelings? The pubUc should not always be told; sometimes it should tell. Photopi^w Magazine is particularly able to be the typographical phonograph of the people. Its keen international ear is its questions and answers department, which, to change the metaphor, is the steadiest and most reliable finger on the pulse of the photoplay public to-day. It receives, and answers, many thousands of letters each month, and ever\' one of them is about the picture acting business. The people who write these letters seldom ask a question without expressing an opinion, and almost ever> writer of a letter is a confirmed patron of the mo\ies — the real "fan," who sustains the motor of the star, the office of the manufacturer and the e.vpense account of the press-agent. These opinions are swayed neither by friendship nor financial interest : they are honest statements of Hkes and dislikes, and the vers' fact that the writers are not professional lileran. camouileurs, habituated to overgrowing their real sentiments with a mass of verbal i\y. makes the expressions blunt, often cruel, and always unmistakable. We have tabulated the favor or disfavor shown in more than one hundred thousand comnTunications received from every quarter of the world. The great majority, of course, are from the United States — ever>' state b adequately represented. The second larcest number comes from Aa=tralia and adjacent English-speaking islands. Third in order is that hustler of the Orient. Japan. England is well represented: the continent, and South America, trail a long way behind. The first thine one realizes, in consulting this massed opinion, is that the producers are right when the> say that the people, not the manufacturer nor the exhibitor, nor i^e re\'iewer, created and maintain the star system. The / I HIS is {he year's JL verdict of the American audience. Here the "fan," the real power behind the stars throne, speaks for the first time! ■ TKc Pinnacle is a tale of the Austrian Tyrol, written, fcc narioized, directed and and acted in by Eric von Stroheim. the villainous young Teuton who first won rcco(<nition in "Hearts of the World. ■ public is a keen student of acting, after its own preferences, and a merciless hammer upon what it does not like, but it seldom takes thf trouble to review a picture, and then applaud its favorite; it always applauds its favorite, and sometimes mentions the picture. It bases its judgment, too, not upon one picture, but upon a long scries. It seems to judge no man. or woman, by a single exhibition, and in that, of course, it shows unconscious good judgment. Only where the persons of its dearest loves are concerned does it zealously, and jealously, inspect every one of the scenarios which surround them. It resents bad support more than a bad play, in single instances, but it will not accept a series of bad plays, or plays which are not to its taste. One can arrive at more definite conclusions concerning the men of the profession than the women, because the majority of letters are written by women, and they are more outspoken, in likes and <lislikes, than their occasional letter-writing brothers. Nevertheless, enoueh men write letters, and enoueh women talk about the stage women in their letters, to arrive at a pretty keen valuation of the acting essences of the twelvemonth in both sexes. The men of Australia and England are