Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1919)

CLOSE UPS EDITORIAL EXPRESSION AND T I M E LV COMMENT The Empire There is i.>nc thini: which the of Alexander, niotion picture business does not share in common with other businesses of equal magnitude: organization. By this we do not mean superficial orjjaniration, such as mere departnicnral erticiency. ot which there is more, or less, in the motii^n picture business, as the various motion picture exc\:utives are slack or efficient in their own office characters. \X'e do mean the lasting, fundamental ori:ani:ation which has made American steel, American banking, American oil, great world powers. The pioneers of American business thought, in their hardy day, only of their own person al fortunes, or com fortable accretions for their families to quarrel over. But as the Twentieth Century succeeded the Nineteenth, a change came over the face of really Big Business: it ceased to become individual, and became institutional. All of w-hich was in accord with the great world movements in property, in finance, in production and labor whose fullest reactions— profounder and more enduring than any effects of the Great War — are only now flowing to and fro, in tidal fashion, throughout the world. In becoming institutional these great organizations, so far, the supreme achievement of America became permanent; they transcended the life of any one man or any set of men. Thus, the death of Andrew Carnegie produced no ripple in iron, though he was the greatest iron-master who ever lived. He had long since removed himself from practical participation in its affairs, it is true, but whether he had or had not, iron would have become an institution anyway. The death of John D. Rockefeller would mean nothing to Standard Oil in any outward way. It might be argued, of course, that the manufacture of photoplays is primarily an art, with Social Expenses CRITICS and audiences have spoken often of the grave-gay humanities which are shot through and through a certain well-known young filmmaster's productions. "Micky Neilan touches" they call them, and doubtless Mr. Neilan was pleased each time he heard or read this intriguing phrase, until Neilan was making a picture, not long ago, for a film producer whose ambitions bade fair to outrun his cash. And then, one morning, the producer arrived on the lot to see a splendid ball-room set rising. It covered a great space, and there was much ornate furniture. "That isn't in the script," murmured the producer, with dismay. "I know it isn't," said Mickey, "but it was in the original strtry, and I restored it because it belongs here. Tomorrow I'm going to have four hundred extras on that scene." "Oh, Mickey!" implored the producer, in a timid panic; "couldn't you took that out, and put instead in some 'Mickey Neilan touches.'* " the trade features always sect)ndary; to which we may answer that in the present enormous scope and universal use of the motion picture, business and art are about fifty-fifty. Institutionalizing a great enterprise does nor mean the efiacenient of the personal toucii, the rubbing out of individuality, and the substitution of a mere dull soviet, inanimate mass-control. Instead, it means the finest and highest kind of individual organization — an organization which bears in itself the power of perpetuity, and which hands down to the youthful enterprise of another generation the genius of the time. There are two or three great motion picture manufacturing concerns in the United States which might well become institutions. One of these represents the Morganlike genius of one man; another is the fabric of three men; still another is the determined expression of one man, plus a corporation with whom he is generally in some dispute. As they are, these things are like the empire of Alexander — colossal fabrics which, doubtless, would not survive the decease of their makers, though the one thing which will advance the art of the picture, and give its creators the leisure that real art always needs, is solid and enduring business organization behind the line. This is not a suggestion that our picture masters weave their cocoons and die; it is a hope that through them some permanence and stability may come to the baby industry they have served and honored. You Can' I Please In China they read from Everubodu. r'Kht to left, eat birds' nests and throw away the eggs, and generally reverse the procedure of the advanced or backward (according to one's viewpoint > Occident. ^ u