Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

The Gold By O. R. GEYER In the dusk of tlie the Sailor, now flash the equally wonder. The industry has grown to such amazing proportions as to spread far beyond the confining walls of American business. HAVING successfully passed through the various stages of infancy, the American motion picture industry today stands on the threshold of a new epoch, which promises to make an even greater contribution to industrial romance than its mushroom growth of the last decade. During the period of twenty years since its birth, the motion picture has completed its conquest of America, with 15,000 theaters catering to the millions who depend upon the screen for their entertainment. But, unlike Alexander, the industry does not have to waste time in sighing for other conquests. The other worlds are here, ready to be conquered. And the period of conquest already is well begun. Unless all signs fail, the next twenty years will witness a repetition, on a much larger scale, of the 48 sensational rise to prosperity that carried the motion picture into the billion-dollar class of American industries. Just as the old international boundary lines and racial prejudices and alignments were cast aside some six years ago, so has the motion picture cast aside its swaddling clothes and prepared itself for a world existence. The World League of Movies came into being on April 6, 1917. the day America tossed its hat into the ring of the World War. And before the war was half over the screen had won its international spurs, having become universally recognized as the most powerful medium of molding public opinion in the world. For the first time in the history of wars, the great nations of the earth attempted to visualize for their peoples their national and international aims and the reasons for the war. Before they were aware of it, the chancellories of the Allied nations had opened wide the door for the development of a universal, living language — the movies. The manner in which the American-made motion picture acquitted itself in the face of tremendous responsibilities, made it impossible for the country's motion picture art to retire within its own borders and to resume its former position of world aloofness. In fact, almost before the industry's leaders were aware of it, the industry had embarked upon a period of world expansion and development that promises to more than eclipse the wonderful romance of the rise of the motion picture industry to a position as the nation's fifth greatest enterprise. In the days before the World War the exportation of film was a business of more or less puny proportions. Except for those portions of the globe most intimately related to America, the fans in foreign countries enjoyed but a meager acquaintance with the high grade American motion picture. Until three years ago, the South American public was being asked to find entertainment for itself in American pictures worn with age and with the marks of incompetent operators. With very few exceptions the class of American pictures shown in Rio de Janeiro, BaJiia, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago, Valparaiso and other large cities might be classed as junk. Many of those pictures were four or five years old, and had been withdrawn from the American market for several years. The war quickly and unexpectedly opened the door of opportunity for the exporter, and before it was half completed, this business had grown to enormous proportions. In 1919, the foreign business of one of the largest companies had grown to $5,000,000, a 300 per cent increase in three years, which is remarkable when one recalls the hazards of commercial shipments in the days when the submarines were making the world unsafe for commerce, and when ~~* governmental requirements were making ship ping space unobtainable except under the greatest difficulties. This one company shipped more than 50,000,000 feet of film abroad during the war, and not one single foot failed to reach its destination. Italian, French and English producers and exporters were forced by the exigencies of war to suspend business. Four years ago, the South American film market was dominated by the European film interests. This was due to the fact that the South American, because of blood and temperamental ties, preferred to do business with Europe and for the reason that the French and Italian films, in particular, were looked upon as the latest and best visualization of fashions and social usages, matters in which the average South American is keenly interested. Thus the Old World producers were able to get a strangle-hold on the market which it seemed impossible to break.