Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

What the Motion Pictures Mean to Me Winners of First Photoplay Magazine Letter Contest. I How Would You Run a Motion Picture Theater ? This is the subject for Photoplay Magazine's Third Letter Contest WHAT sort of a motion picture theater?" you will ask, no doubt, when you read this question. And you ing it. are justified in ask F a person thinks of suicide and first goes to a motion picture, he changes his mind. And I ought to know — I've tried it." That is the gist of one among the thousands of letters received in response to our question: "What Moving Pictures Mean to Me." They came from Alaska, from Mexico, from California, from Newfoundland; but whether the writer was from "a drab little Western town of less : than 6,000," or the largest city, the one dominant note sounding above the chorus of these thousands of film devotees is — lone.iness. It eats into the heart of the man in the backwoods of Kentucky as it wears down the spirit of the young waitress who retires to her hall bedroom only "to look out upon a dirty alley where garbage cans stand in the muddy yards of tumble-down shacks." But those who "feel the world is about to crumble about you, and everything is blueblue-blue" are not the only ones to whom the pictures mean more than they are capable of expressing in words. There are the patients in the tubercular sanitoriums, in the deaf asylums and in the hospitals for the hopelessly crippled to whom a picture, shown once a week, is all the pleasure and connection with the outside world they have. One patient from a tube'-cular sanitorium writes : "Once a week the patients gather in the assembly hall and are treated to a moving picture. A sufferer is natura'ly downcast and glum, but these weekly pictures give him a new lease on life and before sleep comes to give him peace, he thinks: 'If the hero on the screen can make such a fight and win out — why can't I?'" Thousands of women are le^t alone for weeks while their husbands are touring the country and to them the evenings are long and lonesome. Theaters are prohibitive in price for the average mother of a family, but the motion picture saves her day and gives her the company and courage to wait through the long months. To the young and lonelv worker who comes to the larger cities friendless and, figuratively sneaking, homeless, there is only the photoplay to fill these two great wants. 78 Dreams become realities and the happy face of the Prince of Wales nods from the screen and gives the impression that he is glad to know you. Sometimes friends fail and you "feel yourself slipping down, down, down — to you don't care where, and you go into a moving picture theater mostly because it is dark and the dark is in tune with your spirits," then — presto! — the happy smile of Charlie Chaplin is directed straight at you and good-by blues; before your eyes is a friend who has not failed you, one who has entered your heart and to whom you can always turn and be sure that he'll be waiting for you with the same humorously pathetic antics and the same old smile, which, even across the span of years, knows no location or longitude. Oh, it is almost worth being downhearted and lonesome to find "the best friend you ever had, except your mother." There are so many sorts of picture theaters — The magnificent down-town palace with its gorgeous stage effects, its symphony orchestra; The less pretentious, more friendly neighborhood house; The small town "show" which is open, perhaps, two or three times a week. Each type of picture theater fills a distinct need. There is an ideal way in which each one of them may be conducted. Run over in your mind the picture theaters you have known. Some of them have been small, almost shabby, perhaps — and yet, and yet. What was it about them that made them the choice of every one who lived near? Others have been fitted out with every known success-making device that money could buy — and yet they have been unsuccessful. Every one who enjoys motion pictures has said, no doubt, at some time or other, "I should like to run a motion picture theater." What sort of a motion picture theater would you like to manage, and what would you do with one if you had it on your hands? PHOTOPLAY WILL PAY FOR YOUR IDEAS of the most attractive, useful and effective way of running a picture theater: $25 for the best letter, ,$15 for the second best letter; and $10 for the three next best letters of not over 300 words telling how you would play manager. All letters, addressed to Letter Contest Editor Photoplay Macvzine, 25 West 4Sth Street, New York, must be in by July I, 1020. From an "Old Maid" Who Loves Mankind First Prize I COULD never in the allotted three hundred words give full justice to "What the Motion Pictures Mean to Me," but I can give a few very concrete facts. I am an old maid, as you might say, full of experiences and possessor of a flood of tender memories, associated with a college, surrounded by the acme of literature and ideals, leader of a group of adolescents — in full bloom of life, friend to the good and the wicked, and a fa'thful _ devotee of the motion ' pictures. And in every branch of my life, the motion pictures are my most advising and understanding he'per. In the first place, they help me to forget my age (not so easy a thing to do) by letting me live the yesterdays over again; in my college association they intensify my capacity, for human sympathy and understanding; in my world of literature, they reveal many hidden truths, and they strengthen my ideals; in my leadership of the young they give me power, and stimulate my love of youth and romance. Besides this, motion pictures are a tonic for keeping afire (Continued on page 100)