Motion Picture News (Jan - Mar 1914)

3o THE MOTION The Motion Picture News MOVING PICTURE NEWS EXHIBITORS' TIMES Published Every Week by EXHIBITORS' TIMES, Inc. 220 West 42nd Street, New York City Telephone Bryant 7650 Chicago Office 604 Schiller Building WM. A. JOHNSTON President HENRY F. SEWALL Vice-President E. KENDALL GILLETT Secretary WENTWORTH TUCKER Treasurer This publieatien is owned and published by Exhibitors' Times, incorporated under the laws of the State of New York. The offices and principal place of business are at 220 West 42nd Street, New York City. The address of the o/ficers is the office of the publication. Entered as Second-Class matter at the New York Post-Oflice. Subscription $2.00 per year, postpaid in the United States, Mexico, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. Canada and Foreign IS. 60 per year. ADVERTISING RATES on application Copy for next issue must reach us by Wednesday 11 a. m. Cuts and copy are received subject to the approval of the publishers and advertisements are inserted absolutely without condition expressed or implied as to what appears in the text portion of the papery Vol. IX January 17, 1914 No. 2 THE VICE PICTURE T HERE are two ways to approach the subject of the so-called "White Slave" film. One is from the standpoint of public morals ; the other has to do with the welfare of the motion picture. This publication, being a trade journal, is primarily occupied with the latter, and with the former only as it concerns the latter. As to the controversy over public morals and whether the portrayal of vice conditions will help or hurt them, it is doubtful if a satisfactory conclusion will ever be reached. The discussion has been going on at spasmodic intervals for several centuries, ever since plays and books were invented, in fact. We will gladly leave the present interval to the newspapers and magazines —to some newspapers and some magazines. A great many of our leading popular periodicals portray vice with a flagrance or sinister suggestiveness such as the stage never dared to employ. I'm the welfare of the picture. There is an analogy right before us. Jusl recently in New York two plays, "The Fight" and "The Lure," made tremendous hits in the way of box-office receipts; the more so after the publicity that followed their closing by the police. At every performance, afternoon and evening, waiting lines, half a block long, beseiged tin box office. Most of PICTURE NEWS those in line were said to be women, especially young women, of the leisure class. Finally the theatre came to terms with the authorities and expurgated the objectionable scenes. Immediately the waiting lines dissolved and shortly afterward the two shows died. Why? The answer is too obvious to discuss. Let us stick to the business aspects of the situation, and its relation to the portrayal of vice through motion pictures. * * * HpHESE two shows were business failures — in ■* themselves ; and they did not add greatly to the reputation with the public of the producers. But the stage, it must be remembered, is an old, well-established institution. Risks can be taken and mistakes survived. Xot so with motion pictures. They were only inaugurated in the amusement field a few years ago, and then were decidedly not all they might have been. To-day a great advance has been scored. Thousands and thousands of people who only yesterday called them "movies" in a derogatory way are regular patrons now because of the pictures' superior merit, and for their remarkable artistic and educational achievements. Is it wise — especially right now — to have the bigger and better public question the character and field of the motion picture? Another point : here in New York we lose easily our perspective of the country at large. Will the smaller insular cities and towns, with their rigorous provincial tastes, their firm home ties and ideals, permit the flagrant vice picture to be shown? The decided probability is that they will not. But if so, will the exhibition of such pictures increase thereafter the attendance of children and mothers at the local theatres? >! '■£ * np 1 IE two vice plays in New York boasted the only ■■■ waiting lines seen this season; but they lasted less than a month. And all during and even since their sky-rocket existence many other plays continued to draw crowded houses. Apparently the steady crowds, the sustained and accumulative patronage, are drawn, not by sensational vice appeal, but rather by clever photography realistic staging, finished acting and by a strong appeal to those deep or light human emotions that make up for the hulk of the population the greater parts of their interesting daily lives. It is the making of the motion picture along these very same lines that has scored its present great success. Is it wise to turn back? Vice plays, pictures, books, stories come and go; and except they be deadly dull they will have a big, transient appeal. No doubt at all about it. But — frankly, gentlemen — do they pay in the long run? Will they pay you who expect to continue to make pictures, or the man you look to to exhibit them?