Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1920 - Feb 1921)

Where Do They Get Those Titles? show who used to promise: "Myhra, that strange woman from the Orient. See her dance ! See her dance !" This business of naming a picture is not an easy one. R. H. Cochrane of the Universal Company once told me that half of the success of a picture lies in its name. This was at a time when Universal was presenting such alluring productions as "Idle Wives" and "Where Are My Children?" If you hit upon a title that raises a question or suggests a problem, Mr. Cochrane said, the theatergoing public is going to pay money at the box office to see the solution presented on the screen. And so, naming a picture is an art in itself. When you write a book, you give it a title that fits the story. When you write a play, you give it a name that suggests its theme — unless you write a musical comedy or an Al H. Woods farce. But when you write a scenario, you let some one pick a name that will look well in electric lights. Preferably he will select a name that will attract an optimistic class of persons who search vainly for the forbidden and the spicy. As the sales manager of our sketch pointed out, there is nothing that looks so well in a title as the word "love." The best asset of a film's name is some word or phrase that suggests sex conflict. We do not mean that the name need suggest immorality. It need only hint at a romance or a love tangle. Of course, comedies may have any title that is breezy, slangy, and easy to remember. But for the dramatic story, nothing else is so useful as a name that carries a sex lure. Some of the poor, hard-working words that have been billpostered all over the country are: "woman," "sin," "temptation," "virtue," and "marriage." Perhaps you have noticed that titles have a way of running in series. If a picture makes a success, the words of its title are jumbled into all sorts of combinations. And the titles are so much alike, that very likely you have paused in front of the theater and wondered if you had seen that particular film before. After "Broken Blossoms," we waited eagerly for some one to come along with a "Busted Buds." And we suppose that it is only a question of time until Gloria Swanson comes out in a de luxe special called "Why Change Your Clothes?" Cecil B. De Mille produced "Old Wives For New." Now we Theproducers who catch the quarters of the guileless public continue to play up the world, the flesh, and the devil. J/ If motion pictures really did what they pretend to the movie theater would be no place to take pa, ma, and the girls. have "Why Change Your Husband ?" and "Why Change Your Wife?" The marriage service is on his mind, for he reverted to it again in "For Better, For Worse." Mr. De Mille is the Beatrice Fairfax of the motion-picture world. Then in another series we have "Should a Woman Tell?" "Should a Wife Forgive?" and "Would You Forgive?" Also, to swing around the family circle, there are "Sins of the Mother" and "Sins of the Father" ; and there are "Where Are My Children?" and "Children Not Wanted." Virtue comes into its own with a vengeance in "Virtuous Wives," "Virtuous Men," "The Virtuous Vamp," and "The Virtuous Model." If motion pictures really dwelt at length upon the subjects suggested by their titles, if they told as much about marriage, divorce, temptation, and sin as they promise, if they really solved the problems of love as they say, then the movie theater would be no place to take pa, ma, and the girls on a Saturday night. But the amusing part of it is that there is so little French frankness and so little Anglo-Saxon ribaldry on the screen. Can you imagine telling much about love when some State censors limit the length of a kiss to three feet of impassioned celluloid? Can you see much chance of giving the life history of a vampire when the censors make cuts such as : "Eliminate scene of girl smoking cigarette." If the picture called "Romany, Where Love Runs Wild" really showed love running wild, the censors would leave just about enough of it to insert in a news weekly. The producer who tries to suggest something alluring in his title does it for two reasons : first, in order to sell to the exhibitor and the public an otherwise ordinary production ; second, in order to give out the impression that he is a serious and thinking man, not afraid to look the facts of life in the face. And so seventeen-year-old Tommy wanders down Main Street looking for life and divilment and sees a theater that is showing a picture called "A Girl Astray" or "Ruined Lives." Whereupon he goes in and sees a Harry-andLucy story that could be told in any Sunday school. Still hopeful, he is attracted by other dashing titles. By the time he is eighteen, he has lost his faith in the power of advertising and gone back to Charlie Chaplin. Continued on page 76