Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1920 - Feb 1921)

42 The Observer An understanding of psychology is Are We necessary for the successful theater j p manager. We're a lazy people, for in l^azy . stance, and the theater that does not realize that is throwing away profits. There was a theater in Chicago that was not making enough money to pay its film rental so the owner sold it cheap. The man who bought it turned it from a failure to a success in two weeks. All he did was to cater to the lazy bones in people's bodies. The theater proper was built back of a row of stores, and the entrance from the street was narrow and long. The original owner had his lobby open, and the ticket booth was back at the end of it, fifty feet from the sidewalk. There were also two steps up from the street to the lobby floor. People looked at that long walk to the ticket booth and at the two steps up and went past. Unconsciously they felt that it would be an effort to go into that theater, .so they walked a couple of blocks farther to one where the seats seemed closer to the entrance. The new owner rebuilt the floor, taking, out the steps, and brought the ticket booth up to the sidewalk. Halfway down the lobby he built doors, and there placed the ticket taker. Now you buy your tickeas at the booth on the street, walk only twenty-five feet to the entrance, and pass in. After you get in you walk up two steps and perhaps fifty feet farther to the seats. The show is no better than it was before. The patrons have to walk as far as ever. Yet the theater is filled to capacity now. We're queer folks, and the fellow who. gets our money is the one who knows it, and who caters to our foibles. jy Are we going back to the simple life in motion pictures? Perhaps not for Trend to long, but now there certainly is a trend Simtlicitv tnat waY D. W. Griffith has just unF leashed 'Way Down East." Cecil B. De Mille has put aside the gorgeous gowns and has given us "Something to Think About," Tourneur is making "The Last of the Mohicans," Ince is offering a Charley Rayish story, "Homespun Folks," John Robertson, who made "Jekyll and Hyde," is setting out to do "Sentimental Tommy." Our guess is this : The day of the huge spectacle is done. Producers have gradually 1 earned that to be successful they must please the emotions, not the eye. Many of the most successful pictures of the year have been comparatively cheap pictures, and they have drawn crowds because they made the people think and mad? them feel deeply, or laugh heartily. A picture that can do one of these things is a success. The best producers now are hot on the trail of emotional drama, and emotion travels hand in hand with simplicity. They have learned that emotion doesn't mean a vampire beating a heaving breast. It means a mother and son, a little boy healed, a girl who sacrifices her life for others. We have heard a great deal in the past about "big" scenes, which meant the war stuff in "Hearts of the World" or the Babvlonian scenes in "Intolerance" or the shipwreck in "Male and Female." Those were big for the eye, but the really big scenes are big for the heart, scenes like the boy dropping his crutches in "The Miracle Man" or the mother's farewell to her soldier boy in "Humoresque." "Isn't that just like a boy?" is what they say about Charley Ray, and they'll remember him longer than they will a whole screen crowded with fighting men or dancing women. The trouble is that almost anybody can direct a picture with thousands of people in it, and turn out a fair production, but it takes a genius to set up a camera eight feet from a man and a woman and direct them to do things that will make a nation weep. We Still ^e Observer has been called to task by a college student from Providence, Vote for Rhode Island, for declaring in these the Movies comrnns that the drama had its back to the wall, and that probably the best five screen plays which our readers saw last year were better than the best five which they saw on the stage. Our friend in Providence gives "The Taming of the Shrew," with Sothern and Marlowe, "Mis' Nellv of N'Orleans," with Mrs. Fiske, "Moliere," "One Night in Rome," with Laurette Taylor, and "A Young Man's Fancy," with Jeanne Eagels, as the five best stage productions which he saw, maintaining that they represent the highest art of the legitimate stage to-day. On the screen he saw "Why Change Your Wife?" "The Virgin of Stamboul," "Broken Blossoms," "Male and Female," and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." And he feels that there is no comparison between the first five and the last. We feel that the young man from Providence misunderstood us. His town is near New York, and directly on the road traveled by companies making the jump from the metropolis to other cities. Therefore it sees many of the best stage productions which never reach most cities of the size of Providence, and some which are even much larger. When we said that good movies were supplanting poor stage productions, we referred to the shows which reach the cities farther away from New York, and more off the beaten track, shows which have been on the road for more than one season, and go limping along with a second-rate company supporting the star, if star there be, and scenery battered by many a night in the baggage car. We still believe that those persons whose theatrical fare is a cheap stock company in summer and worn-out Broadway productions in winter will vote for the best movies' every time. The Observer, on looking over the Co)iceniing Pro°f sheets of this issue of Picture ' Play, was very much interested and 1 tiles amused by Agnes Smith's article on the way in which the business offices of the film companies dictate changes in the titles of pictures, and devise names for them which they believe will "pull people in" irrespective of whether or not the names lit the pictures. We presume that this custom of the picture producers will be something which many of our readers never had brought to their attention before. If you disapprove of it, however, don't think for a minute that it wras something which the movie people originated, or for which they are especially to be blamed. In a recently published novel called "The Foolish Lovers," by St. John Irvine, the Irish playwright, there is a character named Cream, a music-hall comedian. While talking with another character, a writer, whom he is trying to persuade to write a music-hall skit for him, Cream expounds every one of the principles which Miss Smith says the movie magnates follow in selecting their titles. All of which goes to show that this title business is based on a pretty sound understanding of psychology,, which was worked out, no doubt, long before the first film was ever shown.