Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1921)

IN THE MOVIES? probably a trustworthy and placid things on the screen, don't tell any and also something about what is motion pictures. ILLUSTRATED BY LUI TRUGO Romance is demanded by the distracted housewife who never has time to call her husband by a pet name. The ingenues of the rural districts like depictions of the perils of the city, while the city flappers like a simple tale best. "Bunty Pulls the Strings," is said to have gone begging outside of the big cities, and "While New York Sleeps" was a veritable knock-out. Romance is the particular field of the suburban housewife, whose days are devoted to getting children to school on time, and husbands through breakfast and off to the city on the early train. The mere introduction of anything so crudely utilitarian as a broom, a mop, or a dustpan completely ruins a picture for her. Statisticians, chemists, and other workers with facts, like movies that are highly improbable. Historical plays that disregard history, heroines that disregard convention, and plots that, like the Mack Sennett animals run all over the place — suit their taste. In the interests of this article I should have questioned a few crooks, but I couldn't get any one to admit that he came under that classification. I can, however, quote a murderer who was serving a life sentence in prison. "I don't care much for pictures like that," he said, pointing to the ad of the semi-weekly prison movies, a garish poster depicting high life in the metropolis, "I like stuff about home in the country and boys who find out that their mother is their best friend." That same statement goes for the typical Broadwayite, who apparently has that much sweetness and light, at least, in common with a murderer. Having surveyed these facts, you will agree with me, I am sure, that the producer's job is not an easy one. Motion pictures cannot be put up in packages, plainly labeled, and sold to individuals. And with preferences so decided, it looks as though one picture couldn't please more than two or three of these classes at the outside. But the worldly-wise men who are concerned with the business of making motion pictures look at it this way. You can have your favorite stars, you can have your favorite directors, you can even have your favorite screen writers, but it is not vour keen interest in them that takes you to the theater, even though you may think it is. It is something more fundamental — it is xour interest in yourself. What you reallv go to see in pictures is — yourself. But you've never been in the movies, you say? That doesn't matter a particle. You go to see yourself, nevertheless. The screen is a sort of glorified mirror in which you see yourself as you would like to be. A star's likeness to you is the measure of your interest in him — or her. A daring statement, that. You can now proceed to argue that the most timid and shrinking young woman you know simply adores Louise Glaum, and that her one regret is the temporary absence of the supercilious Olga Petrova from the screen. You can even tell me that phlegmatic Uncle Oscar cares for none but Douglas Fairbanks ; that your minister prefers the bold bad men of William S. Hart ; that the "Do a good deed daily" scout master of your neighborhood is never happier than when some one wallops some one else with a custard pie or a panful of bread dough. That all proves my point. These people all go to see themselves as they would like to be. You know our national joke about the tired business man and his taste for the risque. It must disappoint some of our best uplifters and reformers to find the aforementioned tired business men finding more real enjoyment and relaxation in watching the athletic -exploits of Tom Mix and the stunts of Charles Hutchison than in all of the Holubar orgies or Fitzmaurice spectacles. But even granted that the tired business man does like the Sennett comedies, I'll wager — with a round dozen or more psychologists backing me up — that it is the spirit of recklessness, of gayety, and most of all irresponsibility, that appeal to them more than the costumes — or rather the lack of them — on the comely maidens. As for the feminine counterpart of the tired business man — the distracted housewife, and the tired-of-beingsensible business woman, they flock to such ecstasies of sartorial delicacy as the De Mille and Fitzmaurice