Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

58 The Observer Uniust Observer has received a letter from a Chinese, written in EngHsh, protesting because so many Chinese charChinesef acters in motion pictures are villains. This Singapore correspondent writes : As far as I can remember, photo plays such as "The Exploits of Elame," "The River's End," "The Hawk's Trail," and ever so many others, portray Chinese as inhuman monsters and the like. Why don't American film producers take it in their heads to try and show something better of Chinese people? What I most fear is that the movie idea of a Chinese would be so much impressed upon the minds of the American picturcgocrs as to cause them to despise all Chinese — which is most unfair. Griffith's "Broken Blossoms" and Hugo Ballin's "Pagan Love" are two pictures which occur to us at once as dramas in which Chinese were the heroes, but we must admit that the general information given us by the cinema regarding the home life of the Chinese would lead us to believe that they smoke opium by day and knife American sailors by night. The motion picture is no different from literature or the spoken drama in this respect. We cartoon all foreign races, emphasizing what seems to us to be their outstanding characteristics. Other nations do the same toward us. But the kindnesses we have shown in aiding China in famine and disease have not been in the attitude that we would assume toward "inhuman monsters." Fret not, Singapore. The world goes merrily on, and a Chinese villain in the movies now and then won't affect it one way or the other. What We want to be entertained, not educated. That goes for all of us — The About the Observer, you, and your friends. But Serial? some way we feel that the other fellow needs education. This goes especially for the kids. Down deep in our constitutions is a touch of the old religious feeling that whatever others like is not good for them. A fat old lady in a. one-piece bathing suit is no subject for censorship, but a pretty girl — ah! It is all right for us to see her, of course, but we'd better censor her to save other people who can't stand such sights as well as we. And so we get after the amusements of kids, especially the movie serial. The serial is the motion-picture successor to the dime novel and the cigarette." It rised to be held that all crime was caused by cigarettes and dime novels. Now it's caused by. movie serials. The censors are after it, and, realizing that the pinch is coming, the producers of serials are getting ready to slip out from under. To replace the old-time crime thrillers, they will produce famous historical dramas. They'll take their hero and name him Daniel Boone, change the masked bandits to Indians,' and the censors will possibly let the pictures be shown. We have more confidence in the manliness of the American boy than the censors have. We do not believe that motion pictures inspire boys to do wrong, but, on the other hand, we believe that the average boy will be a better one if he sees a reasonable number of them. He will see somt that are not good for him, but the others will counteract the bad ones. It's the average that rules everywhere in life. When The Observer was a kid he saw the Buffalo Bill show nearly every year and he read a great many cheap novels. He smoked corn silk, stole watermelons from a farmer's patch, and swam in a pond in direct opposition to the posted warnings of the sheriff, who owned the pond and who cut ice from it in the winter. Had The Observer been arrested — as you all will agree should have been his fate — and had the judge said, "What made you do this? Reading cheap novels and seeing the stagecoach robbery in the wildWest show, I suppose," doubtless, so low were The Observer's morals, he would have lied and said, "Yes, sir." Your censor would have us believe that the motion picture always makes a bad boy worse — never better. According to such reasoning, had there been motion pictures in The Observer's boyhood, he would have smoked opium instead of corn silk and would have robbed many banks in order that he might lavish wealth upon the actresses who played in the ten-twenty-thirty stock company at the White City Amusement Park out at the end of the car line. Perhaps the serials could be improved by cutting here and there, but we feel that the censors are going a little too far in threatening to abolish them upon the grounds that they make criminals out of boys. More harm is done to children by mothers who tell them that there's a bear hiding in the dark, ready to get them if they aren't good, than by all the serials put together. The serial hero always is an admirable, courageous fellow who is not afraid of the dark, and he's the man they imitate. rp J, The "Tell the theater manager" campaign, urged so long by The Obthe server, is being carried out by the EiXllibitor P^irent-Teachers-Exhibitors Cooperative League, of New Orleans, with no small success. This league is entirely opposed to "blue laws" and believes that the only way to censor pictures is through the box office. The league members sign the following pledge: I hereby pledge myself to form an opinion of at least one picture, a week, not by hearsaj' evidence, but by seeing it myself. Afterward I will see the manager or write him my opinion of said picture. I will ask m) friends and neighbors to follow this course also. Here is a constructive campaign. If one hundred thousand women in the United States would follow this ■ course for a month, the entire motion-picture problem would be solved, for no more bad pictures would be shown. ) 1, The report that Griffith would make "Ben Hur" seems to have been wrong. Make Now the story goes that Famous Players " Be7lIIur?" ^^^^'^ joined with Klaw & Erlanger, backed by Vincent Astor and some other millionaires, and that the picture will be made in Italy next year. It is said that the production will cost one million five hundred thousand dollars. American money. That being the case, it is probable that the work will not begin until times get a little better. The present market isn't strong enough to pay dividends upon such a production. There is a theater in Philadelphia Pleasing where women drop in after an after7 p noon of shopping to wait for their hus bands coming from work. Rarely do they stay to see a picture through, and usually they come in after the show has started. But they are really interested in pictures — so interested that they think producers ought to insert subtitles here and there that would make it perfectly clear to them what happened before they came in and what is going to happen after they go out. Their theater owner backs them up, and has suggested to a few producers that they cater to such an audience. Fortunately, the prodiicers are more interested in those of us who go to see pictures all the way through.