Picture-Play Weekly (Apr-Oct 1915)

Facts of the Silent Drama By Arthur Gavin, Jr. What you know about motion pictures may be a great deal, and still there may be more that you do not know. Here are some facts of the silent drama with which few who are not closely associated with the industry are acquainted. This article also discusses the effects of pictures on those who see them, especially children, which is an issue of no mean importance. THE invention of moving pictures is counted among the greatest discoveries of the .wonderful nineteenth century. But the results following on this invention are perhaps more astonishing than those of any other. Like the telegraph and the newspaper, the moving picture carries its message to and from e\-ery civilized or even halfcivilized quarter of the rlohe. Whatever happening of historic importance takes place in any part of the world, the motion picture records it alive and actually as it happens, for us to-day and for the spectators of a hundred years to come. Again the moving-picture invention has effected a surprising result in the influence it has had on the stage. The sharpest indication of this is the I act that in New York alone several theaters, formerly devoted to high-class plays, are now moving-picture houses. What we call the theater ordinarily has unf|uest!onably been seriously rivaled in the past, and is suffering rivalry now from the motion-picture sliows, not onl)' in New York but throughout the country. Finall}', the motion picture as an invention causing surprising results, strikes our attention because it has become one of the great questions of the day to ask : "Just how much moral injury and benefit does the moving picture cause to the young? And should the picture houses be limited in number and restricted in hours of opening, as are the saloons ?" The importance of the moral issue in connection with the motion picture may be judged from the fact that in our United States over ten million people spend approximately one million dollars every clay to see moving pictures, and in New Y^ork alone seven hundred thou sand persons attend these theaters dail}', at the average admission of about ten cents each. While we are talking in iigures, it is of interest to note that the motion-picture business as an industry is entitled to some consideration in this land of big industries. It employs over two hundred thousand people, and produces more than seventy-live per cent of the world's annual output of picture plays. Looking back over these figures, one fact that stands out saliently is the tencent average cost of admission paid in the million dollars spent each day. This low cost is what provides the easy opportunity for a boy or girl to become a moving-picture hend. There is no question but that a picture show in a high-class theater is most desirable to be seen whether by the young or by adults. At the same time, if a person were to get the habit, so to speak, of going to a moving-picture show every night in the week, we could properly call him or her "a liend." Boys and girls, especially in adolescence, are most liable to become "liends," and it is just here that the religious press a year or more ago brought its foot down hard. In one of our Eastern cities a law has been proposed to protect the unescorted woman in picture houses from being subjected to the annoyance of what are known as "mashers.'' This law provides one section of seats in each part of the house for gentlemen and ladies in companj', one for ladies without escort, one for men traveling in their own company. As to the immoralit}' in the picture plays, it is so largely in decrease, thanks to the efl'orts of the general press, the daily newspapers especially, and the w^ork of the National Board of Censorship, that all companies are now cooperating for the production of only the cleanest and best pictures. The real immorality of moving-picture shows, when there is any at all, concerns killing people and stealing money. Alurder is done so often in the melodramatic plays that a weak-minded youth of strong will and nature is liable to take a pistol as the surest argument the very next time he is charged with anything, or suspects anything. Then so often the whole sorry business of a defaulter or embezzler is shown as he steals little by little his employer's money. Yet he manages in the end someliow to rejient, reform, be forgiven, and marr^ a nice girl. That kind of immorality is sickening. It shows stupidity on the part of the author of the play rather than bad intent, but may have an unhappy effect on the young man who is just beginning to be intrusted with large sums of his employer's money. This type of picture, however, is also dying out rapidly, due to the care of the producers in accepting scenarios. On the other hand, the educational value of the motion picture is praiseworthy beyond words. It makes us see life from day to day in far Jajian, and the natives, as we would see it there. It enables us to study life in the depths of the sea, in the wilds of Africa, in the whole world above and below; in a word, as if, like the magician in the old fable, we had eyes to penetrate walls of earth and stone and iron — eyes to see whatever we wish to look at, over miles of land and the leagues of the sea. Possessing" such a gift, all that we must do is to use it properlj-; and it may safely be stated that the majority of the public and of the picture producers have this intention and resolve. Harry Sheldon, the playwright, is the latest addition to the scenario forces of the Essanay Film jNIanufacturing Company.