Screenland (Sept 1922–Feb 1923)

fr* HOLLYWOOD CALIFORNIA "Show Me the Telephone and I Can Tell You the Whole Story" Another case is told by a psychoanalyst about a prosperous lawyer who sought his services, wishing to be freed from the habit of reading "trashy" literature. The specialist advised him to indulge in the reading of romance and adventure to his heart's content — that such reading was the necessary mental relaxation which his legal-bound mind demanded ! W HEN drama erotica shows a tendency toward sex films, which are the usual sort to attract unsophisticated girls, quiet matrons and staid maiden ladies, the specialists advise against over-indulgence and attempt to focus the patient's interest in other emotion-arousing relaxation. A woman who "disappeared" at regular intervals from her home to attend a cheap serial in a downtown theater, of which she enjoyed every detail, was miserable in her embarrassment when her family apprehended her weakness. In this case, the attending specialist prescribed a hobby. The woman then became an enthusiastic "fan" of automobile races and found therein a "safety valve." People go to "bad" films because it is "good" for them. Violent happenings on celluloid hold their imagination within legitimate bounds. A bookkeeper wants to see cowboys with smoking six-shooters. Laborers, lumberjacks, stevedores get their "balance" from picturization of ultrasociety circles and business deals involving mental agility to follow. "Highbrow" audiences enjoy comedy "gags." Married people and the aged enjoy heart-stuff which in real life they scorn. The cowboy may sneer at western pictures as "horse opera" but his pent-up inhibitions will respond to erotic society drama. And the so-called "wise" clement among playgoers — the stratum of unfortunates whose moral fiber is mere tatters— flocks to see the wholesome story! A tiny once-a-week theater in an Alaska camp drew packed audiences from the saloons and dancehalls when a "mother picture" was shown. The habitues of the resort demanded to see the film again the next week. So, through the revelations of modern investigators in the vast field of phychological study, critical judgment of the moral effect of a motion picture is given new consideration. It is apparent that it is unjust to condemn abnormal screen entertainment as a destructive force. Within moral lim Challenges Harry Carr in his next piercing article in SCREENLAND for March The Big Burlesque Number Out February First If the heroine's boudoir telephone is masked with an Adonis statue, her husband is going to deceive her. This is one of the signs that never fail. There are scores of other strange quirks of ape-directors that you will recognize. Don't miss Screenland for March itations, lurid melodrama has its useful task to perform in the whirlpool of modern civilization. After all, why should we be so surprised at the above revelations? NATURE has an amazing way of "compensating," as the psycho-analysts say. And when the last dreadful sermon against human nature has been hurled from the pulpit and the last William Jennings Bryan has died of apoplexy in an attempt to reform the human race, it will be found that the graphic chart of human nature for the last two or three million years has shown such a slight deviation that the God-of-things-as-they-are will probably consider it a straight line, instead of the wildly waving one that the moralists believe it is. HARKING back to the beloved midVictorian times, for which our immediate ancestors sigh so sonorously — the days of germ-carrying skirts and germ-laden minds. Prim Mrs. Perkins, wife of the Baptist deacon, stole out a dime from the ginger jar and bought a Bertha M. Clay novel regularly once a week, or bribed the hired girl to do it for her — or, if she were the very primmest, propercst Mrs. Perkins, she stole the hired girl's brazen yellow novel on the hired girl's Thursday off. Then she retired to her bedroom, locked the door and reveled. She became the betrayed heroine, glorying in her betrayal and rather sorry for the necessity of condemning the villain who betrayed her; her prim lips pursed themselves over the immortal Bertha's ecstatic descriptions of ten-minute kisses. The deacon had a hard time measuring up when he came back from prayer-meeting. The daughter of the midVictorian sinner in saint's clothing read Robert W. Chambers just as avidly, just as secretly, just as sinfully — if vicarious dissipation be sin — and came out of her locked privacy feeling as if the world were not such a bad place after all. There would always be more novels by Robert W. Chambers to intrigue her imagination and make up for John's uninspired lovemaking, limited to a shame faced peck on the lips or cheek. Oh, blessed Bertha M. Clay, Charlotte M. Breame, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Laura Jean Libby ! How many women's lives have you made less drab ! And in the moralist's code, how many sins you have to answer for, in making vicarious sinners out of apparent prudes ! The Laura Jean Libby devoteein the more democratic strata of social life were paralleled and beaten at their own game by the more Epicurean mental dissipators in highbrow circles. How many intellectuals have gotten a supreme kick out of Schnitzler's masterpiece of subtle sensuousness — "The Affairs of Anatol" — out of Theophile Gautier's "Mademoiselle de Maupin" — out of Shakespeare's passionate and exquisite descriptions of the mating of Venus and Adonis ! So let's don't hurl ourselves like a ton of bricks at the movies and give them the distinction of having created a brand-new form of dissipation. The movies are mild compared to the real offenders — or benefactors. The form of appeal has been changed; the purpose and the necessity and the immortality of the appeal are the same yesterday, today and forever. So it is mighty nice of the psychoanalysts to come along and pat us on the backs with the assurance that we are just natural after all when we thrill at the final kiss, which we have waited five reels to enjoy. Of course we would go right along enjoying it anyway, but it is nice to be understood at last. 30