That marvel - the movie : a glance at its reckless past, its promising present, and its significant future (1923)

THE MOVIE GOES TO THE BAD 49 were for the most part of the old-time chorus-girl and spear-carrier type; the great scenario-writers were the shop-girls or office boys who were told of the sudden need for stories, with no real training or knowledge of writing — with here and there a newspaper cub or magazine embryo who stumbled into a new gold vein where stories written in an hour could be sold for fifteen dollars; the first investors were the clerks or advertising men or born gamblers, usually in touch with the cheap end of the theatrical world, who had a little money to invest in a new scheme, provided it "looked good" and "wasn't too big." It is a safe bet that the majority of my readers can remember the time when they looked upon motion pictures with a mingling of contempt and impatience, realizing vaguely, perhaps, the promise the screen suggested of better things but disgusted with its seemingly stubborn adherence to cheap claptrap, crude melodrama, and unspeakably vulgar farce. My personal experience in connection with the movies is, I imagine, typical of that which has come to thousands of Americans during the past quarter of a century. I can still remember the thrill I experienced when I first gazed upon human beings in motion screened by a camera. What the photographed puppets did was not, at the moment, of great consequence. The mere fact that they came and went, walked, ran, danced before my eyes was startling enough. I was fascinated by a scientific