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

Record Details:

Title:
That marvel - the movie : a glance at its reckless past, its promising present, and its significant future
Date:
1923
Publisher:
New York : G. P. Putman's Sons
Volume:
That marvel - the movie : a glance at its reckless past, its promising present, and its significant future
Leaf #:
00069
Language:
English
Collection:
Books
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
December 21, 2023
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THE MOVIE GOES TO THE BAD 55 the sources from which they obtained the stories their new tale-teller told to the millions, they displayed an enthusiastic admiration for astronomy. They studied the stars. Would a given matinee-idol "screen well?" Would a certain popular actress endure the searching ordeal of the camera? If they would, the public would flock to the movie's boxoffice even though the scenario writers had done their worst. Followed an era of star-gazing upon the part of the movie fans and of slow but certain enlightenment upon the part of the directors and producers. The latter discovered after a time that the fame of an actor is no safeguard against the destructive influence of a structurally poor picture-drama. They gradually had glimmerings of a basic truth, knowledge of which in the past would have saved countless theatrical managers from bankruptcy, namely, that, as Shakespeare sapiently remarked, "the play's the thing ! " The telling of a story either on the stage or on the screen is a justifiable venture, as a very wise and rather jaded public knows, only if that story possesses certain elements that make it as a tale worth while. Even Douglas Fairbanks would score a failure in a dramatization of the multiplication-table. But ordinary horse sense was acquired only slowly by the movies. It is an amazing story of stupidity,