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

THE MOVIE AND THE LIBRARY 77 has been an upward trend of the movies that is not merely encouraging but intoxicating? There may be, here and there, of course, a man of letters, not sufficiently broadened by his wide reading, who considers the screening of an immortal novel by Dumas, Dickens, Victor Hugo, or other wonderworker in narrative literature, a kind of sacrilege which he will always refuse to countenance. To him the Robin Hood of song and story is a revered personage upon whom Douglas Fairbanks has cast of late something of a slight. Let Alfred Noyes write musical verse about the picturesque bandits of Sherwood Forest, but, in the name of the Great God of Letters, don't allow the new art that the screen has made possible lay profane hands upon a hero whom Literature adopted long ago ! Little good will it do to their ridiculous cause, of course, for lettered reactionaries at this late day to attempt to protect the library from the scenariowriter. The screen has an insatiable maw for dramatic tales, old and new, and more and more, as time passes, will the telling of tales in the universal language of the eye become a factor in race-enlightenment. Nor is the screen really committing sacrilege in making use of the literary achievements of master tale-tellers. Since the movies first began to present