When the movies were young (1925)

198 When the Movies were Young The picture was expensive, but quite worth it ; we were at least headed the right way, in those crude days of our beginnings. We were dealing in things vital in our American life, and not one bit interested in close-ups of emptyheaded little ingenues with adenoids, bedroom windows, manhandling of young girls, fast sets, perfumed bathrooms, or nude youths heaving their muscles. Sex, as portrayed in the commercial film of to-day, was noticeable by its absence. But if, to-day, the production of clean and artistic pictures does not induce the dear public to part with the necessary spondulics so that the producer can pay his rent, buy an occasional meal and a new lining for the old winter overcoat, then even Mr. Griffith must give the dear public what it wants. And for the past year or two it has apparently wanted picturizations daring as near as possible the most intimate intimacy of the bedroom. The season closed with another "Covered Wagon" masterpiece called "Crossing the American Prairies in the Early Fifties." The picture was taken at Topango Canyon. There were hundreds of men and women and cowboys and a hundred horses from ranches near by, as well as eleven prairie schooners. In the picture, guards had been posted at night, but being tired, they fell asleep, so the Indians pounced upon the emigrants, slaughtering some and taking some prisoners, to be burned at the stake. The few survivors who escaped left numbers of dead pioneers behind. The shifting desert sands would soon cover the bodies and remove all trace of the massacre. The dead bodies were represented by the living bodies of members of the company who had to be buried deep in the alkali waste; and the getting covered up was