Judge — October 30, 1920 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

—EE ee See aa SS... ooo NEW MOVES IN THE MOVIES Trying it on the Dog By Myron M. Stearns (“Le ERTAIN leading motion picture producers have adopted an old stunt and invented a new indoor sport: watching people watch movies. The game is called technically a “ try-ow You start with a couple of hundred thousand dollars, if you can borrow that much. Or less: even fifty or a hundred thousand would do in a pinch. There is not even any rule, if you're fixed the way some of us are, and find it hard to stretch your credit beyond a certain point—say thirty or forty cents—against using your own money instead of borrowing. But this is not usually done. You spend your roll with speed and nonchalance upon your leading lady, your director, assistant director, camera man, assistant camera man, studio manager, assistant studio manager, office boy, assistant office boy, film, more film, still more film, etc., etc. Finally your picture is written and taken and assembled and cut and titled and praised and tried out. Then you watch the audience. Pictures Worth Seeing: If the audience shows a tendency to wiggle | yomaps OF THE NORTH A Bear ‘n’ a Dog ‘n’ a forest-fire ‘n’ everything. WAY DOWN EAST Containing really marvelous ef- about in his or her seat, and yawns, and coughs, and looks up when any more of itself comes in—you lose. 0") But the outside audience has no axe to grind, no manners to remember. It doesn't know what it wants, but it knows when it comes. Also when itdoesn’t. Individually, you and Mike McGinnity and Wesley Brown and I give little indication of what we think or feel when we watch a photoplay; collectively, we shout our applause or disapproval aloud, for those who. have eyes to see or ears to hear —and it's a brave producer who dares come to us at the earliest possible moment, and abide by our verdict. One soon learns to read an audience. Take that interesting but appreciative phenomenon known to science as the cough, for instance You and I know that we cough only when and where we just naturally have to, and not to express our lack of interest in a photoplay. But watch the audience at the next movie you go to, Each person there coughs just as we do (only louder)—when he can't keep from coughing one second more. Yet—marvelous! As the interesting spots in the picture come along, all the coughing dies away; then, as the story sags again, an intermittent chorus of utterly uncon- scious coughing breaks out all over the house here and there, like the fire-crackers in a If the audience fails to laugh over the funny fects. small town the night before the Fourth, spots you've cooked up so confidently, but seems OVER THE HILL* Utter absorption in the picture—leaning on the whole interested when the Evil Whiskey ‘The story of # mother. forward in the seat—these are great signs of a Smuggler gets Ethel alone in the cave and be- THE JACK-KNIFE MAN gripping film. Laughter and applause are of gins tearing her blouse during the wrestling match before Lionel arrives, it’s probably a tie. wonder, But if the audience sits quite still as the pic ture begins, and laughs at the first jokes, and doesn’t cough during the climax, and leans for: ward, and gets particularly irritated when new me Whimsical tale of men and a child. HONEST HUTCH A worth-while actor as a worthless A CUMBERLAND ROMANCE® Realistic mount! BEHOLD MY WIFE The Nobleman and the Indian course more obvious. Unconscious comments, when they can be caught, are most revealing of all. Any producer who heard an old lady apologizing to herself for Charles Ray's ignoring of his home town folks in “The “Qh, he’s such a boy!” would have in story, Busher been abundantly justified in offering that pleas- comers have to squeeze past cant seats, and applauds frantically when Lionel kicks the spurs into his horse and starts for the EARTH-BOUND cave in a cloud of dust—why, you win in a walk! A good many photoplay producersh ave not via WHTCE CIRCES’ as yet recognized the They seem to fear the judgment of those who will eventually judge the picture in any MILESTONES .. case, and merely invite a few selected friends and een eae * HUMORESQUE* special showing."’ Then they can bask complacently in the sunshine of the favor able comment that inevitably results. get into the va- IT’S A GREAT LIFE A fantasy of school-boy life. Well-screened story of the Super- natural. bvious advantages of this Melodrama, unconvincing, but exquisitely artistic. A laugh and a tear of Jewish life. *Exceptionally good. ing young actor a contract running into nine figures on the spot. : But you don't have to be a producer to play the game. Anyone can play it Just watch the audience, and listen for com- ments and revealing sounds, Last night I played it myself, watching “Nomads of the North.” I learned the picture would be a box-office success, pleasing all classes moderate- ly, and some classes immoderately, but leaving the “high-brow clement” only very mildly impressed. comicbooks.com