Judge — November 13, 1920 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

] J j i ] ! N EW MOVES IN THE MOVIES All Gaul and Moviedom By Myron M. Stearns (“Lenso”) IVIDING things into three parts has been popular ever since Jule Caesar put the classification sign on all Gaul. Following this favorite method, find that the Great American Public, for motion picture purposes, may be divided into movie fans, occasional visitors, and antis. And all three ‘as you remember Jule said further—differ among themselves, and each from each, ‘The G, A. P., we are told, now numbers some 105,683,108 pounds, dollars, and sense. We might call the fans the 105 Millions, the occasionals the 683 thousands, and the antis 1 There were between fifteen and sixteen thousand motion picture theaters in this country a year ago, according to the most reiiable boosters. The number is now computed at well above eighteen thousand, Into these 18,000 picture palaces there surge, straggle, throng, crowd, and beat their way daily, an army variously estimated at from seven to twelve million head. This is made up almost entirely from divisions one and two—fans and occasionals. Movie fans are myriad. Their numbers are shown by the way in which the photoplay journals have galloped into prominence. Every movie “ Star,” even down to the eighth and ninth magnitude, undreds of letters, evidencing the interest and admiration of this “fan” following. Even second and third m, out hundreds of photographs weekly, in answer to the requests in these letters, With stars the first magnitude, there are often hundreds of letters a day. There are companies that make a specialty ality Pictures W BODY AND SOUL ‘Convincing story of dual person powerful. It is the hope of motion pictures—the influence that will in the end insist on photoplays that are both pepular and geod. You belong to it, and so do I, and so does Martha Pillsbury, and in the end we're going to be more powerful, collectively, than all the fans put together, because they'll go where we go, and think what they think they're thinking because they thin we think it. Then, there is a class that we can classify with the “parlor intellec- tuals”—the antls, who still profess to look down on all picturedom. This is the dwindling army of the left—and it can be blamed pretty severely for not taking more interest and part in the development of the vast new film industry, Eventually it will be brigaded with the great central army of the occasionals, and form an extremely im- portant and influential part of it; but at present it is making a lamen- table spectacle of itself, sulking off in a comer, too proud to play with the common little boys and girls who have less book-learning tied around their necks, ‘And it is still amazingly large. A college president says he “has no time for recreation "—how can he go to the movies? But he is the head of an institution teaching thousands of students a year, who are nearly all of them seeing and being influenced by those me which he knows nothing. A magazine editor, handling a circulation that runs into seven figures, boasts of going to only three photoplays in the last three years. And so on—hundreds and thousands of ‘em, cling- ing to the “intellectuality” that keeps them from recognizing this mighty new colossus because it is still partly punk. Today I saw three new photoplays. One wasa Wallace Reid picture that will be a rth Seeing: of handling this mess of mail—sending photo. | over THE HILL* decided box-office success, because it will please phs to each letter writer, possibly with a polite Fine sob-version of the King Lear | millions of fans. But ® will leave th form card or letter endorsed. The rate cha ally runs from two cents apiece up, exclusive stamps and matenals. Photographic stu- dios with special equipment tum out the com- plimentary photographs by the thousand and laughs hundred thousand. MADAME x If the “fan” mail isn’t answered daily, it fills baskets, desks, rooms. Opening some hundreds of these fan letters, one is struck by three things (cf. Jule Caesar again). First, the striking similarity they bear to each other, Second, the average youthful- ness of the writers, Third, their lack of sense. It is this division—the fan army of the right, let us say—that has made possible and profitable the tremendous number of fair, medium, and YOUTH positively punk pictures, Then we come to division number two—the occasional army of the center, made up of those who go to a movie say once or twice a month. This is the army that is constantly increasing. It is each year, each month, becoming more 39 EAST Mild humor acting. instinct, EARTH.BOUND of a New York boarding-house PEACEFUL VALLEY Old-tine melodrama, with some Good drama, but purty heavy. WAY, DOWN EAST Your money's worth of thrills ‘n’ HUMORESQUE* Homely story of Jewish life. SHE'S A VAMP* ‘Short study of the polygamous HONEST HUTCH Good yarn of a vagabond’s re- form. CONRAD IN QUEST OF HIS More theme than story. THE JACK-KNIFE MAN ‘A photoplay ahead of its time. Photographic spirit-work. *Exceptionally good casionals” cold, because it is so lacking in plaus- ibility as to bruise the intelligence of some at least in each audience. It will please old fole lowers, but will make no new friends. Another will appeal to both “fans” and asionals.” That is the Alice Lake picture and Soul.” Such a good story that it will hold the “fans,’ and so well done that it will grip the more critical. It will make many friends. But it will touch few of such supercriti- cal “antis’ as see it, because it lacks a theme. And the third, “Conrad in Quest of His Youth,” will win an occasional convert to pic- tures from among the “antis’’ who see it, be- cause of the great theme suggested in the very name. But it will leave most audiences cold, because of its very decided shortcomings. And the dyed-in-the-wool “fans,” I imagine, will have very little use for it, so that the manage- ment of the great corporation will have to say: “Pep up your pictures a bit there, old sport; give ’em what they want!"