Judge — September 10, 1921 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

Movie Palace you come to you will find flickering smoothly upon the screen a masterpiece labeled “A Paramount Picture.” Or maybe “A First National Attraction.” Or perhaps travelling under some other equally noble name— Goldwyn — Robertson-Cole—or Metro, or Uni- versal, or Vitagraph, or Hodkinson, or United Artists, or Associated Pro- ducers, or Associated Exhibitors, or Pathe, or Realart. Those are the trade names, trade- marks, new or old, that have been built up by motion-picture concerns desirous of establishing such a rep- utation of excellence for their wares that you and I will want to see what- ever they produce. To the American known as a Movie Fan these signs are _ intelligible enough. Your dyed-in-the-wool Fan can ‘tell offhand what Movie Stars are working for whom and which are not—just as any true baseball fol- lower knows right now how many home runs the Babe has clouted out so far this season. But the rest of us are more ig- norant. “A Paramount Picture” we have seen a good many times; pos- sibly often enough on films that we liked to associate the name dimly with better grade photoplays. Pos- sibly so with some of the illustrious others. Or, we may have associated some name—Paramount or any other —with a film that bored us beyond expression, and so have mentally black-listed it. Just how much has really been ac- complished, up to date, in this build- ing up of trade names in moviedom? How much can we tell, from the name of the concern producing or distributing the picture, about what sort of a film we will find? The first appalling thing that we discover is the movie mortality rate. Picture concerns grow more rapidly ia you step lightly into the first Movie Trade-marks to Date By Myron M. Srearns and die sooner than human beings. Although vital statistics on the Hog or Pork are not on my desk at the moment, I feel that there is a close parallel between the years of the great motion picture and the bacon industries. A movie concern lives, on the average, only about as long as a robust Poland China, and dies, usually, almost as suddenly. So that the movie encyclopedia is full of names that are dead and gone—or at least buried: Bison—Edison—Tri- angle. However, the birth rate is also phenomenal. Today there are several concerns that are trying to build on a some- what more permanent basis, although even yet the immediate dollar, that so frequently is fed at the expense of ultimate prosperity, does a tremend- ous business. “Make your money now” has been the movie motto for so long that it’s a hard thing to shake it off. Goldwyn, for instance. What does Goldwyn mean, on a picture? Probably more of idealism, on the Pictures Worth Watching: THE MIDNIGHT BELL Charles Ray tries comedy-melodrama of bank robbers under a haunted church; defective, yet not ineffective. MOTHER O° MINE Melodrama that falls short of drama by only narrow margin; story of a mother’s devotion marred by movie tricks. THE OLD NEST A rather depressing but very convincing portrayal of every-day family life and people. CARNIVAL ‘A new version of the Othello-story, made in England, with many scenes of beauty taken in Venice. THE CONQUERING POWER Heavy drama that proves Rex Ingram, who made “The Four Horsemen,” is no mere accident. EXPERIENCE Old-type morality play, modernized, of Youth who comes to the city and gets wise before the censors get busy. THE GOLEM A weird, foreign-made story of a clay image that came to life to help the Jews, hundreds of years ago. A YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT ‘A satire on King Arthur's time that de- gerves a long life on account of its excel- jence. whole, than can be located under any other firm name of the industry, just at present. But also, ! probably less of practicality. The Goldwyn Brand is building for the future, but has developed, apparently, a distress ing habit of running into a hole in the present. From the very first, when after a tremendous advertising campaign the preliminary Goldwyn releases appeared, good alternated with very poor. “Baby Mine,” a clever farce, and “Polly of the Cir- cus,” with good points—and on the other hand “Fighting Odds”—so bad it was funny. Latterly pictures like Will Rogers’ best, or “Earthbound” have sandwiched in between pictures that were just plain tiresome, like “The Concert.” So that when we go to see a Goldwyn picture we can only tell that it will probably be slightly highbrow and_ technically smooth enough; it may prove wearying, and it may be a knockout. Paramount proudly believes that it leads ’em all, and bases that belief on a world of evidence. Many of its films rank among the best at present produced, and although the product is in some ways a machine-made one, rather than truly “created” (the pic- tures are almcst without exception technically good, but in far too many cases lacking in real effectiveness or originality) we can be pretty sure that we are going to get something easy to look at. First National, a distributing or- ganization, puts out the pictures of many producers. Here we find far more of individuality, and of variety —many of the best releases of the season, interspersed with almost as many that are at least decidedly in- different. But when Paramount seems merely to be holding its own as a leading manufacturer of excel- lent goods, First National is doing more than a bit to encourage new de- (Continued on page 32).