Judge — September 1, 1923 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

“BIGGER AND BETTER PICTURES” ‘OT A great many years ago, the \ world, for the first time, saw flashed upon a screen the picture of a fast moving train. So perfect was the illusion that we remember people starting from their seats to avoid the embarrassment of being run down. Ever since then, moving pictures have been moving backward and_ forward. Some have moved us to admiration. Others to tears. Others to move out of the house altogether . . . never to return. In the « of their swaddling clothes, pictures were content to amuse us. Not a bad idea. They were just a big, awk- ward, noisy schoolboy with very little schooling. For a nickel or a dime at most we could sit under the stars of summer evening and laugh at the antics of a Chaplin or mingle our tears with the glycerin weeps of a Pickford. We could stack the dishes and hurry down to the corner lot for an hour of unintelligent and innocuous amusement. Some of us were self-conscious about being seen going in or coming out. If of the in- telligentsia, we either hung our heads shamefacedly or carried it off in’ the grand manner of a social worker bestow- ing an umbrella upon a thirsty tramp. Alas! Those days are gone forever. » little, noisy schoolboy has grown ically; come into a great fortune, is to be seen strutting down the m with Tom, Dick or s a good fellow when he , and he has it. All kinds of it. HE SILVER SHEET has proven. itself be a golden shakedown. The ing picture producer, like his ex- perienced brother-in-law, the theatric magnate (they married sister arts), is in business to keep the wolf from off the front porch. Not a bad idea. From him he has learned only too well that art is one thing but money is again some- thing different; that they nev. e seen at the same table or rather that Money 0 sit at the table but Art must ever look hungrily in at the frosted window. With this well-founded idea in mind the little schoolboy so developed that his old friends now scarcely know him. He is putting on no end of lugs. And if he doesn’t watch out, one of these by George Mitchell days cheap little marble and gold theaters like The Capitol in New York, will be forced to doll themselves up. The opening might of a moving picture production in a regular legitimate theater is an event that is fast putting the first night of opera to the blush. The only difference between these two social events is that in the movies many of the faces that are seen in the boxes at the opera are now flashed upon the screen, What with Lady Diana Man- Miss Marion Davies as Patricia in “Little Old New and Columbus ircle. 20 ners of London and the Biddles of Phila- delphia in the east and the Vanderbilts and Astors in the loges, those of us who sit in the orchestra are fast acquiring what may be called the swivel, or roundhouse neck. \ fusicatty, too, the little schoolboy M*‘; as grown a big lad. Perhaps you remember him in the early days when the musical setting to a picture was remi- niscent of the practice hour at the piano, when as a musical prodigy two. soiled hands beat the ivories the while two sadeyes riveted themselves upon the clock. Now look at the darn thing! Victor Herbert at the orchestra with a score that fits the picture like a kid glove. Victor himself with his Irish-Ameri face beaming above the flashing fiddles, interweaving the harp of Erin with the flag of America, pulling you up out of your seat to the strains of the National Anthem, the while an assemblage of plutocrats give vent to silken emotions. In the matter of pictorial adognment, the poor little rich boy of the films has taken on a sense of decoration that might easily be mistaken as having been borrowed from the drawing-room of a Blue Booker. Joseph Urban has found it infinitely more entertaining as well as remunerative to cast aside his social engagement for those of the cinem: Where bare fences or open sky once adorned the nickelodeon, gold, tinsel and rare paint now rest the tired eye. Hence it is that we pause to wonder what this prodigy child will do next. You never can tell. We suggest that he be as entertaining as possible. That at least: must always be expected of him, let his riches come as they will. A governess course is out of the question. He is too big for that and the governess, knowing him, might demand a chaperon. Possibly, he should go to college and absorb a bit of erudi- tion. People laughing at his soci and scholastic manners. A_ little less money spent on his clothing and acces sories and a little more expended on the development of the back of his head, perhaps, may not be amiss, and in all probability would gain for him many additional friends, comicbooks.com mai she com ont in 1 sticl stan Con gent €