Photoplay Magazine Cover — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

. fn eS ‘ . ” 2 “ \ & . Almost any handsome young man can outwit an entire Camorra of old experienced Wall Street magnates inflamed the corpuscles of the Great American Common People with a series of lurid articles entitled “Frenzied Finance,” in which he told astounding tales of Wall Street’s goings-on, and set down fabulous descriptions of the practices and habits of the financiers themselves. But though he gave a new phrase to the language, his revelations were tame and commonplace in comparison with the business life which is presented to us nightly in the dramas of the screen, Let us look first at the stock market of the films. It not seldom happens that the fate of Wall Street depends, in large measure, on whether or not an earnest and virginal young man with polished hair, arched eyebrows, and a skin-tight suit with slanting pockets and peaked lapels, can land some sort of a contract or other. ‘The entire financial district awaits the result with bated breath and popping eyes. The curb is a howling pandemonium; prices have collapsed; panic reigns; and at least six capitalists are about to blow their brains out. If the young man puts the deal across, the market will pull together and go on. But if not! ...,. Well, the bottom will just simply fall out of everything. Moreover, almost any handsome young man, if he is honor- able and pure, and really sets his mind to it, can completely outwit and ignominiously ruin an entire Camorra of old expe- rienced Wall Street magnates. Luckily these youths do not often invade the financial dis- trict. As a general rule, in the films, the stock market is com- pletely controlled by a middle-aged gentleman with a square jaw, who tries to look like Tarzan of the Apes. Single-handed, he can wreck the works, and bring the entire financial struc- 56 S OME years ago an impassioned speculator and literatus HIS is the seventh of one of the most un- usual and talked-of series of satirical articles to ap- pear in any American magazine. Not only is Mr. Wright recognized as one of the foremost sati- rists writing in English today, but Mr. Barton, who is illustrating this remarkable series, is America’s greatest carica- turist. Next month these two famous humorists will collaborate on “The The- atrical Life in the Films.” By WILLARD HUNTINGTON WRIGHT Decorations by RALPH BARTON ture of the country crashing down about the heads of his enemies. And he often does it, just to get even with some- body against whom he has a grudge. He merely calls up his broker on the telephone, speaks a few words out of the corner of his mouth—and, in five minutes, the entire Street is tot- tering. And this brings up another curious point in the financial life of the screen. All millionaires habitually arrange their affairs so that it is possible for them to be wiped out clean in half an hour—so clean, in fact, that their old family servants are inspired to come forward and proffer them their meagre savings. A OES despite the fact that they are always thus on the brink of ruin, and liable at any moment to have to face disaster, the shock of any catastrophe inevitably bowls them over. They all suffer from some serious cardiac disturb- ance; for whenever they get bad news over the ticker, they immediately have a stroke, as of acute apoplexy. Their chins sag; their eyes dilate; and they clutch at their breasts, sway back and forth, and then collapse on the floor, all tangled up in the tape. Before passing on to the more general aspects of business life as depicted on the screen, attention should be called to the fact that all dishonest Wall Street plotters sooner or later come to grief. Virtue and honesty always triumph—one of the reasons being, no doubt, that all financial schemes of a crimi- nal nature are invariably concocted and arranged over a tele- phone with a switchboard, so that the beautiful and- chaste young daughter of the intended victim—enacting the role of Eomicbooks.co > { i 4 Business