The Argosy, Vol. 82, No. 3 — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

HIS MAD MOVE ON THE MOVIES. ATT Tommy! They’ve thrown down the ‘Fate clared. “That’s at the bottom of the whole of the World!’ They’ve thrown it down business! That’s what makes all the utter cold!” rot you have to look at when you go to a “T see that, Jim, but don’t—” Darton gulped loudly and hurled the ac- cursed slip from him. “Why, it was only last Thursday morn- ing that I sat in that scoundrel’s office and went over the thing with him, episode by episode, and he was so enthusiastic that he had to get up and walk around and wave his hands every five minutes! He planned to run it in an entirely new form, for that kind of picture—six separate episodes, four reels to each one, bringing them out every two weeks and then leasing the whole thing to make a two-evening feature. He sat there and told me himself—” “Vou’ll have the house detective here if you yell much louder!” Morely suggested. “T don’t care a continental if the whole New York police force comes in here, I'll say what I have to say—to you first and then go out to the studio to say it over to Park! That ‘Fate of the World’ is the greatest thing ever attempted in the movie line, and the only reason it was turned down is that Park decided to steal it with- out paying a cent!” “Well, Jimmy—” “Tt’s the fact! Park’s up to it! And there are plenty more in the movie busi- ness to steal it, even if he didn’t!” Mr. Darton choked. ‘I don’t say they’re all crooked; they’re not, by any means. But there are so many men like Park and so many concerns like the Trimmer Corpora- tion that any man who’s ass enough to sit down and write movie plots—”’ Here breath failed him. Morely smiled compassionately. “Just for the moment, Jimmy, you sit down and calm yourself,” he suggested. <The" “And if he didn’t steal it, he turned it down because he didn’t dare buy it—that’s right: didn’t dare!” Darton thundered on. “He turned it down because it was so far ahead of anything their beastly staff writers could turn out that if they’d ever bought it and produced it both Trimmers would have come down on their staff and fired them for not thinking up something them- selves that made as big a:Sensation!”’ “Maybe,” Morely assented. Passing the cigarettes as inadequate, Darton bit the end from a black cigar. “There’s no maybe about it!” he de- movie show, I tell you! Why does the same villain lure away the same innocent maiden —why does the same hero rescue her at the last moment—a thousand times a year? Why does the same old wife fall in love with the same old _best-friend-of-her-hus- band, why does the same comedian fall down in the same way, over and over and over? Why have a billion pies been smashed on the faces of a billion poor devils, male and female, on the supposi- tion that it is funny——-when the whole world is full of new comedy ideas?”’ “You speak words of great truth, James,” said his friend, “but at the same time I think that elevator boy’s going to report a fight in here when he gets down- stairs. He stopped the car a good two min- utes that last trip and listened, and I heard him talking to somebody.” “Well, all those things happen because a good part of the movie manufacturers have a paid staff of scenario people in their office and every man who doesn’t turn out so and so many reels loses his job,” Darton continued, unheeding. “No gang of men that ever lived could. keep up that clip and still have a flow of original ideas; and I doubt if any of them try to be original any more, and I doubt still more greatly if they’d be paid for it if they did! And given those conditions, what chance has a really big, new, striking , dramatic idea of getting past that crowd?” ‘Mighty little, perhaps, but you knew it all before, and—”’ ‘Even though I did know it, I thought that anything as good as ‘The Fate of the World’ must have a chance!” cried Darton. “T thought there must be somebody in the business who knew a good story when he saw it—a real story! That’s what people want when they pay their ten cents or their fifteen cents or their quarter to see a movie show—the story! knows that now except the people who turn out the pictures; if you don’t believe it, ask the man who sits next you in the sub- way, ask your doctor or your lawyer or your iceman or the fellow who brings home your shirts from the laundry! They all go and they all yawn through four rotten pic- tures to see one good one, and : say, I’d like to get back at the movie busi- ness!” Go NOOK Everybody in the world . (C@)