Moving Picture World (Dec 1917) - Learn About Movie Posters

December 22, 1917 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD 1759
tatered at the General Pott Office. New York City. •• Second das* Matter
Founded by J. P. CHALMERS in 1907.
Published Weekly by the
CHALMERS PUBLISHING COMPANY
S16 FIFTH AVENUE, AT 43RD STREET, NEW YORK CITY
(Telephone, Murray Hill, 1610, 1611, 1612, 1613.)
J. P. Chalmers, Sr ...President
J. F. Chalmers Vice-President
E. J. Chalmers Secretary and Treasurer
John Wylie General Manager
The office of the company is the address of the officers.
CHICAGO OFFICE—Suite 917 919 Schiller Building. 64 Weat Randolph
St.. Chicago. 111. Telephone. Central S099.
•ACIFTC COAST OFFICE-o:0-611 Wright and Callender Building, Lot
Angeles, Cat. Telephone, Broadway 4640.
SUBSCRIPTION RATES.
United States, Cuba, Mexico, Hawaii, Porto
Rico and Philippine Islands $3.00 per year
Canada 3.50 per year
Foreign Countries (Postpaid) 4.00 per year
Changes of addreai should give both old and new addreases in fall
sad be clearly written. Two weeks' time should be allowed tor change.
ADVERTISING RATES.
Classified Advertising—One dollar for twenty words or less;
over twenty words, five cents per word.
Display Advertising Rates made known on application.
NOTE—Address all correspondence, remittances and subscriptions to
MOVING PICTURE WORLD, 516 Fifth Avenue, at Forty-third Street,
New York, and not to individuals.
CINE-MUNDIAL, the monthly Spanish edition of the Moving Pictore
World, is published at 516 Fifth Avenue by the Chalmers Publishtog
Company. It reaches the South American and Spanish-speaking
Market. Yearly subscription, $1.50. Advertising rates on application.
(The Index to this issue is on page 1850.)
Saturday, December 22, 1917
Facts and Comments
GUSTAV SCHRAPLAN, of Prescott, Arizona,
writes the Moving Picture World of a discovery
made in his own town recently. It was a double
discovery, in fact. The first was on the part of A. R.
Dikey, seventy-two years old, a miner and prospector,
who dropped into Prescott and for the first time in his
life looked on a motion picture. The second was on the
part of Mr. Schraplan, who became aware of the presence
in his house of such an unusual visitor. "I wonder if
there are any more?" asks the exhibitor. Those of us
who dimly recall our sensations a couple of decades ago
when for the first time we looked on the crude beginnings
of the coming kinematographic art may be pardoned a
desire to know what passed through the mind of this
Disciple of the Great Silences as he took his initial view
of the finished motion picture of 1917. Was he regret-
fully thinking of the things he had missed all these years
he had spent on bleak mountainsides and in canyon bottoms
? Mr. Dikey's first impressions of the screen should
make interesting reading.
* * *
REVISION—Not reduction"—with this caption as
an anchor to windward, the Ochs organ made its
appearance last week. It evidently has realized
that its attitude as the exhibitors' champion on the war
tax controversy had about as much chance of being upheld
at Washington as there is of the war ending this
week. The self-styled mouthpiece of a few exhibitors
felt the necessity of preparing the minds of its readers
for a probable disappointment. What a farce—but we
have said something before about the impossibility of
fooling all the exhibitors all the time.
YES,
* * *
sure we are going to Washington.
going just to see if the factions in the
We are
industry
will dare present themselves before the Government
in their effort to get the best of each other. Is the
Government of the United Stares going to be compelled
to believe that all our great promises of support and cooperation
of a few months ago were mere empty words?
We think not, because we know and believe that they
were not, and that no group of scheming politicians and
self-seekers should be permitted to make them seem
otherwise.
* * *
N a short conversation a few evenings since with a
prominent individual in the picture business, an expression
was voiced in regard to the present condition
of the trade that contained food for thought. The claim
was made that all lines of the industry are now clogged
with non-progressive, unimaginative, unbusinesslike individuals
who expect maximum results from the minimum
of brain and effort. Further, that the war tax and other
testing conditions would clarify the atmosphere and really
improve conditions eventually. This is strong doctrine
and may appeal to the magnates, but might not a little
diluting with the live and help live policy be an improvement?
Too much concentration in either the manufacturing
or the exhibiting ends of the business will see the
pictures very much less of a popular entertainment than
they are and have been. Contraction of business is bound
to follow concentration of interpest.
THE
* * *
war tax has certainly produced a liberal crop
of would-be champions of the exhibitor. We are
afraid that most of them, however, will prove to
be broken reeds, if exhibitors in general attempt to lean
on them. In this, as in most other things, the individual
exhibitor must work out his own salvation and we believe
he will be able to do it with mighty few exceptions
WHAT
* * *
are the best pictures to make and exhibit?
What are the film productions that are successful,
financially and every other way ? Not necessarily
the films with a famous star from the legitimate or
operatic stage, if the work of the artist is familiar only
to a dozen of our large cities. Not necessarily the work
of some author who stands high in the literary field but
may not have an appeal for the millions. The pictures
are the people's entertainment in a wider and more comprehensive
sense than ever has been true of the opera
or the stage or any other form of amusement, consequently
the successful pictures will be those that have in
them, star, story or whatever it may be, that broad human
touch or point of contact for the people, the common
people if you will.