OCR Text |
Show mX -vAlAUQlCE COSTELLO. CONSOLIDATED 'h, BY A. H. GlE BLER, .w.-V STKE short-length fllm, the one IS and two reel comedies and dramas that gave us our first : Eppetite for the movies, are passing. Tho decline of the short, photoplay " began with the making of the first s multiple reel and has been going on ( ever since, and such is the rapidity with which things move in the movies that it will bo only a short time uiu.il there will be nothing of the tablio 1 films left except a few comedies, the news weeklys and the educational subjects. If we may judge the future by the past, there is no indication that educational edu-cational pictures will ever be made in longer lengths. The great American Ameri-can public is willing to tak its entertainment enter-tainment in larger doses, but it seems to prefer being educated a little at a ytimc, at least so far as pictures as a medium are concerned. The passing of the one and two reelers has a meaning much deeper than appears on tho surface. It means that the neighborhood picture fhow, as we once knew it, is on the l,. same toboggan and that the two arc W sliding to oblivion at the same rate of I speed. - it 1 he number of moving-picture the-i& the-i& aters is growing less and less all the rT time. To cite an example, the City o wi SL Louis had more than 200 shows teven years ago. Today there are less lban io- 'm This does not mean that the pic- JE tures are losing their hold on the pub- jm He a3 a means of entertainment. T'ic H fact is that they are gaining in popu- mm larlty all the time, because the less jaj than 100 theaters in St Louis todd7 jH have a combined seating capacity H greater than the more than 200 of a Wt few years ago. yffl The old-time nickelodeon, with its iw 200 and 300 sea's, a lone piano player t and a program of four or five single Mm reelB' ,B glvlnf' t0 r8ular theat- lnjP rs "with full orchestras, ushers in tiDf Tinlform and from eight to fourteen htwB reel5 of each performance and an a-i- 3fS tDis6,on prIcc from 10 t0 25 cenls ! ii'rM The Melting Tot. h$ r Tne ollI-fa6uioncd neighborhood yjfe Ehow was one of tho greatest Icvcieis ail and one of the most democratic in- zi Etltutions the country has ever known brought all of the people of a dis icjj Wet together and made them ac- '0 f Minted with one another. It healed tj fcudB aQd destroyed sectional ar.i iMpl Eectarlan lines. jefc Before the movie show the people ct I eacn neighborhood had many kln:te o jolll cntertainmentsf but there was aiwayj iMm a 1,nc of lodge, church or cult sl Emething that prevented a perfect lljil EOcial amalgamation. "M E rs- Jones would go down the w ttrcet na6t where the loyal order of tf this, that or tho other was giving Jgl "blow-out," but she would not eo hi because she knew that her lodge o-her o-her church or club would be givic an entertainmccnt. the next week that would be even ,ao much better than this could ever hope to be. Mrs. Smith, moving into a new neighborhood, would make friendb with tho women of the district who belonged to her club or her church, and very often she got no further into in-to the social life of the district th in this. Vhen the movie show came it drew from all sects, all lodges, all churches. The people met on a common grou'.iJ of amusement. They wept and sorrow ed over the wrongs of the screen heroines hero-ines and laughed atHhc antics of. trc comedians, and a great friendliness grew up among them all. The old-time movie show healed feuds and made friends of encmictr. Mrs. Snippy, making her way to tho one vacant seat in the middle row of a darkened theater, stumbled over the generous feet of Mrs. Cross, her backyard enemy. And, just to shov that she was not forgetful of Lie amenities of life if others were, 5is apologized nolitely. . And Mrs. Cro3S, not to be outdone, grew voluble In her acceptance of the apology, am the first thing either of them knew they were chatting away liko o''l friqnds every time the operator changed the reels. And the next day they would be borrowing cups of sugar and things from one another across the baclv fence. 3Iore Ornate Jlouses. The cinema palaces do not raak for this neighborhood feeling, and ti3 neighborhood melting pot is not bubbling bub-bling as fast and as furiously as U once did. The average housewife does nor stack the supper dishes in the sink slick back her hair, grab little John ny and little Genevieve and three nickels and hit the trail tp the movies five or six nights a week, as she once did. Going to the movies means dressing up in good clothes nowadays, and worse it means twice afc many nickels nick-els as it did in the early days. Of course, the patrons of the pictures pic-tures are responsible for the passing of the short films. The producers began be-gan making five and six reel features The people liked them and began patronizing pat-ronizing the houses that showed then. The managers of the little theaters could not exhibit the big features, that cost all the way from ?25 to $100 a day in rentals, in houses where thai much money could not be taken 'n all evening, and as most of the managers mana-gers had waxed prosperous, they began be-gan erecting larger houses rcguU paiaccc that would accomodate as many as 2000 epople ico-aircd in summer and hot-aired in winter, dp coratcd on the inside with plush banc- ings and brilliantly uniformeo ushers and ornamented on the outside witn tho architect's entire bag of tricks. The moving-picture industry had Its greatest growth and, if tho tru'h were told, its greatest prosperity lc the days of the one-reel film. The little stories did not cost much to produce, and in spite of the fa-.l that at one time twenty-five studios were turning them out as fast as they could make them, the supply did not meet the demand. An Era of ImproTcmont. The first dramatic photoplay ma'o in America was produced at tho Thomas A. Edison plant. Before this the dramatic subjects all came from Europe, principally from France nrul Italy. Theso pictures wore not popular popu-lar after the novelty had worn off. There were few regular pictuit theaters at this time, but with ihi coming of the American picture pjav, thcro was a great boom to the business. busi-ness. Theaters sprang up like mush rooms in every Mty, town and hamlet. A vacant storeroom fitted out with a projection machine, a girl to sell' tickets and a few dozen scats or benches and a white sheet stretched across tho back would become i prosperous theater overnight. Tho exhibitor ex-hibitor who painted the back wall -of bis building white for a screening surface sur-face was considered progressive anJ more than cxtravagent. The one-reel plays were masterpieces master-pieces of condensed action; as murh story and plot wore crowded Into their 1000 feet as is found in many of the 5000 and 6000 foot features or today. They were all action. The life story of the characters from the cradlo to tho grave had to bo told in eighteen minutes, and in some cases it wao done logically and artistically. There wore no waits, no padding; few subtitles were used. A story that did not tell itself in action was not used. The sentences thrown on the screen seldom had more than to l words; letters were limited to fifty words. A man going to China would write and tell his wife all about it in one paragraph. Tho actors did not Indulge In retrospection, re-trospection, introspection, or anytime else. They moved through the story with dash and spirit. No precious moments mo-ments were wasted by tho hero putting put-ting his gloves on or getting h's gloves ofT. Many of tho early actors did not bother about such minor things as gloves at all. They went to weddings, funerals, ic-ceptlons, ic-ceptlons, everything in the same suit of clothes. No doubt many of th'e conventions of good society and dress and" deport raent wore severly shattered, by tins ono-rcelcrs. They wero full of crudities, crudi-ties, absurdities even, but there was a got-up-and-go to them and there wps story and plot and action and pep aivl punch and thrill in every scene, and some of them had aD many as fify scenes. Most of the players In the "big stuff" of today mado their start in tho one-reel pictures, and most of I'd-' prominent directors learned their tcchniquo in making the tabloid dramas and comedies of six and seven years ago. David w. Griffith was a master of the one reels, and his plays wero t f . masterpieces of dramatic force and art. Tho sanio art that ho put Into tho "Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance" "Intoler-ance" was put into the little features. Mary Pickford, Alice Joyce, J Warren War-ren Kerrigan, the Bushman and Bay-no Bay-no team, the three Moore boys, G. M. Anderson, Thomas Santchi, Henry Walthall, Marguerite Snow, Carlyiu Blackwcll, Crane Wilbur, Pearl White. Wallace Reld, Florenco Lawrence, Maurice Costello, Clara Kimball Young and dozens of others had their first screen experience in short-length pictures, and several in this list had never had any previous stage careoc. The five-reel fllm was a natural evolution. Tho producers who made the 1000-foot reel tried their hands r.t two-reclers. Then enmo tho thrco aii-3 the five. For somo unexplained reason, rea-son, there were but few four-reel pictures ever made. There aro few short films being mado today. Tin old Biogrnph Company Com-pany has stopped entirely. Tho Vita graph dovotes most of its time to long films. One-reel comedies will probably always al-ways bo made, because the exhibitor that makes a program of one five-recler five-recler always wants a short-leugib subject to round out tho bill, and vn most of tho long subjects aro dramas, comedies are best for this purpose. Many people deplore the passing o tho short subjects. Some prophc-j their return to favor. Some say they were most crudo and inartistic anil others say that all the fun has been taken out of going to the movies since tho long films came along and mad--it a formal occasion like goiug'to Mi1' opera. |