Frank: "That's Norma Talmadge. You do like saving your honour, don't you, Norma? And now (to the audience) wouldn't you like to see Norma's little sister, Constance? (More applause.) Stand up, Constance, and let the audience see you."
Here another slim lady bowed her acknowledgments and the play was permitted to proceed.
What America is going to do with the cinema remains to be seen, but I, for one, deplore the modern tendency of novelists to be lured by American money to write for it. If the cinema wants stories from novelists let it take them from the printed books. One has but to reflect upon what might have happened had the cinema been invented a hundred years ago, to realise my disturbance of mind. With Mr. Lasky's millions to tempt them Dickens would have written "David Copperfield" and Thackeray "Vanity Fair," not for their publishers and as an endowment to millions of grateful readers in perpetuity, but as plots for the immediate necessity of the film, with a transitory life of a few months in dark rooms. Of what new "David Copperfields" and "Vanity Fairs" the cinema is to rob us we shall not know; but I hold that the novelist who can write a living book is a traitor to his art and conscience if he prefers the easy money of the film. Readers are to be considered before the frequenters of Picture Palaces. His privilege is to beguile and amuse and refresh through the ages: not to snatch momentary triumphs and disappear.
The evidence of the moment is more on the side of the pessimist than the optimist. I found in America no trace of interest in such valuable records as the Kearton pictures of African jungle life or the Ponting records of the Arctic Zone. For the moment the whole energy of the gigantic cinema industry seemed to be directed towards the filming of human stories and the completest beguilement, without the faintest infusion of instruction or idealism, of the many-headed mob. In short, to provide "dope." Whether so much "dope" is desirable, is the question to be answered. That poor human nature needs a certain amount, is beyond doubt. But so much? And do we all need it, or at any rate deserve it? is another question. Sometimes indeed I wonder whether those of us who have our full share of senses ought to go to the cinema at all. It may be that its true purpose is to be the dramatist of the deaf.
THE AMERICAN FACE
Perhaps it is one of the travellers' illusions (and we are very susceptible to them), but I have the impression that American men are more alike than the English are. It may be because there are fewer idiosyncrasies in male attire, for in America every one wears the same kind of hat; but I think not. In spite of the mixed origin of most Americans, a national type of face has been evolved to which they seem satisfied almost universally to pay allegiance. Again and again in the streets I have been about to accost strangers to whom I felt sure I had recently been introduced, discovering just in time that they were merely doubles. In England I fancy there is more individuality in appearance. If it is denied that American faces are more true to one type than ours, I shall reopen the attack by affirming that American voices are beyond question alike. My position in these two charges may be illustrated by notices that I saw fixed to gates at the docks in San Francisco. On one were the words "No Smoking"; on the other "Positively No Smoking."
And what about the science of physiognomy? I have been wondering if Lavater is to be trusted outside Europe. In China and Japan I was continually perplexed, for I saw so many men who obviously were successful—leaders and controllers—but who were without more than the rudiments of a nose on which to support their glasses; and yet I have been brought up to believe that without a nose of some dimensions it was idle to hope for worldly eminence. Again, in America, is it possible that all these massive chins and firm aquiline beaks are ruling the roost and reaching whatever goal they set out for? I doubt it.
The average American face is, I think, keener than ours and healthier. One sees fewer ruined faces than in English cities, fewer men and women who have lost self-respect and self-control. The American people as a whole strike the observer as being more prosperous, more alert and ambitious, than the English. Where I found mean streets they were always in the occupation of aliens.