We don’t use our brains enough, where the movies are concerned, either in the selection of pictures to go to see, or in analyzing—and appreciating or criticizing—what we see.
How often do you watch motion pictures?
Do you know anything about how they’re made? And who makes the best ones? And how they do it? And why they are better? And how you can tell them? And what it means in your life to see good ones—or bad ones?
More than twenty years ago, at a Yale-Harvard football game in New Haven, Harvard got the ball somewhere near midfield, in the second half, and hammered away towards the Yale goal. It was a cold, rainy day, with gray skies overhead and mud underfoot. Harvard weighed more, and was better trained, and had better men. From the very first they had the better of it; early in the game they plowed through to two touchdowns, while lumps came into the throats of the draggled Yale thousands, looking helplessly down from the great packed bleachers.
Then came that march down the field in the second half, with the rain falling again, and the players caked with mud until you couldn’t tell Red from Blue, and the last hopes of the Yale rooters sinking lower and lower.
But as Harvard pounded and plowed and splashed past midfield—half a yard, three yards, two yards, half a yard again—(five yards to a first down in those heartbreaking days) the cheering for that beaten, broken, plucky, fighting eleven swelled into a solid roar of encouragement and sympathy. It rose past the cheer leaders—ignored them; old grads and undergrads, and boys who wouldn’t reach Yale for years to come. Yale—Yale—Yale—over and over again, and then the famous Brek-ek-ek-ek! Co-ex! Co-ex!—rolling back again into the Nine Long Yales. All the way from midfield they kept it up, without a break or waver—there in the rain and the face of defeat—all the way down to the goal—and across it. Loyalty!
Another game. Yale-Princeton this time, with Yale ahead, all the way. And at the very end of the game, with the score twenty or more to nothing against them, those Princeton men gritted their teeth and dug in, holding Yale for downs with just half a yard to go! And on the stands the Princeton cohorts, standing up with their hats off, singing that wonderful chant of defeat:
“Her sons—will give—
While they—shall—live—
Three cheers—for old—Nassau!”