With the movie makers

by Myron M. Stearns

But for me, there was one tremendous defect, that marred what would otherwise have been an exceedingly fine film.

It was this: the boys and girls of the story were—oh, say twelve to fifteen years old. Certainly not more. But the actors who took the parts were nearly all of them nearer thirty than fifteen, and showed it.

Now, boys in a swimming-hole, purloining each other’s clothes, or ducking to get out of sight of some one hunting for them, and all the rest, may be funny enough, and interesting. But when you see a man doing those same things, it is entirely different. And Charles Ray never at any time in “The Old Swimmin’-hole” looks enough of a boy. The result is, that the film, instead of being a knockout, is “almost” the real thing.

Or take “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” It is a fine picture. But Mary Pickford is playing a boy’s part—and we are never quite able to forget that she is a girl. Result: the photoplay isn’t quite right.

We have a right to insist on reality.

Now, when it comes to what the “regular fellows” of our photoplays (men, women or children, it makes no matter which, so long as they are real flesh-and-blood human beings, with real characteristics to distinguish them from everybody else)—when it comes to what they do, we have the chance to see if they are worth while or not.

If the picture is an out and out fairy story, say like “The Little Princess,” or “Rip Van Winkle,” or “The Golem,” we can take our choice. Occasionally, a Douglas Fairbanks comes along and escapes from thirty-nine bloodthirsty villains by jumping over a house, and we like it because it is pleasing nonsense. But mostly, when photoplay folk do quite impossible things, they might as well “get the hook.”

Whether it is scaling precipices that simply couldn’t be scaled, or rising to heights of grandness that never could be risen to, the trouble is the same. For even when watching pure fiction, we want to have it applicable to life. We want to be able to feel that it really might have happened. And whenever we find a movie hero doing something, big or little, that makes us say or feel “O piffle!”—why—out.

Another thing: our movie people must have worth-while thoughts in their heads.

Take a small thing—the men in a picture keeping their hats on in a house, or perhaps failing to stand up when a lady enters the room, or showing poor table manners, such as would not be expected from gentlemen in the class they are pretending to portray.