With the movie makers

by Myron M. Stearns

Great!

But what of it? And what has it to do with motion pictures?

Just this. Each person, of all the thousands watching those games, was impressed.

Could not help but be. Few will ever forget all of what they saw, or all of what they felt. Something of the loyalty of the Yale stands, the fighting spirit of that dauntless Princeton eleven, became a part of each spectator.

Do you get it?

It’s the things that we see, the things that we hear, the things that we read, the things that we feel and do, that taken together make us, in large measure, what we are. Yes, the movies among the rest.

Every time we go to a loosely played baseball game, and see perhaps some center-fielder, standing flat-footed because he thinks he’s been cheated of a better position, muff an unimportant fly—we’re that much worse off. We don’t realize it, and of course taken all alone one impression doesn’t necessarily mean much of anything, but when it comes to our turn at the middle garden, it’ll be just that much simpler to slack down—and take things easy. And every time we see c. f. on a snappy nine, playing right on his toes, turn and race after a liner that looks like a home run, and lunge into the air for it as it streaks over his shoulder, and stab it with one hand and the luck that seems to stick around waiting for a good try, and hold it, and perhaps save the game with a sensational catch—why, we’re that much better ball-players ourselves, for the rest of our lives.

It’s a fact. An amazing, appalling, commonplace fact. But still a fact, and so one of the things you can’t get away from. The things we hear, the things we do, the things we see, make us what we are.

Take stories. The fellow who reads a raft of wishy-washy stories, until he gets so that he doesn’t care about any other kind particularly, becomes a wishy-washy sort of chap himself. On the other hand, too much of the “dime-novel” stuff is just as bad, with its distorted ideas and ideals. Twenty-five years ago, the Frank Merriwell stories, a nickel a week, were all the thing, and sometimes it seemed to many a boy unfair foolishness that Father and Mother were so against reading them. But Father and Mother knew best, as those same boys will admit to-day. Too much of that sort of thing is as bad for a fellow as a diet of all meat and no vegetables. Wishy-washy, sentimental books can be compared to meals that are all custard and blanc mange.

To watch first-class motion pictures (when you can find them) is like reading worth-while stories. They tell us, show us, as often as not, places that are interesting, and different from the parts of the world we live in. They bring all people, and all times, before us on the screen. But the poor pictures that we see twist out of shape our ideas of people and life; they show things that are not and could not be true, they gloss over defects of character that a fellow should—that a regular fellow will—face squarely. A clothing-store-dummy “hero” does things that no decent scout would do—and we’re just as much hurt by watching him on the screen as we would be by watching that flat-footed center fielder on the losing baseball team.