With the movie makers

by Myron M. Stearns

A few years from now, when certain brands, names, or concerns have come to have a definite following of audiences that will know what to expect from them, “The Copperhead” or “The World and His Wife” could be distributed, in all probability, with far greater success. “The Copperhead,” in particular, a patriotic spy story of the Civil War, with the appeal that it has through the portrayal of Abraham Lincoln, as well as its stirring war setting, would be sure to please—as soon as it could find the right audience, and a big enough one.

This brings us to another point of improvement that will be seen in pictures before long: good films will last longer.

Just such pictures as these mentioned, for instance,—“The Copperhead,” “The World and His Wife,” “Over the Hill,” “Broken Blossoms,” and many more, will be watched and welcomed again just as gladly as was Mary Pickford’s “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” or Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation.” The day when a good picture will “go” only when it is brand new—only when you and Dug and I have never seen it before, and go to it only because it’s new, is almost over. In the long run you and Dug and I—and Henry, too,—have more sense than that. We shall be just as willing to see and enjoy a good picture a second time—perhaps years after we saw it the first time—as we are now willing to re-read a book or story that pleased us immensely.

As an example, take “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”; any one who enjoyed that whimsical yarn of a Yankee in armor as much as I did will be entirely willing—yes, anxious—to see it again, if it is shown once more, half a dozen years from now.

Never be afraid to go to see a really good film twice; never be afraid to go to see a really good film after it is old or out of date. That will help things along. For the quicker poor photoplays die, the better off we are, and the longer good ones live, the better off we are, too.

Next, to get to another change that will come to the movies very shortly. That is the coming in of a more far-sighted dollar.

Far-sighted dollar? Exactly. At present the dollars invested in movies are mostly very shortsighted. At the very best, we can say they are—well, “smart.” They don’t look ahead. They take no particular pride in their work. They are not ashamed if they fail to give value received—100 cents of satisfaction for every 100 cents.

Speaking of dollars in this way is entirely correct. For a dollar is an inert thing, that takes on life and movement and power and individuality in accordance with the ideas and ideals and personality of the man who spends or invests it. The selfish dollar is the coin of the purely commercial business man who merely tries to get as much as he can while giving as little as he can. The intelligent dollar is the dollar of a really intelligent investor, who expends it wisely, and fairly, and in such a way that it will bring him both a sure and an honorable return.

In motion pictures, the average investor, up to the present time, has been either a “sucker” who simply lost his money, or a speculator who took a blind chance, or a “wise guy” who knew the picture business and merely played it for what he could get out of it, with little or no regard for the other fellow, or the public, or American prestige, or anything else that didn’t directly affect his own pocketbook. Of course there are exceptions—but after all there are not so very many of them. The dollar of the average American movie producer to-day is still a rather unintelligent dollar.

Up to this time, intelligent dollars have been a little ashamed to go into motion-picture investments, because with so many unintelligent dollars around they were afraid they would be classified the same way. A publisher, for instance, who has had wide magazine experience and who now runs more than one New York magazine, was recently urged to go into a motion-picture investment “for the good of the movies.” He refused, because, he said, he had never stooped to that kind of investment. To him, the movie dollars seemed so selfish, so short-sighted, so unintelligent, that he refused to let his own dollars associate with them.