THE PICTURE PALACES OF AMERICA

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3376, 2 March 1920, Page 2

THE PICTURE PALACES OF AMERICA

AN ALADDIN'S CAVE OF MONEYMAKING. By Sir John Foster Fraser. The "movies" ha:x hypnotised the American people, and incidentally killed a good many other things. New York has a fashionable fondness for grand opera, and Chicago, despite the scoffer, ha? a quicker eye and more alert ear to discover artistic merit than any other city in the world. In the big American towns plays have their successes, but it is not the best which succeed most. Yankees crmh to see "The Better 'Ole," but there is plenty of room to see Maeterlinck before le is withdrawn, because his work is not appreciated. Travelling theatrical companies are rare in the United States, and not very successful. Wirk like that presented by Frank Benson, the Compton Comedy Company, the Carl Rosa "Opera Company, and the D'Oyly Carte Companies is unknown. The theatres in New York and Chicago and other cities have more of the structural beauties than most modern Lonudon theatres. Music-hall entertainments, vaudeville, are not in the same street with those which English audiences have. They are poor.

But when one comes to deal with the "movies," England, I must confess, has to take so far back a seat that it is scarcely worth mentioning. America has plenty of sub-hole picture houses, but the best places are superior to anything in London, not even excepting the big place in Kingsway and the huge arena near Marble Arch. The "movie" houses of the United States are luxurious; the accompanying decorations and lighting are artistic, and to rest the eye from too much "movie" there is invariably a first-rate orchestra and good singing. Some of the new American houses cost £500,000 in the building. The "trust" scheme is penetrating the film business and combinations, by erecting gorgeous palaces and corraling famous "stars" with glittering contracts and squeezing lesser folk out of a living. In a mid-western town I've paid 10 cents (5d.) to see a good picture, but in New York I've paid two dollars (which at the present exchange in currency represents about half a sovereign). And the rings of film producers in America, like the combines of the packers in Chicago, mean that our movies as well as our meat costs us more. HUGE SALARIES. It is reckoned there are 14,000 moving picturs theatres in the United States; that there are 6,370,000,000 visitors annually, and that something not far short of £200,000,000 is paid each year for admission. I am writing in Chicago, with a population of less than 3,000,000, and I've been informed that during the last six months the average paying attendance each week has been 2,550-000. Since Prohibition, attendance at the "movies" has increased. America pays the largest salaries in the world tc its movie stars and pays its educational experts the worst. Charlie Chaplin's annual income is' more than the salaries received by all the professors of Harvard, Yale and Cornell. FILM TOWNS. Whole towns, especially on the Pacilc coast, are engaged in nothing else but producing film plays. There is lots of money in the business —the "Birth of a Nation" cost £40,000 to produce, but the producer pocketed something like £1,000,000 and there is recklessness of expenditure. Chaplin, who used to be glad to earn £3 a week, has just refused a contract of £250,000 for a year's work, and Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks have each turned up their noses at £200,000 a year, which means appearing in about a dozen pictures, though Chaplin limits himself, I believe, to six a year. Actors and actresses who a few years ago were doing splendidly with £3O or £4O a week now receive £IOO,OOO a year.

It can easily be understood how half . the pretty girls in America think they have only to go into the "movies" and make millions of dollars. Many indifferent performers on the stage are successful in the films. The beginner in the "movies" gets about £3 a week. The luxurious methods of "stars" are duly recorded in the American journals. More fuss would be made over Douglas Fairbanks in Chicago than over Lloyd George. American Cabinet Ministers consider it an honour to be introduced to movie heroines and have the scene depicted in the wonderful Sunday supplements. The art of film production in the United States is moving along the best of lines, for the knock about pictures are little in favour save in rube communities. Frankly, the sentimental films that the soft-hearted Americans can weep over and thoroughly enjoy do not appeal to my more robust British palate. Most certainly are they fond of what they themselves call the "sob stuff." I saw a picture this afternoon "The Miracle Man," which bored mo because it was sloppily religious, but I'm sure everybody else thought it was just beautiful. "Broken Blossoms," founded on one of Thomas Burke's Limehouse night stories, is the film eevrybody in America has seen or wants to see. What is troubling the American film producer is the difficulty in getting good plays. £I,OOO PLOTS. The great demand is for new plots suitable for the pictures. A thousand pounds will be readily given for tin idea around which a play can be built by the "movie" artistes. Two hundred pounus will be riven for a title. Old ideas are being worked over again with new settings—for the demand for new films is tremendous. Some men who have got the knack of scenario writing are petting the income of a British First Sea Lord—though that is a mere bagatelle compared with the salary of a "movie" star. I know an English journalist who came ever here a vear or two ago to do "free-lancing. He tried his hand at "movie" work. He is disgustingly prosperous, but gives the most excellent dinners to his friends. Butt he Sardou of the "movies" has yet to be born.