That Marvel—The Movie A Glance at Its Past, Its Promising Present and Its Significant Future

NO conscientious writer begins the final chapter of a book that has engaged his energies for a considerable period of time without a feeling of mingled regret and apprehension....

WITH striking unanimity contemporary writers dealing with the problems vexing humanity to-day express amazement at the fact that the race has learned so little from its variegat...

WHOEVER asserted that “you can’t indict a whole nation” made a sweeping generalization that was both historically and psychologically accurate. In what I have said, and am about...

FOR countless ages Man watched the birds in flight, realized his own motor handicaps, and relegated his hope of flying to a life which he might eventually lead in the world of s...

IT would be inexpedient, I believe, for me to bring this inadequate, but, I hope, more or less illuminating, investigation of the origin, present status and future possibilities...

DR. JEKYLL has begun belatedly to make his elevating influence felt in the movies. Press, pulpit, producers, are backing him in his fight against Mr. Hyde. But the latter seems...

NO story of the evolution of the motion picture from an experiment in photography to a factor in the daily lives of millions of people would be complete without a passing refere...

WE Americans are forever boasting of our sense of humor, but we have a deplorable way of exhibiting a complete lack thereof at certain crises when its saving grace alone could r...

WHETHER the first antidote the race has discovered against polyglot poison can save civilization before it is blown to pieces by high explosive shells is a problem that assumes...

THE need of motion-picture producers for new raw material for the screen grows apace, and is constantly harder to satisfy. Otherwise, the camera would not at present be endeavor...

IN a very important particular the title first chosen for this little book was a misnomer, a fact that grows more apparent to the author as he approaches the end of the task he...

FOR ages the interest of the individual in dramatic episodes in real life was in direct ratio to his propinquity to the locality in which these episodes occurred. Until recently...

THE utilitarian evolution of the movie has been as remarkable as the recreational—though much less spectacular. The screen seems to have come like a poultice to heal the blows o...

THE conviction expressed at the end of the preceding chapter that in the screen civilization has finally found a medium through which Man’s loftiest ideals, hopes, dreams, visio...

WAS it Brander Matthews, Henry Van Dyke, Richard Burton or Clayton Hamilton who asserted that any given novel must be placed in the category of either the Impossible, the Improb...

BEFORE going on to a discussion of the utilitarian as contrasted with the recreational functions of the movie, it seems advisable to consider for a moment a type of screen prese...

NOT long ago the good people of Stratford-on-Avon, England, arose in their might, held a great mass meeting, and decreed that Shakespeare’s birthplace should not be desecrated b...

HAS a race harassed, well-nigh hopeless, forever committing old errors under new incitements, found in the screen both a pedagogue and a peacemaker, potent for rescue if its pos...

_The Esperanto of the Tongue—Its Rapidly Increasing Vogue—All Countries Taking It Up—Its Inferiority to the Esperanto of the Eye—Together They May Save the World—“The Covered Wa...

_The Movie Ran Wild for Years—Not Threatened with Censorship Until too Old to Need it—What Christ Thought of Pharisees—History and Common-Sense Against Censorship—Rev. Newell Dw...

_Philip Kerr vs. H. G. Wells—Is the Race Doomed to Commit Hari-Kari?—The Failures of Diplomacy—The Screen Revealing Man to Himself—History the Best Bet of a Warworn Race—Teachin...

_Its Rise from Mush to Masterpieces—Its Debt to D. W. Griffith—“The Birth of a Nation”—A New Way to Tell Old Tales—“The Three Musketeers”—“The Count of Monte Cristo”—“The Four H...

_The Entertainer Becomes an Instructor—Schools and Colleges make the Screen a Professor—Visual Instruction more Effective than Text-Books—Educational Films as Teachers of Histor...

_The Movie Learns to Walk—George Eastman’s Great Achievement—The Kinetoscope Goes to England—John W. Paul Throws Motion Pictures on a Screen—London “Bobbies” See the First Movie...

_Buried Civilizations—They Perished from Lack of Intercommunication—Civilization now World-Wide—Its Salvation Depends on Mutual Understanding—The Screen the Only Universal Tongu...

_Grows up in the Slums—Used and Abused as a Money-Getter—Goes from Bad to Worse—Will Hays Called to the Rescue—Pulpit, Press and Playwrights Thunder Against it—The Responsibilit...

_Muybridge’s Trotting Horses—Edison’s Kinetoscope—The Problem Eastman Solved—The Movie as a Universal Language—A Toy for Children that Became a World Power—The Men Who Rocked th...

_Ravenous for Screen-Food—A Ghoul Exhausting the Grave-Yards—Contemporary Novelists Fail to Supply the Demand—A New Art, a New Technique and a New Possibility—Scenario-Writing T...

_Pictures that Combine Instruction and Amusement—“Nanook of the North”—Passing Phases of Life Preserved for Posterity—African Big Game Screened for our Descendants—President Har...

_Civilization in Peril—Leaders of Thought give Warning—Mankind Repeats Old Errors—Needs a Universal Language—The Motion Picture the Only Esperanto—Can the Screen Save the Race?—...

_Its Enormous Audiences—It Speaks to all Men—What Message Does it Carry?—The Race at the Parting of the Ways—Have International Marplots Won Control of the Screen?—The Fate of C...

_The Era of Fly-by-Night Speculation—The Mushroom Movie Craze—The Screen’s Youthful Indiscretions—Stupidity and Cupidity as Partners—The Degradation of a New Art-Form—Boy-Made S...

_The Screen Demands the Inevitable—Movie Audiences no Longer Easily Fooled—They can Tell a Hawk from a Hernshaw—The Value of the Screen as a Mirror of Life—Man’s First Universal...

_War and Love Degraded—The Crook and the Vampire—Pursuers and Pursued—The Box-Office Finally Vindicates Dr. Jekyll—The Photoplay’s Marvellous Future—Booths and Barrymores Pass,...

_The Screen Wins Powerful Friends—Societies Representing Sixty Million Americans Endorse it—Its Power for Good Recognized by Altruists—The Movie’s Allies Mobilized—The New Art i...

_Solves Many Problems—Becomes Actor, Artist, Singer, Scientist, Teacher, Drummer—As a Hamlet Shows Mother Earth Two Pictures—Will the Race Go Up or Go Down—The Screen Possibly a...