Category: 1910s

Film Matinees for Children

Source: ‘Film Matinees for Children’, The Times (London), 13 May 1920, p. 14

Text:
FILM MATINEES FOR CHILDREN.

AN EXCITED AUDIENCE.

At many picture theatres in the outer zone of London it is the custom to set aside one afternoon a week for the benefit of children. The average film, of course, is admirably suited to the intellect of a child, and all that has to be done is to reduce the price of admission to the level of a child’s pocket. The process is wonderfully simple. The price of admission is reduced from 6d. to 3d. and we have what is triumphantly described as a “Children’s Matinée.” The fact remains, however, that although it is unpretentious, a children’s matinée is a remarkable experience. Thoroughly to enjoy it the intruding grown-up must put on the simple faith of a child. He must be both childlike and bland, and, above all, he must forget to be superior. If he will try to forget for a few hours any theories on the film and crime, or the film and education, and just be content to think of the film as an afternoon’s diversion, he may enter into the company of the elect, who regard a film, a dog fight, a revolution, or a Punch and Judy Show, as created for one purpose, and one purpose only-that of their own personal and private entertainment. If he fails to enjoy the experience he must either be very clever or very foolish. He will almost certainly regret that the cinematograph was not invented when he, too, too, was young enough to live in Arcadia.

Mandarin’s Gold was the title of the principal item at one matineé for children this week. The enormous enjoyment they managed to extract from it was a revelation. The ground floor of the hall was thick with ecstatic and squirming children. They squirmed not only with their bodies but with their tongues, and the result resembled the remarks of the chorus in the Frogs of Aristophanes. The clamour was amazing even before the lights went down, and when the title of the film flickered uncertainly on to the screen the noise changed to a roar of the kind that is usually associated with an “infuriated mob.” The Mandarin then made his appearance. It turned out later that he was an extremely unpleasant person, but his gorgeous costume endeared him to his audience at the outset, and he was received with a hurricane of applause. A sophisticated child, who had apparently seen Chu Chin Chow, informed all those around her that she had obtained the autograph of Mr. Oscar Asche, but her remark was treated with such contumely that she had to be led forth in tears.

As the story developed it became obvious, since the scene was laid in New York, that the Mandarin was really an undesirable Alien, and he began to grow very unpopular. He soon attempted to make violent love to an innocent Chinese maiden, and there was not a child in the audience that managed to retain its seat. They arose and denounced him in good but unusual English, and one almost expected to see him tremble under the wrath that was being poured upon him. When, however, he had first played his part, there was no one more hostile about than the producer, and so the Mandarin continued his dastardly deeds with a phlegm that was more British than Oriental. The plot continued to thicken with surprising rapidity, and the uproar began to get quite alarming.

DRAMATIC IRONY.

Then came the peripeteia. The hero and heroine of the film set out to succour the Oriental maiden. There was a glimpse of them in a large motor-car, into the corners of which were crowded what seemed to be half the New York police force. The scene was switched- back to the wicked Mandarin. He was still gloating over his victim, little thinking of the terrible things the producer had in store for him. Here was dramatic irony as the scenario writer loves it. The children in the audience, however, had very little use for irony, and a very diminutive child somewhere in the neighbourhood of the orchestra informed the villain in a very shrill voice that “The coppers were coming.” As it happened the mandarin turned towards the audience at that moment in order to gnash his teeth. The child seemed to think that retribution was swiftly on his track, and he, too, was led out weeping. The remainder of the children paid no attention to these mishaps, for the New York police force had appeared again. They were greeted with an outburst of cheering that would have made them blush if they had been able, and when they burst into the house of the Mandarin the children rose in a body and delivered three hearty cheers. Their enthusiasm was infectious, and one parent in the audience was seen to shake a very large fist at the unfortunate Mandarin, who was by then lying on the floor in an attitude reminiscent of Pecksniff, while the New York police force struck him on his gorgeously decorated head with their batons.

The lights went up, and the children wiped their brows and tried to sit down. Then the babel began again, for the excitement had been so intense that half the audience had left their seats to encourage the protagonists, and taken up positions in rows far in front. They had not sorted themselves out before the next film was being shown. This indicated the habits of the emu, and there was plenty of time to reorganise before the next comic film appeared.

Comments: The film described was Mandarin’s Gold (USA 1919), directed by Oscar Apfel and starring Warner Oland as Li Hsun, the mandarin. Chu Chin Chow was a 1916 musical comedy based on the story of Ali Baba, written by Oscar Asche. Pecksniff is a character in Charles Dickens’s novel Martin Chuzzlewit.

The Night Side of Europe

Source: Karl Kingsley Kitchen, The Night Side of Europe, as seen by a Broadwayite abroad (Cleveland: The David Gibson company, 1914), pp. 161-162

Text: Damascus boasts of three theatres — all cinemas, as the “movies” are called in the Orient. I chose the Palace Theatre, near the hotel, because on its billboards it announced a troupe of dancers in addition to its photo plays. Twenty piasters (80 cents) bought a box, which was located in the balcony overlooking one of the strangest audiences in the world. The entire lower floor was filled with turbaned Arabs and befezed Syrians smoking “hobble bobbles,” as the Turkish water pipes are called in Syria. When you take your seat in a Damascus theatre, you are asked by the usher if you want a “hobble bobble,” and if so one is provided for a trifling tip.

Nearly five hundred men were puffing away downstairs, while thirty or forty smart looking Turkish officers were in the tier of boxes when I took my place. The pictures — mostly French made films — were shown without musical accompaniment, and when the lights were turned on after forty minutes of darkness a third of the audience was asleep.

Under the guidance of my dragoman I visited two cafes chantants, where the few unattached European women in Damascus make their headquarters, and where the “night life” of the officers and higher officials centers. One of the cafes — known as the American bar — proved quite gay. Its guests were being entertained by a phonograph, and I was informed that there would be muscle dancing as soon as the performers could leave the Palace Theatre.

That sent me back to the Victoria Hotel in a hurry, where I found real “night life” under my mosquito bar. But that, as Kipling says, is another story.

Comments: Karl Kingsley Kitchen (1885-1935) was an American travel writer, newspaper columnist and bon viveur. His book The Night Side of Europe documents his experiences of theatres across Europe, Russia and the Near East. In 1914, Syria was part of the Ottoman empire.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

Industrial Town

Source: Charles Forman, Industrial Town: Self Portrait of St Helens in the 1920s (London: Paladin Books, 1979 [orig. pub. 1978]), pp. 120-121

Text: THE JOINER, BORN c. 1905

My brother and I used to get 1½d every Saturday to go to the picture palace. There was one film and lantern slides. It used to be a gymnasium. You climbed on the bars to get a better spec. There was a cinema at the top of Helena House, the Co-op building. It was 1d to go in and ½d for two ounces of toffee. We used to give one of the halfpennies to a friend. He had no money, there were too many of them, seven in the family. If we gave the two halfpennies to him, the three of us could go in. The children’s idol was a fellow called ‘Pimple’ – in the same year as Flora Finch. He was a fellow like a clown. He came on in a series each week – ‘Pimple at the North Pole’. Then there wasn’t enough film to go round all afternoon. The lantern slides used to come on – pictures of plants, flowers and birds, the drawing-room scenes. Sometimes they told a story.

Comments: Charles Forman’s Industrial Town is a collection of eye-witness accounts of life in the Lancashire town of St Helens in 1920s (and earlier, as with this account). ‘Pimple’ was a character played by British comedian Fred Evans, who plays the character in a long series of short films in the 1910s. The film referred to was Lieutenant Pimple’s Dash for the Pole (UK 1914). Flora Finch was a British comic actress popular in American films.

The New China

Source: Henri Borel, The New China (New York: Dodd, Mead and company, 1912), p. 77

Text: The bioscope films—Tien ying or “lightning shadows”—have become immensely popular in China, and here and there even begin to supplant the ancient, very popular Chinese theatre. In the large Ta-Sha Lärl Street, in the Chinese City, some theatres where special Chinese plays used to be given have been entirely re-arranged for bioscope productions, although only in very exceptional cases are Chinese scenes reproduced. The bioscope seems an invaluable instrument for giving the Chinese people some idea of life in Europe, of which they used to have not the slightest notion; and the Chinese also forms by its means a clear conception of modern inventions. I positively saw in Peking good films of balloon ascents and aviation. It is certainly a sharp contrast to visit the Chinese City in the evening, to go through the sombre mediaeval Ch‘ien Mên Gate, to walk along the wide Ch‘ien Men Street, where not a single European can be seen at that time of day, to pass into the crowded Ta-Sha Lärl Street and traversing a long, dark passage, to enter a Chinese theatre and see on the canvas a Paris Boulevard with Parisian gentlemen and girls, clearly on the spree, sitting, half seas over, in front of a café. Shade of Confucius, how is it possible?

Comments: Henri Borel (1869-1933) was a Dutch travel writer, journalist, novelist and diplomat. He was an authority on Chinese affairs. This account of Chinese film shows refers to Beijing.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

The Child and the Cinema

Source: C.W. Kimmins, ‘The Child and the Cinema’ in The Child’s Attitude to Life; a study of children’s stories (London: Methuen, 1926), pp. 101-102

Text: The moving picture I liked best was a gentleman advertised in a paper for a lady friend, and in a class of young ladies, one read it in the paper and ran out of the room, another also read the article, and also left the room; one by one they all dis appeared and went to the gentleman’s house. When they all came, he did not want every one and he then started to run away. During different pictures it is shown that he runs into woods and hides behind trees, all of them trying to catch him, but not one succeeding. He continues to run up hills, over ragged rocks, sometimes falling over, but always picking himself up and continuing. The women also stumble over many large boulders, but they never seem to mind. It shows him running along a pier, and unable to escape, he dives into the sea, all the women following him. There was quite a band of bobbing heads, all trying to get to him, but as he had a start none succeeded. He swims to land and races across open country, all the others following him. He is then seen climbing on the top of railway carriages with the others behind him. At last tired out he reaches home again, to find that his wife, who had run away, had come back again. The others leave very sorrowful at their disappointment.

Comments: Dr Charles William Kimmins, Chief Inspector under the Education Committee of the London County Council (his son Anthony Kimmins became an actor and film director) supplied evidence to the Cinema Commission Inquiry, instituted by the National Council of Public Morals, whose report on children and cinema was published as The Cinema: Its Present Position and Future Possibilities (1917). He had 6,701 children of different ages from 25 London schools each write an account of ‘the moving picture they liked most of all those they had seen in the cinema’. They had 15 minutes in which to do so, with no preparatory discussion. The 1917 report includes extracts from the children’s accounts, reproduced on this site, but Kimmins included further examples in his 1926 book The Child’s Attitude to Life, from which the above account comes. The unnamed child, aged 10-12, is recalling, in vivid detail, a chase film close in theme to the much-imitated Biograph film Personal (USA 1904), but which would have been a later production.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust
Kimmins’s evidence to the Cinema Commission Enquiry

A Death in the Family

Source: James Agee, A Death in the Family (London: Peter Owen, 1965 – orig. pub. 1957), pp. 11-14

Text: At supper that night, as many times before, his father said, “Well, spose we go to the picture show.”

“Oh, Jay!” his mother said. “That horrid little man!”

“What’s wrong with him?” his father asked, not because he didn’t know what she would say, but so she would say it.

“He’s so nasty!” she said, as she always did. “So vulgar! With his nasty little cane; hooking up skirts and things, and that nasty little walk!”

His father laughed, as he always did, and Rufus felt that it had become rather an empty joke; but as always the laughter also cheered him; he felt that the laughter enclosed him with his father.

They walked downtown in the light of mother-of-pearl, to the Majestic, and found their way to seats by the light of the screen, in the exhilarating smell of stale tobacco, rank sweat, perfume and dirty drawers, while the piano played fast music and galloping horses raised a grandiose flag of dust.

And there was William S. Hart with both guns blazing and his long, horse face and his long, hard lip and the great country rode away behind him as wide as the world. Then he made a bashful face at a girl and his horse raised its upper lip and everybody laughed, and then the screen was filled with a city and with the sidewalk of a side street of a city, a long line of palms and there was Charlie; everyone laughed the minute they saw him squattily walking with his toes out and his knees wide apart, as if he were chafed; Rufus’ father laughed, and Rufus laughed too. This time Charlie stole a whole bag of eggs and when a cop came along he hid them in the seat of his pants. Then he caught sight of a pretty woman and he began to squat and twirl his cane and make silly faces. She tossed her head and walked away with her chin up high and her dark mouth as small as she could make it and he followed her very busily, doing all sorts of things with his cane that made everybody laugh, but she paid no attention. Finally she stopped at a corner to wait for a streetcar, turning her back to him, and pretending he wasn’t even there, and after trying to get her attention for a while, and not succeeding, he looked out at the audience, shrugged his shoulders, and acted as if she wasn’t there. But after tapping his foot for a little, pretending he didn’t care, he became interested again, and with a charming smile, tipped his derby; but she only stiffened, and tossed her head again, and everybody laughed. Then he walked back and forth behind her, looking at her and squatting a little while he walked very quietly, and everybody laughed again; then he flicked hold of the straight end of his cane and, with the crooked end, hooked up her skirt to the knee, in exactly the way that disgusted Mama, looking very eagerly at her legs, and everybody laughed very loudly; but she pretended she had not noticed .Then he twirled his cane and suddenly squatted, bending the cane and hitching up his pants, and again hooked up her skirt so that you could see the panties she wore, ruffled almost like the edges of curtains, and everybody whooped with laughter, and she suddenly turned in rage and gave him a shove in the chest, and he sat down straight-legged, hard enough to hurt, and everybody whooped again; and she walked haughtily away up the street, forgetting about the streetcar, “mad as a hornet!” as his father exclaimed in delight; and there was Charlie, flat on his bottom on the sidewalk, and the way he looked, kind of sickly and disgusted, you could see that he suddenly remembered those eggs, and suddenly you remembered them too. The way his face looked, with the lip wrinkled off the teeth and the sickly little smile, it made you feel just the way those broken eggs must feel against your seat, as queer and awful as that time in the white pekay suit, when it ran down out of the pants-legs and showed all over your stockings and you had to walk home that way with people looking; and Rufus’s father nearly tore his head off laughing and so did everybody else, and Rufus was sorry for Charlie, having been so recently in a similar predicament, but the contagion of laughter was too much for him, ang he laughed too. And then it was even funnier when Charlie very carefully got himself from the sidewalk, with that sickly look even worse on his face, and put his cane under one arm, and began to pick at his pants, front and back, very carefully, with his little fingers crooked, as if it were too dirty to touch, picking the sticky cloth away from his skin. Then he reached behind him and took out the wet bag of broken eggs and opened it and peered in; and took out a broken egg and pulled the shell disgustedly apart, letting the elastic yolk slump from one half shell into the other, and dropped it, shuddering. Then he peered in again and fished out a whole egg, all slimy with broken walk, and polished it off carefully on his sleeve, and looked at it, and wrapped it in his dirty handkerchief, and put it carefully into the vest pocket of his little coat. Then he whipped out his cane from under his armpit and took command of it again, and with a final look at everybody, still sickly but at the same time cheerful, shrugged his shoulders and turned his back and scraped backward with his big shoes at the broken shells and the slimy bag, just like a dog, and looked back at the mess (everybody laughed again at that) and started to walk away, bending his cane deep with every shuffle, and squatting deeper, with his knees wider apart, than ever before, constantly picking at the seat of his pants with his left hand, and shaking one foot, then the other, and once gouging deep into his seat and then pausing and shaking his whole body, like a wet dog, and then walking on; while the screen shut over his small image a sudden circle of darkness: then the player-piano changed its tune, and the ads came in motionless color. They sat on into the William S. Hart feature to make sure why he had killed the man with the fancy vest – it was as they had expected by her frightened, pleased face after the killing; he had insulted a girl and cheated her father as well – and Rufus’ father said, “Well, … this is where we came in,” but they watched him kill the man all over again; then they walked out.

Comments: James Agee (1909-1955) was an American novelist, journalist and film critic. The passage above is the opening to chapter one of his posthumously-published novel A Death in the Family, which is set in 1915 in his home town of Knoxville, Tennessee. Despite the great detail given, the Charlie Chaplin film described is imaginary. The family had attended a continuous show, which is why the William S. Hart western comes round again. Player-pianos were not infrequently used in early cinema shows.

Diversions of a Naturalist

Source: Sir Ray Lankester, Diversions of a Naturalist (New York: The Macmillian Company, 1915), pp. 29-31

Text: I recently was present at a lecture given to the Anthropological Institute in London by Professor Baldwin Spencer, of Melbourne, with whom I was closely associated when he was a student at Oxford thirty years ago. He has devoted many years to the study of the Australian natives, and ten years ago published a most valuable work describing his experiences amongst them, to which he has recently added a further volume. He has lived with them in friendship and intimacy in the remote wilderness of the Australian bush, and has been admitted as a member of one of their mysterious clans, of which the “totem,” or supposed spirit-ancestor, is “the witchety grub “—a kind of caterpillar. He has been freely admitted to their secret ceremonies as well as to their more public “corroborees” or dances, and has been able (as no one else has been), without annoyance or offence to them, to take a great number of cinema-films of them in their various dances or when cooking in camp or paddling and upsetting their canoes, and climbing back again from the river. Many of these he exhibited to us, and we found ourselves among moving crowds of these slim-legged, beautifully-shaped wild men. The film presented some of their strange elaborate dances, which soon will be danced no more. These wild men die out when civilized man comes near them. It appears that they really spend most of their time in dancing when not looking for food or chipping stone implements, and that their dances are essentially plays (like those of little children in Europe), the acting of traditional stories relating the history of their venerated animal “totem,” which often last for three weeks at a time! Whilst dancing and gesticulating they are chanting and singing without cessation, often repeating the same words over and over again. Here, indeed, we have the primitive human art, the emotional expression from which, in more advanced races, music, drama, dancing, and decorative handicraft have developed as separate “arts.”

The most remarkable and impressive result was obtained when Professor Baldwin Spencer turned on his phonograph records whilst the wild men danced in the film picture. Then we heard the actual voices of these survivors of prehistoric days—shouting at us in weird cadences, imitating the cry of birds, and accompanied by the booming of the bull-roarer (a piece of wood attached to a string, and swung rapidly round by the performer). A defect, and at the same time a special merit, of the cinema show of the present day is the deadly silence of both the performers and the spectators. Screams and oaths are delivered in silence; pistols are fired without a sound. One can concentrate one’s observation on the facial expression and movements of the actors with undivided attention and with no fear of startling detonations. And very bad they almost invariably are, except in films made by the great French producers. On the other hand, I was astonished at the intensity of the impression produced by hearing the actual voices of those Australian wild men as they danced in rhythm with their songs. To hear is a greater means of revelation than to see. One feels even closer to those Australian natives as their strange words and songs issue from imprisonment in the phonograph, than when one sees them in the film pictures actually beating time with feet and hands and imitating the movements of animals. To receive, as one sits in a London lecture-room, the veritable appeal of these remote and inaccessible things to both the eye and the ear simultaneously, is indeed the most thrilling experience I can remember. With a feeling of awe, almost of terror, we recognize as we gaze at and listen to the records brought home by Professor Baldwin Spencer that we are intruding into a vast and primitive Nature-reserve where even humanity itself is still in the state of childhood—submissive to the great mother, without the desire to destroy her control or the power to substitute man’s handiwork for hers.

Comments: Ray Lankester (1847-1929) was a celebrated British biologist and zoologist. The Anglo-Australian anthropologist Baldwin Spencer (1860-1929) studied Australian Aborigines over many years, using film and sound recordings (on wax cylinders) as part of his investigations. The film and sound were separate recordings, not designed to be played back in synchronisation. Those witnessed by Lankester were either made in 1901-02 or (more likely) 1911-12.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

Doing My Bit for Ireland

Source: Margaret Skinnider, Doing My Bit for Ireland (New York, The Century Co., 1917), pp. 202-204

Text: At a moving-picture performance of “The Great Betrayal,” I was surprised at the spirit of daring in the audience. The story was about one of those abortive nationalist revolts in Italy which preceded the revolution that made Italy free. The plot was parallel in so many respects to the Easter Week rising in Ireland that crowds flocked every day to see it. In the final picture, when the heroic leaders were shot in cold blood, men in the audience called out bitterly:

‘That’s right, Colthurst! Keep it up!”

Colthurst was the man who shot Sheehy Skeffington without trial on the second day of the rising. He had been promoted for his deeds of wanton cruelty, and only the fact that a royal commission was demanded by Skeffington’s widow and her friends, made it necessary to adjudge him insane as excuse for his behavior, when that behavior was finally brought to light.

It was on the occasion of my visit to the moving-pictures that I was annoyed by the knowledge that a detective was following me. His only disguise was to don Irish tweeds such as “Irish Irelanders” wear to stimulate home industry. He had been following me about Dublin ever since my arrival for my August visit. To this day I don’t know why he did not arrest me, nor what he was waiting for me to do. But I decided now to give him the slip. In Glasgow I have had much practice jumping on cars going at full speed. The Dublin cars are much slower, so as a car passed me in the middle of the block, I suddenly leaped aboard, leaving my British friend standing agape with astonishment on the sidewalk. Doubtless he felt the time had come for me to carry out whatever plot I had up my sleeve, and that he had been defeated in his purpose of looking on. I never saw him again.

Comments: Margaret Skinnider (1892-1971) was a Scottish revolutionary who fought as a sniper for the Irish republicans during the Easter Rising, being the only woman wounded during the action. The Great Betrayal was the British release title for the Italian four-reel feature film Romanticismo (Italy 1915), a drama of Italian partisans fighting the Austrians in the 19th century, directed by Carlo Campogalliani and starring Tullio Carminati and Helena Makowska. Skinnider dates her cinema visit to August 1916. She left Dublin for the United States, to avoid internment, publishing her autobiography there.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

Vaudeville and Motion Picture Shows

Source: William Trufant Foster (with the aid of sixty investigators), Vaudeville and Motion Picture Shows: A study of theaters in Portland, Oregon (Portland, Or.: Reed College, 1914), pp. 52-53

Text: “Picture 1 ‘A Seaside Samaritan.’ Robbers are reformed immediately by kind treatment. Picture of simple and happy home life. Kindness shown to strangers. Wrong-doers are converted too suddenly to be convincing. The right triumphs. Harmless but not helpful.

“Picture 2 ‘Rory O. The Bogs.’ Melodrama. Impossible to follow the story. Effect apparently harmless.” (1)

“Picture 1 ‘The Cross in the Cacti.’ Melodrama. Without moral value. Worst wrong-doer was killed but no evidence that the one who escaped deserv[e]d better treatment. Purely adventure. Comparativ[e]ly harmless.

“Picture 2 ‘Curing the Doctor.’ Melodrama. Harmful morally. Improper ethical standards. Low ideals of love.

“Picture 3 Farce. Cheap, vulgar in parts, probably harmless.

“Picture 4 ‘The Hounded Bride.’ Morbid, unmoral. Would have caused nightmare to me as a child.” (1)

“Picture 1 Saloon scene, drinking.

“Picture 2 Altho not elevating, still not bad.

“Picture 3 Ridiculous in a vulgar way. Without moral value.

“Picture 4 Morbid.” (1)

“I saw nothing morally wrong with any of the pictures. However, I question scenes showing brutality between a father and a mother, also extended death scenes.

“‘Betty’s Nightmare.’ show[e]d the unsatisfactory results of patent medicines and sensational novels. It perhaps dasht a little cold water on some embryo Mary Garden but it left the final impression that there is no place like home.

“Picture 2 Good, the right-doer prospers. Effect somewhat inspiring.” (2)

“Picture 1 Tragedy. Seducer shot. Moral value good. The wrong-doer was punisht.

“Picture 2 Portrays act of stealing. Might instigate theft.

“Picture 3 Farce. Portrays unwholesome scenes. Effect bad.

“Picture 4 Tragedy depicting dual life of a man.

“Singing disgustingly vulgar, coarse and exceedingly flat.” (3)

“The film has no educational value. The villians [sic] are worsted but not in such a manner as to teach the triumph of virtue. For blowing up a bridge to wreck a train, for throwing the hero into the ocean to drown and casting the heroine down an old well to perish they suffer merely a few blows at the hands of the rightfully angry hero.

“The children were intensely interested in the hero and heroine overcoming the obstacles placed in their way by the villains. The film appeal[e]d to their imagination and love of adventure in a harmless way.” (3)

“Picture 1 ‘The Intruder.’ Melodrama. Moral value good if any. True love scenes.

“Picture 2 Farce. Harmless for adults, bad for small boys. It suggests dangerous pranks.

“Picture 3 ‘Cue and Miss-Cue.’ Farce. Man lies to his wife. Much drinking at billiards and at the bar, vulgar hotel scene, unwholesome picture of family life.

“Picture 4 ‘The Female of the Species.’ Melodrama, Moral effect bad. No person worthy of admiration with the possible exception of the gypsy. Shooting and acts of violence. Man unfaithful to both women. The adventure appeals to children but much of it has a demoralizing effect on them.

“Vaudeville stunt of Reuben who told vulgar jokes and sang silly songs.” (3)

“Picture 1 ‘The Return of Helen Redmond.’ Moral value good, possibly, for a melodrama.

“Picture 2 ‘Wild Man from Borneo.’ Apparently not harmful.

“Picture 3 ‘What the Burglar Got.’ Husband lies to wife. His trickiness is made to appear laudable. Effect demoralizing. The cartoons were ill-disguised defences of the use of whiskey and tobacco.” (4)

“Picture 1 ‘A Rattle Snake.’ A disgusting scene of a Mexican harboring the snake and placing it in a bed to be occupied by a child. Other acts of a violent nature.

“Picture 2 Shows beer wagons and violence to persons. No act of immoral nature and very little to appeal to the intellectual. No censorship stated.’ (5)

“There was positiv[e]ly nothing of an educational nature and the finer qualities of chivalry, kindness and love were not shown to advantage. Je[a]lousy, intrigue and violence were generously portray[e]d in three out of four pictures. Only one picture was passed by the National Board. That such subjects should be thus used is most unfortunate. The effect must be morbid ideas and depression.” (6)

“Picture 1 ‘Indian Massacre.’ Shooting and daring riding. About as uplifting as the usual dime novel.

“Picture 2 Villain drinks whiskey. Commits robbery. Meets violent de[a]th. Of poor moral value for children.

“Picture 3 Pleasant fore[ig]n pictures.

“Picture 4 A so-called comedy on the ‘Mannish Old Maid.’ Not a wholesome plot. Promiscuous kissing and other acts not clean.” (7)

“Picture 1. ‘The Adventure of the Alarm Clock.’ Moral value bad. General effect bad. Passed by National Board.

“Picture 2 ‘Desperate Chance.’ Tragedy. Kindness, true love, faithfulness, violence, hanging scene, murder, drunkenness, neglect. Moral value bad until the end. Passed by National Board.

“Picture 3 ‘Iron and Steel.’ Kindness, brutality, fist encounters, de[a]th scene, cowards, cheating, true love, trechery, disobedience, revenge. Bad more than off-sets the good.” (8)

“Picture 1. ‘Too Much Love.’ Immoral. Virtue made source of mirth. General effect bad.” (9)

Comments: William Trufant Foster (1879-1950) was an American educationalist and economist, president of Reed College, Oregon, which published this report into vaudeville and motion picture shows in Portland, aiming to determine their influence upon children. It was conducted with the co-operation of local theatre managers and involved sixty investigators. The report states that fifty-one theatres showing motion pictures were investigated (the number in brackets refer to one of the cinemas). It includes blank versions of the investigators’ forms and a list of all their names. The text above comes from an appendix giving individual comments from the reports received. The films seen include A Seaside Samaritan (USA 1913), Rory o’ the Bogs (USA 1913), The Cross in the Cacti (USA 1914), Curing the Doctor (USA 1913), Betty’s Nightmare (USA 1912), Cue and Mis-cue (USA 1913), The Female of the Species (USA 1912), The Return of Helen Redmond (USA 1914), The Wild Man from Borneo (USA 1914), What the Burglar Got (USA 1914), The Rattlesnake (USA 1913), The Indian Massacre (USA 1912) and The Adventure of the Alarm Clock (USA 1914). The apparent absence of non-American film is noteworthy. The references to singing are to vaudeville acts that were sometimes part of early cinema shows.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

The Spell of China

Source: Archie Bell, The Spell of China (Boston: Page Co., 1917), pp. 102-104

Text: Charlie Chaplin has “invaded” the Orient and he is winning friends for the “American drama,” where acting and singing companies have failed to do so. They told me of an American comic opera company that visited Shanghai some time ago. My informant declared that the troupe gave creditable performances, but the Chinese ears were tortured by the singing. At first the audience calmly endured it, thinking that the agony would soon be over. Then they looked at one another absent-mindedly, and, finally, before the evening was over, most of the men had folded their coat sleeves over their mouths, so their laughter would not be audible. But they all have heard about the popularity of Chaplin in America, and for once in their lives Orient agrees with Occident. Chaplin is a great entertainer! The Chinese enjoy him, because his antics coincide exactly with their ideas of what comedy should be; and think he is the funniest man who ever lived. It is amusing to attend a theater in China where a Chaplin exhibition is in progress. When I first saw him in the country it was in a rather imposing theatre and “Our Best People” were said to be in attendance. The first glance at them, however, was rather shocking. Here was “full dress” with a vengeance; “full dress” that quite put into the shade any similar effort at undress in the Metropolitan horseshow in New York. Many Chinese were stripped to the waist and wore either a pair of bathing trunks—the idea was borrowed from America—or the long, baggy Chinese trousers that are tied around the ankles with ribbons. As I looked out over the audience from the back of the house, the bathing trunks, trousers and ribbons were invisible. What I saw was an ocean of bare backs and shoulders. I took a seat among this strangely costumed multitude, and finally recovered sufficiently to note that a Charlie Chaplin comedy was being shown. Bang! Something came down and hit him on the head. Zipp! He tripped his toe and fell headlong. The audience laughed as I had never seen Chinese laugh. There were few ladies present, because it is not yet considered quite the “proper” thing for a Chinese matron or her daughters to attend a cinema exhibition, but I carefully observed the perspiring gentlemen close to me. They seemed to be having the time of their lives, sometimes laughing so violently that it seemed to pain them, doubtless because it pained them to realize that they were so far forgetting themselves. Whenever “Our Charlie” took a particularly heavy fall, or whenever something fell on his head, apparently causing him great suffering, the Chinese closed their eyes, sat back on their benches and laughed facially and inwardly. It was a typical July night and it was very warm. The perspiration flowed down their backs in streams as they literally undulated with glee.

Comments: Archie Bell was an American travel writer. The racially questionable piece goes on to argue that “no better exhibition could be devised for the entertainment of the Chinese audience. He is supposed to have a ‘heart,’ but the Chinaman derives much satisfaction when he sees another man suffering, particularly if there is a remote possibility that he deserves it.”

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust