We must have better pictures. And to get them we need these two things: inside the industry, the higher standards and leadership that can only come in with intelligent capital; and outside the industry, the support and encouragement of such good pictures as are already made. We of the motion-picture industry who stand for more intelligent pictures can only provide them if you on the outside, in addition to criticising in no uncertain terms the stupid films that offend you, will take the trouble to hunt up, and go to see, and boost, the photoplays that are good enough to merit your interest. When you do that we can have better movies. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VI THE MOVIE AND THE LIBRARY _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 Horsemen”—How Book-Worms May Renew their Youth._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VI THE MOVIE AND THE LIBRARY 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 to be a psychological cat with nine lives. The power which he has exercised for evil in the realm of the photoplay for a quarter of a century he refuses to relinquish without a fight, and an immediate and complete victory for Dr. Jekyll only the most optimistic dare to predict. Look at a list of movie titles recently compiled by a somewhat cynical observer desirous of proving his proposition that for one photoplay worthy of approval the screen shows a score whose appeal is only to either the depraved or the unintelligent: “Only a Shop-girl,” “The Lure of Broadway,” “More to be Pitied than Scorned,” “The Darling of the Rich,” “Deserted at the Altar,” “The Woman Gives,” “Thorns and Orange Blossoms,” “The Curse of Drink,” “How Women Love,” “From Rags to Riches.” Month after month, year after year, the type of mind that considers Laura Jean Libbey’s novels admirable dominates too large a percentage of the output of the movie studios. The dime-novelish taint that was placed upon the screen at the outset of its career has been until recently only a shade lighter than it was in the beginning.