What shall be done in especial by this generation of idealists, whose
flags rise and go down, whose battle line wavers and breaks a thousand
times? What is the high quixotic splendid call? We know of a group of
public-spirited people who advocate, in endowed films, "safety first,"
another that champions total abstinence. Often their work seems lost in
the mass of commercial production, but it is a good beginning. Such
citizens take an established studio for a specified time and at the end
put on the market a production that backs up their particular idea. There
are certain terms between the owners of the film and the proprietors of
the studio for the division of the income, the profits of the cult being
spent on further propaganda. The product need not necessarily be the type
outlined in chapter two, The Photoplay of Action. Often some other sort
might establish the cause more deeply. But most of the propaganda films
are of the action variety, because of the dynamic character of the people
who produce them. Fired by fanatic zeal, the auto speeds faster, the
rescuing hero runs harder, the stern policeman and sheriff become more
jumpy, all that the audience may be converted. Here if anywhere
meditation on the actual resources of charm and force in the art is a
fitting thing. The crusader should realize that it is not a good Action
Play nor even a good argument unless it is indeed the Winged Victory
sort. The gods are not always on the side of those who throw fits.
There is here appended a newspaper description of a crusading film, that,
despite the implications of the notice, has many passages of charm. It is
two-thirds Action Photoplay, one-third Intimate-and-friendly. The notice
does not imply that at times the story takes pains to be gentle. This bit
of writing is all too typical of film journalism.
"Not only as an argument for suffrage but as a play with a story, a
punch, and a mission, 'Your Girl and Mine' is produced under the
direction of the National Woman's Suffrage Association at the Capitol
to-day.
"Olive Wyndham forsook the legitimate stage for the time to pose as the
heroine of the play. Katherine Kaelred, leading lady of 'Joseph and his
Brethren,' took the part of a woman lawyer battling for the right.
Sydney Booth, of the 'Yellow Ticket' company posed as the hero of the
experiment. John Charles and Katharine Henry played the villain and the
honest working girl. About three hundred secondaries were engaged along
with the principals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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