When the Nickel Went to Wall Street

The Growing Danger, to the Drama, from the Incursions of the Movies

JAMES S. METCALFE

TO-DAY the nickel doesn't know itself. It has been so shot to pieces by the high cost of living and other recent calamities that when members of its family find themselves thrown together in a slot-machine they find it hard to recognize one another. They have so fallen away in purchasing power that they are hardly more aristocratic than the old-time copper.

There is a place, though, where the nickel still retains its former supremacy, not in intrinsic value, buf in moral and intellectual force.

In the moving-picture art, or industry, or whatever it is, the nickel idea still controls and limits what the movie might accomplish artistically were it not for the surviving "nickel" influence.

You and I, and even some of the younger generation, remember the days and evenings when, for a lark we went to see a movie-show and had to go into a side street or an obscure neighborhood to find a "nickelodeon" or similar place of entertainment. This was just after we had recovered from the early and stunning novelty of seeing the race-horse shown on the screen in his actual awkwardness instead of in the graceful but impossible extension of the artist and lithographic printer; also from that thrilling effect of the Empire State express coming into view in the distance and finally rushing into the foreground with a speed and force that would have destroyed most of -the audience if the reel hadn't ended at just the right moment.

The Power of the Nickel

WELL, the nickels that we paid—and that countless thousands of others paid in these early days and since—have made the movies what they are to-day. It is the millions of nickels of the millions of all kinds of people that established the standards of the American movie drama and of the art of acting before the camera.

To-day, of course, the nickel doesn't get anyone very far, even in the humblest of the moving-picture houses, but its equivalent (in the present scale of prices) still sets the pace for the cinema producer.

He still has to catch the fancy of the original nickel public as represented by its descendants and successors, or he is bound to be a failure in his job. The cinema's methods have vastly improved since those early and "jiggly" days, and its resources of all kinds have vastly increased in the intervening years, but its principal motive must of necessity always remain the same.

There are movie producers who would gladly eliminate the nickel slush, if they could. They can't, because they are dominated by their financial backers and these, in turn, get their knowledge of what the public wants—and insists upon having—from the exhibitors who will take no chances of going over the heads of their least intelligent patrons. The cost of film-production and the greed for big profits make their standard the test of all film plays. These must' absolutely be made to please the big public regardless of whether or no they satisfy any but the most primitive tastes.

These things are law in the moving-picture business and are so well known that they are set down here only to explain to intelligent outsiders why it is that in order to see the much that is good on the screen they have to endure the puerility, sickly sentimentality and slap-stick idiocy which in the movies passes for innocence, romance and humor.

And, strangely, the great films, those that have been most successful through their appeal to the whole public (films like Cabiria, The Birth of a Nation, The Miracle Man, and, more lately, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, have gained their eminence in spite of, and not because of, truckling to the supposed demands of the movie public.

The cheapness of the average movie play, not in cost but in the character of much of its material, perhaps accounts for the passing of a loudly heralded and at one time really feared danger—the death of the spoken drama, at the hands of the movies. Commanding great, but, until recently, scattered financial resources, it was possible, at the time spoken of, to attract to the service of the screen the best known artists of the regular theatre. At about the same time the theatre lost the greater part of its gallery patronage. It really seemed as though, through the combined competition of the movies and improved vaudeville, the theatre might permanently lose a very essential part of the patronage necessary to its maintenance. Fortunately, for the future of the old institution, there has always been a large percentage of amusement patrons, some of whom do not care for the picture play at all, and others who were not subject to the lure of names on the billboard unless those names were backed with something more seductive than the crudest appeal to the uneducated and unintelligent.

This nucleus was large enough to save the theatre from the danger that threatened it then and preserve it for the great prosperity that has come to it as the result of recent war conditions.

Now comes a new danger. You can sell anything through Wall Street, if only you make it worth Wall Street's while. The very shrewd men who have grown up with the moving-picture industry, from the early days of the nickel theatre in a side street, have lately been able to convince Wall Street of the tremendous possibilities of the movie business, if only it could be concentrated in a few hands. They went to Wall Street and asked for millions. Being perfectly well able to satisfy Wall Street's usual Missouri pose, the millions were forthcoming to be poured out not only in customary lavishness on the movies themselves but also—and here is the real meat of the matter— in large investments in theatrical properties and enterprises as well. It is the use of these millions in a few hands that forges the new weapon aimed at the existence of the spoken drama as we and our ancestors have known it.

The nickel amusement, drawing its mammoth income from the largest cities as well as from the smallest towns and villages, in every country, civilized and uncivilized, has become a financial dinosaur big enough to attack and devour anything that may come in its way and attract its fancy.

Already it has reached into the major theatrical field. It is an open secret that the properties and enterprises once associated with the name of Charles Frohman are now under movie ownership. Carried further, this means the eventual ownership, by movie men, of the theatres of this country. With America the best patron of foreign theatrical talent, it is not a far reach to imagine the American movie magnates setting the standard of the theatre for the whole world.

What will it all mean ?

The Death of Dramatic Literature

FIRST, the complete destruction of dramatic literature. Not requiring the spoken word, the written word is unimportant in the drama of the screen. To the screen the dime-novel writer is of more value than William Shakespeare. Shakespeare has never been a moneygetter in the movies. The greatest of contemporary dramatists have been valuable to the movies only for the use of their names; their works have been most attractive to the movie public only when most mutilated. Here it is well to note the curious fact that photography, the basis of the movie, and which best of any medium could follow the canon of holding the mirror up to nature, secures its greatest applause from movie audiences when it departs furthest from that function of the drama which exists in giving the appearance of real life to the children of the imagination.

Catering to its own public—the public it created in the nickel days—the movie has made its own standards of production and educated its own school of producers into its own ways. They have only movie standards and a hearty contempt for any one who looks at their product with any but movie eyes. In only a few cases has the standard varied from the cardinal principle that nothing must stand in the way of securing the nickel of the unthinking public. No matter what the other excellencies of a production, the basic appeal must never be omitted.

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The result is, naturally, that the most successful movie producers, those who are most valuable to the business, are not the ones who have done the most artistic things, but those who are supposed to be most expert in regularly meeting the taste of the nickel public. Authors have naturally not taken kindly to modifications of their works governed by such a motive. Incidentally, this is said to be the reason why the mine of rich material in the writings of Kipling has never been thoroughly exploited for the movie public.

Acting and the Movies

HAT the movies will do to the art of the dramatist when they gain complete control of the theatre, is as nothing to the side-swipe they will give to the art of acting. The most successful actors for the screen to-day are—with the exception of a few artists like Miss Ethel Barrymore—negligible quantities in the spoken play. There are a few like Miss Barrymore who seem to be interchangeable between the two media. These will be most valuable in the transition stage when the spoken drama is used in theatres only where it is likely to be more profitable than the movie, or in connection with the screen play where there may be audiences some of whose members still retain a liking for the human voice on the stage. The most that we can hope for in the final summing up is that, as the movie public becomes more exacting—and it is said to be growing restive in respect to some of the present crudities of movie acting —the art of pantomime may revive.

To anticipate the complete disappearance of the trained actor is not an overpessimistic view when it is remembered that the highest rewards of the movie profession go to the women who can add to personal prettiness the full-eyed blankness of innocent girlhood, or the wicked gleam of the designing vampire; to the men who can do the most dangerous athletic stunts, or hurl a custard pie with the most abandon. When the screen has been able to use the better known artists of. the speaking stage, it has been not so much on account of their acting ability as for the added attraction or advertisement given to the usual movie appeal by their personal attractiveness, their celebrity, or their stage drawing power. Not even these have always served and there have been notable instances of acting in its best estate, and by unquestioned artists, that has only bored those educated by and accustomed to the strenuous methods of movie acting. And it is not strange that the backers and producers who have lost money on "stickers" of this sort vow never again to desert the "sure-fire" methods that have always caught the nickel.

It may be that when the movie becomes the only Richmond in the amusement field it will develop a better school of actors of its own. It is too much to expect that there will ever be a movie Edwin Booth—although Booth had beautiful eyes and a profile that, lacking legitimate opportunity, he might have condescended to adapt to the tricks of the camera. Such a future star will find his task easier, for the Booth of the movies will need no melodious or sonorous voice to transmit the words and thoughts of great minds. That part of the entertainment will be cared for by the scholars who write the screeds which explain the scenes to those of the audience who are able to read. Whatever educational influence the speaking stage has had in the improvement of our none too musical American speech will disappear completely when the movies have killed the theatre.

Another sin then to be laid at the door of the movies, present and prospective, is the arrested development of the stage artist. With Wall Street pouring in its money and Los Angeles asking only for physical equipment to insure large salary returns, why should youth or girl go through the long and stern discipline of dramatic education? The new art is not exacting of its votaries.

Here is yet another angle of attack, taken from the season just closed. The movie interests had bought a melodrama especially suited to their uses, although simply as a play it didn't amount to much. A New York run might help its value for the screen. Money being plentiful, there was offered to the owner of a New York theatre a weekly rental so large that it represented his income from a more than usually successful dramatic production and without any risk of housing a failure or a succession of failures. Many plays were ready and waiting for an opportunity to test their merits with the New York public. In the case of this theatre they were completely barred by the money back of the melodrama. It was produced and promptly rated at its dramatic value by the critics and the public. It was kept on and ran out the season with audiences supplied by a judicious generosity with "deadheads," and proper arrangements with the cutrate ticket offices. Next season it will be put out as the movie version of a New York theatrical success. Meanwhile, the good plays that had looked forward to making their appeal at this theatre, simply as plays, have some of them been shelved with a loss to their promoters and perhaps to the playgoing public. There is no money reason why this experiment shouldn't be the rule rather than the exception in the future.

The housing question, in which the movies already have the whip-hand, bids fair to put the regular theatre in the background as America's favorite indoor amusement. Already, in many towns, the cinema has built handsome new theatres or pre-empted the better ones and relegated visiting theatrical attractions to the older and second class houses. Real estate scouts are scouring the country for eligible sites. The day may not be far off when the early situation will be reversed and the playgoer, instead of the movie fan, will be forced to seek the back streets and out-of-theway places to find his favorite form of amusement. And then, in its nickel days, with reduced income and in shabby-genteel surroundings, the poor old theatre may finally yield up its picturesque soul.

A Ray of Hope

PERHAPS this picture of the theatre's future is an exaggerated prospect. In spite of the unlimited wealth of the movie, the fickle public taste may change. The screen may exhaust all the startling possibilities of the camera and its distortions of real life. Even sickly sentimentality so portrayed may lose its appeal to the elemental understanding. What seems most likely is that the nickel public may itself tire of being interested through the eye alone and revert to its liking for the human voice and the play of flesh-and-blood features. If our boasted education is of any value, it may reach the point where intelligence will also resent the continued implication of the movie producer that his output must be based on the mental comprehension of a child of twelve.