The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1914-03-27
The Movies

leased OK the jury on the ground that moving
picture show is necessity. This opinion strikes
one at first as being somewhat extravagant, but
after taking survey of this young but exceed
ngly vigorous industry, he is almost tempted to
believe that the people of the world coming to
think of it necessity, even if it might not be
strictly SO interpreted
A surprising amount of money is tied up in
the manufacture, distribution and exhibition of
films Forty thousand miles of them were used
in the United States last year at cost to the
people of two hundred and seventy-five million
dollars. 1t is estimated there is, at the present
time twenty-five million dollars invested in man.
ufacturing plants in this country fifty million in
finished pictures and stock, and one hundred and
twenty million in theaters.
It is for purposes of entertainment, of course,
that people most often patronize the movies.
Take it all in all, there are few forms of amuse-
ment so innocent or so democratic. The price is
in the reach Of everybody and in the most
superficial "dramas there is always something
left over which makes substantial addition to
ones stock of information.
The purposes of entertainment do not by any
means exhaust the possibilities of the movies.
They now being everywhere adopted by edu-
cationalists an ideal means of conveying infor-
nation. The modern large city church does not
!
or more machines. Many cities are putting them
into their schools and they are widely used by all
kinds of civic organizations for educational pur-
poses. Missionaries even have found the films
helpful A number of picture machines have
been shipped out to the remote Pacific Island in
order to help the missionaries at work there in
their attempts to appeal to the savage mind.
The state highway department of Ohio is u.s.
ing films to convey to the Buckeye people the ad-
vantages of good roads, Raymond Lee Ditmars,
curator of reptiles in the New York Zoo, is pre-
pairing a geological history in moving pictures.
He has worked out methods whereby he can
show the development of an animal from the
time the egg is formed until it reaches maturity
One of the most effective means in fighting flies
and similar insects which are menaces to public
health has been with the pictures.
In the earlier days of the business "legiti-
mate actors and actresses looked with some con-
tempt upon the humber silent drama, but today
they have changed their attitude and many of
them are very glad to pose before the camera
Such lights in the theatrical world as Sarah
Bernhard, Gertrude Elliott, Forbes-Robertson
and Sir Herbert Tree have sought immortality in
the flying film.
In the San Fernando Valley of California is
town called Universal City built for the exclusive
uses of the film manufacturers. In England are
other such communities while in France and
Germany several. The traveller, who happens
into Of these towns without knowing what it
is, is very often bewildered by the things going
on there, because the streets and buildings are all
used property for the shows and some of
the most thrilling escapades worked out in
the middle of the community.
So keen is the competition to attract the pub
| lie manufacturers ransacking the world for
new materials and new adventures. Only the
other day an actor was killed in an African wild
erness near Narob by wild lion and it is pretty
safe to say that every country on the planet has
itself pretty we'll worked up into moving pictures
Because Of the danger and expense of creating
some of these films, they cost very large sums of
money. The Quo Vadis picture, for instance, Git
happens to be showing here now, by the way),
sold at auction for $35, 900 not long ago.
In this country there are $4,000 theaters with
q daily attendance Of 100000. Chicago alone
has 625 with daily attendance of 100000 while
New York's number Ola, averaging almost mil
hon day in attendance. In England there are
1900 houses and other European countries are
developed in proportion 1t is estimated that in
the entire world fifteen to twenty million of peo-
pie see the movies every day.
i 1t goes without saying that the moving pic
ture theater has become one of the mightiest Of
influences in our time. For the most part, this
influence is of the best and it is reassuring to
learn statistics show that crimes directly tracea-
BILE to bad films are steadily decreasing.
! Merely a Family Trait.-"Has my daughter given you
to understand that she loves you?"
/ "She told that she will live she
can be mine"
"she inherits it My father awful