The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-07-19
An Inexpert Expression of Negat0e Opinion as to
 Whether inc Motion Picture is Losing n Popularity
By DOLLY DALRYMPLB
By DOLLY DALRfMPIb WHERE are a lot of people who know
 a lot more about a lot of things


 In fact. I often have the same feeling
 that Sidney Smith had about McCa u's'' l when he said he wished he was as sUi
 of knowing as much about any one thlhs'
 as McCauley was about everything. Which. being translated into plain Eng
 fish. probably meant that it is better to
 be king of one trade than jack or all
 trades.
 All of which has to do with bit or
 observation which I've been making as
 to whether the moving picture is losing in popularity or not
 In other words, has the speeches.
 drama "shot its bolt" so to speak? Is Eugene Walter, the playwright who
 has made study of these things, correct
 in stating that it's popularity is on the
 decline?
 Or is MT. Arthur Brisbane justified in | his appraisal the human significance
 of the motion picture?
 While I m not an expert; no, not by
 any means, on the matter of what our
 diminutive comic opera friend, Frank
 Daniels, calls the f-l-i-m drama" I am
 frank to say that I like it tremendously. | year and a half ago I never had
 seen half dozen moving pictures in my | whole life; at that time visit to a | picture playhouse bored me worse than l anything under the sun axcept auc-
 tion"; my feet would go to sleep; I'd begin to get crawly and scratchy and 1 itchy all over; I'd yawn until I'd nearly | break my jaw bones; in fact, I was so
 bored that I just simply didn't go; that's all.
 Suddenly, I experienced a change Of 1 rt. Rrtb nf
 and that did the work; to be exact, it was year ago last May when I was | in New York that I saw this marvellous 1 picture; since then I've seen "The Birth | of Nation five times; I've reveled in The Averaging Conscience" MT. Walth- 1 alf best photoplay; I've sat at the feet l Ciguratively, of course), of 'out own | dear Geraldine" in Carmen" and Ha- ria Rosa; I've seen Mabel Taliaferro in | The Snowbird" time and time again; 1 I've cried and wept and walled over | Rockliffe Fellowes and Anna Nelson in The Regeneration;" I've been enchanted | by Fannie Ward and Sessue Hawyakawa
 in "The Cheat I've raved over Wallace | Reid and Harold Lockwood; I've learned | a great deal about artistic photography and Pve read everything that has come l my way about moving pictures and l went to the movie exposition at the Madison Square Garden last time I was i in New York.
 | The spoken drama and it's devotees at | first solemnly pronounced the doom of | the moving picture play; but photogra- | phy was crude then; acting was infer≺ | people we'd never heard of were being featured" in the movies; and altogether | it looked a S if the days of the movies" l were indeed numbered.
 | However, there were a few who sat | tight in the boat and declared that evens | tually the moving picture industry would claim for it's very own the "big bugs" of l the legitimate stage; and those who ex-
 pressed doubt became less and less, and | finally were scoffed at as a person who discouraged Robert Fulton would have l been when he began meddlng with the l steamboat
 1 That the moving picture has reached | heights artisticaly that it's pioneer pro- motors predicted is now an unquestioned l fact that the motion picture today oc- cupies a position that is absolutely unique and as firm as the Rock of Gibraltar in ! the amusement world is conceded | If you don't believe this, stand out any day in front the Strand, the Rialto, | the Majestic, the Colonial the Alcazar
 and hear the comments of the people, | it's exactly like a first night audience l at big show on Broadway.
 | Moreover, all the big "dailies" every where now have their regular movie" critics just as they have their dramatic l critics; the Sunday metropolitan journals | give over pages and pages of highly col ored stories, colored both as to word | painting and pictures; and practically
 everybody of any importance in the le- gitimate theatrical world has become l movie" actor
 Take How Molly Made Good" which | is attracting such favorable comment
 round at the Majestic; here we are
 taken on personally conducted tour' I ( %I1 nf for ic 0F fIe
 most popular and notable actors in the world today.
 l Name over your favorite and you'll 1 find several of them in this bunch there's Henrietta Crossman, Julian
 Eltinge, Cyril Scott, Charles J. Ross,
 Mabel Fenton, Julia Dean and Lee | Ditrichstein, besides the clever little
 movie star herself Marguerite Gale | And then, too, look who wrote the | scenario-Burns Mantle, If you please | I-showing that the newspaper people, ! if they can't get in the movies one way will do something and so the inimitable
 dramatic critic of the New York Even- | ing Mail entertains Us for an hour | and half with very cleverly con- | ceived scenario, built around a news paper story and attractively presented 1 The play is quite clever. Of course,
 newspaper people would like it, for tt l has to do with an inexperienced little repOrter--MOlly MalOne-WhO, arriving
 from her native heath. good ould Ire | land," and going to the office of the | New York Tribune to surprise her | brother who is employed there finds a surprise herself, in the fact that two weeks before her brother goes to the l border to serve with his company. | The little Irish girl Is at loss what l to do-her funds are limited and she | is a stranger. At this critical mo- | ment, Miss Hilton, one of the Tribune reporters who has been detailed to l interview Mme. Fjorde. upon her arr comes in with the report that Mme | is Molly's chance. and with true Irish spirit. she is quick in snatching 1t. Sure she was on the Adriatic, wasn't she afther taking with me herself?" | she blurts out "Is that what they're I paid for, these reporters, for not find- | ing person? Sure I could do that 1 well meself"
 | As result of this frankness, Molly | is detailed to interview Mime. Fjorde | in Miss Hilton's place. Her try-out proves successful-so successful in fact | that the Sunday editor decides to give l her another chance at the game. An l idea for big Sunday story has come | into the office. It is plan to inter l view 10 theatrical stars in their sum | mer haunts The name of Lulu Glascr l is given as a start-off Each actor or actress as interviewed in turn, is tc | suggest the name of some other one, until a chain of 10 has been inter viewed The impossible part of the l task consists in the shortness of the