I struck the movies. They've gone crazy over it.

"'The Half-Breed,' you know, was adapted from one of Bret Harte's
stories, and nothing would do the director but a trip up to the
Carquinez woods in northern California. A forest fire figured in one of
the scenes, but I never thought much about it until I saw them bringing
up some chemical engines, hose reels, and five or six fire-brigades.

"'What's the idea?' I asked.

"'To keep the flames from spreading,' they told me.

"And let me tell you, it was _some_ fire. After I got out of it I felt
like a shave from a Mexican barber."

"What effect is the movie going to have on the speaking drama?" was my
next question.

"Look at the effect it's had already," he said. "Shaw is the only
playwright clever enough to write dialogue that will hold any number of
people in the theatre. The motion picture has made the public demand
_action_. It has changed the plot and progress of the drama completely."

"Do you think that a good thing? Doesn't it mean the substitution of
feeling for thinking?"

"Well," he answered slowly, "the world goes forward through the heart
rather than through the head. Happiness, to my mind, is emotional, not
mental. And the movie _has_ brought happiness to millions whose lives
were formerly drab and sordid. I love to go into these little halls in
out-of-the-way places, and see the men, women, and children packed there
of an evening. Theatrical companies never reached the villages, and the
men had no place but the saloon, the women no place but the kitchen or
the front porch. The camera has brought the world to their doors, and
life is richer, happier, and better for it."

Take him as he stands, and Douglas Fairbanks comes close to being the
"real thing." Men like him as well as women, and, best proof of all, the
"kids" adore him. On a recent visit to Denver, his old home town,
youngsters followed him in droves, clamoring for a chance to "feel his
muscle." The mayor, no less, had him address a public meeting, the
feature of which, by the way, was this piped inquiry from the gallery:

"Say, Doug, can youse whip William Farnum?"

And let no one quarrel with this popularity. It is a good sign, a
healthful sign, a token that the blood of America still runs warm and
red, and that chalk has not yet softened our bones.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Laugh and Live, by Douglas Fairbanks

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