irst to last.

The domestic comedies produced by Metro, featuring Mr. and Mrs. Sidney
Drew, of which we have already spoken, are so well known, and these
artists are so universally popular, that a word or two from Mr. Drew
on the subject of screen comedy should be interesting and instructive:

"Comedy is and always will be an amusing story humorously told," says
Mr. Drew. "If it _is_ a good story, well told, then it is a comedy,
but if it has no story or cannot be told humorously, then no amount of
bolstering will ever make it into a comedy. You may add a lot of
knockabout and perhaps get an acceptable farce, or you can write in
sensation and get travesty, but you cannot by these means change the
unfit into comedy, and the broad use of 'comedy' to apply to anything
intended to be diverting is a misuse of an ancient and honorable
word.... To my way of thinking comedy is first of all a good story. It
is a story and not merely an incident or a collection of incidents.
There must be a plot to obtain and hold the interest. This plot does
not necessarily require profound depths, but there must be a distinct
and clearly defined objective upon which the interest may be centred,
and the interest must arise from mental processes and not from mere
mechanical appeal.... Humorous action does not mean gross horseplay.
The action itself may not always be marked to be amusing. To take a
crude illustration, suppose that a character in the story is about to
thrash his ancient enemy. He feels so certain of victory that he
bribes the policeman on the beat not to interfere. Now he goes to the
field of battle and unexpectedly gets the worst of it. He is the first
to call for the police, and the scene flashes between the suborned
officer placidly smiling at the sounds of the affray and never
dreaming that it is his patron who is calling for aid. There is
nothing humorous in the spectacle of a policeman on a street corner.
In a comedy of incident he would have to suffer indignity to get a
laugh. In the comedy with a plot, the plot makes the action humorous.
We are not, in reality, laughing at the policeman. He is merely the
symbol of the idea. We are laughing at the predicament into which our
hero has thrust himself. It is this thought, and not the sight of the
policeman, at which we laugh. The policeman merely stands for the
thought, yet it is humorous action within my meaning of the term in
that the policeman represents the thought.

"In