disapproval of the "Universal City" type of production. It is almost as
easy for the expert to pick out the fake Russian village or the pasteboard
Virginia court-house as it is for him to spot the wrinkles in the
countenance of the school girl who left school in 1892. Next to a fake
environment the patchwork scene enrages one--the railway that is
double-track with 90-pound rails in one scene and single-track with
streaks of rust in the next; the train that is hauled in quick succession
by locomotives of the Mogul type, the Atlantic and the wood-burning
vintage of 1868. There is here an impudent assumption in the producer, of
a lack of intelligence in his audience, that is quite maddening. The same
lack of correspondence appears between different parts of the same street,
and between the outside and inside of houses. I am told by friends that I
am quite unreasonable in the extent to which I carry my demands for
realism in the movies. "What would you have?" they ask. I would have a
producing company that should advertise, "We have no studio" and use only
real backgrounds--the actual localities represented. "Do you mean to tell
me," my friend goes on, "that you would carry your company to Spain
whenever the scene of their play is laid in that country? The expense
would be prohibitive." I most certainly should not, and this because of
the very realism that I am advocating. Plays laid in Spain should be acted
not only in Spain but by Spaniards. The most objectionable kind of fake is
that in which Americans are made to do duty for Spaniards, Hindus or
Japanese when their appearance, action and bearing clearly indicate that
they were born and brought up in Skowhegan, Maine or Crawfordsville,
Indiana. I have seen Mary Pickford in "Madame Butterfly", and I testify
sadly that not even she can succeed here. No; if we want Spanish plays let
us use those made on Spanish soil. Let us have free interchange of films
between all film-producing countries. All the change required would be
translating the captions, or better still, plays might be produced that
require no captions. This might mean the total reorganization of the
movie-play business in this country--a revolution which I should view with
equanimity. Speaking of captions, here again the average producer appears
to agree with Walter Pritchard Eaton that he is catering only to the
uneducated. The writers of most captions seem, indeed, to have abandoned
formal instruction in the pri