Within eight years the motion picture industry has attained the status of fifth largest industry of the world. Some statisticians have even ranked it as high as third, placing above it only the iron and coal industries.
The United States alone contains 25,000 theaters, of which more than 16,000 are devoted exclusively to motion pictures and some 5,000 to combination pictures and vaudeville.
The investment in these theaters aggregates many hundreds of millions. The investment in motion picture studios also runs into many millions. About 40 of the largest of these studios are in or near Los Angeles. Fifteen or twenty more are in New York and New Jersey.
Eighty-five per cent of all the photoplays made are produced in Southern California. What Detroit is to the automobile industry Los Angeles is to the film industry.
Besides the vast sums invested in theaters and studios, it is estimated that more than $100,000,000 is spent yearly in the making of the big photo-dramas.
Today this vast industry is on the verge of the greatest upheaval in its cyclonic history. The independent producers, the movie actors, the independent exhibitors, the independent distributors, the members of the various labor crafts affiliated with the industry are all running in circles. Those who dare are uttering loud wails of protest others are dumbly awaiting their fate. [Deleting here a nasty paragraph that refers to the devil, uses the analogy of a serpent, and mentions "the International Power that controls the world's money."] But they have a mighty ally if he can only be aroused; an ally of whom the serpent is ever in deadly fear. This ally is known as Public Opinion- the same force that has slain many such dragons in the past.
If this were merely a struggle between competing elements in the industry, the public would have no interest except as a spectator on the side lines. But the matter goes much deeper than that. It is a question that vitally affects the public itself. The domination, by a Wall Street corporation, of such a medium of public information and molder of public opinion as the motion pictures have become, is a dangerous thing.
Few realize the terrific power wielded by the controllers of the film-screen. Read what Sydney Cohen, president of the Motion Picture Theater Owners of America, said in an address to President Harding last May.
"Its language is simple, vivid and direct, because it appeals to the eye, which has been called the immediate channel of the soul; because it impresses with equal force the literate and the illiterate, the motion picture has developed into an agency more powerful than either the printed or the spoken word."
In other words, the motion picture may become a more powerful engine for the molding of the human mind than our books, newspapers, magazines; a more dynamic influence than the eloquence of preacher or orator. Small wonder that those who would subvert society have gazed with covetous eyes on this tremendous leverage over that public which it affects to despise but secretly fears. That public is like a herd of Texas cattle in that while under control it can be handled by a few men, but when once stampeded it becomes a menace that terrorizes the stoutest hearted.
But the greatest power of the motion picture, the real secret of the desire to control it, is its internationalism.
The motion picture, by appealing to the eye, and the eye alone, overcomes the great barrier of language and distance that has until now separated the world's peoples. On the screen the little touches of nature that make the whole world kin might be utilized to bring together the inhabitants of the globe into one great family. Insular prejudices and ignorance might be swept aside and the cause of humanity advanced further in the next century than it has been in all the centuries of the past.
This end would be realized if the motion pictures were in the right hands. In the wrong hands they can be and are used as an instrument for sowing discord, hate and warfare. We have seen what they were able to accomplish during the World War in this country. Appeals by public speakers and the press left a large portion of the public unmoved. But the pictured stories of well-staged "atrocities" fanned their indignation to white heat. It is the difference between the recital of a narrative and actually seeing the occurrence.
With this mighty instrument to use as they see fit, the little group of men who dominate the industry today can hold the peace of the world in the hollow of their hands. Who are these men; what are these men; where did they come from and how did they obtain this control? It is only by the past that we can judge their conduct for the future. Without passion or prejudice, the writer will tell the story straightly and simply as it was revealed to him by men who have grown up in the industry.
The facts told here are open secrets within the industry. Several of the trade catering to the exhibitors have openly made charges based upon these facts and have named names. The charges are at last now matter of investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and the United States Senate has before it a resolution demanding an inquiry into the alleged movie trust's violation of the Clayton Law.
That the reader may understand the present situation in the film industry it is necessary to delve a little into its past history. It has become commonplace to say of motion pictures that they are in their infancy. As in art this is probably true; but as an industry they are grown up. Wall Street has no time for infants. Sometimes a promoter leading his prodigy by the hand may be 'sandbagged' and his child kidnaped by hangers-on lurking in its environs, but the street itself is only concerned with grown-ups.
During the years that the industry was getting on its feet, Wall Street ignored it. It was classed with the theatrical business. It was too much of a gamble for the "sure thing men" who never play without having the cards stacked and the wheel wired.
Even the big Jews in the theatrical business who had succeeded in getting control of the legitimate stage and had already begun their campaign of substituting pretty faces for actors and shapely forms for acting looked with contempt upon the early development of the screen.
Same of these very Jews, however are now leaders in the industry, and they got in on the ground floor. They broke in through the penny arcade route; open front storerooms filled with music boxes and peep shows where one deposited a penny and watched a bunch of chorus girls in tights or a couple of prize fighters strike boxing attitudes. They had little idea in those days into what these crude machines would eventually evolve. The ingenuity of Thomas Edison and the genius of David Wark Griffith carried them forward to a fame and fortune of which no one had dreamed.
But it was something besides luck that brought such men as Zukor, Goldfisch (now Goldwyn) and Loew into the dominant positions they now hold in the industry. They had the opportunity and they also had the ability to avail themselves of it, an ability that must not be underestimated.
Fortunes came quickly in those early days of the pictures, especially after Griffith had conceived the idea of making big photoplays for the screen. Previously the pictures had attracted by their novelty, but with the advent of the drama in the films genuine interest was created and a steadily increasing, regular patronage was built up.
It took but little capital to get into the business then. All a producer needed was money to purchase a camera and supplies and he usually could get credit for these. There were no stars drawing bank president's salaries, no directors whose weekly stipend would require a wheelbarrow to convey home, no costly studios representing millions of invested capital. The producer simply took his cameraman and with a dozen or so active young people hunted a location that did not cost him a cent. As soon as his film was completed his returns were immediate. Money literally poured in on him. The industry financed itself.
At the time Griffith was beginning to prove that there was a real field for drama on the screen, the big money was in prize fight films. The boxers soon discovered this also and presently the picture rights became even more valuable than the purse at stake. Then certain states began to pass laws against the showing of fight pictures and a lucrative source of revenue was cut off from the promoters.
Business began to slacken, the people were getting tired of pursuit pictures and besides these early films with their spots and flickers were hard on the eyes. Many producers were about ready to throw up the sponge when Griffith galvanized the industry into new life. He opened the vista of possibilities for the silent drama and encouraged the improvement of the camera. Inventors began to realize that this was no longer a mere amusing novelty, but a new art in the making. Improvement followed improvement in the technical side of the industry.
From the time of Griffith the motion picture industry grew and spread like a prairie fire. No other industry, with the possible exception of the automobile, has equaled it. At first the theaters were cheap garish structures, but, as the class of pictures became better and better, the theater owners began to realize that the new industry had come to stay and they built more pretentious edifices.
Practically all these theaters up to a few years ago were built by local capital. A man of theatrical experience would interest a local capitalist or large property owner in building a theater, and they would form a partnership, with the theatrical man actively conducting the business. Both the theater man and his backer would be residents of the town or city in which the theater was situated. Being residents and citizens, they would be sensitive to the criticism of their neighbors and would accordingly govern their selection of pictures to be shown in their house. Furthermore, at that period in the history of the industry, they had a choice. They were absolutely independent of producing companies and could buy where and what they pleased. These are facts that the reader will do well to bear in mind in view of what shall be revealed as the situation today.
While the exhibitors were busy in erecting theaters, the producers were likewise frantically building studios in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. While locations were still being used a great deal more than they are today, they found that they must have studios for the interior scenes that were being used more and more as the art of the photoplay improved. New York being the theatrical center of the continent was at first the center of motion picture production but when the producers discovered that the climate of Southern California would give them double and treble the number of working days because of its almost perennial sunshine, the production center gradually shifted to Los Angeles.
The financial end of the business in those days was about evenly split between Jews and Gentiles but the latter held the reins. Thus the first attempt to control the industry was made by the General Film Company, an organization Jewish members but composed mostly of Gentiles. The General Film Company, later dissolved by the United States Government as being in violation of the anti-trust act, attempted to control the industry through distribution, and succeeded for a time. It made no pronounced effort to go into either production or exhibition but contented itself with taking its principal toll from the theater owner or exhibitor.
The present group of promoters, who are attempting to and to a large extent do control the industry today, have gone about their plans differently. They started at the producing end, then began distribute their own product and that of others and finally, as the culmination of their effort completely to control the industry have entered the exhibition field.
They learned much from the fertile effort of the General Film Company, which many of them- then on the outside looking in- lent considerable aid in battling. They learned for one thing that the open use of the club and sandbag was disastrous. They found that the smothering process was much more efficacious. They discovered it was cheaper in the end to buy out a man who stood in their path than to ruin him. But they usually bought him out at their own price. This price depended not so much on the value of his interests as his ability to make a roar where it might do them harm.
"Baring The Heart of Hollywood: The Truth About the Motion Pictures," Baring The Heart of Hollywood Part I, The Dearborn Independent, October 29, 1921.
© 1998, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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