Laeramle Donation 
 
Screencraft 
 
 BY 
 
 LOUIS REEVES HARRISON 
 k 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 CHALMERS PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 17 Madison Avenue 
 NEW YOPvK CITY 
 
Copyright in the United States, 1916 
 
 Copyright in Great Britain, 1916 
 
 Copyright in Canada, 1916 
 
 by 
 
 CHALMERS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
 (All Rights Reserved) 
 
INDEX 
 
 Shifting Fancies and Celestial Lights 5 
 
 Skeleton and Soul 9 
 
 Beginnings 15 
 
 Totality of Effect 22 
 
 Present Day Issues 34 
 
 Making a Scene 43 
 
 The Five-Reel Feature 47 
 
 Sex Drama 54 
 
 Human Emotions 64 
 
 Detective Stories 73 
 
 Secrets . . 77 
 
 Titles and Subtitles 85 
 
 Plots, Many andj Varied 89 
 
 Intelligent Characterization 99 
 
 Acting That Is Not 105 
 
 Picture Composition Ill 
 
 Illustrations Analyzed 115 
 
 Picture Inspiration 119 
 
 A Working Scenario 123 
 
 Examples of Form 142 
 
 773825 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 Screen visualization, so little understood by those 
 who should be among the first to grasp its possibili- 
 ties, is a composite art, its parts so combined that they 
 lose their distinctive characters, to an end that the com- 
 plete product becomes an instrument of thought, a 
 medium of expression more direct than printed lan- 
 guage. This new art has been misjudged because of 
 its early examples and its use for low-priced entertain- 
 ment, but its evolution has been rapid in spite of erro- 
 neous opinions of men devoted to one or another of the 
 parent arts of expression from which it sprung. Many 
 established principles of the older arts, while applicable 
 to the new one, have to be adapted to its ends. 
 
 From constant study of the readjustment of old 
 principles to this new relation, and from many years 
 of practical experience in nearly all departments of 
 motion-picture production, is drawn what appears un- 
 der the title "Screencraft." The book is intended to 
 help in formulating a new art, not that the art may 
 appeal to the delicate sensibilities of the super-cultiva- 
 ted, but that it may adequately respond to the needs 
 of plain people the world over through addressing their 
 sympathetic intelligence. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
SHIFTING FANCIES 
 
 and 
 CELESTIAL LIGHTS 
 
 THE GREATNESS OF THE MOVING PICTURE DRAMA 
 
 WHEN there came unheralded into our midst a 
 new art, that of visualizing movement and 
 sensation, agitation of mind and soul, tendency 
 of desires and passions, it was the second art to appear 
 during the Christian Era, the first being that of pro- 
 ducing printed matter by the composition and Imposi- 
 tion of type during the Fifteenth Century. Both were 
 undervalued at the outset, because scientific develop- 
 ment had not overcome a certain crudity of early ex- 
 amples; both were aided during their evolution by 
 collateral arts, and both grew in popular favor despite 
 a lot of envious criticism from men who should have 
 been the first to welcome any means of advancing 
 common progress through dissemination of truth. 
 
 Even now, among the privileged few who take 
 themselves seriously, who have acquired an intellec- 
 tual aloofness from what is easily comprehended by 
 ordinary people, there are many who reach false con- 
 clusions about the production of moving pictures by 
 the dangerous route of pure reason based on wrong 
 premises. They regard the new art as purely reflective 
 because it lacks precedent and tradition and is intro- 
 duced apologetically, not yet having acquired a full 
 dress of glossary. No single and all-embracing term 
 such as "literature" or "drama" has yet been found to 
 fit it. It is wearing altered clothes of its elder brothers, 
 with "photo" and "moto" patches that add neither to 
 the strength nor to the beauty of its vocabulary. 
 
 The egotism of misinformation, more destructive 
 than the egotism of simple ignorance, has caused men 
 
6 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 who should know better to depreciate the value of 
 moving pictures. The new art is not strong in the 
 hearts of people because it is democratic, not because 
 they have dominated it, for they have not. They have 
 gone by millions to contemplate its work because of 
 the direct nature of its appeal and because that appeal 
 has been so strong that it has enabled them to forget 
 a great deal that mars everyday existence. To the 
 generous support of common people it owes its vitality, 
 not to those cultivated individuals who have achieved 
 intellectuality by long study of rare models in the 
 older arts. 
 
 Said Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 
 
 The growing drama has outgrown such toys 
 
 Of stimulated stature, face and speech; 
 
 It also peradventure may outgrow 
 
 The simulation of the painted scene, 
 
 Boards, actors, promoters, gaslight and costume, 
 
 And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, 
 
 In shifting fancies and celestial lights, 
 
 With all its grand orchestral silences 
 
 To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds. 
 
 In place of "sounds" she might have been completely 
 prophetic had she used "motion." Edward Gordon 
 Craig, much in evidence as a reformer of the drama, 
 declares : "There is a thing which man has not learned 
 to master, a thing which man. dreamed not was waiting 
 for him to approach with love ; it was invisible and yet 
 ever present with him. Superb in its attraction and 
 swift to retreat, a thing but waiting for the approach 
 of the right men, prepared to soar with them through 
 all the circles beyond the earth it is Movement. It 
 is somehow a common belief that only by means of 
 words can truths be revealed. Words explain the law 
 of two and six, images delineate the relation of four 
 and eight, but what of that infinite and beautiful thing 
 dwelling in space called movement? And I like to sup- 
 
SHIFTING FANCIES AND CELESTIAL LIGHTS 7 
 
 pose that this art which shall spring from movement 
 shall be the first and final belief of the world." 
 
 All the arts of expression have frontiers, but they 
 are growing more neighborly, those frontiers are being 
 crossed and recrossed, until artists of broad viewpoint 
 are beginning to realize that separation of interest will 
 be replaced by a community of interest, which will 
 subordinate tradition and eliminate prejudice. If true 
 creative genius has something to give the world and 
 lacks skill in the older crafts, he may find his way 
 through the new one now in a formative stage, even 
 through others yet unborn. True genius will be less 
 embarrassed by the art that has been and turn his face 
 to the art that has never been, will draw popular ap- 
 proval by what is new, original and capable of infinite 
 variety of expression rather than surrender the prod- 
 ucts of imagination to a clamor from the sordid and the 
 unthinking. His medium will be of secondary impor- 
 tance to his message or to that most real of all teal 
 things in men of creative imagination, sentiment, but 
 he will invoke the new art in vain if he is not sincere. 
 
 "All art," says Sheldon Cheney in his advocacy of a 
 new movement in theatrical presentation, "is a matter 
 of nature or life acted upon, by man ; a part taken out 
 of the accidental surroundings and given artistic form." 
 
 In viewing any great artistic masterpiece we our- 
 selves cannot always interpret the message. Alone 
 we cannot even guess at the noble conceptions the 
 artist imprisoned in his creation. We feel the need of 
 outside help. We feel like invoking the Spirit of 
 Motion. 
 
 A lifeless landscape ; a stretch of glossy sea ; what a 
 wondrous change comes when invisible forces stir 
 them to action ! We associate life with action, with the 
 exercise of mind and body, and death with the absence 
 of it. The Spirit of Motion has already raised the dead 
 as if by enhancement and she holds out both hands 
 
8 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 to True Genius that he may stir millions with his in- 
 spirations, that his celestial light of truth may reach all 
 humanity through this art that is without confusion of 
 tongues. Says the Immortal Bard, who in compassing 
 little comprehended much: 
 
 The idea of her life shall sweetly creep 
 
 Into his study of imagination, 
 
 And every lovely organ of her life 
 
 Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit, 
 
 More moving delicate and full of life, 
 
 Into the eye and prospect of his soul. 
 
SKELETON AND SOUL 
 
 OR 
 THE NEED FOR GOOD CRAFTSMANSHIP 
 
 THAT there should be such a thing as technical 
 workmanship in a scenario for screen production 
 comes to many ambitious writers as a somewhat 
 disagreeable surprise; it may be received with incre- 
 dulity, and it has even awakened resentment. The art 
 is so new that it would hardly seem as though time 
 enough had elapsed for any remarkable degree of skill 
 to have been acquired in its various departments, 
 whereas men of high native ability have been hard at 
 work for many long years with no other object in view 
 than perfecting both artistic and scientific methods of 
 screen visualization, and these men have developed 
 with their work, each in his way becoming a craftsman. 
 
 Adequate knowledge of language may be required by 
 the novelist, of harmony by the composer, of stage re- 
 quirements by the dramatist, and even a painter has 
 to learn how. Though they may be veritable artists, 
 they are obliged to become craftsmen as well, and to 
 assume that no skill is required in the construction of 
 a screen story which satisfies millions of minds is noth- 
 ing better than assumption and often worse, a mere 
 supposition incapable of being proved. 
 
 While the new craft is developing along lines of in- 
 dependence, some of the oldest conventions of litera- 
 ture and the drama survive in it and even flourish, par- 
 ticularly "the unities" and the technics of impartiality, 
 playing fair with the characters. On the other hand, 
 partially because the art is divided into formulation by 
 the author and treatment by the director, and more 
 largely because the use of language is very limited, 
 being confined to a few telling words, usually those of 
 conversation, the author need not be embarrassed be- 
 
10 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 cause he is unacquainted with that overfed darling of 
 literature known as "Style." 
 
 The author needs clarity of expression in the sce- 
 nario, knowledge of construction and some ability to 
 inspire, but his general equipment need not include 
 mastery of all the formidable intricacies of language. 
 He may start with the same small prospect of imme- 
 diate and adequate return for outlay of time and effort 
 he would encounter as a novelist, or as a dramatist, but 
 the field is wider, and it is constantly widening for 
 those who labor with sincerity and determination. 
 
 Given an unfailing font of creative imagination, in 
 itself native, the way to successfully meet the competi- 
 tion of skill is to acquire skill. The author's craft 
 being that of formulation, he can save thousands to 
 the producer through systematization of the work in 
 advance of treatment and interpretation, thus raising 
 his own value through his craft. It is not enough to 
 have an imaginative and selective mind the author 
 should LEARN HOW to conquer the minds and 
 hearts of those who sit in the shadow and closely scan 
 the illuminated screen. The creative soul may be native 
 its finest expression is acquired. 
 
 The scenario of a photodrama has been very reason- 
 ably compared to the foundation and framework of a 
 house even in its simplest form it is the basis on 
 which the visualized story is built, and a genuine work- 
 ing scenario rises so high as to establish the entire 
 general design. No matter how elaborate and beautiful 
 the finished structure, its character is bound to be 
 deeply affected by what gave it configuration, but it 
 might be nearer the truth to call it a skeleton. It is a 
 dead thing in physical appearance, must be covered 
 With the pulsing flesh of life before it is particularly 
 attractive, but with it goes that invisible spirit which is 
 only manifested in the complete form, the soul of the 
 story. 
 
SKELETON AND SOUL 11 
 
 Strip a popular novel of its highly-colored verbiage ; 
 denude it of those words which control the writer's 
 flights of imagination ; remove superfluous traces of the 
 medium through which he has given his ideas expres- 
 sion, even to his literary tricks of exciting curiosity 
 and fanning the flame of suspense, and it is possible 
 to reach a scenario of the book. There remain, the mo- 
 tive, the characters, the situations, the incidents illus- 
 trating motive and character, and, if it is a story worth ^* 
 screen visualization, one dominating thought. These 
 materials, newly arranged in a continuous succession of 
 dramatic scenes, by methods either analytic or syn- 
 thetic, can be brought into an entirely new unity of 
 narrative for direct presentation to the eye. 
 
 This new arrangement is so far removed from being 
 that of stage plays, and to a less degree from most nar- 
 rative arrangements of prose fiction, that it is perilous 
 to quote from governing laws of the older arts. There 
 is also a danger of imposing restrictions, the risk of 
 replacing spontaneous composition withithat of ineffec- 
 tive artificiality. But all story telling mediums are 
 more or less akin, and what applies to one often applies 
 to all, the adjustment of background to character, the 
 focussing of attention upon people and events destined 
 to play the leading parts in reaching desired results. 
 
 People sitting in the semi-obscurity of a motion pic- 
 ture theater cannot lay aside the five-reel screen story 
 and take it up again. They cannot refer back to what 
 has not been made entirely clear to them. They are to 
 watch the performance without intermissions. There 
 must be a concentration of action and characterization 
 in what is shown. Diversions so dear to the dramatist 
 and to the novelist are worse than confusing they are 
 destructive to sustained interest. Pretty little side 
 stories of subordinate characters are not for the screen. 
 A handful of main characters is enough for practical 
 as well as for artistic reasons close-up scenes are in 
 very small scope, and the average mixed audience be- 
 
12 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 comes easily confused in attempting to follow what is 
 happening to more than five people in the swiftly 
 changing scenes. 
 
 The opening pictures may well be devoted to the 
 characterization of one or more principals, even if their 
 lives are moving in widely-separated channels. The 
 hero may be a soldier dominated for the moment by 
 war lust, the heroine a hospital nurse, saving life while 
 he is bent on destroying it. He may be a gentle clergy- 
 man expounding on faith, she a girl of the slums, an 
 unconscious Christian in good deeds. One whole reel 
 of a strong play was effectively devoted to the charac- 
 terization of a two-sided man about whom leading 
 events clustered. The audience knew him when he 
 came to be the important factor in all that transpired. 
 
 Prompt characterization not only wins sympathetic 
 interest, but it aids in making a logical series of events 
 plausible. During this preparation, in itself a delicate 
 forewarning of complications to follow, there should be 
 an equally delicate intimation of the story's trend, just 
 a few notes of the theme may be sounded. There is a 
 wrong being done; there is a complication set up 
 which is bound to result in cross purposes or a clash 
 of individual desires; there are entanglements to be 
 straightened out; there is a theory to be proven; there 
 is a problem to be solved whatever the eventual 
 scenes of tension, however, the main action should be 
 preceded by an unfolding of the minds and hearts of 
 those who interpret that action. 
 
 What are the people in the story? What are their 
 relations to one another? What compelling influences 
 are bringing them together? What needs readjustment 
 in their conduct? Intense drama is concerned largely 
 with those forms of evil which grow out of ignorance, 
 principally our ignorance of one another. We lead up 
 to a crisis, an effect of which lack of enlightenment is 
 usually the cause. False ideas in the mind of one cause 
 the mental suffering of others. Out in the audience 
 
 I 
 
SKELETON AND SOUL 13 
 
 our sympathies are enlisted, and, from our superior 
 standpoint, we enjoy having error punished as an ex- 
 ample for certain people we know. 
 
 Having introduced the characters 'and opened up a 
 possibility of struggle between the opposing forces, 
 during three or four reels, we begin somewhere about 
 half past four * an exciting promise of consequences. 
 That promise must be fulfilled. If the story becomes 
 entangled, there can be no shirking of responsibility 
 by dying confessions the situation should be worked 
 out with the same skill that worked it up, else fine 
 structure and artistic treatment are in vain. We have 
 built a noble house and covered it with a leaky roof. 
 
 It is not fair to judge any art by its immature ex- 
 amples, else we would infer from screen stories that 
 the sole object of following a picture narrative to the 
 end is that of watching two young people embrace just 
 as the orb of day sinks behind distant hills, or the fire in 
 the grate grows dim. Of course the human race must 
 be perpetuated, but an audience may grow skeptical if 
 Washington is shown crossing the Delaware that Jen- 
 nie may be enfolded in the arms of Jim. Nine out of 
 ten screen stories do not end that way they subside. 
 The scenario writer who offers such a spineless com- 
 promise after a crisis of definite and logical conclusions 
 lacks craftsmanship if not artistic conscience. 
 
 With a definite theme in mind, with salient qualities 
 of leading characters defined, the author of a five-reel 
 story has time to dispose of minor conclusions on his 
 way to the main point. As far as it is possible to do 
 so, he should clear his path of lesser issues on ap- 
 proaching the plot culmination, so that it may imme- 
 diately precede his final scenes. That pictured stories 
 so often suffer from one form or another of anti-climax 
 is largely due to the absence of a complete working 
 scenario in the beginning an ineffectual attempt is 
 
 *Indicating middle of fifth reel. 
 
14 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 made to replace forethought with badly articulated 
 afterthought. 
 
 Above all things should a scenario convey the spirit 
 of the story, even if this has to be done by explanatory 
 foot notes. That people sit emotionless before screen 
 portrayals is less due to faults of the medium than to 
 false use of it. Failure of the author's creative imagina- 
 tion far more than faulty instrumentality or inadequate 
 interpretation is accountable for soulless photodrama. 
 
BEGINNINGS 
 
 OR 
 THE WRITER'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SCREEN WORK 
 
 IT MUST be admitted that at present most of the 
 popular and profitable screen productions are from 
 men unheard of in the other arts, and that the real 
 stars of screen portrayal, those who are making money 
 for the exhibitor, gain, in the great majority of cases, 
 no great reputation from their chosen work. Yet, in 
 spite of all this, the men who buy and distribute fea- 
 tures lay great stress on reflected light, the flash. The 
 explanation of this is the influx of theatricalism and 
 the inability of those who buy and distribute to judge 
 of merit. It is easier to go by past decisions, and 
 therefore to revive something that has once lived and 
 counted in one of the other art-forms. The flash covers 
 a multitude of sins. And this state of affairs, such as 
 the popularity of some old novel or worn-out play, may 
 just as well be taken into consideration from the start 
 by the author of original photodrama. For he is "up 
 against" a condition. 
 
 The beginning of a photodrama thus possesses an 
 importance beyond that of artistry. There is a com- 
 mercial value in a first reel which compels attention or 
 which so excites curiosity that prospective buyers may 
 be led into a more intelligent examination of the whole 
 story. Even though it may contain a wealth of thought, 
 display a rare charm and grace, be replete with the 
 magic of sustained interest in its big scenes, it may 
 never be a child of the sun, delight millions with its 
 glory, if its first act fails to make an impression. To 
 be profoundly careless of this first impression may, 
 therefore, mean a highly artistic inability to earn, one's 
 daily bread. 
 
 To get at the heart of a story at once without endan- 
 
 15 
 
16 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 gering interest in its crisis may plunge the photoplay- 
 wright into a mental whirlpool of indecision, but the 
 way out may be as easy as that of a melodrama hero 
 thrown into a sewer where the water rose higher and 
 higher during a series of exciting scenes until it reached 
 his face, when he calmly swam out by an exit not avail- 
 able until the water had risen. It is not always neces- 
 sary to begin at the beginning in photoplays, and, 
 there being no arbitrary starting point, one may plunge 
 into the middle of his subject without qualms. Ante- 
 cedent causes and circumstances may be shown in the 
 course of action immediately preceding a crisis. To 
 what extent this may be done, however, without a 
 lapse of sustained interest, is a matter requiring nice 
 judgment. Opportunities for failure at the high point 
 are multiplied by the number and extent of previous 
 explanatory phases to be pictured. 
 
 A three-reel mystery story of fine development 
 opened with a rapid succession of incidents, including a 
 bitter quarrel between two men closely followed by the 
 murder of one. Commonplace in subject, the develop- 
 ment proved to be unusual and of high interest. Aside 
 from the evidence pointing straight to one man, there 
 was not the slightest clue to the real murderer, not a 
 visible motive, not a character other than the accused 
 man capable of the deed. The author now set up an en- 
 tirely new line of action, itself quite sensational, lead- 
 ing gradually to the first, though there had apparently 
 been no previous association of the main characters. It 
 was a daring expedient to reach the edge of a crisis and 
 turn back for a gradual solution of the mystery, but it 
 succeeded. 
 
 In spite of the fact that a number of able critics have 
 written learnedly on various forms of creative compo- 
 sition, there is little to offer in the way of rules sug- 
 gestions are, however, permissible, and that is about as 
 far as one writer can go in helping others. There are 
 
BEGINNINGS 17 
 
 instances without number to show that it is unwise to 
 always plunge into the thick of the struggle, and it 
 will become apparent to the writer of screen stories 
 that he is at his best when he has a free hand. It need 
 not be taken for granted, therefore, that any one 
 method of introducing characters, theme and action is 
 to be blindly followed, but there are many considera- 
 tions, artistic as well as commercial, which favor at- 
 tacking a photodrama near its end. 
 
 An audience can be held by interesting personalities 
 during the opening of a stage play; the novelist may 
 keep our minds aglow by the power of his own 
 thoughts until his narrative is under way; the photo- 
 playwright may not indulge he has to depend largely 
 upon what can be made visible of characterization, mo- 
 tive and movement. He may get at character, pene- 
 trate motive and set action going on in a way to hold 
 attention while preparing for important situations, but 
 his problem bristles with difficulties if he follows a 
 straight line from his earliest events to his terminal 
 position. 
 
 To the gentlemen engaged in trading between the 
 creator and the user of photoplays it may seem almost 
 laughable that a scenario writer should take infinite 
 pains with his work, but it is to be expected that audi- 
 ences will grow more and more exacting that is in 
 accord with experience and the standard of technical 
 excellence must be constantly raised. The number of 
 writers for screen production is rapidly narrowing 
 down to those who do take pains and who are capable 
 of concentration upon large themes and their effective 
 visualizations. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that a live beginning may 
 help to tide over that period of preparation which 
 nearly always precedes the really big scenes in a play. 
 It can often stimulate anticipation of good things to 
 come, and it should certainly operate to put the spec- 
 
18 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 tator in the responsive state of mind of an im- 
 pressionist. 
 
 Because there is no surety that the methods of one 
 author will prove a safe guide for another, and because 
 any didactic effort to stimulate creative work may 
 sterilize it, or lead to dull imitation, illustrative exam- 
 ples are of doubtful value. The idea of a story should 
 germinate in the author's brain and be accorded large 
 freedom from technique in its growth. Essayists dwell 
 on the subject of technique because it affords them 
 the joys of a voyage of discovery it is ever new. Each 
 born story teller originates methods of manipulation 
 entirely his own, yet, if one torch lights another in the 
 matter of artistic execution, a few examples from fea- 
 ture plays may do no harm at this stage of the dis- 
 cussion.. 
 
 1. A five-reel adaptation from a successful stage play. 
 There was little promise of suspense necessary to hold 
 an audience through five reels, and the unsatisfactory 
 ending was a handicap, but its reputation insured a 
 good sale, and it was up to the adapter to conceive of 
 a method which should not wholly disregard the au- 
 thor's purpose, and, at the same time, please the mil- 
 lions of people who might see it on the screen. The 
 story 
 
 A weakling employe with a sweet wife steals from 
 his employer, a self-avowed old sensualist, a hard, cruel 
 and unscrupulous sea captain. The weakling's defalca- 
 tions are discovered, to the delight of his employer, for 
 the latter has long been infatuated with the former's 
 sweet young wife. The weakling, knowing what to 
 expect if his wife falls into the power of the captain, 
 deliberately sends her late at night to the latter's den 
 to adjust matters so that he will not have to go to jail. 
 
 What would a man of the captain's character do ? He 
 would act in accord with the qualities which had dis- 
 tinguished him through life unless there was an un- 
 
BEGINNINGS 19 
 
 revealed soft spot in his hard heart. Why not closely 
 examine that character, open up some wild experiences 
 aboard ship in the past, and expose his relations with 
 the sweet young wife, while exciting curiosity and as- 
 sembling forces for the high scenes? 
 
 He is discovered in the first scene recovering from a 
 debauch in a private dining room. In a moment of 
 self-disgust, he recalls some former experiences. In the 
 interim a jeweled hand issues from portieres at his 
 right, the beckoning hand of sensuality. Down at the 
 root of his character is the cave man. He rises in con- 
 tempt and opens a window at his left. A light streams 
 in, the light shed upon his mind by the influence of one 
 pure woman, the one given in marriage to his weakling 
 clerk. He sits down, lights a cigar and pictures experi- 
 ences in her presence, as covetous as ever, dominated 
 by the predatory instincts of the male, yet it could be 
 seen that her refinement might hold him. 
 
 That first reel, devoted entirely to characterization, 
 held as well as the high scenes, though it was entirely 
 out of the stage version. Its meaning was not thrust 
 upon the audience by sub-titles, but was felt. The 
 photoplay was a decided success and proved to be one 
 of the most profitable of the year. 
 
 2. Like it in financial returns and artistic success was 
 an adaptation from a stage play which had failed in 
 New York and was comparatively unknown through- 
 out the country, the story of a woman driven by the 
 cruelty of a gambling husband, the loss of her only 
 child, and by ill health, combined with extreme poverty, 
 to the verge of suicide. The stage play drifted away 
 from the first and main line of interest to the operations 
 of a gang of swindlers aboard a transatlantic liner in 
 mid-ocean and became badly tangled through the in- 
 troduction of minor characters and a lot of irrelevant 
 matter. The dramatist apparently had a first concep- 
 tion of merit and went astray in an attempt to please a 
 
20 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 Broadway following with picturesque variety he 
 thought he had his finger on the feverish pulse of his 
 public. There was an immediate question of elimina- 
 tion involved. The cast was cut in two and the main 
 line of interest thoroughly established for photoplay 
 purposes before "picturesque variety" could get in its 
 deadly work. 
 
 Scene First is decidedly impersonal. All that is in 
 view is the top of a table on which are a small bottle of 
 poison and a white rose in a half glass of water. The 
 rose is drooping and several of its petals have fallen. 
 Scene Second, in larger scope, shows the same table, 
 and presently a thin and trembling hand reaches for the 
 poison. Then the woman is revealed and, by double 
 exposure, her reasons for committing suicide. She is 
 saved in this first attempt by the sudden coming of a 
 former suitor, an ex-gambler who proves to be the 
 Nemesis of her dissolute husband, but she is finally 
 induced to take the poison by her husband, and he 
 leaves her for dead, failing to join her in ending their 
 lives together. The contents of the bottle are not poi- 
 sonous; the woman recovers, she crosses in the same 
 ship as her husband, and he becomes mastered by the 
 idea that his dead wife is haunting him. 
 
 Clever piece of double exposure in this photodrama, 
 one which drew a round of applause at the Strand, was 
 devised by the writer of the scenario, but ingeniously 
 developed by the director. The haunted man is looking 
 over the side of the ship and sees his wife's accusing 
 face in the water, a face that vanishes in the foam and 
 reappears in the dark water. 
 
 3. A modern five-reel feature, dealing with a vital 
 phase of the European War, presents a strange condi- 
 tion in the first reel, a marriage between a daughter of 
 Polish nobility and an American attached to the Red 
 Cross service, which could be disclaimed by either of 
 them, though it is legally performed in the presence of 
 
BEGINNINGS 21 
 
 many witnesses, including the bride's father. The wed- 
 ding has been hurried by the approach of military oper- 
 ations, and a distant battle is in progress during the 
 services. Miles away from the private chapel in which 
 the young couple are being united a small battery of 
 artillery has been thrust forward to search out the 
 movements of enemy troops. One of the guns is ele- 
 vated to find the range, and the shell from it drops into 
 the wedding party at the altar immediately after the 
 bride and groom have passed into an adjoining salon. 
 The shell fatally wounds the father and kills all others 
 in the chapel. 
 
 The swift series of events that now follows is entirely 
 dependent upon one chance shot from a masked bat- 
 tery. The play opens with an inanimate scene, that 
 of a cluster of bushes. No human being is visible at 
 any time in this scene. Slowly the muzzle of a cannon 
 is thrust through the bushes, and it is covered by a 
 few branches. At various times during the progress of 
 the first reel, the menacing muzzle of the weapon is 
 shown; its "roar of death" may be expected at any 
 moment ; it strikes a keynote of the story, arouses an- 
 ticipation; and is the unconscious factor in the lives 
 of important people, if not in the destinies of a nation. 
 The determining factors of a story spring from a 
 source "the point of attack." And it is the "point of 
 attack" that does much to make or mar the effective- 
 ness of a fine film production. 
 
TOTALITY OF EFFECT 
 
 OR 
 REALISM, POETRY, AND REVELATION 
 
 WORSE than ignorance is a false idea that takes 
 possession of healthy human minds and per- 
 verts what might otherwise be good judgment. 
 Such is the mistaken association of realism in drama 
 and literature with unvarnished truth the application 
 is more truly that of critics to varnished fiction. They 
 seized upon a term which ordinarily defines a form of 
 philosophy and applied it to what had the appearance 
 of being an effort to exhibit literal reality in the arts, 
 whereas the true artist appropriates the facts of life as 
 so much rough material from which he constructs an 
 existence more marvelous than that we daily look upon, 
 better calculated to arrest and hold attention when it 
 delves into hidden secrets of the soul or offers ideals 
 through which common human nature hopes to attain 
 perfection. It is very doubtful whether any creative 
 author merely describes what he knows, or thinks he 
 knows, about his own life or that of his neighbors, 
 even if able to make it all less vulgar than reality. He 
 depends largely upon his imagination. To critically 
 ignore that fact is to attempt to solve the problem of 
 creative art by denying its source. 
 
 It is quite possible that realism exemplifies what is 
 said of persons and events of the day in which the 
 author lives, that it is a short word for contemporane- 
 ousness combined with plausibility. What kind of 
 realism is it when his story antedates his experience? 
 It is even dangerous to go back a generation in a 
 search for truth. That supposed exponent of realism, 
 Ibsen, causes Doctor Stockmann to say in "An Enemy 
 of the People" that most truths cease to be such after 
 twenty years' time. The great Norwegian poet held 
 
 22 
 
TOTALITY OF EFFECT 23 
 
 strongly to the idea that the rights of an individual 
 were superior to those of society as composed of indi- 
 viduals. His bold theories were those of a revolu- 
 tionary idealist asserted through mastery of his craft. 
 His speculations were made intelligible through sim- 
 plicity of method, but his people and events were as 
 unreal as his convictions were vacillating. He was at- 
 tempting to get at great truths through vigorous ideal- 
 ization. 
 
 Such is the case, within individual limitations, of 
 thoughtful authors, whatever their medium of expres- 
 sion, that of painting, that of sculpture, that of the 
 printed or the uttered word, that of visualization on 
 the screen. Whatever the art process, there is an ideal- 
 ization to stir thought or feeling, to make us conscious 
 of our souls. Consistency is a jewel of this art struc- 
 ture and plausibility of its treatment. Harmonious 
 agreement in all parts of the original creative work is 
 of high importance, with an added plausibility or a 
 specious appearance of truth that shall make it 
 worthy of confidence, in many works of art, and these 
 merits constitute an EFFECT, that of being in accord 
 with the truth. 
 
 The story may be cunningly realistic or openly ro- 
 mantic to impose critical limitations on it in either 
 respect narrows the field and dulls variety of presenta- 
 tion. An author deeply interested in social problems 
 may present scenes and characters as he thinks he sees 
 them from a purely personal point of view or from that 
 of an artist engaged in revealing what is unknown of 
 them. 
 
 Sometimes the autocrat of artistry is hampered by 
 an experience purely theatrical and occasionally dra- 
 matic. It is quite possible that poesy and jingle are 
 confounded in his mind, natural result of several years' 
 apprenticeship to the stage. He may have lost all 
 traces of natural endowment to grasp the almost in- 
 
24 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 tangible spirit of poesy. Then it is that his backgrounds 
 possess not even a pilfered essence of artistry. Con- 
 sumed by a desire to display his knowledge of stage 
 mechanical operation, a slave of the property room, he 
 loses sight of the fact that he, and he alone, must ap- 
 peal to a sensitiveness, to a love of beauty and harmony 
 that is almost universal among intelligent people, that 
 even makes dull hearts beat high in response. When 
 he receives the best that capable authorship has to 
 offer, he demonstrates his own unfitness for his work 
 unless he transmits the energy and beauty of it to his 
 audience. He should do this and even more, even add 
 to what is destined to become an instrument gf uni- 
 versal culture. 
 
 There can be no spirit of poesy in a screen visualiza- 
 tion that does not spring pure and undefiled from a big 
 heart, one in generous sympathy with whatever con- 
 tributes to world-over human happiness. This spirit is 
 as delicate as the poet's own tender sensibilities. That 
 it may persist in and pervade the completed product, 
 it must be handled with high appreciation of its value. 
 If it does not discover a great truth, its mission may 
 be that of bringing truth to light, or that of helping to 
 make a truth of restricted circulation socially appropri- 
 ated. Its interpretation on the screen should be of 
 beauty rather than of force. It should appeal rather 
 than strike with hard blows. While science has en- 
 abled us to advance through knowledge of observed 
 facts, the Spirit of Poesy has brightened our way, 
 made us more tender and ennobled our aspirations. 
 
 It is the aspiration for, the attainment of, this Spirit 
 of Poesy, this spirit of pure beauty, which spells the 
 finest, the most idealistic side of the scenario writer's 
 profession. And he is helped in this by the public itself. 
 For, inasmuch as picture show audiences are both hope- 
 ful and generous the writer of screen stories need not 
 concern himself with what he has been told will "please 
 
TOTALITY OF EFFECT 25 
 
 the public" such an effort is liable to cause the dear 
 public much pain. He may concern himself only with 
 what his creative ability brings forth the spectator 
 does not pay his admission fee to arbitrate but to enjoy 
 what springs fresh and sparkling from some other mind. 
 He will enjoy more what is truly created than what is 
 copied, though that might not be what he would de- 
 mand. He may not know in advance what is good, but 
 this does not interfere with his appreciation of it when 
 it is held up to his enraptured gaze. The actor may imi- 
 tate and simulate ; the director may be constrained and 
 impeded by the commercialism with which he is in 
 close touch, but the true creative artist must be free to 
 translate thought and feeling through movement in 
 harmony with his inspiration. 
 
 One serious objection to offering standards to the 
 born mind of tremendous creative impulse, the mind 
 of impelling constructive tendency, the mind of genius, 
 is that genius flowers most richly in the sunshine of 
 encouragement and that it is highly sensitive to the 
 rigors of craftsmanship. It is in genius to devise its 
 own methods, to set up its own standards, to cast off all 
 shackles of convention and extend the scope of human 
 effort ; hence it seems unwise to establish such a barrier 
 as that of "Don't Teach," but the barrier is little more 
 than a line of demarkation between visualizations in- 
 tended primarily to entertain and those intended for no 
 other purpose than instruction. The builder of inter- 
 esting stories may well group his recreations of human 
 experience around some vital truth and weave that 
 truth into a symmetrical design with a more powerful 
 effect than could be reached without it, but the central 
 idea should not be permitted to ascend the pulpit and 
 shout where the whole art is that of delicate revelation. 
 
 Weary are we of pulpit solemnity, of the school 
 thesis, of the political shouter, of people who argue and 
 argue, not because they have anything new or valuable 
 
26 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 to offer, but because they desire to assume the superior 
 position and prove something that none of us cares par- 
 ticularly about. No one of us knows so much more than 
 the others that we can constantly affirm with any 
 surety of being accurate the best we can do is to offer 
 such information as we possess along lines where we 
 are best posted, by means which do not excite antago- 
 nism and which permit the recipient to accept or 
 decline, according to his individual requirements and 
 tastes, and even then we must set a high intellectual 
 pace to keep ahead of the crowd. The man who would 
 reveal something in his story must keep in close touch 
 with his age and its revelations. 
 
 Important discovery is made by a capable author 
 when he learns to his amazement that he is not a 
 finality. It is disquieting, if not discouraging, for any 
 of us to realize that we know as little about the Alpha 
 of human existence as we do of its Omega. Densely 
 ignorant of origin and of our destiny, vainly specu- 
 lating about our beginnings and endings, poor, tiny 
 drifting atoms in a self-destructive current of human- 
 ity, what have we really to offer in the guise of knowl- 
 edge that is more than a deduction from the little we 
 have been able to pick up in one narrow experience. 
 Remembering that error is a deduction from experi- 
 ence, how do we know that we are not offering error 
 in the place of truth when we ascend the pulpit to 
 declaim? Instead of attempting to promulgate a great 
 truth, the author who sincerely desires to be of service 
 to mankind may add his small contribution to general 
 enlightenment by pointing a way out of error. 
 
 The audience in receptive mood, a great deal may be 
 done in the film story to suggest through clever char- 
 acterization and appropriate incident our common 
 weakness ot clinging to old ideas and dogmas, our 
 common hypocrisy of assuming a highly moral air in 
 dealing with those we have reason to dislike, our af- 
 
TOTALITY OF EFFECT 27 
 
 fectation of loyalty to a code we have never read, our 
 disinterested devotion to the line of work that pays us 
 best, our toy-balloon patriotism that is but a puff of 
 air healthy people will come of their own accord to a 
 wholesome way of thinking through the screen story, 
 whereas they might put up a stubborn defens'e of 
 established ideas against the greatest logician in the 
 world. The art is not to teach them, especially by 
 methods that have made teaching repulsive, but to 
 reveal and amuse. 
 
 The impression made is one worked out through sub- 
 tle means, for the tendency of dramatic art in all forms 
 of expression is away from realism that is not pure 
 caricature and toward such instrumentalities as sym- 
 bolic interpretation and imaginative picture effects, 
 such as those through which great painters of other 
 days strove to express what was in their minds. We 
 are all thinking, thinking, eternally thinking of those 
 social forces which touch our vital interests, of what 
 shall foster growth and conserve happiness for the 
 many of what shall bring our institutions up to a higher 
 plane, where they may minister to our own needs and 
 t& the greater enjoyment of all within the scope of our 
 influence. The biggest story of today will embody the 
 fervor of our social hopes and aims. 
 
 Every art, in its own way, and according to its own 
 limitations, tries to achieve a totality of effect. And 
 this totality of effect, composed as shown above of 
 beauty and truth, this sum of artistry depends largely 
 upon that creative imagination which shows itself 
 throughout the entire domain of expressive arts in the 
 production of IDEAL representations, principally 
 those "whose grandeur and beauty transcend all actual 
 experience, and which appeal to our most refined sensi- 
 bilities, our most elevated emotions." We are short of 
 authors who can either idealize types of humanity or 
 display through the workings of varied human char- 
 
28 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 acter some fundamental truth. We are even short of 
 authors who have an elementary grasp of screen crafts- 
 manship. 
 
 The novelist divides profits with the publisher, and 
 the dramatist is given a generous portion of the box- 
 office receipts, but a certain "borrowing tendency" in 
 motion-picture production has discouraged creative 
 authorship. As a natural result there are shown on the 
 screen but few examples destined to live more than a 
 brief season, and even fewer command the admiration 
 of intelligent people. Still, like a few little hardy 
 plants springing up in barren soil and adverse environ- 
 ment, occasional screen stories of bright promise ap- 
 pear, harbingers of a richer growth to come under 
 intelligent cultivation. 
 
 The ill-rewarded author of native genius has at least 
 one compensation in adequate screen portrayal of his 
 story the expression of his genius is not only sounded 
 where he lives, but it is echoed all over the world. He 
 reaches an enormous audience, contributes to forming 
 its taste for what is worth while, and he is bound to 
 rise if his inherent fertility holds out. He is bound to 
 become the first and most important contributor to the 
 general sum of artistry, itself fast attaining recognition 
 as the dominant factor in motion-picture production. 
 
 A highly capable director recently made a significant 
 remark in a private letter to a writer of screen stories, 
 expressing a hope that he was to have more of the kind 
 he had just visualized, because it provided a "minimum 
 of worry and a maximum of result." It is not only the 
 author's duty to provide a story both original and ef- 
 fective, but to exhibit fine quality of craftsmanship in 
 formulating the structure, indicating the settings, in- 
 tensifying the principal characters, enforcing psychol- 
 ogy, and breathing into the whole scenario a soul of 
 inspiring influence. This leaves the director free to 
 
TOTALITY OF EFFECT 29 
 
 apply all the artistry of which he is capable to style and 
 imaginative treatment. 
 
 The director of today not only supervises visualiza- 
 tion, together with all expenditure therefor, but he 
 decides how the author's conception shall be expressed. 
 He translates the indicated thought and feeling into 
 pictures "more powerful than words." Starting with 
 a clear conception of what he is to do, his whole mind 
 can become concentrated on lucidity, on force, on 
 beauty of the total effect. Opportunities to blunder on 
 every side of him, he must exhibit a delicate sense of 
 selection in his methods of expressing the author's in- 
 tention, using only those which enhance, avoiding 
 those which are inappropriate. 
 
 Supervising director, art director, actor, cameraman 
 and studio force working in harmony, the negative film 
 may be good, but there is artistry in scientific work on 
 the positive film to follow. Then, when a definite value 
 has been created, an entirely different group releases 
 energy in making that value known and commercially 
 profitable, but IT MUST BE THERE, an artistic 
 totality of effect. 
 
 He may follow the ordinary course of events from 
 cause to effect or plunge into the effect and bring up 
 his cause for reinforcement. He is in either case pre- 
 senting images formed by recombining what he knows, 
 the highest power of which his mind is capable. What- 
 ever he tells, however he tells it, the story successful 
 is a child of his imagination. 
 
 Imagination is working overtime when an intimate 
 friend tells of some episode in his past life. He may 
 use it to illumine a dull point, or to bring up experience 
 in illogical support of a losing argument, or even to en- 
 tertain himself at his listener's expense, but his vanity 
 gets busy at a time when his conscience is looking out 
 of the window, and he rolls a large snowball of fiction 
 around a handful of truth. Such is realism in the crude 
 
30 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 state. This realistic novelist in miniature, requiring 
 only craftsmanship and an independent income to enter 
 upon a professional struggle for poorly rewarded at- 
 tainment and posthumous fame, is kept within a modi- 
 cum of restraint, that of his hearer's credulity. When 
 he breaks loose in print, he may rise above the ordinary 
 level of misrepresentation and acquires a splendid dis- 
 dain of dry facts to the delight of his readers and to 
 the benefit of literature in general. 
 
 It rarely occurs to critical readers that error is a 
 product of reason. It grows out of false interpreta- 
 tion. Many of the absurd notions, false conceptions 
 and pernicious practices that we deplore in human 
 existence have been created by realists and naturalists 
 who argued wrongly from a fundamental truth. Pe- 
 culiar quality of the unfettered poet and of the fiction- 
 maker who does not waste his time in acquiring a 
 heavy burden of useful information is a gift of exag- 
 geration that is often inspiring and even prophetic. 
 The romancer writes fiction because he loves it, the 
 realist as if he had a painful duty to perform. The 
 man who loves his work is sincere. He is drawing 
 from the exhaustless font of his sympathies and not 
 attempting to deceive us by presenting dull facts under 
 the illusions of fiction, yet he accurately pictured the 
 submarine fifty years ago and set the whole world 
 thinking with the purely romantic characters of Dr. 
 Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 
 
 While it is a difficult matter to properly represent 
 truth through pretense and deception, stories realistic 
 and naturalistic, those minutely portraying certain 
 phases of life as seen through a temperament, may be 
 accorded space on a varied program, especially when 
 offering one or another form of social criticism, but 
 realism may easily become monotonous and naturalism 
 disgusting if untempered by contrast. Their sermon- 
 izing is rarely subtle enough to be successfully masked 
 
TOTALITY OF EFFECT 31 
 
 as entertainment, and their attractiveness at the fancy 
 dress ball of imaginative fiction is akin to that of men 
 who go in business suits. They look on with mingled 
 wonder and disdain while Robinson Crusoe and 
 Mother Goose share popularity with Rip Van Winkle, 
 Cinderella, Count of Monte Cristo, Robin Hood, 
 Ivanhoe, Hamlet, Juliette, Othello, Beatrice and a long 
 train of idealizations, strong or beautiful, quaint or 
 sympathetic, the creatures of Romance. 
 
 To know truth one must feel it intuitively, as a ma- 
 jority of intelligent people do who are disinterested 
 spectators of a great wrong being done at this time, or 
 it must be acquired through patient investigation of 
 what science is accomplishing and a clear judgment 
 that enables a writer to choose, not only the best 
 means, but the best ends for his work. Whether it 
 comes through intuition or through wisdom, truth will 
 make itself felt, will find unconscious recognition 
 awaiting it among all classes of people. Whatever the 
 form throughout the wide sweep from farce to tragedy, 
 the finest realism is that of a world idea which sways 
 feeling through its complete rationality. 
 
 To blend truth with beauty, with poetry that is 
 perhaps one of the main attributes of the screen drama. 
 There is indeed a phase of screen imagery akin to 
 poetry. There is a point where this phase fuses with 
 the esthetic, where these two unify in an entirely new 
 method of expression, that of the screen, and yet re- 
 main true to the underlying principles of art. Through 
 physical movement, through intelligent application of 
 settings and lights, through sanctification of nature's 
 sweetest moods, may be evolved a harmony of revela- 
 tion that is at once a delight for the eye, a stimulus for 
 the mind, and inspiration for the heart. At that par- 
 ticular point the author abdicates in favor of the 
 director, who thereafter reigns supreme the autocrat 
 of artistry. 
 
32 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 The autocrat of artistry has his troubles. Even when 
 he is entirely capable of entering into the spirit of 
 this new art he is all-too-often harassed by the com- 
 mercial management driven to complete his work in 
 time for an arbitrary release. So many feet of film 
 for so much money is the requirement, with all that 
 goes to make that film a thing of beauty and joy for- 
 ever as a side issue. This policy is the result in part 
 of an old system of distribution, one which compels 
 the exhibitor to eat everything on the bill of fare or 
 starve. It is also partly to blame for the prosaic char- 
 acter of most releases, but the big fault in produc- 
 tion lies in the system which has grown out of a super- 
 fluity of scenarios. A flood of them pours in from 
 amateurs who read the "no-previous-experience-neces- 
 sary" advertisements and the director has to choose 
 between these and the scripts from professional 
 writers who reach down from some isolated height of 
 literary obscurity to immolate their talents and pick 
 up a little easy money. 
 
 If poets have one single distinguishing characteris- 
 tic, it is that of sincerity. Even when they make a 
 study of their own ideals and principles, or take pains 
 to find what demands are made upon them by those to 
 whom they sing, they do so to put emphasis in songs 
 that come straight from their hearts. If prosaic pho- 
 toplays have only one characteristic to distinguish 
 them from stories containing a beautiful ideal, it is 
 lack of sincerity. The sordid motive cannot be con- 
 cealed. It deadens the whole product. The surest 
 way to detect hypocrisy in this new and beautiful art 
 of expression is to closely examine what the author 
 has to express. Scenarios from those who try to 
 squeeze the last drop of blood out of stale situations 
 and plots are false offerings from apostles of nothing- 
 ness. 
 
 Given a poetic theme of vitality, sympathy with its 
 
TOTALITY OF EFFECT 33 
 
 spirit, knowledge of photoplay structure and an abil- 
 ity to communicate that knowledge in writing, the 
 average director will find his scenario a source of de- 
 light and inspiration. Success can only be expected 
 in this composite production when it is an art com- 
 plete, not one incomplete. The autocrat of artistry 
 may be able to accomplish wonders, but he falls down 
 when called upon to imitate the forest bird's note on 
 a penny whistle. Nor is it entirely up to him to carry 
 forward the poetic spirit of a story. His is sensitive 
 work, and he must have the cordial support of those 
 who watch expenditure, generosity of conduct quite as 
 well as of outlay. 
 
PRESENT DAY ISSUES 
 
 OR 
 WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT 
 
 FEEL the pulse of the national heart for what is 
 it throbbing? Tremendous problem of the pres- 
 ent and of many years to come is that of inter- 
 national relations. Whatever may be the pretext of 
 war, we all know that one real cause of it is greed, 
 the desire to acquire through an exhibition of superior 
 force. A nation may be ashamed of its motive, it may 
 loudly shout that a war obviously undertaken for con- 
 quest is purely defensive, but the principal object 
 sought is an acquisition of territory along with such 
 other property as may be obtained by loot or indem- 
 nity. Behind the gilded robbery and theft is a desire 
 for power on the part of ruling classes and for greater 
 revenues through taxation than could be obtained in 
 times of peace. By winning a war the sovereign who 
 is losing his grip on place may pretend that he is 
 responding to a popular demand and he may actually 
 win the gratitude of the very people he is sacrificing. 
 Can a weak body of men or can an unprepared na- 
 tion abolish war by non-resistance? Is the spirit of 
 aggression to be so easily quenched in the hearts of 
 men? How about the powerful impulse of protection 
 that causes a male to flame with anger when one he 
 holds dear is attacked? Will any vigorous nation re- 
 main passive when her vital interests are threatened? 
 Is it not an error of unthinking peace advocates that 
 peace can be maintained except by the warning of 
 strong military preparation? In possession of a re- 
 sourceful country of our own, we do not covet the 
 poorer territory south of the Rio Grande, yet do we not 
 honestly believe that the best thing that could happen 
 to Mexico would be annexation to our own more en- 
 
 34 
 
PRESENT DAY ISSUES 35 
 
 lightened and better organized form of government? 
 Could we not end war by making it? 
 
 Can relations between two countries be made peace- 
 ful by treaty where there is no other responsibility in 
 the signatures to such treaty than that of an absolute 
 monarch held unaccountable for his acts by his people? 
 Of what value is a treaty between one great sovereign 
 nation whose people have demonstrated their high 
 honor and ability in regulating their own affairs with- 
 out the interference of a hereditary class, and an in- 
 ferior nation, whose people publish their own incapac- 
 ity and lack of conscience by not asserting the prin- 
 ciples of self-control? Are not those men, whether 
 they be called socialists or by any other name, who 
 are struggling to throw a beam of light into the dull 
 minds of their fellows on the Continent of Europe, who 
 are risking their lives and fortunes to assert the rights 
 of humankind over the ridiculous "divine rights" of 
 ruling families, the greatest heroes of modern times? 
 They are sounding big notes that will ring and rever- 
 berate down the corridors of centuries to come. 
 
 Those who are striving to demonstrate the value of 
 high character, as opposed to the dominance of heredi- 
 tary place, are finding support in the ranks of contend- 
 ing armies among the Poles, whose leaders have more 
 than once attempted to set up an elective form of gov- 
 ernment, to substitute common justice for imaginary 
 consequence, to produce a government by compact on 
 the only principles by which government of any kind 
 can endure and hold the respect of enlightened people. 
 Some great heroes are bound to emerge from the bitter 
 struggle, men and women who may lose all that they 
 hold dear in attempting to replace a reign of terror 
 with that of reason. "For a nation to love liberty," 
 said Lafayette, "it is sufficient that she knows it; and 
 to be free it is sufficient that she wills it." 
 
 We may be proud of ourselves and of our country, 
 
36 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 but are we entirely grateful have we given due recog- 
 nition to one of the mightiest factors in our progress? 
 Does not the name "mother" spell to us our sweetest 
 memory, our finest inspiration? Why should we deny 
 her anything in the world that we enjoy? Why should 
 we deprive her of any advantage she might wish to 
 use for the benefit of children and therefore to the 
 benefit of humankind? Though she could not be better 
 at heart, she might well be accorded any and every 
 privilege now given to mankind alone. 
 
 You cannot soil a true woman by broadening her 
 knowledge and her experience you cannot tarnish 
 pure gold you can only brighten her and enlarge her 
 sphere of usefulness. Wherever you find a man of 
 strong character you will find a mother of beautiful 
 character, one who has not only given of her body to 
 the making of God's creatures, but one whose splendid 
 spirit has been communicated to the child during mo- 
 ments, hours and years of exhaustless affection. 
 
 That the lamp of the soul may never go out women 
 should be given all that strengthens mind as well as 
 body their vestal watch keeps the spiritual light 
 aflame. We must be fair to her who has the power to 
 make this a much more splendid world through the 
 children she brings into it the building of their char- 
 acters is so largely in her hands that what they receive 
 is usually proportioned to what she is given. 
 
 Feel the pulse of the national heart it throbs re- 
 sponsive to the idea of sounding the capacity of chil- 
 dren that they may be benefited to the fullest possible 
 extent. Millions of parents are deeply interested in 
 discovering such a course of training as shall develop 
 strength and beauty in nice balance with such a men- 
 tal growth as shall assure a high place for their chil- 
 dren. They are giving more and more attention to that 
 subject. The method need not be suggested that 
 might prove dangerous but the necessity of improved 
 
PRESENT DAY ISSUES 37 
 
 methods may be strongly indicated in the pictured 
 story. 
 
 While it is quite natural for us to draw inspiration 
 from classical antiquity, especially where it lays em- 
 phasis on the esthetic side of life, where visible things 
 have been transmuted into forms artistic to the delight 
 of whatever is fine in our sensibilities, the intellectual 
 idealist of determination, good sense and high aspira- 
 tions does not confuse change with progress, nor does 
 he disregard the lessons of antiquity, but he is often 
 regarded as impracticable because he strains with all 
 his eager strength to overcome ignorance and its preju- 
 dices, ever pushing forward toward finer spirituality 
 and happiness. He is impracticable only in setting his 
 own standards beyond the immediate possibility of in- 
 dividual achievement. No greater mistake could be 
 made than that of supposing a man to be incapable 
 of accomplishment because he is imbued with new 
 spirit, ardent in aspiration and seemingly indifferent to 
 material results. It is in the essence of true genius 
 to consider what bearing events easily foreseen are to 
 have on vital issues. 
 
 What are the issues of largest interest to English- 
 speaking people of the present time? War looms up 
 with overshadowing importance. What effect will it 
 have upon the social fabric? What economic changes 
 will result? News columns are filled with accounts of 
 profits it has brought to a small body of manufacturers 
 and traders, while little is said about that finer profit 
 to the whole universe of imposing a check upon auto- 
 cratic militarism, even upon despotic forms of govern- 
 ment, capable at any time of destroying splendid inter- 
 national relations for mean and selfish purposes. We 
 may be on our way to achievements which will put 
 to shame all that we have hitherto accomplished, but 
 will this prevent our being regarded with eyes envious 
 and covetous by those gangs of men organized to rule 
 
38 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 by force, especially should their survival depend upon 
 our downfall? 
 
 It is not at all impossible that we may be deeply hu- 
 miliated at the end of this war by well-armed forces 
 ready to use any pretext to collect from us enough to 
 pay their bills. Preparation for such an emergency 
 is coming to be regarded as a live issue, but there is a 
 more far-seeing preparation for all such emergencies 
 to be considered. Our general efficiency as educated 
 and intelligent men of athletic training, our specializ- 
 ing in all departments of engineering and science, our 
 elimination of half-decayed human garbage, our pro- 
 tection of women, homes and children from the evil 
 influences of men who mistake license for freedom, 
 the cultivation of social muscle through the cultiva- 
 tion of all that is fine in human nature, all these are 
 vital themes. It is within the province of this new 
 art to make felt the power of right. 
 
 Those who clamor for peace because they do not 
 understand that war may be waged for a principle may 
 find vent for their surplus energy in fostering another 
 kind of peace, that between employers and workpeople. 
 Stories bearing on the regulation of what are often 
 regarded as conflicts of interest, which should be mat- 
 ters of common concern, are bound to attract the enor- 
 mous number of people who work for wages. Correla- 
 tive themes relating to the health and happiness of 
 workpeople, suitable homes for their families and 
 schools for their children, quite as well as factory in- 
 spection and hygiene comprehend issues that are far 
 from dead, though many of them have already engaged 
 the attention of motion picture producers. Big sub- 
 ject, especially in this country, where working people 
 have reached a high degree of self-reliance, is that in- 
 volving the principle of industrial co-operation. 
 
 What of the workman's child? Every splendid child 
 would pay the country high interest on its careful nur- 
 
PRESENT DAY ISSUES 39 
 
 ture and education. Shall it be sent to earn a pitiful 
 wage in the factory? Shall it be sent out into the street 
 to peddle? Shall it, in this great country of equal 
 rights, be given an even chance to live, achieve and 
 enjoy? How can we even consider a future that shall 
 make this continent one of sunshine, an example to 
 the world, unless we value childhood and youth? We 
 are doing more and more to give them strong bodies 
 and clean minds, but the concern shown in them is 
 so often lacking in ordinary common sense that it 
 would seem as though the parents must be educated 
 as such or the children pass into the care of the public 
 so far as system in training. 
 
 While there are big things to do, big issues of which 
 to treat, there are also many, varied and important 
 things which the writer of the photoplay ought not do. 
 This, the inconsequential of moving drama writing, 
 is well worth a few paragraphs. For instance: Frail 
 wife leaves the compromising letter in a magazine she 
 happens to be reading when it arrives, the logically 
 correct thing to do in current photoplays and made- 
 over melodramas, notwithstanding the fact that both 
 maid and butler are present. The latter pounces upon 
 it as soon as Frail Wife is gone, but he is compelled 
 to disgorge when stern and unrelenting Husband un- 
 expectedly returns. Husband grits his teeth and 
 clenches his hands. He dashes out. He reappears in 
 the main dining room of notorious restaurant. He 
 slips a bill of large denomination to head waiter. 
 H. W. rolls his eyes significantly in a certain direc- 
 tion. Husband exits and soon reappears in private 
 dining room, where Frail Wife and False Friend are 
 clasping hands over a table. Husband regards them 
 sternly and locks the door ! 
 
 During the early part of the presentation, the piano 
 tinkles monotonously, while the fiddlers tune their in- 
 struments. Then the orchestra leader makes his bid 
 
40 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 for attention with a snappy tune. While the music is 
 reaching a noisy conclusion, Stern Husband is choking 
 the life out of False Friend, pressing his thumbs in the 
 latter's Adam's Apple. Slowly the False Friend suc- 
 cumbs, while Frail Wife cringes in the corner unable to 
 do else than watch the killing. Ah ! The arms of False 
 Friend drop helplessly all is over and the music 
 comes to an end with a zip and a boom. 
 
 At this point a thousand or more people burst into 
 an uncontrollable roar of laughter, a recent and actual 
 occurrence. Of course it was largely due to coin- 
 cidence, but the people were venting their scorn in a 
 good-humored way, scorn for the stupidity of the story, 
 a weary re-enactment of a situation moth-eaten years 
 and years ago. 
 
 People will never grow tired of moving pictures 
 when the importance of artistry comes to be fully 
 recognized, but a very large part of present produc- 
 tion is merely repetition, or reversion or is seriously 
 marred by the inconsequential. People laugh in a 
 generous sort of way at errors, but there is a serious 
 meaning to that laugh when it occurs in the midst of 
 serious presentations. There is even contempt in it 
 at times. No man feels it incumbent upon him to get 
 up and announce that what is being shown on the 
 screen is utter rot, but he will release his derision when 
 afforded an opportunity. 
 
 Another large audience, viewing a feature distin- 
 guished by one fine characterization, that of an un- 
 selfish family-provider, burst into laughter near the 
 end, right on the eve of tragedy, because of an incon- 
 sequential bid for sympathy. In dire extremity, the 
 unselfish provider decides to commit suicide so that 
 his family may benefit from his incontestable insurance 
 policy that familiar device is used in spite of the fact 
 that it only excites a feeling of nausea among people 
 of common sense and he goes to a hotel for that pur- 
 
PRESENT DAY ISSUES 41 
 
 pose. He is shown in a handsome hotel office pulling 
 out his pocketbook to pay for his room, and a close-up 
 is given of his hand and pocketbook that pity may 
 be excited he has only fifty cents. He registers and 
 is conducted off scene by the bell-boy. The latter 
 immediately ushers the fifty-cent guest into a spacious 
 and well-furnished bed chamber. At this point the 
 whole audience roars. 
 
 There was not the slightest necessity for showing 
 what the room cost, particularly of enforcing that cost 
 in a close-up. The price of the room was of no conse- 
 quence when a man was about to take his own life, 
 so the people in front laughed and thus vented their 
 disapproval of a course which seemed to them to be 
 uncalled for under the circumstances. Many of those 
 people in front had been in dire extremity themselves 
 and had fought their way out by continuous exhibi- 
 tions of courage in the face of suffering, but they 
 might not have laughed at the presentation if the di- 
 rector had not provided an opportunity by an enforce- 
 ment of the absolutely inconsequential. Another play 
 of merit, one of exceptional artistry in treatment, de- 
 serving the applause usually given on that account, 
 fell flat at the end before a friendly audience. It was 
 of the olden time. The hero, an expert swordsman, 
 becomes embroiled in a tavern row and thrusts his 
 rapier into a half dozen people before making his 
 escape. He is separated from the heroine, but a long 
 series of exciting adventures, leading to a land thous- 
 ands of miles from home, results in bringing them to- 
 gether at the end. Interest is entirely centered on their 
 fortunes, but the director issues an explanation at the 
 very moment of their happy reunion, citing that the 
 most prominent of those who went down in the tavern 
 brawl, to whom no interest had been attached, had not 
 been killed at all. 
 
 The example just cited illustrates the destructive 
 
42 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 effect of unimportant explanatory details injected after 
 the crisis, so destructive as to warp judgment of a play 
 otherwise highly meritorious. The second example 
 points out how those useless details, thrust upon at- 
 tention at an important moment, may excite derision. 
 The first example, while the laugh was excited by an 
 amusing coincidence, indicates that audiences are 
 weary of such wornout devices as that of the compro- 
 mising letter left where it will do most harm. Only 
 feeble invention depends upon the hackneyed. 
 
 The effect of the inconsequential is jarring when it is 
 not ridiculous, as jarring as the sudden appearance 
 before the curtain of an actor who has just been seen 
 lying dead on the stage. It is absurd for a director, or 
 for an author, to build up interest with infinite pains 
 and tear it down at a crucial moment by thrusting upon 
 attention the inconsequential. It is a sure sign of tech- 
 nical inefficiency not that technique is an end, but it 
 is surely a means to an end. 
 
 The employment of whatever is really inconsequen- 
 tial diverts attention at any point of development in 
 the story, and it becomes positively obnoxious during 
 intense action. Lack of hard, concentrated work on the 
 part of an author, and consequent lack of material in 
 the scenario, may lead to the interpolation of irrelevant 
 and superfluous matter by the director, but his reputa- 
 tion is at stake, and he is certainly lacking in those 
 qualities of judgment which he should possess when 
 he sets in motion the complicated mechanism of fea- 
 ture production only to clog it when under full head- 
 way and thus dissipate his energies to no complete 
 and satisfactory purpose. 
 
MAKING A SCENE 
 
 OR . 
 ITS QUALITY, THE TREATMENT AND NUMBER 
 
 TO WORK out any ideal system for an art in the 
 early stages of its evolution is manifestly danger- 
 ous. On the other hand, to abandon the abstract 
 for the concrete, to be guided by the examples put be- 
 fore our eyes in that state, is equally perilous. With 
 almost every constructive detail of the new art in 
 process of formulation, like the characteristics of a 
 young child, what principles can be laid down that are 
 really logical deductions from what has been well 
 done? The finest screen stories of a few years ago 
 begin to look amateurish just now we might easily 
 find ourselves reasoning from feeble premises. 
 
 Observe the best photoplays is there any such thing 
 as a regular practice in determining the number of 
 scenes to an act, or the quantity of material necessary 
 for a scene ? If not, how is it possible to lay down any 
 law on the subject which shall be in accord with pres- 
 ent experience? It is better under the circumstances to 
 avoid assertion altogether and offer merely an idea of 
 what has been found useful in some recent scenarios 
 successfully produced, a sort of experimental founda- 
 tion. 
 
 A scene in its broad sense comprises what goes on 
 without a break in one place. It presents uninterrupted 
 action in the open or within the confines of a studio 
 set. When it is broken by a screen imprint, or to cover 
 a lapse of time, or to portray another line of coincident 
 action, or for some mental vision of one of the charac- 
 ters of other times and places, not depicted by double 
 exposure, both it and the interruptions become new 
 scenes so far as enumeration is concerned. Also, when 
 the scene is very long, or when the effect can be height- 
 
 43 
 
44 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 ened by contrast, it may be interrupted, but not so as 
 to lose hold on attention. 
 
 In farce-comedy, and in that unconscious farce the 
 screen drama which does little more than depict action, 
 the scenes may be so indiscriminately chopped and 
 patched by every one, from author to editor, that there 
 may be a hundred or more in one act, whereas three 
 or four dozen, inclusive of screen imprints, particularly 
 when filled with interesting matter, are sufficient. 
 While there are no arbitrary rules on this subject, the 
 audience point of view is to be considered, and constant 
 flashing back and forth may easily operate to destroy 
 rather than to sustain interest. 
 
 When a small boy is robbing an orchard and sees the 
 farmer's big dog headed his way there is a time for 
 action and little room for psychology, but consider the 
 well-known situation of the young girl of ruined aristo- 
 cratic family, her heart given to an absent young man 
 of her own class, her attention compelled by a husky 
 parvenu of great wealth proposing marriage. The ab- 
 sent one has been long silent; her devoted father is 
 facing disgrace as well as destitution; her loving 
 mother is on the verge of physical and mental collapse, 
 and the girl's sense of obligation to her parents is as 
 high as her fine spirit. 
 
 Assuming that all the characters have been made 
 known when first introduced, the set first calls for 
 attention. To be in accord with the girl's social station 
 and the mood of the play it should be described clearly 
 and briefly, nominating essential details. Let it be that 
 of a well-ordered reception-room with a glimpse of 
 noble hall in the background. Refinement characterizes 
 the girl's costume, absence of savoir faire the dress and 
 conduct of the suitor. He may not be lacking in dig- 
 nity of a rude sort, but he must betray that he is jll at 
 ease in spite of abundant self-confidence. She is wait- 
 ing when he enters. 
 
MAKING A SCENE 45 
 
 The scene between these two may be disposed of in 
 three parts, one portraying the proposal, one given to 
 a screen imprint of what the suitor says, and one show- 
 ing the girl's reluctant acceptance and the suitor's de- 
 parture, with a glimpse of her mental torture after it is 
 over. Characterization at once becomes important and 
 occupies a large part of what is described in the sce- 
 nario how do the two people conduct themselves 
 under the circumstances? The girl's mental state may 
 be set forth by still greater amplification, increasing 
 the number or scenes. 
 
 1. The set is named and described. The girl's atti- 
 tude toward the suitor after he enters must be con- 
 sidered. She knows why he has come because she is a 
 woman; she receives him with a measure of dignified 
 courtesy because she is intelligent ; she tries to relieve 
 his embarrassment because she is generous. He is full- 
 blooded and impassioned, but he falters and fails until 
 the intensity of his nature breaks like an on-rushing 
 wave on the merciless rock of her native resistance. He 
 declares himself. 
 
 2. An imprint of his ardent declaration. 
 
 3. The girl does not give an immediate reply she is 
 still struggling between an impelling necessity and the 
 natural dictates of her heart. Instead of deciding mat- 
 ters in the third scene, the general effect may be 
 strengthened by some revelation of what is passing in 
 her mind. She listens with lowered head, then she 
 turns away and gazes pensively toward the camera. 
 Show her in what is called a "close-up," a large view 
 of her face alone, exhibiting her mood as a dreamy one. 
 Note in the scenario that this scene dissolves to the 
 next, the ordinary term being "Cut to Scene 4." Audi- 
 ences have grown accustomed to consider this fading 
 out and into another scene as a "vision." 
 
 Four may begin with "resolve" to whatever new set 
 is to follow, or to the same set in days gone by. Let it 
 
46 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 be that the girl remembers a parting from her true- 
 love in the same reception room after a costume ball. 
 The last guests are bidding good-night to her parents 
 in the hall, while her true-love in the foreground slips 
 a chain and locket over her head and implores her not 
 to forget him during his absence. Now the scene is 
 cut to 5, in which is imprinted his parting injunction, 
 "Promise that you will be true." There is a cut to Scene 
 6, the same as 4, and the portrayal of her promise and 
 the parting. This is followed by a dissolve to 7, same 
 as the first scene. 
 
 Seven shows in large scope that the girl is standing 
 apart from her parvenu suitor in the last attitude por- 
 trayed in 3, only in large scope. Her whole soul re- 
 volts against breaking her promise to wed one she does 
 not love, and this is made so plain that he cannot fail 
 to see it, but she catches a glimpse of her unhappy 
 father guiding a physician through the hall, and she 
 regains her original strength of purpose. She bows to 
 the inevitable and accepts the proposal, but her atti- 
 tude is so appealing that her suitor is affected. There 
 is conversion in his attitude for the moment ; he bends 
 over her hand and leaves. She weakens when he has 
 gone, but brightens up on the appearance of her father 
 and tells him the news. 
 
 One scene develops to three and even seven under 
 some circumstances, particularly when it is of prime 
 importance, but this does not mean that mere inter- 
 mittent flashes of action need be dignified as scenes. 
 It is not necessary for the author in unimportant cases 
 to do more than state that two scenes of contrast or of 
 converging action are to be subdivided for any purpose, 
 particularly that of intensifying suspense. 
 
THE FIVE-REEL FEATURE 
 
 OR 
 HANDLING LONGER MATERIAL 
 
 THE author who has a story to tell, even when he 
 knows how to tell it in print, is ofted under a false 
 impression as to the amount of material required 
 for a five-reel feature and almost wholly unaware of 
 how it should be divided into five acts. He may even 
 imagine that because he knows very little about the 
 construction of a photoplay scenario that there is very 
 little to be known. Such a view is the natural result of 
 having an intellectual boundary, that of his own craft, 
 and the one who entertains it is occasionally shocked 
 to discover that all he has to provide can be swallowed 
 by one reel without a gulp. 
 
 While no rules have yet been formulated on the sub- 
 ject, at least none which would not equally serve for 
 measuring moonlight, the author who has one eye on 
 the main chance, who wishes to develop his story in 
 feature proportions, may feel reasonably assured that 
 directors rarely complain of excess material. Long ex- 
 perience has taught them to expect a shortage of gray 
 matter in the scenario, which they convert by laborious 
 overplaying, or by reckless interpolation, into an over- 
 supply for the ruthless editor to cut down, all of which 
 might be obviated in the scenario. "But, how?" asks 
 the author, the gentleman who is supposed to supply 
 the brains of a story, "how is this to be done?" 
 
 The question might be evaded by suggesting that the 
 anxious inquirer closely observe the best screen ex- 
 amples, count the time, the scenes and sub-titles, and 
 in a general way familiarize himself with the subject 
 on which he is about to venture. Such a training might 
 modify many a new writer's self-sufficiency and tame 
 some of the older ones, but short cuts of experience 
 
 47 
 
48 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 may be of value, and what is done in other arts of ex- 
 pression may help. 
 
 In the opening period, that of making known the 
 characters, the location and the general trend of a story 
 may be one-third of the whole novel and usually re- 
 quires one-third of a three-act stage play. It is not, 
 however, advisable to use more than one-fifth, the first 
 act of a five-reel photodrama, for such introductory and 
 preparatory work, though this limitation is not actually 
 imposed. Now strip the novel or the drama of all 
 verbiage save a few clarifying explanations or bits of 
 conversation, particularly those which enforce the ac- 
 tion, and there is left a skeleton of incidents and events, 
 the bare narrative. 
 
 Those who have sucessfully transformed the novel 
 and the stage play for screen presentation have come 
 upon a discovery that is always alarming and some- 
 times painful the actual story material is not enough 
 to hold the attention of an audience for more than 
 three reels. Two additional reels must be provided by 
 dragging attenuation or by providing entirely new ma- 
 terial in harmony with the subject matter. In both 
 cases, especially in the latter, it has been found neces- 
 sary to knock the old ship to pieces and simply piece 
 the old material into a new structure. 
 
 Pages of conversation and philosophic comment in 
 one case, hours of uttered language in the other, nearly 
 all must be eliminated for the sake of visible beauty, 
 significant movement and intense psychology. In or- 
 der to ascertain how every one of three dozen scenes 
 and a half dozen sub-titles in one act of a photodrama 
 may be made to count strongly with an audience, it 
 would not be a bad plan for an author to reduce his 
 narrative to a synopsis and work from that basis to 
 evolve a single telling act, remembering that the chop- 
 ping of two contrasting scenes can easily be done at 
 the studio by the editor. 
 
THE FIVE-REEL FEATURE 49 
 
 Starting with a theme, and keeping that theme ever 
 in mind, the author of creative imagination and devo- 
 tion to his work will find his material supplied by the 
 necessities of development, his plot taking care of 
 itself. If the story reaches its natural end in three reels, 
 let it rest there for good, or begin over again at the 
 beginning on a larger general scheme, one which will 
 probably suggest itself after the first writing. The one 
 thing to be avoided at every step is theatricalism. 
 
 By theatricalism is meant staginess and the use of 
 artificial characters and incidents long deemed essen- 
 tial in the drama. By theatricalism is also meant stale 
 stuff, the Kentucky feud, the Balkan Princess and the 
 ingenious young American who stirs up things in her 
 kingdom, the country maiden who is wronged, or 
 nearly wronged, by the city chap, who is forgiven by 
 her old country sweetheart, the shifting of clothes and 
 identity between mistress and maid, or between gentle- 
 man and valet, the dual indentity, or the man of two 
 lives, the story that depends upon uncle's will, or upon 
 a foolish wager, the millionaire hero or heroine who 
 assumes a disguise that he or she may be wed for 
 love's sweet sake. Above all, the wornout Cinderella 
 story. 
 
 The author who starts in to use this sort of material 
 need not fret his soul as to how much of it will fill a 
 feature play. It is at present being liberally supplied 
 to us without cost to the producer. Largely from foun- 
 tains of pure creative genius will come such original 
 five-reel features as will be given consideration by men 
 who must expend thousands of dollars to produce them. 
 Most surely such features may be counted upon to win 
 the author's way to artistic success and at least an 
 imitation of commensurate financial reward. 
 
 But in the handling of material that involves a large 
 expenditure of money on the part of the producer, the 
 author should keep in mind the cost of the production 
 
50 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 because every dollar he adds to this cost detracts just 
 so much from the producer's eventual commercial 
 profit. That means that the author should not call for 
 either too many and too costly mechanical accessories, 
 for too many and too costly settings, or for the employ- 
 ment of a too large number of stars. In other words, 
 the author should not hesitate to learn the lessons that 
 the editor or the director, familiar with the handling of 
 big productions, are in a position to teach. 
 
 The future success of both author and producer is 
 bound to depend more and more upon mutual confi- 
 dence and respect. Nearly all large makers of motion 
 pictures have become established through hard work 
 and business sagacity, a fact occasionally overlooked 
 by scenario writers of decided native gifts and unde- 
 cided ideas of how to formulate their creations they 
 invent without providing a practicable working device. 
 Even those who are in earnest, who do not look to 
 moving pictures for a little easy money on the side, 
 often fail because whatever is worth while in their 
 scripts is presented in bad shape. 
 
 Imagine a publisher of fiction being compelled to hire 
 a squad of skilled craftsmen for the purpose of trans- 
 forming, revising and punctuating carelessly written 
 novels before sending them to the printer! The suc- 
 cessful novelist exercises a vast amount of purely 
 technical skill in writing and rewriting his story, realiz- 
 ing that it is not enough to be familiar with his subject 
 matter he must have an intimate acquaintance with 
 his medium. Yet he will send in a scenario of weird 
 structure to the producer of moving pictures and sit 
 back with a self-satisfied smile when he sees his un- 
 moulded clay splendidly visualized on the screen, 
 densely unaware that it is essential in other artistic 
 callings than that of literature to be an artisan. Having 
 provided the raw material, he is stupid enough to ac- 
 cept credit for the finished product, almost entirely 
 
THE FIVE-REEL FEATURE 51 
 
 the work of those who gave it form at the studio. Even 
 intelligent dramatists are slow to appreciate the genius 
 required, not to reflect what they have done, but to 
 refract it in glowing shape on the screen. 
 
 As many a novelist has learned how to tell his story 
 through assistance of a very practical nature from his 
 publisher, and is indebted to that help for no small 
 part of his success, so would the author of a screen 
 play be benefited by contact with the editorial brains 
 of a concern producing motion pictures. It is, however, 
 rare for a publisher to concern himself with any kind 
 of a script that requires general revision, whereas there 
 is a tremendous labor of clarification, alteration and 
 correction imposed upon the producer of visualized 
 stories. Few authors deem it necessary to sit back and 
 scan their scenario in an imaginative way, scene by 
 scene, just as it is to be presented before an audience 
 knowing nothing about the characters and their rela- 
 tions to one another, nothing about what is being said 
 in conversation not imprinted, nothing about the sig- 
 nificance of action that does not lucidly reveal its own 
 motive. 
 
 The best editors are those who combine in them- 
 selves all that is discerning, careful and sensible, with 
 an admixture of artistic taste, all that knowledge and 
 experience can contribute to good judgment. Editors 
 are not born they are made in the crucible of varied 
 experience. The editor has less chance than the author 
 to be dilatory and careless about results. Those results 
 are not so far away as from the author, and they mean 
 either profit or loss to capital at his elbow. An author 
 may be serenely unconscious of his own idleness, 
 imagine he is at work when he is not he is often 
 unaware of how much he could accomplish until driven 
 by hard necessity. The editor has a release date staring 
 him out of countenance, an imperative demand upon 
 his courage and his endurance. He has to work harder, 
 
52 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 even when at the top of the ladder, than any man in the 
 studio from top to bottom. 
 
 Authors of undoubted creative genius succeed when 
 they master the craft and themselves, but there are 
 authors of undoubted creative genius who are inclined 
 to take things easy, especially when the rent is paid. 
 There is only one kind of an editor. On his rapid and 
 untiring efforts depends the successful elimination of 
 the unfit, provided by the director, and the successful 
 providing for what the careless author has left out. 
 Sometimes it is only a pertinent sub-title to clarify 
 what is obscure, sometimes it means that whole scenes 
 must be taken over again, if the sets are not knocked 
 to pieces and the actors within reach. It is the editor's 
 pure labor of unreciprocated love to readjust awkward 
 construction, correct unpardonable errors and find a 
 logical way out of the labyrinth in which author and 
 director have become entangled. 
 
 Given a scenario of haphazard construction, in which 
 there appears the slightest modification of original in- 
 tention, and the director may succeed in reaching a 
 skillful readjustment, but he usually requires a subject 
 strong enough to warrant such pains. His mission is 
 that of treatment, his to decorate the structure, not to 
 devise it. If he should be tempted to stray into by- 
 paths he has been known to meander it devolves 
 entirely upon the editor to restore the semblance of a 
 steady movement in the pictured story. In a few short 
 hours he must rearrange and recombine while bringing 
 the bewildering array of unmatched and incongruous 
 positives down to fixed dimensions. It can be readily 
 imagined, considering the limitations of his time, that 
 his problems are too much for human ingenuity to 
 solve with any hope of a polished result. 
 
 It is for the author to do one thing and do it well, 
 the director to do another and apply more system to 
 his work and the editor to see that the story is so un- 
 
THE FIVE-REEL FEATURE 53 
 
 rolled before the spectator that the mechanical work is 
 not visible. It is also imposed upon the editor to clarify 
 wherever the audience needs information with brief 
 explanatory sub-titles, a few words and nothing more. 
 This requires skill rarely found outside of those who 
 are constantly studying and using the language. It 
 helps greatly if the author offers sub-titles of his own 
 at the intricate places, if only by the way of suggestion. 
 There is a new office coming into existence, one which 
 involves an unusual combination of constructive imag- 
 ination and selective taste, the Supervisor. From his 
 skilled supervision we may expect a more satisfactory 
 exposition, one that is "straightforward and swift and 
 clear." 
 
SEX DRAMA 
 
 OR 
 
 MAN AND WOMAN AS DEFINED ON THE SCREEN 
 
 EXACTLYwhat is meant by "Sex Drama" awaits 
 the lexicographer. The term is subject to wide 
 difference of interpretation, but the significance 
 most generally understood in this country has probably 
 grown out of our attitude toward French plays, partic- 
 ularly those of the "eternal triangle." If we were to 
 judge France by the work of her dramatists we could 
 not help thinking that French people lay too much 
 stress on sex. Much that their playwrights have to say 
 on the subject in their outspoken way disturbs us as 
 much by its frankness as it does by an ethical stand- 
 point somewhat opposed to our own. Any author of 
 intelligence is aware that "love is the one subject which 
 every member of the audience understands," but that 
 does not imply a limitation to the monotonous eternal 
 triangle of husband, wife and lover. 
 
 While an artist of rare ability may handle a perilous 
 subject with such skill as to strip it of offense, the 
 clumsy artisan, hammering out an adaptation, may 
 only thrust into prominence whatever is repulsive. At 
 best he would be a follower of Strindberg, who says, 
 "Let us have a theater where we can be shocked, 
 where we can have revealed to us what has hitherto 
 lain veiled behind theological or esthetic preconcep- 
 tions." Such a theater would necessarily be devoted to 
 the presentation of what is unnatural in our social 
 structure or to the emphasis of what is morbid in 
 human nature. 
 
 "Sex Drama," in a broader and more varied sense, 
 offers much that is tragic and even more that is comic 
 in the clash between all that is masculine on one side 
 
 54 
 
SEX DRAMA 55 
 
 and all that is feminine on the other, but it is not so 
 easy to differentiate the sexes as is commonly imag- 
 ined. It is extremely difficult it is ordinarily impos- 
 sible for a scientist to determine whether a human 
 skeleton is that of a male or of a female being, and 
 authors soon find that a careful examination of mascu- 
 line and feminine characteristics reveals a confusing 
 similarity of structure. The difference is largely that of 
 individuals. 
 
 Nearly all stories consider men and women as types 
 of the race, not of one or the other sex, unconsciously 
 recognizing the old empirical dual sexuality, the pres- 
 ence in man of a womanish strain, or in woman dis- 
 tinctly paternal characteristics. Such stories do not 
 clear the way in the matter of sex discrimination, but 
 lead us deeper into the jungle. Given exactly equal con- 
 ditions of heredity and environment, it might be rea- 
 sonably doubted that character differences exist. 
 
 They do exist. Possibly the secret of all of them is 
 to be found in the maternal instinct. A splendid woman 
 can become completely and contentedly occupied with 
 children, identifying herself only with what her hus- 
 band creates simply for the love she bears him, but not 
 really interesting herself in those creations further 
 than that they bear upon the welfare of her children. 
 
 The fact that a man's sensibilities become more or 
 less indurated by intense devotion to work seldom 
 meets with woman's approval for her, love is ever the 
 well-spring of existence. She must love some animate 
 thing, even if it is only an old cat, to the last days of 
 her life. 
 
 Heart hunger with man is intermittent. It occurs 
 to him at all kinds of unexpected moments. The flash 
 of a bright eye beneath a half -lowered lash, the faintest 
 dimple of a feminine smile, and he forgets the business 
 engagement he intended to keep. There is a lot of 
 comedy in his erratic heart-hunger and a lot of tragedy 
 
56 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 in the heart-ache it causes. Close analysis brings to 
 light many sex differences, most of them suggesting 
 stories of infinite variety, nearly all interesting to the 
 average audience, hence it seems unnecessary to use 
 the coarser elements of sex relation for any form of 
 drama. 
 
 Our lower impulses need refining rather than stimu- 
 lus. We have learned to idealize love, to sweeten 
 and beautify it through all the arts of expression. This 
 does not mean that our blood shall not run red with 
 intense feeling, but that our very passions shall grow 
 more beautiful with our unfolding of character. Love 
 can be all that love ever was and a thousand times 
 more. Human nature may be superb in breasting a 
 torrent of desire it is pitiful when wallowing in the 
 mire. The dramatist who lowers and cheapens the su- 
 preme sentiment which brought him into the world 
 must surely forget the world's dearest gift, the bene- 
 diction of a mother's eternal love. 
 
 In every encounter of the sexes there are two heroes, 
 the man and the woman, each of equal importance and 
 indispensable. The role man plays in any drama is one 
 his character impels, plus or minus the influences 
 brought to bear upon that character at critical mo- 
 ments according to his strength of reason. The same 
 may be said of woman when she has a reason, when 
 she does not wholly depend upon keen sensibilities 
 and intuitive judgment. It is almost always a question 
 of superior or inferior rationality with the being who 
 is "a mighty maze, but not without a plan." He is a 
 creature of remembrance and reflection, quite often 
 conscious of his unfulfilled possibilities, inclined more 
 and more, as the centuries of evolution are unrolled, to 
 do his own thinking. 
 
 Man, as he is pictured by the playwrights, occupies 
 one of two places when there is strife for a woman 
 that of duly legalized possession, or that of unauthor- 
 
SEX DRAMA 57 
 
 ized desire. He plays a dual role when his errant heart 
 is torn by affection for his wife and another woman at 
 the same time. His social course seems to be clearly 
 defined he should maintain the conventions, anni- 
 hilate the lover in one case and stick to his vows in 
 the other, but the primary emotions, love, hate, jeal- 
 ousy and envy often unscramble his omelet in a fashion 
 so distressing that his proper study for dramatic pur- 
 poses becomes three-sided. Embarrassing as it is to 
 the theory of man's ratiocination, he occasionally does 
 reason less from premises to conclusion than along the 
 devious course of inclination. From his tendency to 
 range, more than that of woman, have risen the thous- 
 and and one variations of the Eternal Triangle. 
 
 At this point there comes to mind the query what is 
 meant by Sexual Selection and what part does it play 
 in motion picture drama. A brief discussion may not 
 be amiss. By Darwin Sexual Selection is defined as 
 that province or department of natural selection in 
 which sex is especially concerned, or in which the 
 means by which one sex attracts the other comes prom- 
 inently into play. So it is defined by Darwin. He 
 further says : "For my own part, I conclude that of all 
 the causes which have led to differences in external 
 appearance between the races of men, and to a certain 
 extent between man and the lower animals, sexual se- 
 lection is by far the most efficient." 
 
 The favorite theme of all story-makers, love is re- 
 garded by many as the dominant passion of existence, 
 now sensuality adorned by sentiment, again passion 
 beautifully tempered by affection, at once a torture and 
 a masterly fascination, a compelling force that leads in 
 one case to race preservation and all the charm that is 
 attached through it to home life, that drives in another 
 to brutality and madness. Certain it is that the im- 
 pulse of reproduction has but one rival, that of self and 
 family maintenance. Love and money rule the world. 
 
58 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 Students of the drama are led to find its essence in 
 one word, "desire," or more truly in a conflict of de- 
 sires. The word "desire" may well include ambition 
 and determination to achieve a certain definite purpose 
 through struggle of mind and body, but sexual selec- 
 tion almost invariably plays the leading role in stories, 
 for all that there may be other currents of thought and 
 feeling flowing along at the same time, intermingled 
 with the love affair. Where natural longing runs coun- 
 ter to convention, the lapse of a husband furnishes 
 comedy material and that of a wife, the race mother, 
 an element more serious, often tragic. This may be due 
 to an idealization of womanhood or to the fact that 
 men write most of the plays. 
 
 If the story is to be remembered, if it is not a pas- 
 time, why not adorn the normal life of woman with 
 compensating charm and beauty? Why not hold up 
 the supposed gay life to the mirror of truth and expose 
 its superficiality, its hideous concealments, its dark 
 miseries, and hold it up to the scorn of ridicule? Men 
 who are qualified by varied experience to write on the 
 subject know that the alleged gaiety of fast life is one 
 of alcoholic illusion, a shabby old mask for moral de- 
 cadence, the fatuous leer of degeneracy. 
 
 When it comes to the cure for wrong methods of 
 living, our hearts may well expand for erring humanity. 
 Only a few victims of social depravity are perverts. 
 Most of them are men and women of perfectly normal 
 tendencies, whose ideals unattained have given rise to 
 a form of revolt against existing laws and customs. 
 They are brothers unfortunate and sisters unhappy in 
 our common social household, widowed by failure of 
 heart selection. 
 
 That life's dramas should invariably end with the 
 embrace of a girl in her teens and a young man with 
 fuzz on his upper lip is not entirely in accord with ex- 
 perience. It is often just about to begin. Man and wife 
 
SEX DRAMA 59 
 
 enter upon a long series of comedies and tragedies at 
 the altar. Stories both amusing and enthralling are yet 
 to be visualized of the trials of sexual selection, where 
 it plays the dominant note, phases of the inevitable 
 clash between strong personalities, and of reconciliation 
 or of tragic end. Such stories may come with the ad- 
 vent of professional writers into this new art of expres- 
 sion they are beyond the amateur as a rule and then, 
 at last, a large part of the audience will sit up and take 
 notice. 
 
 Perhaps some of life's greatest tragedies result from 
 the unpreparedness of wife or from the unfitness of 
 husband for the married state. The death of a first 
 child may be the innocent means to a noble end. Finer 
 understanding and greater happiness may grow out of 
 what at first has the appearance of a calamity. The 
 dominance of love over self-assertion furnishes rich 
 material for comedy, especially when it conquers the 
 lord-and-master type of old-fashioned benedict. Most 
 fascinating is the play of feminine charm against 
 brutal force of character. The field is so rich in themes 
 that one only wonders why it lies fallow. 
 
 Callow love interests cannot but bore the mature 
 mind, whereas on the other hand, deep interest will 
 always hinge very much on material and spiritual dif- 
 ferences in the love of man and that of woman. To all 
 minds not primitive, the most fascinating thing in a 
 presentation of human love is its psychology. 
 
 This discussion now naturally and inevitably leads 
 to a consideration of domestic drama in all its many 
 and varied phases. In such drama it is extremely inter- 
 esting to note the character of the man as he is usually 
 depicted, and further to study what such delineation 
 and picturization might be made to portray. 
 
 The lives of married people are replete with material 
 for the screen story. The clash of individualities and 
 the effect of that clash upon offspring ; the inspiration 
 
60 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 afforded by an intelligent woman to her husband in his 
 work ; the disaster which often follows an inability to 
 combine in a mutual effort ; the comical readjustments 
 of young married couples; the tendency of man to be 
 weaned from his natural affection by his wife's inability 
 to keep pace with his advancement; the danger of hous- 
 ing relatives whose partiality keeps the wounds of mis- 
 understanding ever open; the strange happiness en- 
 joyed by couples seemingly ill-mated ; the folly of dig- 
 ging into the past of either party to a union ; all these 
 and many others furnish themes entirely outside of the 
 Eternal Triangle. Nor need the question of marital 
 fidelity seriously intrude where there is a breach be- 
 tween husband and wife on account of his or her asso- 
 ciations. 
 
 The justice of man's role is largely dependent upon 
 characterization. In that character lies a seed from 
 which his conduct grows. His natural function that of 
 providing subsistence and shelter, the larger part of 
 his mind force is directed toward overcoming the oppo- 
 sition he meets in competing with other men. The 
 preservative forces in him make him aggressive. He 
 is calculating the recognition of individual property 
 gives him a distinct object to pursue. He is avaricious 
 at times because he must provide those very comforts 
 and luxuries women enjoy, which cause them to prize 
 the successful man without closely investigating his 
 methods of doing business. He is obeying his most 
 powerful impulses when he works hard, schemes cun- 
 ningly and worries himself into fits of nervous depres- 
 sion to get possession of what represents the accumu- 
 lated surplus of labor. 
 
 The man who is able to make his own way and pro- 
 vide a home for wife and family seems to be regarded 
 from a theatrical point of view as more or less of a 
 fool, if not an easy mark. He lacks on the screen, as on 
 the stage, the keen penetration and quick wit of similar 
 
SEX DRAMA 61 
 
 men in real life. Then, when the millionaire banker 
 comes home and tells his wife that he has lost "all," 
 they move into one room with the plaster falling off 
 and dine from the milk bottle. All the sagacity, strat- 
 egy, craft and cunning that the banker has displayed in 
 making his millions disappear overnight. There is 
 practically no true characterization of men in the do- 
 mestic drama. If they are not made to act in direct 
 opposition to what might well be expected of them, 
 they simply stroll through the piece in dress suits and 
 other fine raiment. 
 
 To picture man as purely an automaton, or even 
 merely as an emotional being, is to disregard the intel- 
 lectual growth working within him. The emotions are 
 constant it is mind that is variable. Nature may im- 
 pel him, propel him, but his mind does the steering. 
 Necessity may drive, passion may urge him into dra- 
 matic entanglements, his collision with obstacles may 
 be almost continuous, but chance should not be arbi- 
 trarily called to his aid he should not be cleared of 
 an unjust accusation by a dying confession of the real 
 culprit. He should enforce the recognition of truth 
 through his own intellectual activity. We love char- 
 acter, not incident and accident. Directors are not ex- 
 pected to provide characterization where none has been 
 indicated. That is entirely up to the author, which 
 means that he must have a supply of mind force in or- 
 der to write plays. 
 
 But there can be no domestic drama, neither tragedy 
 nor comedy, without woman. Side by side with man 
 she plays her role. How then should she be revealed 
 on the screen? 
 
 Misunderstandings in married life are all-too-easily 
 solved by authors who do not get at the MOTIVES 
 of a wife, especially when she constitutes the hypoth- 
 eneuse of an "eternal triangle." To nominate her 
 merely "capricious" and let it go at that is to ignore 
 
62 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 the real issue, the basis of a new and better under- 
 standing. Nearly all women have the social instinct 
 and the moral instinct, the better class of them are 
 products of developed social and moral desires. An 
 author must dig deeper than mere caprice to get at the 
 cause of marital disagreement, remembering that 
 woman, because of her dependence, her closer adher- 
 ence to social forms and exactions, her natal purity of 
 heart, rarely gives up the co-operative habits of mar- 
 ried life without a motive arising from a torrent of 
 feeling sweeping her soul. 
 
 Lack of psychology in the pictured domestic drama 
 deadens interest in the story. Why do wives wrangle 
 over trivialities and foment discord to the destruction 
 of their own happiness? A quaint philosopher claims 
 that married women are divided into four classes: 1, 
 the primitive, those actuated by small cunning when 
 not brutalized by bad temper ; 2, those who are honest 
 and harshly frank ; 3, those who are deceitfully tactful 
 for selfish purposes, and 4, those who are naturally 
 sweet through the impulses of a kind heart and gra- 
 cious through an endowment of cultivation. There is 
 nothing on earth so hard to subdue by forceful meth- 
 ods as the will of a powerful and vigorous male, yet 
 he will strain hard in the harness and put forth all his 
 strength to pull more than his share of the load when 
 he is given an easy rein and quietly encouraged in the 
 fiercest part of his struggle. He is ever engaged in a 
 battle all his own between the lower and higher im- 
 pulses of his nature, and the peculiar constitution of 
 his mind becomes apparent to the wife whose tender 
 sympathies are supported by the high faith and keen 
 vision of intelligence. 
 
 Whatever the story, that of the devoted wife who 
 fails to inspire her husband in his work, that of the 
 innocent wife driven to false ideals by the cruelty of 
 her mate, that of a disreputable woman's atonement, 
 
SEX DRAMA 63 
 
 that of drifting apart through lack of congeniality, 
 whether the end be adjustment or disaster, the mere 
 facts become commonplace without an analysis of mo- 
 tive behind the action, and this means an analysis of 
 sex and character. That one or another type of primi- 
 tive woman is so constantly pictured on the screen, 
 presenting little or no resistance to the pleadings of 
 some wandering and predatory male inanity, is because 
 the term "primitive" adequately describes the authors. 
 Both on the legitimate and the screen stage, there 
 has in the past been a certain stigma attached to all 
 matters dealing with sex. Yet I venture to say that this 
 stigma has been entirely undeserved. For, after all, the 
 relation of the two sexes to each other expresses in 
 itself everything worthwhile in human life, including 
 as it does every emotion, good or bad, of which the 
 human heart is capable ; and every striving, every am- 
 bition, good or bad, which is at the back of a man's or 
 a woman's career, life, and outlook on life. 
 
HUMAN EMOTIONS 
 
 IN 
 COMEDY AND TRAGEDY VISUALIZED 
 
 WE ROAR when the clown throws a wet sponge 
 at the acrobat and hits the ringmaster by mis- 
 take, partly because the latter has been strut- 
 ting around in a silk hat, cracking his whip and other- 
 wise offending our egotism, and partly because we 
 take a malicious delight in the mistakes of others. Two 
 brothers are chaffing at the head of a staircase and one 
 slips and falls down the entire length. The one remain- 
 ing goes into hysterics of laughter it is a secondary 
 matter with him to ascertain whether his brother is 
 injured. A man chases his wind-blown hat in a devi- 
 ous course, while the rest of us grin from a point of 
 security. The clown, foolish and vulnerable ass that 
 he is, has a close kinship to that part of ourselves which 
 we carefully conceal from our nearest friends, whereas 
 the arrogant ringmaster represents out attained aspi- 
 rations to be the center of attention. We instinctively 
 dislike him because of his airs of importance, whereas 
 the clown represents an inferiority of which some of us 
 are conscious in periods of occasional sanity and is 
 correspondingly popular he is one of us. 
 
 When we emerge from the pure and childish joy of 
 watching men throw things and sit down with unex- 
 pected force, we begin to have a rather cloudy suspi- 
 cion that there may be something funny about our- 
 selves as exemplified in other people. What we are is 
 nobody's business, and it is all right about our playing 
 little parts, just as we attempt to achieve an angelic 
 expression before the mirror we are trying to live up 
 to the best there is in us, and it adds greatly to our 
 happiness that we can hope people take us for what we 
 seem to be. The brutal truth about us would be rather 
 
 64 
 
HUMAN EMOTIONS 65 
 
 disconcerting at times. We have only to sit down and 
 dissect ourselves psychologically to find abundant ma- 
 terial for comedy. 
 
 It may not seem true that we are justified by self- 
 examination in formulating an estimate of all human 
 nature, but it will become painfully apparent in time 
 that we are very much akin to one another. We all 
 know the sensations of hunger and cold, and a large 
 part of masculine effort is given to procuring subsis- 
 tence and arranging for shelter. Therein lies the be- 
 ginning of industry, also of avarice. In acquiring from 
 others we have developed a system of exchange and 
 some crude forms of civil justice to settle our disputes. 
 There is nothing particularly complex about man. He 
 is devoting most of his hours in making and distribut- 
 ing appliances for protection against climate, to trans- 
 portation, to procuring food, to eating, sleeping, but- 
 toning and unbuttoning, fighting, or to entertainment 
 for the eye and ear. When he turns from these at all, 
 as he occasionally does, it is to love woman. 
 
 Now it is true man does not love as woman does, for 
 the preservation and perpetuation of life, but with an 
 intense lack of dignity and no overwhelming sense of 
 personal responsibility when he is fully aroused. He 
 may be a lion, a fox, a monkey, or an ass, according 
 to temperament, when he is in love, but he is a rank 
 outsider, and will remain so all his life unless he is 
 fortunate enough to grasp the full meaning of a splen- 
 did woman's love. To the fact that he remains in a 
 state of uncertainty most of the time, rarely sure of 
 her and never sure of himself, must we ascribe his fit- 
 ness for the lead in comedy. There is nothing funnier 
 on the face of the earth than just plain man. 
 
 Two popular screen stories so popular that they 
 were widely imitated may be cited in illustration. A 
 young married woman in modest circumstances re- 
 ceived a set of sables from a former suitor in Alaska, 
 
66 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 but feared that her husband might object. She pawned 
 them and told her husband that evening that she had 
 found the ticket. He took her savings and promised to 
 redeem the furs next day. He came home next evening 
 with a moth-eaten set of fox, and she dared not com- 
 plain, but she did more than that when she visited 
 his office and found his pretty stenographer wearing 
 the sables. Two newlyweds invited their friends to a 
 New Year's Eve celebration and all imbibed too freely 
 of a delicious punch. Next morning, when hubby 
 rushed into the dining room for ice water he had a 
 nervous fit over his inability to remember what oc- 
 curred after he was caught by his wife kissing their 
 prettiest guest. His agony of mind grew until his wife 
 appeared, a towel around her head, and feebly com- 
 plained that she could not remember a thing that oc- 
 curred the night before. 
 
 Neither the farce, nor pantomime, nor the antics of 
 the buffoon furnish half the amusement offered by an 
 ingenious comedy of situation which exposes some of 
 the weaknesses of human nature. Man finds it impos- 
 sible to live up to his own standards. He likes to go 
 with the crowd, and he keeps up a good front. In order 
 to preserve his social status he becomes careful about 
 his morals and his necktie. He wears whatever is the 
 fashion. He does not lunch at an expensive restaurant 
 because the food is better but to make an impression, 
 just as he attempts to establish his relative position by 
 the brand of his motor car. He affects dignity in the 
 office and solemnity on Sunday, and sneaks away for 
 a night off at the French ball under the pretext of hav- 
 ing an important business engagement in dear old 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 Man may never love virtue as he does beauty, but 
 it should not be forgotten that he is a thinking animal, 
 and we may learn to sympathize with him, to like him 
 for his humaneness. To show him as he is, to bare 
 
HUMAN EMOTIONS 67 
 
 his heart and soul, is a higher form of comedy, espe- 
 cially when it is interwoven, with tragedy or intense 
 drama. He is better established in our minds as a real 
 human being by revelation of his imperfections, and 
 our hearts may beat the more warmly for him that we 
 are obliged to balance what is good in him against cer- 
 tain obvious defects of character, especially when he 
 is made over by favorable environment. We recognize 
 that circumstances have a great deal to do in forming 
 character, and we rejoice when a man of naturally 
 kind heart and good intentions finds himself lifted from 
 the misery of an evil life by a sudden expansion of 
 opportunity and consequent gain in breadth of view. 
 
 In delightful comedy drama may be dispelled many 
 popular conceptions which are without basis and have 
 become entrenched in the human mind through hasty 
 acceptance of superficial knowledge, the kind that Pope 
 called "a dangerous thing." Millions of people are ab- 
 solutely honest in believing what is absolutely false, 
 and so they will continue to believe until some shock 
 of actual experience makes them skeptical, when they 
 are little better off than before. If they do not sub- 
 scribe to the form of a faith rather than its spirit, why 
 has all Christendom so lately been warring? It is not 
 so necessary that all people should be enlightened as 
 that true sources of enlightenment should be open to 
 all. Moving pictures offer the medium, one that has 
 no confusion of tongues, not to rearrange native ca- 
 pacity, but to place what is worthy of confidence within 
 the reach of those who really hunger for the truth. 
 
 Horace Walpole came near dividing the human race 
 into two classes when he said that the whole world 
 is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who 
 feel. Writers and philosophers who favor a supremacy 
 of the spirit over the flesh have appeared at all periods 
 of recorded history ; among the earliest settlers of New 
 England who carried their doctrine of restraint into 
 
68 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 the gloomy pretense of Puritanism, among certain in- 
 tellectual ascetics of today. Out of the necessity of 
 restraint has often arisen an idea that feeling should 
 be totally repressed, whereas, far from being modera- 
 tion, repression of feeling may easily be immoderation. 
 It is true that the struggle for existence is often a 
 bitter one, but it is through feeling that bitterness is 
 made known, and through feeling it may be assuaged 
 by those who unite to intellection broad sympathies 
 and tender compassion. 
 
 Poor people, whether their condition be due to native 
 inability or to the force of circumstances, become so 
 absorbed in their struggle that their line of thought is 
 cramped by their individual and immediate require- 
 ments, but their minds may be reached and powerfully 
 affected through feeling as stirred by the screen story, 
 especially when it appeals to that sense of injustice 
 which ever rankles in the proud hearts of the unfortu- 
 nate. Thinking men of big hearts realize that injustice 
 to the poor is less due to modern intention than to the 
 artificiality of forms and conventions we have inherited 
 from the ages which we are slow to replace with im- 
 provement because such changes must be inaugurated 
 for the greatest happiness of the greatest number irre- 
 spective of section and class. 
 
 One effective way to deal with those inherited artifi- 
 cialities of custom which are responsible for injustice 
 to men who deserve better treatment is to hold up to 
 ridicule the heartless stupidity of privilege, affected 
 standards of living among those who have never had 
 the wolf at the door, hypocrisy of those who attempt to 
 create an impression of superiority, amusing pomposity 
 of servitors appointed to public office, unblushing 
 promises and hollow performances of professional poli- 
 ticians, business management that is fawning to capi- 
 tal and oppressive to honest labor, predatory instinct 
 that thrives on exploiting stolen invention and the 
 
HUMAN EMOTIONS 69 
 
 idea that a moment of serious attention should be given 
 in religion, politics or society to the utterances of a 
 blatant demagogue. 
 
 While our long-suffering world may be a great com- 
 edy to those who think, it might not be a bad idea for 
 them to let us have the benefit of their thoughts, espe- 
 cially for use in motion pictures. Screen stories go to 
 the hearts of the people. Through their pictured se- 
 quence of incidents many common illusions may be 
 unmasked. We would greatly enjoy some keen satires 
 on mistaken conceptions of life and of society. Many 
 of us can only get at truth through the process known 
 as disillusionment. We must laugh away the cobwebs 
 in our brains before we can reach a state of being 
 able to recognize the truth when it is placed before 
 our eyes. We are all willing to learn, and whatever 
 is a comedy to those who think, a profound truth en- 
 wrapped in satire might prove a most delectable meth- 
 od of disseminating information. 
 
 While life may be a comedy to those who think, 
 while we can use a laugh to gain heart for ourselves 
 to face a struggle, or again to bring home to the un- 
 heeding some vital lesson, it is nevertheless true that 
 life is more tragic than comic to those who feel. 
 Analysis will reach reason, but the recognition of the 
 most profound truths is often rather the outcome of 
 feeling than of thinking. Dramatists like Bernard 
 Shaw address man's analytic intellect, but they labor 
 in vain if they attempt to disassociate feeling from 
 man's activities in the discharge of what he deems to 
 be his duty. That he fought for a principle in making 
 the fair country in which we live was because of his 
 sense of wrong and oppression. Man was impelled by 
 his sensibilities to supplant intolerable despotism with 
 a greater scope of individual freedom. That he devised 
 with reason and fought his slow way to human liberty 
 does not mean that sentiment played an insignificant 
 
70 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 part in his achievement, but to the contrary FEEL- 
 ING made the nation. 
 
 We are supposedly no longer in that animal world 
 where one part subsists by devouring the other part, 
 where sentiment is accorded scant consideration, but 
 are striving through an appeal to feeling to reach a 
 sunshine of liberty and opportunity that each one of 
 us may enjoy the privilege of utilizing native energy 
 in harmony with inclination. Some of us are confronted 
 by military prohibitions and restraints, some by the 
 remorseless laws of custom handed down from primi- 
 tive society, and our tragedies are plentiful. Those 
 tragedies may seem at times too pitifully small to be 
 of common interest, but, when they are of common 
 interest, it is the mission of the playwright to make 
 them great enough to reach popular approval through 
 the affections. So many drops of water in the human 
 stream, some of us float along in a tranquil middle 
 course, others sweep in a torrent over rocks of ad- 
 versity, others sink into stagnant pools of decadence, 
 the course of each being very largely one of directive 
 influence. 
 
 That the claims of feeling are quite as high as those 
 of function may be realized when we consider our ef- 
 forts to either attain self-control, or some just form of 
 social control, in restraint of powerful instincts of 
 self-preservation and reproduction. A vast amount 
 of training is required to make the immature human 
 creature understand that individual liberty may not be 
 successfully asserted against common happiness, to 
 nicely blend the idea of personal freedom with delicate 
 consideration for the rights of others. Even when a 
 man has reached a high degree of enlightenment 
 through native kindness of heart and fine cultivation, 
 he still feels that he is "created half to rise and half 
 to fall, Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all. Sole 
 
HUMAN EMOTIONS 71 
 
 judge of truth, in endless error hurled, the glory, jest 
 and riddle of the world." 
 
 What sensitive human plant lives without conscious- 
 ness of an invisible and fatal power that seems hostile 
 to all we hold dear? The presence that haunts us with 
 menace of danger may be tragic distrust of ourselves, 
 secret dread of our own weakness, or merely the way- 
 ward ghost of public opinion. The latter can be dis- 
 pelled by courage and sincerity, but not so with those 
 intuitive apprehensions of the soul which were born in 
 the darkness of primitive fear and have survived on the 
 evidence of things not seen because we do not know 
 ourselves. Only in the tragedies of love, for instance, 
 do we seem to grasp love's full meaning. Its normal 
 course very easily becomes a commonplace affair. 
 The simple solution never fascinates like the stories 
 of Romeo and Juliet, Cyrano and Camille. Tragedies of 
 love have held audiences enthralled from time beyond 
 reckoning. 
 
 How many women have survived great tragedies of 
 love in silence, yet oppressed by suffering more intense 
 than man can ever know? Tragedies of the heart that 
 must deeply affect the gentler sex are those of mother- 
 hood. For the creator of a human being to see the 
 flesh of her flesh, the heart of her heart, the very soul 
 of her soul, slipping away into the fathomless un- 
 known what more poignant grief than hers? Even 
 though time bring recompense, and her bruised heart 
 be healed, her all-too-common story is ever that of 
 tragedy. Woman, because of her tender affections, 
 God-given to keep this world beautiful, becomes the 
 central figure of tragedy that softens our hearts and 
 sends our souls to our eyes. She is sweeter and dearer 
 to us in sorrow than at any other supreme moment of 
 her life. Just as, to quote a Castilian cynic, the great- 
 est comedy, the most exquisite joke, is the one which 
 we feel in the inmost depth of our minds and the secret 
 
72 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 of which we will divide with nobody, not even with our 
 most intimate friend, so the deepest tragedy which 
 can happen in the life of man or woman is the tragedy 
 which cannot find relief by shouting aloud its woes 
 from the housetops. This is more true of woman than 
 of man, since man, through the greater activity and 
 shifting chances of his physical life, is more apt to 
 find forgetfulness, thus relief from the torments which 
 rend his inmost self. Woman is more handicapped in 
 this respect, and so the germs of a tragedy in the heart 
 of woman will often grow and finally break through 
 the inadequate restraint of modern life to the social 
 destruction of the woman herself and of her finest, 
 sweetest ideals. 
 
 It is then that woman breaks with her conscience. 
 It is then that we have the key to the greatest love 
 tragedies of which the human heart is capable, to the 
 dominance of impulse over volitional control often 
 with death as an atonement the final, the greatest 
 tragedy. 
 
 From such a tragic note we may derive either a 
 bitter corrective that acts as a tonic in its spiritual 
 and emotional effects or we experience a psychic up- 
 lift that tends to elevate and to purify our finer ideals. 
 
DETECTIVE STORIES 
 
 OR 
 THE VALUE OF ANTICIPATION AND WONDER 
 
 WONDER has been defined as the effect of nov- 
 elty upon ignorance, but there would appear 
 to be rational delight in novelty, especially 
 in the presentation of something entirely new to the 
 mind, something that arrests attention because it is 
 strange, that holds intelligent attention until it is un- 
 derstood. A form of intellectual pleasure may be 
 aroused in reaching an explanation of the unusual, or 
 of the extraordinary, in a story, particularly when that 
 story offers the mystery of a crime for solution. A 
 low order of mind can hardly be that which enjoys 
 making deductions from premises, or which becomes 
 easily engaged in watching how an author reaches the 
 intelligible essence of a difficult situation. On this 
 very account, however, because the form of entertain- 
 ment provided by a detective story depends upon its 
 appeal to a combination of wonder and reason, there 
 is peril in every step of its construction. That an 
 author may not slip and fall at some danger point in 
 such a story, it is not a bad idea for him to have his 
 subject matter well in hand. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the story of crime mystery 
 is fast degenerating to one of stock properties. We 
 know exactly what is going to happen when a sharp- 
 visaged gentleman in a steamer cap appears on the 
 scene armed with a pipe and a pocket lens. "Hist!" 
 This inscrutable individual will detect a button, a 
 finger imprint, a wisp of hair, a stray tooth, or a thread 
 from the murderer's garment. It may even be dis- 
 covered that the fatal bullet is of such peculiar design 
 that it only fits the guilty man's pistol. A weapon 
 may be found which belongs to the hero, one neatly 
 
 73 
 
74 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 engraved with his monogram, and when this marvel 
 of creative ingenuity appears on the screen we are 
 spared much agony of mind by advance realization of 
 how the hero will escape. We know that the real 
 criminal will accurately time his dying confession so 
 as to spare the unjustly accused an ignominious execu- 
 tion by a hair's breadth. 
 
 One is at a loss to explain the fascination of mystery 
 well concealed, if it is not to be ascribed to a form of 
 intellectual pleasure. We know that the author is de- 
 liberately throwing us off the track at every stage of 
 development, but we set our wits against his and re- 
 solve to guess the riddle before he tells us the answer. 
 Magnificent human egotism is responsible for our stu- 
 dious attention. We settle upon a solution of our own 
 and await confirmation with a degree of interest that 
 rivals concentration upon a game of chess. Such is 
 the case, at least, with minds not primitive. 
 
 That noble sense of superiority which dignifies each 
 grown man as a god in his own estimation leads him to 
 untangle a string for a child and, at the same time, 
 demonstrate to his wife how easy it is to overcome 
 difficulties when one has a preponderance of gray mat- 
 ter over osseous formation in the cranium. There is 
 a suggestion here involved. If the writer of detective 
 stories expects to demonstrate his superior ingenuity, 
 it might not be a bad plan for him to disentangle 
 rather than cut his Gordian Knot. Far from being 
 satisfactory to people of intelligence, the arbitrary de- 
 termination of a difficult problem is apt to prove as 
 mildly disappointing as the enthusiasm of an orator 
 who forgets the point he intended to make. There 
 exists an arduous necessity of reaching a well- 
 grounded conclusion before launching Act I, Set 1, 
 Scene 1 of the scenario. 
 
 Story visualization lends itself particularly to a form 
 of clairvoyance which is rarely used, that of getting at 
 
DETECTIVE STORIES 75 
 
 the mental aspect of a suspect by close observation of 
 seemingly unimportant details and by a process of 
 reason which leads to discovery of the criminal. The 
 guilty betray themselves unconsciously. The innocent 
 may easily become confused under examination, or 
 sullen, or indignant, but cold and brazen defiance is 
 the weapon of guilt. Police officers learn the signs, 
 though it must be admitted that they are not unfailing, 
 and they acquire the habit of studying conduct for 
 indication of hidden motive. "She did this and she 
 did that," ponders the detective, action easily visual- 
 ized, incidentally revealing his methods of getting at 
 motive. "Therefore," he reasons, and his conclusions 
 can be shown. What a treat to view his spectacular 
 induction ! 
 
 Every man mentally out of his teens and able to dis- 
 count his bills has been pleased by the flattering atten- 
 tions of friends up to a certain point, then he is jarred 
 with a sudden realization that so much kindness and 
 consideration is rarely extended without an object in 
 view. From that moment he becomes a detective on 
 his own account as a measure of self-protection. Lack- 
 ing woman's keen susceptibility to impression, that 
 which occasionally enables her to get at the truth by 
 intuition, man enjoys discerning motive through con- 
 duct, and on this account he is more deeply interested 
 in the plot than woman she is chiefly concerned 
 about how it will turn out. To him the value of detec- 
 tive stories lies almost wholly in their ingenuity. Once 
 ended, there is little or no after effect, no lasting im- 
 pression made, no line of thought stimulated, no fine 
 emotions aroused a riddle has been answered, and 
 that is all. 
 
 Inasmuch as there are many skillfully-constructed 
 detective stories shown today on the screen, it would 
 seem as though the inventive genius at work might 
 advance beyond contriving a good plot, especially in 
 
76 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 those numerous cases where the framework of ex- 
 planation is entirely too slight for the heavy ground- 
 work of mystery. The intellectuality involved might 
 strain a point to weave strong human interest into the 
 narrative by swift characterization. Conventions and 
 laws are the delight of essayists who dig them out of 
 the past performances of successful writers, but 
 authorship precedes criticism it has the right of way 
 and may set its own pace. In the face of all that has 
 been said on the subject, there still remains no con- 
 vincing reason for believing that the idea is of minor 
 importance, that the plot is paramount. However 
 skillfully it may be contrived, it is nothing more or 
 less than a formulated scheme, usually of complicated 
 incidents, an instrument to promote an object, one 
 wholly at the author's service. 
 
 Audiences grow weary of the conventional they are 
 ever on the lookout for something new, something dif- 
 ferent from what has been steadily served to them, the 
 latter including gross and stale exaggerations of melo- 
 drama. The author of independent viewpoint may 
 avoid futile methods of expression by not depending 
 wholly on ingenuity of plot in this or in any other 
 form of story, by reaching out with his ideals and by 
 using his depth of insight to portray character, so that 
 when the play is over the audience may feel that it has 
 glimpsed an interesting phase of life, even if that phase 
 be made over in the crucible of creative imagination. 
 
SECRETS 
 
 OR 
 LITTLE TRICKS OF STRUCTURE 
 
 "f*\ IVE the people what they want," says the man 
 IT who wots but little of the task of writing a 
 great drama, a drama that shall deal with hu- 
 man emotions, that shall furnish pleasure and recrea- 
 tion, and yet that shall tell of something deep and 
 true and universal. He who would give the people 
 what they truly want cannot write to order unless his 
 love for his subject be indeed great. If he would warm 
 hearts and brighten minds other than his own, his 
 whole soul must be in his task. He must know the 
 truth in order to tell it, and, if he would glimpse the 
 secret of success, he must know much more than the 
 truth; he must know a way of making it so beautiful 
 that it will soften all hearts, on its way to its final 
 appeal : its spiritual appeal to the mind. 
 
 A step in the right direction is to win the audience's 
 sympathy for one or more leading characters. All 
 plays above farce-comedy that depend entirely upon 
 ingenuity, or upon some exciting situation supposed 
 to be "dramatic," head for a disappointing slump at 
 the conclusion when the affections of an audience have 
 not been engaged. The pleasure they give is either 
 intellectual, that of solving a problem, or merely that 
 of gratifying curiosity temporarily stimulated, and 
 they may utterly fail if the situation is forced or im- 
 probable. To win at all they must be plausible. 
 
 Not so the story striking a tender chord in the hu- 
 man breast. Once the emotions are deeply engaged, 
 faults that might seem glaring under other circum- 
 stances are forgiven and improbabilities are tolerated. 
 Fine characterization leads us nearer the heart of giv- 
 ing people what they want than the cleverest of illu- 
 
 77 
 
78 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 sions. Kindly interest in the characters makes the 
 way to success decidedly easier, but there is a deeper 
 interest ; our pictured people must be created for some 
 purpose worth the effort made to enlist sympathy for 
 them. 
 
 But sympathetic appeal alone does not constitute 
 success, nor is the method whereby it may be engaged 
 the only secret to success. The most elusive 'quantity 
 in a story is that which is so carefully suggestive at 
 the outset that no strain shall be put upon credulity 
 in either development or crisis, yet which mystifies 
 while it suggests and augments curiosity as to the 
 outcome. It has been entitled "foreshadowing," and 
 that term may do for lack of a better one, though the 
 shadow of coming events should only be clearly 
 enough defined to account for strange happenings 
 without making it known what they are to be. It is a 
 perilous thing to "foreshadow" events in a story, es- 
 pecially where there is a condition of suspense to be 
 maintained, and, on this account, it is rarely success- 
 ful except when used by experienced writers. A well- 
 known critic declares, however, that a story bears the 
 mark of an amateur, or of a bungler, when it lacks 
 this very quality, so essential is it to that completeness 
 of form and structure which characterizes the work of 
 professionals. 
 
 Plenty of true stories, if told exactly as they hap- 
 pened, would arouse skepticism, if not derision. On the 
 other hand, a pure figment of fancy may be so cleverly 
 handled as to give an impression, if not of absolute 
 truth, of satisfactory rationality. Even the rational is 
 not necessary if some beautiful truth is symbolized in 
 purest romance, for the power of that truth completely 
 overshadows the method of its telling its guidance is 
 the more eagerly sought that we are enveloped in mist 
 but it is made particularly effective by aroused antici- 
 pation that there exists a way out of the mystery in 
 
SECRETS 79 
 
 which we are involved, if a means of escape is made 
 possible by delicate intimation during the early scenes. 
 The value of foreshadowing lies not wholly in the aid it 
 affords to realism and in its contribution to the fine art 
 of arousing and sustaining interest, but also in the fact 
 that its clever employment lends material force to char- 
 acterization. 
 
 An impression of realism is rarely given by a crude 
 presentation of the actual truth. It is almost purely a 
 question of psychology. Breaches of veracity may be 
 committed over and over again if the people in front 
 are led to consider the possibility of certain events and 
 become associated in a sort of compact between author 
 and audience which is entirely satisfactory in the end. 
 Not only during the early stages, but just before there 
 is a catastrophe in the visualized story may the events 
 to come be foreshadowed with effect. It is done by Na- 
 ture. We feel that the atmosphere is pregnant with 
 change. There is a nervous flight of birds; there is a 
 sudden rush of fitful gusts of wind ; the door slams un- 
 expectedly ; the light flutters ; dark masses of cloud pile 
 up in the sky ; the action of invisible forces is promised, 
 forces over which we can exert no control. A cumula- 
 tive period of preparation immediately precedes a trag- 
 edy. We shudder in anticipation when we might not 
 be deeply affected by realization. Forebodings are 
 aroused that characters in the visualized play are about 
 to enter upon a struggle with Fate, and we are dis- 
 quieted from sympathy with them, aware of the grad- 
 ual approach of disaster, profoundly interested in the 
 outcome. 
 
 Even the novice knows enough to have a weapon 
 shown during the early stages of a story, if it is to be 
 used with murderous results later on, but he does not 
 give due recognition to the fact that a very large ma- 
 jority of men lack criminal intent, that very few have 
 murderous weapons lying around loose, and that they 
 
80 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 must be shown as having periods of moral decadence to 
 account for their committing a capital crime. Nearly 
 all crimes are committed in the pursuit of self-gratifica- 
 tion at the expense of society in general, and the in- 
 telligent man has many means of retaliation against a 
 supposed enemy not so opposed by his finer self as 
 murder; hence there is a lot to show besides the 
 weapon itself in foreshadowing the deliberate murder 
 of a fellow-being. Influences must be indicated which 
 overcome natural repugnance and fear of harsh punish- 
 ment for the deed. Advance characterization also be- 
 comes extremely necessary in such cases. 
 
 It is not to be inferred that a noble end may always 
 excuse ignoble means. In simple illustration is the all- 
 too-common story of a man hard-pressed by misfortune 
 and up against the unexpected requirement of a sum of 
 money to save a dear one's life. Temptation is placed 
 in his way by chance, and he yields to it on impulse. It 
 is more in accord with experience and with human 
 nature that he should avoid injuring others in the pur- 
 suit of a noble end. The very compassion he feels indi- 
 cates aversion to a criminal course. His underlying 
 motive good, it is hard to believe that he will not make 
 prodigious efforts of the right kind to save his dear 
 one rather than burden that dear one with a humiliat- 
 ing sense of receiving benefits all out of harmony with 
 the means employed to obtain them. 
 
 Consistency imposes a limitation of any foreshadow- 
 ing of coming events, as, indeed, it does upon all kinds 
 and phases of dramatic structure. To make that struc- 
 ture harmonious in all its parts neither the shadow nor 
 the events must offer contradiction to what is com- 
 monly known of human nature and human conduct. 
 The shadow may be nebulous, but it must stand in 
 agreement with what is to come, for the excellent 
 reason that it is worse than useless, a positive detri- 
 ment, when satisfaction does not result. The psychol- 
 
SECRETS 81 
 
 ogy involved is that we all enjoy having formulated a 
 possible end to the story, though we may feel decidedly 
 insecure about it during intermediate development. 
 Part of the scheme of suspense devised to hold an 
 audience on edge during the presentation is that of 
 keeping the end a secret, but it is quite as essential 
 that we hint at that end in a mysterious way to set 
 that audience guessing at the earliest possible moment. 
 The writer's skill in arousing and holding the spec- 
 tators' sympathy with the participants in the drama 
 they are witnessing, his artfulness in "foreshadowing" 
 the big events that are to come, are both important 
 factors in the success of any drama. Yet there is some- 
 thing more. It has to do with motivation. Some one 
 character wants something. There is the clash of con- 
 tending desires. In other words the portrayal must 
 show contrast. 
 
 In referring to the use of contrast in moving pictures, 
 I fully recognize that the expedient is shared in com- 
 mon by all mediums of emotional expression, but it 
 seems to be invested with freedom from difficulty in 
 the newest of arts and to permit going back of con- 
 duct to the cause of it more than is always possible in 
 the specialized and limited art of the theater. Noted 
 dramatic antithesis is that of Othello and lago. 
 "Imagine," says Bernard Shaw in the Metropolitan, 
 "the scene in which lago poisons Othello's mind 
 against Desdemona conveyed by dumb show!" Tak- 
 ing the distinguished dramatist at his word, and ad- 
 mitting the tremendous loss of lago's fascinating 
 intellectuality, there could be shown by screen meth- 
 ods, not only the contrast of character through conduct, 
 but, what is sorely lacking in the play, the motive 
 behind lago's "motiveless malignity." "lago," says 
 one of Shakespeare's greatest admirers, "is too venom- 
 ous. His villainy is too cruel, too steadfast, to be 
 human; perfect pitiless malignity is as impossible to 
 
82 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 man as perfect innate goodness." Imagine the diffi- 
 culty of explaining the seemingly inexplicable through 
 the medium of words, "the motive hunting of motive- 
 less malignity," in this notable triumph of the dra- 
 matic art, yet screen methods permit, by throwing back 
 to motive behind lago's strange conduct, constant 
 intensifying revelation of his character and purposes, 
 and every word picture used by lago to- inflame 
 Othello's mind can be made far more vivid by direct 
 exhibition to the human eye. 
 
 Back into contrast of character screen methods may 
 draw us, before the main action takes place, back into 
 contrast of environment, into contrast of compelling 
 circumstance, even into contrast of mood. If screen 
 visualization has a distinguishing peculiarity, such as 
 Professor Mathews seeks to differentiate the drama, 
 though far from being an exclusive possession, it is 
 that it lends itself broadly and generously to contrast. 
 By way of contrasting screen presentation to that of 
 the stage, for the benefit of Bernard Shaw and all 
 others in authority, imagine the silent visualization of 
 Othello creeping into the chamber of Desdemona in- 
 tent on murder, as opposed to the average stage player 
 creeping in so as to make no noise, then bellowing at 
 the top of his voice, "Yet she must die, else she'll 
 betray more men." I once heard Salvini shout this 
 noble sentiment in a voice calculated to rouse a toper 
 on the rear gallery seat, yet Desdemona never fluttered 
 an eyelid. Imagine it! In this bedchamber scene, 
 Othello is swayed at one moment by the hateful pas- 
 sions lago had fanned into flame, but this cannot be 
 made visible to remote portions of an audience, so he 
 is compelled to shout it at us. The figures of Othello 
 and sleeping Desdemona may be brought up into small 
 scope on the screen, so that the hideous workings of 
 his mind may be more eloquently revealed in silence. 
 
 In demonstrating the capacity for good and evil in 
 
SECRETS 83 
 
 human nature, screen methods permit the return at any 
 moment, for purposes of emphasis, to those dominating 
 influences which sway human conduct. We may even 
 delve into the early formative period of character and 
 show how it was sympathetically nourished by intelli- 
 gence and misshapen by ignorance. Asking an audi- 
 ence to look upon this picture and then upon that not 
 only helps to make the screen story "a factory of 
 thought, a prompter of conscience and an elucidator of 
 social conduct," but it may contribute to our slowly 
 acquired store of truth. Small as the number of Eng- 
 lish-speaking people completely submerged in ignor- 
 ance may be, an enormous number are in a state of 
 semi-submergence. 
 
 Scenic contrast, impossible to present with any de- 
 gree of rapidity on the stage, robs the older medium of 
 advantages with which the younger one is richly en- 
 dowed. Sketchy views of life in the open can be 
 opposed to the cramping influences of city environ- 
 ment. The actual squalor of tenement-house poverty 
 can be illustrated in realistic street views, where men, 
 women and children are crowded into filthy and 
 disease-producing intercourse, and thrown into in- 
 stantaneous contrast with whatever relief is afforded 
 by smiling Nature in her sweetest moments. 
 
 If the essence of dramatic action lies in the opposi- 
 tion of human will to circumstance, the circumstances 
 can only be described in prose fiction and but faintly 
 indicated on the stage. They can be shown in all their 
 infinite variety on the screen. Even in recent achieve- 
 ment, photo-dramas have revived some of the long-lost 
 splendors of setting, the natural framework for action, 
 and the trend is now toward esthetic ideals that no 
 stage presentation can afford to copy if such a thing 
 was possible. Always broader in its possibilities, the 
 new art is now richer in scenic contrast and ever ready 
 to enrich itself from the wondrous resources of nature. 
 
84 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 Most delightful of all contrasts, and possibly the 
 most subtle of all, is that of mood. Once in a while, for 
 some reason not yet definitely determined, the intense 
 human being is at the mercy of mood. Where there is 
 no permanent conversion of character a man of kind 
 heart and gentle deeds becomes a gloomy misanthrope, 
 even a raging demon. As suddenly, without obvious 
 reason, he returns to his normal disposition and con- 
 duct he is subject to variation. This form of con- 
 trast is as dangerous as it is difficult to portray. He 
 is often a creature of dual life, because of innate pecul- 
 iarity. The use of contrast thus embraces parallelism, 
 conflict of character, antithesis of scene, and an ele- 
 ment of suspense growing out of moods mysterious. 
 
 So in the skillful use of sympathy, "foreshadowing" 
 and the art of contrast we have three weapons through 
 the use of which the clever workman may make his 
 picturization more real, more dramatic and more vivid. 
 
TITLES AND SUBTITLES 
 
 OR 
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SCREENED CAPTION 
 
 UNDER the general term "subtitles" are included 
 all explanatory words shown on the screen. The 
 word "title," itself defined as "an inscription 
 placed over something to distinguish or specialize it," 
 is largely inclusive, but it is here narrowed to the 
 name of the story. What that first caption shall be has 
 ever been the hardest problem writers have had to 
 solve. So much depends upon it that literary failures 
 have been suddenly transformed to those of success 
 by a change for the better in the name of a book. The 
 critic, quite as well as is the public, is affected by 
 what first reaches the eye, the initial clue to the qual- 
 ity of what is to follow. 
 
 No guide can be offered to the selection of a title 
 which will lead to superior results. The author of 
 brilliant imagination is surest to conceive of what is 
 apt to make a hit, yet he fails notably where the ama- 
 teur strikes the mark with a chance shot. Perhaps 
 the best suggestions to be offered are those indicating 
 what to avoid, and first of these, quite possibly the 
 commonest, is the error of selecting a title which indi- 
 cates the plot "They Loved in Vain," "After Many 
 Years," "Won at Last," and the like. Such preliminary 
 announcements spare us any anxiety about the termi- 
 nation even when they do not entirely repress curiosity 
 during development. 
 
 To find a name which excites interest without plot 
 disclosure, which is entirely appropriate to some im- 
 portant phase of the narrative without revealing con- 
 sequences, and has, at the same time, a pulse beat 
 rhythm all its own, is a quest of Diogenes. One needs 
 the lantern of a bright mind to find it. "Paid in Full" 
 
 85 
 
86 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 strikes a blow of its own and excites interest clear 
 up to the crisis. "Born or Made" opens up a splendid 
 problem. To sound the keynote, or even to suggest 
 the dominant theme without being too general, mean- 
 while not spoiling what is to be anticipated by advance 
 realization, seems to be the ideal so many are searching 
 for and so few find. 
 
 The writer of cramped vocabulary, as well as the 
 one of limited imagination., heads his script with "The" 
 something or other, and even doubles "The Bandits 
 of the Prairie," when "Soldiers of Fortune" would do 
 just as well and sound better. Professionals err oc- 
 casionally in this respect, but the amateur announces 
 his incompetence at once with his awkward beginning. 
 Carelessness at the outset does not promise infinite 
 pains with the general plan and failure is cordially in- 
 vited by the easily-satisfied subtitle. 
 
 In an art of no traditions, and one of few illuminat- 
 ing examples, confusion as to the use of subtitles is to 
 be expected. Every man, whether or not he can write 
 a play, can write about it, and he becomes a law unto 
 himself when called upon to direct the visualization of 
 a scenario. A self-appointed editor once sliced about 
 half the subtitles in a carefully composed script for a 
 five-reel feature and explained that a customer "up 
 state" said there were too many subtitles in the pic- 
 ture. Their appropriateness was a minor considera- 
 tion. The man from "up state" probably meant that 
 screen announcements of the obvious were unneces- 
 sary, and we all agree with him. This does not mean 
 that vigor and vitality of explanatory phrase shall be 
 punished in retaliation, shot down as a terrifying 
 example. 
 
 Suppose the action of the day is finished, the lovers 
 have been introduced. Something happens next day 
 and next day. There are periods to be covered with- 
 out wearisome repetition. A hint is enough. 
 
TITLES AND SUBTITLES 87 
 
 Time now yields to Youth and Love 
 And counts its days in briefest hours. 
 
 In fact, the poetic title, when appropriate, is more ef- 
 fective than prose. Some of the freshness, inventive- 
 ness and fantastic charm that we enjoy in the printed 
 story is not wholly out of place in subtitling the visual- 
 ized one. 
 
 One strong photodrama, suggested by a poem, 
 worked the action up to points where the verse struck 
 the telling blows. In another, a most spontaneous 
 laugh came from the thousands gathered there because 
 of a cleverly placed subtitle, where the action itself 
 excited no particular amount of amusement. The art 
 was Shakespearean in suiting the action to the word. 
 There is another art, and one quite as important that 
 of bringing out the peculiar qualities of a screen per- 
 sonage through exhibiting morsels of conversation. 
 There are times when it is irritating to an audience 
 that this is not done. To see people mouthing at each 
 other and be compelled to guess at their utterances is 
 not an undiluted joy for those in front. 
 
 In the first act of a five-reel feature, while there is in 
 view a later purpose to represent life, there are opening 
 situations and relations capable of being explained in a 
 few words which would require dozens of visualized 
 scenes to make clear. It is not always possible to de- 
 termine at a glance whether the attractive lady cling- 
 ing to the gentleman's arm is his sister, or his cousin, 
 or his wife, or some other fellow's wife. It might be 
 easy to interpret his question, "Do you love me?" but 
 who can picturize hers, "How much are you worth?" 
 We must shamelessly print it or relegate her motives 
 to obscurity. Yet we need not fall into the verbal re- 
 dundance of the transformed stage play. Nothing is 
 to be gained by concealing a painful truth concerning 
 them ; most of them contain so little worth visualizing 
 
88 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 that the screen versions are more or less reflective of 
 their most cherished utterances. 
 
 Whether an author is attempting to give new life 
 and form to old novels and dramas, or whether he is 
 writing straight from his own heart and mind, his own 
 thoughts, his own individuality will be manifest in his 
 subtitles. Good style and good selective taste in this 
 portion of the photodrama, far more than that part 
 treated by the director, reveal the texture of the 
 author's thought. His style is apt to be the result of 
 his ideas more than of his vocabulary, and he has an 
 advantage over the writer of fiction in his freedom to 
 borrow, to take from other sources what exactly suits 
 his ideas and present them lucidly. 
 
 The most beautiful titular form, where there is some- 
 thing to be said that is really worth while, is that of 
 poetry. The great poets of all ages have built treasure 
 houses for the jewels of thought. They have gathered 
 the crude ideas of their generation and shaped them 
 into song. From these accumulations may be drawn 
 nearly all the requisites of the subtitle, particularly of 
 that superior kind in which all is said that should be 
 said and nothing else besides. Their finest composi- 
 tions often contain exactly what is suited to subtitling 
 the pictured story, of offering no sentence without a 
 meaning to it. Their logical application and their en- 
 tire appropriateness assured, they furnish what the 
 author seeks and the audience most likes "much in 
 little." The oldest of literary counsels affords a fairly 
 safe guide. In this phase of your work let good taste 
 and sound critical judgment prevail. 
 
PLOTS MANY AND VARIED 
 
 OR 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEME 
 
 WHEN Shakespeare said "the play's the thing," 
 he did not dream that, in a later century, a 
 new art would come out of nothing and de- 
 velop into a rival of the legitimate stage. Nor could 
 he have dreamt that the saying which he coined to 
 illustrate certain vital necessities of his period and his 
 own art would have to be radically changed, would 
 indeed have to be turned inside out, to fit the require- 
 ments of the latter art. 
 
 It is indeed true that in the case of many photo- 
 dramas "the plot's the thing." By that word we mean 
 no narrow, limited thing even though it is true that 
 the source of artifice rather than of art, stage presenta- 
 tion, has narrowed the broad meaning of story plot 
 from a general plan to a specific complication. The 
 playwright who feels that he must adhere to tradition, 
 another name in this case for imitation, gives his first 
 attention to plotting a plot. He feels that he must 
 "mix those children up" so that they will meet with a 
 snarl of difficulties before they are extricated from the 
 entanglement in which he started them. Such is the 
 theatrical idea of plot, and it has its merits. One in a 
 hundred times it may work up to an interesting HIGH 
 SCENE, a tense moment, but the author must have 
 that in view from the start and not lose sight of it for a 
 moment. The stage plot is very exacting. Its creator 
 is under the thumb of his audience. He must consider 
 suspense to be of highest value in his problem and he 
 must justify it with a solution at once logical and un- 
 expected. 
 
 A close investigation of the plot theatrical may dis- 
 cover that modern authors have been led into an over- 
 
 89 
 
90 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 estimation of plot by superficial knowledge of the old 
 stories they consciously, sometimes unconsciously, imi- 
 tate. They seek to stimulate curiosity through compli- 
 cation rather than stimulate the emotions by portray- 
 ing the spiritual side of human nature. "Plot," says 
 one critic, "may be defined as any sequence of events 
 making or marring happiness, success or achievement. 
 It is not necessarily emotional nor spontaneous." He 
 struggles to explain it for a few lines, then scuttles 
 his ship as follows, "Plot is capable of such infinite 
 methods of treatment that rules are valueless and in- 
 struction of little practical aid.'* Another says, "Plot 
 is the basis or framework of fiction," "It carries a 
 problem and a solution." "The problem to be solved 
 is of no greater importance than the solution." At 
 last we get light. He takes the trouble to enumerate 
 the hopelessly trite. 
 
 "(1) The mistaken identity idea. (2) The rescue 
 with love-gratitude climax. (3) The lost or altered 
 will. (4) The poor versus the rich suitor. (5) The 
 cruel father or stepmother. (6) The resisted tempta- 
 tion to be dishonest, or redemption after dishonesty. 
 (7) Heaping coals of fire. (8) Unjust suspicion. 
 (9) The neglected parent. (10) Reformation of the 
 villain by the little child." These are a few. Closely 
 examined, it would seem as though there was a con- 
 fusion in this list of plot, characterization and theme. 
 The critic finally reaches a very simple classification, 
 declaring that plots are of three kinds, 1, the ingenious; 
 2, the detective, and, 3, the problem. He might as well 
 have grouped them all under "problem." 
 
 The plot theatrical is virtually a problem, whose 
 solution is the important factor. Brander Mathews 
 says that "the situations a dramatist may use are very 
 few their ultimate value is that they enable the dra- 
 matist to reveal human nature." We are still getting 
 light. The solution counts and revelation of human 
 
PLOTS MANY AND VARIED 91 
 
 nature is of greater importance than situation. So 
 many bright minds have been applied to the discovery 
 of what is structurally essential to dramatic success 
 that we may still gain light by investigation of these 
 views. Brunetiere declares that the stage play is for 
 the "development of the human will, attacking the ob- 
 stacles opposed to it by destiny, fortune or circum- 
 stance." Barrett H. Clark comments that it is "dra- 
 matic to personify great social or political forces or 
 'wills' in individuals." "The rights of the individual," 
 says Charlton Andrews, "as against his duties to his 
 environment form the basis of nine-tenths of the suc- 
 cessful plays, since Ibsen at least." Still more light 
 the dramatist must be a thinker. 
 
 The rights of the individual ! What are those rights? 
 We may not know them well enough to define them, 
 but we feel them. From this feeling has grown a broad 
 sympathy. We become concerned in HUMAN 
 RIGHTS. We revolt against any form of injustice. 
 
 Aglow with a live subject, we study our THEME 
 from every advanced point of view, embody ideas in 
 our characters, bring them into romantic relation, de- 
 velop the human will in opposition to the obstacles of 
 environment, call on creative imagination for interest- 
 ing situations and formulate a story. The general plan 
 of that story is the plot. 
 
 A plot may justly be regarded as a working plan 
 of action and a diagram of character relations. But 
 this does not necessitate that plots bear a constant 
 similarity one to the other. There is room for origi- 
 nality. The constant reappearance of outworn intrigue 
 is due quite as much to insincerity as to incompetency 
 of writers. They depend on simulation rather than 
 upon originality, and betray themselves by trying to 
 make interest in a story depend entirely upon its gen- 
 eral scheme, by considering its design rather than its 
 
92 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 aim, instead of subordinating incident and situation to 
 theme. 
 
 The ancient triangle of husband, wife and lover has 
 been industriously jingled for many decades, and it 
 may always remain as one piece in the orchestra, its 
 little note sounding whenever it suits the whole, but 
 it palls as a solo instrument. The idle married woman 
 suffers from ennui. Her husband's devotion to work 
 is ascribed to neglect. She is at the mercy of the 
 predatory villain. There is a struggle at the close ot 
 which the wife either falls into disrepute, or she re- 
 pents in time and is folded in hubby's arms, thereby 
 causing our honest countenances to be suffused with a 
 glow of intense gratification. 
 
 Quite as popular with those authors whose equipment 
 is plenty of paper, pens and ink, and two arms, may be 
 the story of the beautiful working girl persecuted by 
 the villainous head of her department in the store, or 
 by the millionaire decadent who dangles a cigarette 
 from his under lip as he objectively contemplates the 
 subject of his dark schemes. Or she may be an inno- 
 cent country girl caught in the web of a spider-legged 
 city chap until Jim comes down from the farm to see 
 how she is getting along, and takes her back home. 
 There is something so delightfully unlike the Ameri- 
 can girl in this innocent and much-persecuted fe- 
 male that she should be typed from our imported un- 
 intelligence to be in keeping with the role. 
 
 Then there is Cinderella, the slave of envious ones, 
 ragged, poorly nurtured, destitute of opportunity; how 
 happy we feel when Prince Charming comes along and 
 enables her to turn up her nose at her wicked sisters ! 
 Quite another Prince Charming may be the inadvertent 
 guardian of an unhappy child, and watch her flower 
 from an ugly little bud, while gray hair appears over 
 his temporal bone and leads him to decide that some 
 
PLOTS MANY AND VARIED 93 
 
 fair-haired boy is better equipped to guide and protect 
 her. 
 
 Husbands who have accumulated silver shreds 
 among the bald and a certain amount of wisdom in 
 the process are then set down as mentally incompetent 
 when their wives secretly embrace erring brothers. 
 Such benedicts are often pictured in the act of shoot- 
 ing, or of shooting at, the erring brother, to the subse- 
 quent edification of all concerned. But when it comes 
 to deeds murderous, no plot is so strongly entrenched 
 as that of the unjustly accused. All evidence points 
 to the guilt of the hero even the deadly weapon gives 
 silent testimony against him and yet we know he is 
 innocent. How can he escape? We suffocate as he 
 is about to be executed. Then, when all seems lost, the 
 ingenious playwright has the villain confess all, and we 
 breathe again. 
 
 Those sweet little girls with hair in curls, bare feet 
 and "nighties," who reconcile estranged parents by 
 putting mamma's hand in papa's hand, are busily occu- 
 pied these days, for each one has to reform a burglar 
 when he calls for the family silver. If the noble 
 burglar is in a dress suit, and caught by a suspicious 
 husband in the bedchamber, we are brought to a pro- 
 found realization that one may steal for a living and 
 yet have a delicate sense of honor about women. For 
 the sake of the uplift, gentle woman's predilection for 
 bridge whist and motor cars is regularly contrasted 
 with man's intense longing for the pure and calming 
 influence of home, provided always that his "occa- 
 sional" is not stronger than orange phosphate. 
 
 But that these old and hackneyed plots are so con- 
 stantly recurring is not the fault of the medium for 
 which they are prepared. In no art can the medium 
 which is, after all, nothing but the technical vehicle 
 of art be held responsible for the shortcomings of 
 the man who uses it to express his ideas. It is so with 
 
94 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 the screen drama. There, too, the chief blame rests 
 with the laziness and the lack of ability of the creative 
 artist, the writer. Life itself, with the character de- 
 lineation that serves to make for individuality and the 
 motivation that accounts for all human actions under 
 whatever circumstances, can be portrayed in all its 
 richness and fullness. Why then should the writer be 
 satisfied with handling the old themes and situations 
 in the same old, worn-out ways? If we are drafting 
 from humanity for the entertainment of humanity why 
 not let revelations of purpose behind action come to 
 us in a natural way, little by little, just as in life it is 
 that we gradually find out about those people whom 
 we may eventually distrust. 
 
 The one form of drama that will always arouse the 
 interest and hold it until the last picture has been 
 shown on the screen is the struggle that takes place 
 within the soul of the actors, in other words, there 
 should be a presentation of the emotions rather than 
 a presentation of the screen performers' physical 
 actions. 
 
 The human brain, which is the source of every ac- 
 tion, is a continuous screen drama at times a screen 
 comedy in itself. The sensitive film is that part of 
 it which constantly receives and develops impressions 
 from without. When these impressions become fixed 
 in our dark room, the cranial laboratory, they are 
 canned and put away for future use. They can be 
 taken out of the storehouses of memory and projected 
 before the mind when needed, and on very short notice. 
 We can even run two shows at the same time by re- 
 calling two different lines of events and thus put them 
 in what might be called juxtaposition. This helps us 
 in making comparisons and contrasts, so that we arrive 
 at conclusions from past experience. 
 
 When we think, we are reviewing the impressions 
 that our brain has received. The result of thought has 
 
PLOTS MANY AND VARIED 95 
 
 given most of us enough intelligence to know that to 
 preserve the unit we must preserve the community. 
 This is why we insist on our rights and insist upon all 
 taking a just share in mutual responsibility. Herein 
 lies the secret of social instinct. When we feel that 
 we have lost something contained in the sum of com- 
 mon benefit we suffer a disturbance within us which 
 we recognize as one of emotion, usually manifested 
 by the presence of excitement. 
 
 Another kind of emotion is that which looks for- 
 ward with pleasurable anticipation, the hope which 
 may sustain us in our darkest hours. We can actually 
 enjoy imaginary gratifications, hence the well-known 
 saying that anticipation is usually better than realiza- 
 tion. 
 
 Out of these emotions, quite as well as from animal 
 instincts, grow the powerful desires which may sway 
 our lives at times, even cause us to break the social 
 compact. The half -blind desire to attain an ideal love, 
 the absorbing desire to accumulate wealth and power, 
 these constitute tremendous forces within the individ- 
 ual, forces which may desperately conflict with the 
 social and moral part of our natures, battling through- 
 out the whole course of life against reason, sympathy 
 and affection. This is the soul drama, none the less 
 intense that it is hidden. 
 
 One great drama of the soul, if not the greatest, is 
 that of a strong general, a conqueror of men, unable to 
 conquer himself, Othello. A man of lofty pride and 
 high sentiments, he is hated by lago because of his 
 unconscious assumption of superiority, and led on by 
 "trifles light as air" to a state of emotional weakness 
 where those trifles become "confirmations strong as 
 holy writ." He becomes racked with doubt, distraught 
 with jealousy, maddened with passion, over a handker- 
 chief, raging like an imbecile against all the world, a 
 caricature of himself when "his occupation's gone." 
 
96 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 Another great soul drama, possibly the most pro- 
 found ever written, is that of the incomparable Hamlet. 
 Probably more has been written about the man who 
 deemed it wise "to know thyself" than of any other 
 fictional character, maybe because many brilliant men 
 feel like Coleridge "I have a smack of Hamlet myself, 
 if I may say so." It is claimed that Shakespeare de- 
 picted himself in this wondrous soul revelation. He 
 depicted a man much like the rest of us in one seldom- 
 confessed respect we are creatures of two opposing 
 wills struggling for mastery. 
 
 There is in the commonplace hero of fiction an al- 
 most constant exercise of the will on the side of higher 
 sentiments as against the lower impulse or desire. In 
 real life the impulse which prevails is not always the 
 best one, and from obedience to the prevailing desire 
 we fall into errors of judgment and conduct. Know- 
 ing the right course to pursue, why do we ever do 
 wrong? From a comprehensive viewpoint it looks 
 very much as though habits judiciously formed in 
 youth prompt us to do right spontaneously, without 
 any effort of that doubtful force known as "will," for 
 it is easy to become the slave of a habit. 
 
 Othello's criminal act was not that of a great mind, 
 but of a mind so weak that it permitted another to 
 , completely misdirect it. Yielding constantly to the 
 promptings of lago and to his own base suspicions, a 
 mad desire to kill acquired dominance of his soul. 
 Hence the criminal action of murdering an innocent 
 and loving wife can only be regarded as the expression 
 of a protracted course of criminal thought. A man 
 is held responsible for such acts by society, though he 
 may have temporarily lost the power of self-control, 
 because he is a dangerous weakling unable to resist his 
 worst impulses. 
 
 The character of Hamlet is a nobler one because of 
 rather than in spite of its vacillation. Nursing a deep 
 
PLOTS MANY AND VARIED 97 
 
 sense of injury, with a father's murder to avenge, he 
 falters because he recognizes a Higher Will than his 
 own as the source of power he can exert. His clear 
 measurement of himself stirs within him a loftier 
 measure of his Creator. A sweet moral purity within 
 him, combined with a strong sense of eternal justice, 
 brings about a terrible soul struggle, now one desire, 
 now another, prevailing in his mind. The ideas he 
 derives from reflection, however, gradually yield to his 
 passion for revenge until he becomes the sport of in- 
 tellectual vagaries and the ultimate slave of a mur- 
 derous impulse. 
 
 It will appear that the soul drama, while confined to 
 an individual field, is very largely a matter of external 
 influence. Each of us has a volitional power, it is true, 
 but it may be turned into bad channels quite as well 
 as to good account. A great deal depends upon the 
 direction in which it is employed. We may be in- 
 clined to benevolence; we may be aware of a con- 
 science; we may respond nobly to the suggestions of 
 affection ; yet our attention may be so habitually fixed 
 on the gratification of selfish propensities, such as 
 making money, that our powers of mind may be used 
 only for hypocrisy and dissimulation. 
 
 In depicting the human soul, it might be as well 
 assumed at the outset that there is an abuse as well 
 as use for its gifts and acquirements. It will not do to 
 assume that our propensities and passions are evil in 
 themselves, but only so in misdirection and excessive 
 gratification. Strong emotions may easily give force 
 to a character of high ideals. 
 
INTELLIGENT CHARACTERI- 
 ZATION 
 
 AND 
 THE ACTOR VERSUS TYPE 
 
 INTELLIGENT characterization counts enormously 
 in the telling of a story. It is one of the prime 
 factors in the novelist's art, and skill therein is of 
 equal moment to him who would make an effective 
 photoplay. But how in the world can intelligent char- 
 acterization, the one charm to be counted upon "in 
 putting over" a mediocre story, be expected of authors 
 who are either incapable of understanding human na- 
 ture, or who do not see the necessity of winning inter- 
 est through establishing the distinguishing qualities 
 of their leading characters. We rarely become interested 
 in people of the passing crowd, while our sympathies 
 may be easily stirred for those we come to know. In 
 order to appreciate both action and the motive behind 
 action in screen stories, we must have some intimate 
 acquaintance with the leading personalities brought 
 to our attention. To depict mere movement without 
 meaning is to revert to the first moving pictures ever 
 exhibited, yet it is being done day after day by pro- 
 ducers whose estimate of the public is that of their own 
 limitations. 
 
 Now and then a story is flashed on the screen which 
 soon warms our hearts. We see in the evolution of an 
 individual something akin to ourselves, or to humanity 
 as we know it, and we soon get the impression that we 
 are looking at something that has really happened. 
 Even inconsistencies are excused, so prepossessed have 
 we become with the fascinating personality before us. 
 It may be a comedy, a castigation of our defects; it 
 may be a tragedy, convicting society of wrongdoing; 
 
 98 
 
INTELLIGENT CHARACTERIZATION 99 
 
 it may be an intense drama, scourging the injustice of 
 cherished institutions; we may become absorbed in 
 the outcome of a crucial situation what would it all 
 amount to if we were called upon to merely watch a 
 picture and not the projection of human character, 
 authentic, veracious, and readily understood? We 
 might occasionally be entertained, but we would sel- 
 dom be impressed. 
 
 Only an author of exceptional perceptions, partaking 
 of the intuitive, need attempt the construction of indi- 
 vidual types without study. Characterology has be- 
 come a science to be studied from the two points of 
 sex view and from that of humanity in general. It is 
 not entirely safe to consider the gentler sex of today 
 from even the standpoint of the Immortal Bard. "She's 
 beautiful, and, therefore, to be wooed ; she is a woman, 
 therefore to be won." She is not so simple as she was. 
 A finer ideal of her arose more than a half century ago 
 in "Ingomar, the barbarian, and Parthenia," an ideal 
 that has persisted in thousands of stories since then, 
 in "The Great Divide" and similar plays, all portraying 
 a semi-cultivated man winning through brute force 
 and brought to a finer realization of himself through 
 woman's refining influence. 
 
 The sexes must be considered as they are, and this 
 means the whole domain of human consciousness, if we 
 are to progress from elemental ideas into the present 
 fascinating complex of human character, yet this re- 
 search need not be carried away from the lines of 
 Nature. Our impulses and emotions are much the 
 same as they always were they are possibly intensi- 
 fied but we are obliged more and more to consider 
 the domination of mind over what might as well be 
 called "our former selves." Not to consider mind and 
 the power it exerts over the elemental within us is to 
 confess its absence in character analysis. She is noble, 
 sweet, pure and lovely, and, therefore, to be wooed. 
 
100 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 She is a splendid woman, and therefore to be splendidly 
 won. 
 
 An infinite variety of portrayals may show the super- 
 man of today in a struggle to subordinate his "former 
 self" to the requirements of higher civilization. He 
 might easily be placed, through double exposure, in the 
 position of a spectator to the combat going on within 
 him. His finer self can be so spiritual 'as to stand 
 aloof, outself himself, superior to his fate, and thus 
 free to control the Old Adam, free to regulate his pas- 
 sions instead of being merely an animal embodiment 
 of them. When he is his nobler self, note his kindness 
 to little children, his affection for relatives and friends, 
 his compassion for the weak and erring. He may even 
 get the whip hand over his vanity, not presume a 
 superiority in a world like ours, where nobody is any- 
 body in particular. He may have a power of mind that 
 reaches out to thousands yet be without assumption, 
 without hypocrisy. 
 
 The average hero suffers nothing and really achieves 
 nothing. All things are thrown his way. He is simply 
 a nice-looking, well-groomed, tailor-made, lucky dog. 
 He opens a gold mine, falls heir to a million, stumbles 
 into the accumulation of some other man's labor and 
 is decidedly un-American. He is only a fortunate 
 weakling, whose loftiest ambition is to make an im- 
 pression through physical appearance really great 
 men speak through their souls. The screen hero, 
 whether of the drawing-room or of the plains, makes 
 his principal address through his clothes and his shape. 
 The spirit within seems to be of secondary conse- 
 quence. The screen hero is a poser, a creature of the 
 mirror, the real one is at his best when most unmind- 
 ful of effect, aggressive and determined from hard 
 necessity, but in a creative way, never to the injury 
 of his fellow-men. 
 
 The real hero is intensely human, despite his occa- 
 
INTELLIGENT CHARACTERIZATION 101 
 
 sional exhibitions of superior mental force. He* cdh* 
 tains within his complicated makeup the elements of ' 
 all villainy, and he may descend to the depth's in : his 
 varied moods, but the light that shines within him is 
 not of one-candle power; it is a burning flame, con- 
 suming him at times, at others brightening the lives 
 of all within the scope of his influence. His character 
 is a fabric of many intense characters, and he may 
 live one or another of these in his differing moods and 
 periods. He is not a tame hero, one who merely re- 
 peats himself over and over again. Whatever his 
 criminal instincts, they have become intellectualized 
 and may be utilized for noble purposes in the end, but 
 their outbreaks constitute one of the strong fascina- 
 tions of a dramatic story. In the high color and con- 
 trasts of his portrait lie the essence of the drama. 
 
 Sum up primitive man, and the solution of primitive 
 woman is not far removed, but why should the primi- 
 tive be as far as the average story goes in picturing a 
 heroine? She is Eve's reincarnation, and so little more 
 than those who have penetrated the depths of one hu- 
 man character are either amused or disgusted by the 
 portrayal. We have had a surfeit of her on the screen. 
 Is it possible that men who write and visualize such 
 stories have never encountered any but females of 
 rudimentary minds? They are either lacking in com- 
 prehension of human character, or they have been 
 wandering so long in the weeds that they have ceased 
 to believe in the existence of flowers. 
 
 But the character study that the author has put into 
 his photoplay goes for naught unless such character 
 work is intelligently depicted by the actors. Here, 
 possibly, a study of the actor versus type may not be 
 amiss. 
 
 Actors there are, possibly a half dozen all told, who 
 can impersonate almost any leading character yet con- 
 ceived for the screen story. Actors there are who think 
 
102 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 they can, and their number has not been computed, 
 not as yet. Besides, there are few roles to be enacted 
 and many calling only for a performer who looks the 
 part, a "type." Keeping in mind that we are dealing 
 with an appeal to the eye alone, it becomes very im- 
 portant that true exemplars of the different parts are 
 chosen in the cast, especially among those who have 
 little more than physical representation to attempt. 
 The work of mental revelation falls to the principals, 
 and only the most capable authors and directors begin 
 to realize how much of that should be brought to light. 
 
 As usual, farce offers the exception. An actor who 
 is naturally funny may be short, tall, broad or narrow 
 he has only to be himself. His limitations are his own, 
 not those of the role, unless he is woefully miscast or 
 given scant opportunity. The higher we soar, the more 
 necessary it becomes to entrust a role to an actor who 
 seems to be its "characteristic embodiment." 
 
 It is indeed true that when the physical attraction 
 is particularly suited to the role, the characterization 
 becomes effective without any tremendous amount of 
 mental exertion a most fortunate circumstance on 
 the part of the character's impersonator. 
 
 Physical fitness of primary importance, there follows 
 an essential not easy to define, the ability of an actor 
 to lay aside consciousness of his existing self and take 
 on imaginatively some other identity than his own. 
 He may call up remembrance of some character like 
 that he attempts to impersonate and express emotion 
 as that conjured-up personality might under certain 
 circumstances, but it is when he exercises his imagi- 
 nation in a sustained and determined manner, just as 
 does the author of a story, that he can give the appear- 
 ance of actuality to a character which is merely an 
 ideal creation. 
 
 The whole process is not far removed from that of 
 the one we pass through in the dream state. The 
 
INTELLIGENT CHARACTERIZATION 103 
 
 habitual current of thought laid aside, the interpreter 
 who becomes seriously engrossed in a portrayal lives 
 alternately in two worlds, one in which he is improvis- 
 ing an existence wholly different from that he or- 
 dinarily follows, the other one to which he is suddenly 
 recalled when the director, for one reason or another, 
 breaks the continuity of story action. Capable directors 
 make as few such interruptions as possible. They jar 
 the keen sensibilities of a good performer and nullify 
 some of his best work. 
 
 "Put yourself in his place," says the capable director. 
 "You are impersonating a man who judges everything 
 through the medium of a gloomy and morose temper 
 he is looking out at the sunlit scene through a smoked 
 glass." Once in this mood, imbued with this spirit, 
 the actor unconsciously plays his role so that it deeply 
 affects the audience. His emotions and his actions 
 cease to be forced in outward appearance, for they are 
 truly of an involuntary kind. Just so when the char- 
 acter is that of a cheerful person, one who sees every- 
 thing in its brightest aspect. 
 
 The moment an actor succeeds in applying both 
 common sense and imagination to his impersonation 
 he ceases to be a "type" and becomes an interpreter. 
 Interpretations of the finest sort are not only acts of 
 judgment based on experience, but they are greatly 
 affected by dominant feeling or mood. The inter- 
 preter's attention must necessarily be fixed on this 
 mood, his mind so completely engrossed by it that his 
 current of thought is not changed by little interrup- 
 tions at rehearsals. He is thinking the thoughts of his 
 assumed character, not to be diverted by his surround- 
 ings, nor by his own self-consciousness. 
 
 When the true interpreter's mood is distracted by 
 the intrusion of some inappropriate idea or feeling, he 
 is compelled to make an effort in order to keep within 
 his role, and this becomes eventually visible on the 
 
104 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 screen. On this account it is a fact worth every di- 
 rector's consideration the capable actor should be 
 given a clear view of his part in advance, together with 
 its relation to the whole story, and permitted to work 
 out his own interpretation within the limits of action 
 imposed by camera scope and general environment. 
 His effort should be volitional. 
 
 Sweet little girls and handsome boys will always 
 have a place in motion-picture production, but along 
 with the advent of great stories written especially for 
 screen representation and their intelligent supervision 
 by capable directors will undoubtedly come interpreta- 
 tion by veritable artists. 
 
ACTING THAT IS NOT 
 
 OR 
 A DISCUSSION OF SCREEN INTERPRETATION 
 
 "^T^ HE art of the Theater/' says Gordon Craig, "is 
 neither acting nor the play, it is not scene nor 
 dance, but it consists of all the elements of 
 which these things are composed." This sums up an 
 entire book he has written on the subject, but, like 
 many another talented writer, he appears to avoid 
 saying definitely what acting is and what it should be. 
 So far as the screen is concerned, the entire subject is 
 a rich field lying fallow. Even the keenest critics avoid 
 scratching it. 
 
 Grant in advance that the absence of uttered speech 
 severely conditions expression of thought and feeling 
 in the photoplay, it would seem from the finest ex- 
 amples of work done by silent performers that there 
 is being unconsciously shaped a definite art of minis- 
 tering to the minds and hearts of an audience through 
 silent portrayal of character, even in its psychological 
 depths; of motive, even in its hiding places; of recre- 
 ated human experience, even in its most intense mo- 
 ments, and of great moral passions, even those which 
 occasionally convulse the whole world. 
 
 In the screen drama it is frequently the actor, or the 
 actress who is at fault and who call it vanity, or call 
 it overaccentuation of his or her personality defeats 
 the ends of screen art. 
 
 The author may have had an artistic creation in 
 mind, such a brilliant insistence of the central figure 
 as occasionally causes the story to stand forth as a 
 noteworthy achievement. Why should the high-priced 
 star care? She is chiefly concerned with making an 
 impression of her personality, as conveyed by careful 
 manicuring and hairdressing, rather than that of the 
 
 105 
 
106 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 play. Even when we all love a star sometimes it is 
 only the director we feel that she should deserve a 
 fine part by making the best of it. We best enjoy her 
 participation in the story as one of its natural and con- 
 sistent factors, and our interest in her begins to wane 
 when her appeal is a smirk that speaks louder than 
 words, "Don't you think I am well worth all the time 
 and money spent on ME?" 
 
 It is not just to the audience when a really fine stage 
 performer slights the screen representation, depend- 
 ing wholly upon past reputation to carry over a medi- 
 ocre effort, particularly when the silent picturing ot 
 thought and emotion, calls for all the intelligent ap- 
 plication of her art that an accomplished actress can 
 give. Great stars are known to accept the money for 
 good service and give it so grudgingly, even disdain- 
 fully, that their movements and gestures become as 
 automatic as they might be in eating soup while read- 
 ing the paper. 
 
 Many patrons who would go regularly to the pic- 
 ture shows, just as regularly as they read their daily 
 papers, are drifting away to other forms of enter- 
 tainment during intervals, though they return again, 
 ever hopeful, always serene in the faith that the best 
 is yet to come, and unfavorable comments made are 
 nearly all of the same kind. Such and such an artist 
 merely walked through her part and spoiled the story. 
 
 Let us illustrate what an actor may do and may not 
 do in a little imaginative illusion of our own. The 
 play opens with a severe and orderly room, a well 
 arranged library, in which books and writing materials 
 indicate that the owner is a man of high standing and 
 a student of law. In the foreground at one side, that 
 it may be prominent without intruding on the action, 
 is a figure of Justice. Presently Judge R. enters and 
 hands his things to a servant who follows. Servant 
 gives Judge an important-looking envelope and retires. 
 
ACTING THAT IS NOT 107 
 
 Judge R. is not in a state of fatigue, but he exhibits 
 relief on sitting down. He is a fine type, thoughtful, 
 impartial, high-minded. 
 
 He turns calmly to the envelope, glances at the su- 
 perscription, and opens it with calm deliberation. Its 
 contents prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he 
 has been guilty of a decision which wronged another 
 man and wrecked the unfortunate victim's life. An ex- 
 hibit of the document reveals to the spectator that a 
 faulty decision has involved the happiness of the vic- 
 tim's family. What does the Judge do? 
 
 What WOULD such a Judge do? Would not such 
 a revelation come to one of his usually accurate judg- 
 ment in the nature of a shock? His whole theory of 
 himself is upset. He who has spent his best years in 
 righting wrongs has committed a grievous one. It is 
 scarcely to be credited ! A second examination of the 
 document brings out with terrible force that it is a 
 pure expression of the truth. He falls into a reverie, 
 during which the existing scene dissolves to that of the 
 wrong and back again. Now his eyes open wide with 
 horror in the first torment of conscience. 
 
 A period of time can be covered with a glimpse of 
 other action, a line leading up to the main one, and 
 return is made to the Judge. It is thus shown that he 
 is a man to think long and hard on a subject. He has 
 a habit of mentally reviewing all the testimony before 
 reaching a mature decision. He first exhibits emotion, 
 then his mind begins to reach out for a solution of his 
 difficulties. He is not a man TO JUMP AT CONCLU- 
 SIONS. We feel that something larger is coming than 
 a plan merely conceived on the impulse of a moment. 
 Higher suspense is aroused by thus forecasting events 
 of large importance. 
 
 Is not this adequate interpretation of character, at 
 once a revelation and a prophecy, a finer quality of act- 
 ing than the more or less automatic movements and 
 
108 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 gestures ordinarily employed? The Judge develops a 
 plan of clandestine relief for his victim's family, and 
 this is gradually unfolded in what he does. What he 
 does is of interest, but it does not afford the relief ex- 
 pected. He cannot shake off the phantom of wrong, 
 because he is persisting in his methods toward others. 
 
 He must be made to FEEL deeply, and the mental 
 process by which he reaches a complete conversion of 
 character cannot be consistently hidden. How does he 
 bring about a reconciliation of his daily acts and the 
 new ideals which are preying on his mind? Why se- 
 crete the forces now at work making a complete change 
 in the man and their effects upon him? Quite as well as 
 studied facial expression, gesture and movement, we 
 enjoy the unconscious revelation of soul which comes 
 to us of itself when the performer lives the role he is 
 enacting. Is not fine acting on stage or screen largely 
 a question of psychology? 
 
 Screen drama, like all other arts, is indeed an exact- 
 ing mistress, not only from the point of view of the 
 actor, but also from that of the director, the producer, 
 and the writer. Being essentially modern, essentially 
 picturesque, and essentially direct in the effects it de- 
 mands and creates, it must keep the closest possible 
 watch on everything, be it science, art, religion or plain 
 fad, which happens to interest the paying majority. 
 And this paying majority demands more and more the 
 truth in all things. 
 
 Truth is bound to win popularity for educational re- 
 leases. It is bound to win that kind of support which 
 brings the New Art constantly increasing respect, 
 hence the author of an educational release has a re- 
 sponsibility which should make him extremely careful 
 in distinguishing between right and wrong in the pres- 
 entation. He is morally accountable to those whose 
 confidence in screen portrayals is most to be desired. 
 
 We all feel that we participate in what science has 
 
ACTING THAT IS NOT 109 
 
 accomplished during the past fifty years, but we are 
 not entirely conscious of what science has NOT ac- 
 complished, that its logic has not succeeded in weeding 
 out delusion and superstition from the human mind. 
 This may be done through moving pictures. A big 
 hope lies hidden there. It will not do for those of us 
 now in authority, from author to producer, to consider 
 ourselves more important than the art we are using. 
 The author in particular should rise to his opportunity. 
 He should not only familiarize himself with all facts 
 bearing on his subject, but he should seriously attempt 
 their right interpretation. 
 
 "The vital knowledge," says Herbert Spencer, "that 
 by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, 
 and which underlies our whole existence, is a knowl- 
 edge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners, 
 not the mumbling of dead formulas." There is the cue 
 for the author who would become an educationalist. 
 An author must have brains in order to teach aspiring 
 millions to observe, to use keen logic and to attain 
 fine judgment. If he has not, he will only be like the 
 gentleman mentioned by Shakespeare. 
 "Man, proud man! 
 Dress'd in a little brief authority 
 Most ignorant of what he is most assured." 
 
 The screen is not for the perpetuation of false the- 
 ories, of fanatical theories, or of ordinary shams. Its 
 language must be that of truth, of logic, of sound 
 sense. 
 
 The educational value of the screen play is great, 
 and will steadily increase. 
 
 When we enter upon the navigation of dangerous 
 waters, we naturally trust to pilot and captain qualified 
 by long training and familiar with their duties rather 
 than attempt to point out channel intricacies ourselves. 
 On the same general principle, as a matter of good 
 common sense, we should consult the greatest scien- 
 
110 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 tific authorities of our period, just as the President of 
 the United States has recently done, before seriously 
 embarking on an enterprise deeply concerning our na- 
 tional life, our national safety, our national character. 
 It is absolutely necessary that we discriminate between 
 what is true and what is false in any projected educa- 
 tional system. 
 
PICTURE COMPOSITION 
 
 THE impressionist who paints may attempt to con- 
 vey sensation by conflicting lights and colors 
 irrespective of theme. He may only be in revolt 
 against accepted principles. Whatever his motive, and 
 he may be both capable and sincere, it will not do to 
 attempt impressionism in moving pictures until it is 
 better defined among the painters. 
 
 Offhand impressions, whether of nature or of so- 
 ciety, are apt to be superficial. They may easily be 
 misleading when a scene is glimpsed without study of 
 its elements, when a group of people is characterized 
 without examination of its individual members. The 
 dreary plain may be as true to nature as the forest and 
 stream, as the bold shore and breaking waves, yet one 
 may repel and the other attract. There is an exacting 
 sense of beauty within us, one so common as to be in 
 evidence among all classes of people. 
 
 As we are compelled to closely study the real to 
 make the romantic plausible, so a purely technical ex- 
 amination of prosaic details in a scene to be pictured 
 may well result in a general effect highly inspirational. 
 The word "technical" need cause no alarm, nor should 
 it be confused with the merely stilted. The idea is to 
 acquire a certain amount of skill in applying esthetic 
 judgment and taste to picture composition. 
 
 A lack of "picture eye" is most noticeable in news 
 periodicals exhibited on the screen. .The cameraman 
 not only leaves it almost entirely to chance where his 
 point of view shall be taken, but his selection of ma- 
 terial usually shows lack of judgment. He dwells on 
 the unimportant and the uninteresting, while the vital 
 is merely glimpsed or left out entirely. About the 
 only time he portrays the amusing is when he attempts 
 the tragic. 
 
 Ill 
 
112 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 A notable example was first announced on the screen 
 as "Aweful Fire in Saint Louis." Over two thousand 
 people in the audience watched a lot of smoke tinted 
 red, while expectation ran high of witnessing some 
 exciting rescues. What did the cameraman find "awe- 
 ful" about the conflagration? Ah! The smoke parted 
 and the walls of a building were seen. On them, set 
 forth in bold print, was a sign whose only visible part 
 was the word "BREWERY." Two thousand people 
 roared, though the fire may have seemed a tragedy to 
 the cameraman. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the very men who regard 
 the burning of a brewery as an "Aweful Fire" almost 
 invariably point the camera down at the water when 
 photographing scenery from a boat moving along 
 some picturesque river or lake. This sacrifice of land 
 and sky to an element which the cameraman may 
 concede to be useful for bathing purposes might be 
 classified as a "waterscape," but his pictures have the 
 appearance of having been trimmed too much on the 
 top for nice balance. 
 
 If emphasis is to be placed on a character in the 
 foreground of an exterior where a spreading scene is 
 shown, a man in the close-up watching remote action, 
 such as a conflict, place him a little to the right of the 
 center, his immediate environment to the right of the 
 picture, if the effect of that conflict on him is of first 
 importance, while it is glimpsed to the left in the re- 
 mote distance. There are virtually two lines of action 
 demanding attention, and there is involved a question 
 of centering interest on the more important of the two. 
 The near figure is intensified by isolation, the idea of 
 the close-up, yet the eye may take in action profoundly 
 affecting that figure, action set aside in a field of its 
 own that it may not distract. 
 
 Millions of people have approached New York City 
 from nearly all points of the compass by water, and 
 
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PICTURE COMPOSITION 113 
 
 millions have noticed wondrous effects of light and 
 shade, especially among tall buildings grouped at the 
 Battery, which seem to escape all photographers of 
 motion. One cameraman did fairly well after several 
 trials from four viewpoints on a Staten Island ferry- 
 boat coming up the bay. The first two were taken 
 from the upper deck, the others from the main deck, 
 all in slanting sunlight. 
 
 The first was of wide horizon, embracing even the 
 badly-placed Statue of Liberty. The second and 
 nearer one, like the first, exactly centered the Battery 
 group and fastened attention upon it because no ves- 
 sels of importance intervened. The third centered on a 
 building made prominent by some deep shadows back 
 of it, giving no view of the water to distract attention 
 and preserving an ample sky. The last shot up 
 from close in shore, still preserving the sky line and 
 accentuating the great height of towering structures. 
 
 The passing of a white Sound steamer would have 
 distracted attention in any one of these. It would have 
 loomed into prominence, and the eye is often so at- 
 tracted by light objects in the foreground as to give in- 
 adequate consideration to more important objects in a 
 darker background. Such was the case in picturing a 
 duel between principals through a break in a hedge near 
 which some recumbent vagrants became involuntary 
 witnesses of the affair. The scene was taken from the 
 west side of the hedge in the afternoon and embraced 
 both witnesses and principals. The sun shone on 
 them all and lighted up visible portions of the hedge 
 on either side of the picture, giving distracting prom- 
 inence to it and to the unimportant vagrants. 
 
 A striking effect could have been obtained in the 
 morning. Those secretly watching the combat would 
 have been in the dark shadow of the hedge, and the 
 latter would have formed two sides of a heavy frame 
 for vital action, in the background now thrown by 
 
114 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 contrast into bold relief. Attention doubly attracted 
 by the center and by the high lights would have been 
 concentrated upon the main action, while entirely con- 
 scious of subordinate details in the foreground. Com- 
 position in this case consists of wise distribution of 
 forces at work, sacrifice of essentials having minor 
 importance, and emphasis of important action in a 
 light background by contrast with a dark 'foreground. 
 
 Actual screen portrayals have been thus far used 
 to show that the object of highest value in a picture 
 should be given emphasis even to the point of sacrific- 
 ing others of lower value, but there are cases where the 
 principal object cannot be perfectly centered, as in a 
 large ensemble, and, at the same time, be free from 
 distracting influences. It is better to give up centering 
 in any such case and isolate the important unit, even 
 at the extreme edge of the picture, and depend upon 
 this isolation and contrast, remembering that if the 
 figure is light it is intensified in proportion to the 
 amount of dark background against which it is shown. 
 
 The application of elementary principles to the ar- 
 rangement of groups and lighting of scenes does not 
 mean that they constitute a set of hard-and-fast rules 
 for use in all sorts of cases, but that they may prove 
 helpful to those who desire to convey some of the 
 delight they feel when they chance upon some beauti- 
 ful effect in one of nature's own pictures accidentally 
 composed. 
 
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ILLUSTRATIONS ANALYZED 
 
 "The Christian." Unity is nicely preserved in this 
 example, though there are figures in semi-obscurity. 
 They add to mystery and suggestion. By placing the 
 important group, three men and one woman, under 
 intense light, there is nothing in the background to 
 distract from their revelation. Attention is almost 
 entirely focused on their condition of mind as shown 
 by attitude, facial expression and implied action. 
 Through admirable group arrangement, and through 
 intense effects of light and shade, their message is 
 made known, even in the still picture. 
 
 "Pharaoh's Daughter and Moses." This group is 
 very much in accord with the ideas of Repin, greatest 
 of Russian painters, and in a way with those of Claude 
 Lorraine. The contrast results almost entirely from 
 skill in grouping, irrespective of light and shade. The 
 Barbarian forces are so arranged that the proud and 
 indulgent attitude of the men is opposed to the ma- 
 ternal ecstasy of the kneeling women. The latter have 
 their hearts in their faces, and the attention of all 
 but one is concentrated upon the infant Moses. In 
 bold relief, and therefore calculated to fix the attention 
 of the spectator, is one figure in the foreground. Her 
 emotional condition is a thing apart from that else- 
 where exhibited, and this psychological contrast alone 
 causes her to dominate the entire picture. 
 
 "Richelieu." Not only is the group so nicely bal- 
 anced as to give each of the subordinate characters 
 individual significance without sacrifice of the im- 
 portant central figure, but there is an exquisite and 
 carefully-studied balance of light leading from the 
 brightly illuminated floor in one corner to the dark 
 vaulted roof in the upper opposed corner. A line 
 drawn between the corners either way will make ap- 
 
 115 
 
116 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 parent how the positive exterior light is made to gradu- 
 ally pass into the natural shadow of an interior. The 
 effect upon Richelieu's face, as well as on the faces 
 of other characters, is that of a Rembrandt half-light 
 so often used in portraiture. The leading character, 
 although a little to the right of the center, is strongly 
 placed in opposition to the kneeling woman at his 
 feet. He dominates without sacrifice of the others, as 
 may be seen in the suggested action of their attitudes, 
 and the entire group is enveloped in the necessary 
 atmosphere by a consistent and artistic setting. 
 
 "Twelfth Night." Characters are placed in the 
 midst of a broad middle tone, with accents of light 
 above and heavy darkness below in almost perfect 
 proportion. This is in accord with the principles of 
 Titian and Paul Veronese. Their principles allow 
 about one-quarter of the entire space for strong light, 
 about one-half for the middle light, and fully one- 
 quarter as dark as possible. This arrangement gives 
 distinctness to the group which it might not otherwise 
 enjoy. The subordinate figures are admirably placed 
 in mild sacrifice to those of higher importance in front. 
 Note the delicate balance between the corner of ex- 
 treme light and that of extreme darkness. The intro- 
 duction of a heavy column to the left seems to be an 
 intrusion until it is eliminated by covering; then it is 
 seen that it gives classic dignity to the entire composi- 
 tion, a master-stroke. 
 
 "Peggy." The background, with its dangerous tran- 
 sitional line and its demi-dark in the middle space, 
 would be dull indeed but for the exquisite effect of a 
 sidelight striking across the scene, illuminating the 
 toadstool on which the dark figure stands, delicately 
 touching the grass at its base and intensifying the 
 central and important figure so that the whole compo- 
 sition is one of beauty and power, making it one of 
 those rare exteriors which are veritable pictures. 
 
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ILLUSTRATIONS ANALYZED 117 
 
 Quietude, mystery and great dignity of background are 
 achieved without formal balance. A striking effect, 
 one that instantly impresses the eye and the mind of a 
 beholder, is brought about by skillful opposition of the 
 two figures and by strong effects of light and shade 
 that carry the eye into the deep ground and back 
 again to the figures with a growing sense of satis- 
 faction. 
 
 "Mice and Men/' A remarkable exterior in many 
 respects and especially so to those familiar with the 
 difficulties of getting anything like correct picture com- 
 position during the rush and strain of production. At 
 a glance one would say that such lighting and shadow 
 must be of a studio interior. The intense light on the 
 faces of subordinate characters to the right does not 
 emphasize them to their disadvantage, and the back- 
 light, most ingeniously illuminating the figure at the 
 left, while softening and sweetening the face, are studio 
 effects, but one has only to peer into the background 
 to perceive that it is all a question of "placing the sun." 
 A picture like this, containing the greatest amount of 
 beauty of which the subject is capable, has a very 
 strong appeal to all classes of people, from those who 
 love beauty from instinct to those who know the 
 reason why. 
 
 "The White Pearl." This expression of character 
 through harmonious detail illustrates the necessity of 
 emphasis through lack of it. Entirely appropriate, 
 nicely centered and admirably proportioned, the gen- 
 eral effect is agreeable, but the eye is distracted from 
 the face of the character in the foreground, the im- 
 portant factor, by the emphasized white idol in the 
 background. Attention is scattered by an unimportant 
 detail when it should be concentrated on the very sweet 
 and attractive figure with which the story is concerned. 
 This loss is due to a habit directors have of taking 
 exteriors during the middle of the day, when deep 
 
118 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 shadows are not so easily found. In a better light the 
 picture would have breathed the spirit of springtime 
 joy and pleased the more because of its delightful 
 arrangement. 
 
PICTURE INSPIRATION 
 
 IT IS possible to intensify the main line of action in 
 a big screen story through effects rarely suggested 
 
 by authors because not demanded by that action, yet 
 it is their duty, not that of directors, to provide and 
 appropriately place such effects in the story structure. 
 We are just now enjoying some screen representations 
 of very beautiful sunsets to the detriment of other 
 matter and some equally beautiful dawns where there 
 is no particular reason for them to appear. Vivid 
 lightning and torrents of rain are shown where there 
 are no "dark deeds or strange," and lovely formal 
 gardens, of themselves a delight to the eye, are thrust 
 upon attention to the complete distraction of interest 
 in the play and its characters. 
 
 If an author feels that his inventive resources would 
 not stand the strain of devising a new effect, the older 
 arts may lend a small fraction of what has accumulated 
 during the past twenty centuries. An empty stage 
 may be shown when the curtain rises with a view to 
 causing a hush of expectation in the audience. Then 
 the scope may be enlarged and a scene revealed which 
 suggests the story's mood. Or a symbol may be ex- 
 hibited, or some mechanical accessory on which events 
 depend. A little glamour, a suggestion of mystery, a 
 stretch of fair country, some keynote to the composi- 
 tion, may start the imagination of an audience before 
 the play begins. 
 
 There is a sad note at the beginning. A fond girl 
 is parting from the man she loves. She will linger 
 after he has gone, her heart aching as she contemplates 
 the scene, for a shadow has fallen on her most cherished 
 hopes and plans. The slanting sunlight is painting 
 dark shadows on the hills, shadows that deepen until 
 the whole world seems dark. A day comes when she 
 
 119 
 
120 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 receives notice that the absent one is to return. She 
 rises and opens a window. She looks out on a scene so 
 bathed in early sunshine that every flowering plant is 
 tipped with gold the whole world is radiant. 
 
 The story opens with a view of flowers. While at- 
 tention is confined to a study of their beauty there is 
 no other movement than theirs. When attention has 
 given place to curiosity a butterfly is seen, drifting 
 this way and that, impelled by every vagrant breeze. 
 It vanishes and a light-hearted girl appears. She stops 
 here and there, impelled by every shifting caprice in 
 her nature. She dances off scene, and no other char- 
 acterization is needed. We know what to expect of 
 her in the events that follow. 
 
 Ah! Here is a close-up of a splendid spider on his 
 intricate and well-constructed web! Carnivorous and 
 highly predatory, he can afford to wait in his Wall 
 Street office until the foolish come along and speculate 
 on a margin. He does not have to hunt his victims 
 they hunt him. The spider fades out as one of the 
 characters seated at his desk fades in, and we need no 
 other introduction. 
 
 It is through symbols that this new art often 
 gathers its strength. It may appeal to intelligence 
 through its representations of thought and reach that 
 intelligence the more directly through an excited imag- 
 ination, through arousing the sympathies, through the 
 magic of suggestion. To stir soul appreciation one 
 must have soul appreciation and ingenuity enough to 
 contrive means of communicating such appreciation 
 to others. 
 
 The story is of a man who conceives the idea of 
 curing all the ills of the world through laughter. The 
 ordinary method is to explain his plans by means of 
 screen imprint, but there is a method quite as effective 
 without words, and therefore more in accord with story 
 visualization. By double exposure the Spirit of Joy 
 
PICTURE INSPIRATION 121 
 
 visits him, perhaps a pretty little girl who laughs be- 
 cause she cannot help it. He feels brightened by her 
 spiritual presence, but his nature is sunny, and he 
 ascribes his sense of pleasure to what is within him. 
 
 Now the little Spirit of Joy leads him away by invisi- 
 ble influences to where a group of discharged work- 
 men are growing bitter over a strike that has failed. 
 The Superintendent makes overtures, but they glower 
 at him with suspicion and hatred. The Spirit of Joy 
 leaves the main figure of the story and draws near 
 the Superintendent. He is worried over the situation, 
 but the near presence of Little Joy, though she cannot 
 be seen, has an effect on him. He bows his head in 
 amused reminiscence, then he raises it and tells a funny 
 story. One by one the angry faces around him soften ; 
 there is a snicker here, a giggle there, and then a burst 
 of laughter. The day is won. 
 
 Through other, similar adventures the Spirit of Joy 
 is seen leading the one who is to be an exponent of 
 cheer and encouragement. He sees that people take 
 their small woes too seriously, only forgetting them 
 when some greater sorrow puts in an appearance. 
 While the Spirit of Joy is gradually taking possession 
 of his mind there is inspiration in the scenes which form 
 no part of the main action. It is seen that poverty is the 
 arch-enemy of man, depriving him of opportunity, 
 souring his disposition, impelling him to be guided by 
 those primitive impulses which lead to demoralization 
 and crime. 
 
 Not only is there a distinct purpose enforced by 
 effects not demanded by the main line of action, but 
 that purpose is in harmony with the main one and well- 
 calculated to strengthen it, and by such methods effects 
 can be produced which might be resented if less 
 subtle no audience wants a preachment, but any 
 audience will stand for what it is permitted to interpret 
 on its own sweet account. 
 
122 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 The story is that of a husband whose heart is bound 
 up in a wife who has enriched and beautified his other- 
 wise dull existence. Suddenly this better half of him, 
 this very essence of his being, is swept away into the 
 unknown. He is completely prostrated by the blow. 
 All his hopes of the future are blighted. He wanders 
 about his home, only to burst into tears at the sight 
 of what he and his loved one had built together. He 
 yields to despair and starts on some form of self-in- 
 dulgence which would have formerly been repugnant 
 to him. In the midst of his debasement he takes out 
 his watch and sees her picture pasted there her eyes 
 seem to be filled with tender reproach. 
 
 By a form of suggestion, one leading from the face 
 in the watch, he can feel her near presence it can be 
 shown as a spiritual one. He is led to a window and 
 given a view of some pitiful creature whose misery he 
 could relieve, or he is brought into new relation with 
 the life all about him, which he could not see in the 
 midst of his selfish happiness. Through suffering his 
 whole soul is refined until he glimpses some great 
 divine purpose in which he must play his little part 
 courageously to the end. It is from these neglected 
 spiritual influences that the audience draws its finest 
 inspiration. 
 
A WORKING SCENARIO 
 
 For purposes of illustration only the body of the story is 
 here given, the enumeration of characters and costumes being 
 omitted: 
 
 President Shallenberger of the Arrow Film 
 Corporation, producer of the "Who's Guilty?" 
 series, writes to Mr. Harrison : 
 
 "The scenario 'Beyond Recall' is a model of 
 construction, thorough and complete in every de- 
 tail, and it tells a story of great power. I fully 
 realized that when I saw it on the screen, and I 
 have confirmation in its MAKING A RECORD 
 as one of the finest two-reelers ever released. We 
 cannot get too many of this kind, so when you 
 have any plots anywhere equal to this let us have 
 them." 
 
 BEYOND RECALL 
 
 Two Reel Scenario 
 
 By Louis Reeves Harrison 
 
 Produced by the Arrow Film Corporation for the Pathe 
 "Who's Guilty?" Series 
 
 CAST OF CHARACTERS 
 
 Edwin Martel (lead), about 28. In hard luck financially; 
 honest, well-intentioned and eager to get on, but tempo- 
 rarily discouraged. 
 
 John Leonard, his friend, 30. Prosperous, independent in 
 thought and habit, and of generous, helpful nature. 
 
 District Attorney, 35. Energetic and ambitious. 
 
 Margaret (lead), 25. Ambitious to show what a woman can 
 do in public life. Somewhat capricious but of high prin- 
 ciples. Capable of strong emotion, but ordinarily cool and 
 self-possessed. 
 
 123 
 
124 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 Elsie, 24. Emotional, oversensitive, mercurial type; given to 
 extremes of thought and action, and to sudden impulse. 
 Mrs. Wiggs, 50. Character. 
 Policeman O'Brien. 
 New Year's Eve Revelers. 
 Judge, jury and court attendants. 
 Prison attendants. 
 Newsboy. 
 Taxicab driver. 
 Servants. 
 Waiters. 
 Crowds. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 New Year's Eve. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 From a poor man's chance, a woman's caprice and a lawyer's 
 
 conscience the devil makes his favorite salad. 
 Note: Make this in bright letters which appear one by one. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM, that of Margaret. Servant ushers 
 in Leonard and Martel, the former prosperous and in trav- 
 eling suit, the latter in plain business suit not recently 
 pressed. He is ill at ease and shows dependence on Leon- 
 ard. The two men are slightly separated when Margaret en- 
 ters and greets Leonard with gracious courtesy. She barely 
 nods to Martel, and this slight is so significant that he turns 
 away nervously to look at the pictures or mural decorations, 
 while Leonard scowls slightly and indicates Martel as if he 
 deserved more consideration. Margaret shows by her atti- 
 tude that the presence of Martel is distasteful to her. She 
 may even resent it and plainly indicate that he is de trop. 
 Leonard sighs as if he is accustomed to the whims of a ca- 
 pricious young lady and goes to Martel. He says privately 
 to Martel, "wait for me outside. I have something private 
 to say." Martel is entirely willing he seems glad to get 
 away. He motions rather awkwardly that he will wait be- 
 fore the door, bows to Margaret and exits. Leonard turns 
 to Margaret and says, 
 CUT to Scene 4 
 
A WORKING SCENARIO 125 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "You have changed your opinion of Mattel because he is 
 poor, but I may take him with me to South America to- 
 morrow. I find that I shall have to be absent for sev- 
 eral months out of touch with civilization." 
 
 SCENE 5. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM, same as Scene 3, Leonard ad- 
 dressing Margaret. She is only slightly surprised, her mind 
 being occupied with what she has to say to him. He is not 
 particularly pleased over having to respond to her whim 
 about Martel he sees that she is capricious and he assumes 
 an air of dignity. It may be said that all this does not get 
 over, but it is the most fascinating part of a screen story. 
 He is hurt that she shows so little interest and is inclined to 
 reproach her, but she tosses her head with an air of inde- 
 pendence. She has plans of her own. He gazes at her 
 sternly while she explains them. With a great deal of pride 
 she says, 
 CUT to Scene 6 
 
 SCENE 6. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "The District Attorney appreciates my ability he has made 
 me his secretary and I propose to show what a woman 
 can do when she is given a fair chance." 
 
 CUT to Scene 7 
 
 SCENE 7. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM, same as Scene 5, Margaret address- 
 ing Leonard. He listens with a scowl of displeasure and 
 makes a gesture as if to say "this is the limit," but he im- 
 poses a restraint upon himself and addresses her seriously. 
 She merely shrugs her shoulders they are drifting apart 
 and refuses to give him the attention he deserves. He says 
 to her with bitter significance, 
 CUT to Scene 8 
 
 SCENE 8. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "You will simply become the instrument of a social system 
 so merciless that it is behind the times. Do not undertake 
 that work, Margaret It is not suited to a woman." 
 
 CUT to Scene 9 
 
126 SCREENCRAFT* 
 
 SCENE 9. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM, same as Scene 7, Leonard speak- 
 ing. Margaret is indignant. "I have a right," she claims, 
 "to do as I please." He denies that she has any right to do 
 anything that she pleases, and a bitter quarrel results in her 
 pulling off an engagement ring and throwing it at his feet. 
 He is so disgusted over what he deems to be her folly that 
 he does not beg her to retract. He stands before her in a 
 determined sort of way and says, 
 CUT to Scene 10 
 
 SCENE 10. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "You may not hear from me for many long months, but I 
 shall come back to see if you have recovered your 
 senses." 
 
 CUT to Scene 11 
 
 SCENE 11. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM, same as Scene 9, Leonard speak- 
 ing. Both show that they feel a deep sense of personal in- 
 jury. Her wounded pride makes her indifferent. She ex- 
 hibits no response when he makes a slight movement toward 
 reconciliation. Her lips curl in disdain at the thought. He 
 straightens up proudly, hesitates a little, then he bows stiff- 
 ly and leaves the room. Now show a little of her capricious 
 character. The instant he is gone she has an impulse to re- 
 call him she even smiles then she checks herself with a 
 grieved air that is almost childish. "He will be sorry," 
 she consoles herself. Then she feels a little heart pain he 
 has always been a good fellow. She picks up the ring he 
 disregarded and gazes at it wistfully. Then in response to 
 another impulse she throws it after him savagely. She sits 
 down with an air of defiance, but she succumbs to a more 
 tender emotion and buries her face in her arms. 
 CUT to Scene 12 
 
 SCENE 12. 
 
 BEFORE MARGARET'S HOUSE, exterior. There may 
 be a taxi in evidence, with the trunks of Leonard in it, but 
 this is optional. Martel is pacing up and down when Leon- 
 ard comes out of house and joins him. He asks Martel to go 
 with him. Martel a little embarrassed he has a call to make 
 on his own account. Leonard asks him if he is short of 
 ready money. Martel says he has a little. Leonard presses 
 a bill upon him and says, 
 CUT to Scene 13 
 
A WORKING SCENARIO 127 
 
 SCENE 13. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "If you are free to leave for an indefinite period, meet me at 
 
 Dorley's about eleven-thirty prepared for the trip." 
 CUT to Scene 14 
 
 SCENE 14. 
 
 BEFORE MARGARET'S HOUSE, exterior, same as 
 Scene 12, Leonard addressing Martel. Martel is deeply 
 grateful, and he shows that he is on good terms with Leon- 
 ard by putting his hand on the latter's shoulder when they 
 part. Martel goes one way, and Leonard either walks the 
 other, or enters the cab. It should be remembered that this 
 scene is to be tinted for night. 
 CUT to Scene 15. 
 
 SCENE 15. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM. Margaret talking to servant, who 
 has just brought in Margaret's wrap and hat. Margaret tells 
 servant to lay them aside. Servant exits, and Margaret goes 
 to mirror. 
 CUT to Scene 16 
 
 SCENE 16. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 The District Attorney. 
 CUT to Scene 17 
 
 SCENE 17. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM. Same as Scene 15. Margaret is 
 turning from mirror, giving herself a final adjustment; she 
 advances smiling to greet the District Attorney, who enters. 
 He says, "You are looking lovelier than ever to-night." She 
 laughs in matter-of-fact way. She asks him to be seated. 
 "It's too early to go out yet," she remarks, pointing to the 
 clock. "Let's have a little chat first." They seat themselves. 
 CUT to Scene 18 
 
 SCENE 18. 
 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 Another marriage engagement broken. 
 
 CUT to Scene 19 
 
 SCENE 19. 
 
 SITTING ROOM. That of Elsie. Two doors, one to hall 
 and one to dining room. Large sofa and fancy pillows. 
 
128 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 Small table with ornate clock. Unframed photos tacked on 
 walls. Books and magazines on sofa and floor. Elsie in her 
 best dress is seated on sofa putting a few touches to her 
 make-up. Mrs. Wiggs, janitress, has placed a salad on the 
 small table, and now stands holding the tray on which she 
 brought it, while regarding Elsie. The latter realizes why 
 Mrs. Wiggs is waiting; takes a large roll of money from her 
 bosom, peels off a bill and hands it to Wiggs. The latter 
 is very grateful, obsequious, then leaves by the hall door. 
 CUT to Scene 20 
 
 SCENE 20. 
 
 HALL. Outside Elsie's sitting room. Show a door at end 
 of hall and a branch to right or left. The door leads to 
 where Wiggs lives; the branch to the street. Wiggs starts 
 from door of Elsie's apartment in the foreground, the money 
 in her hand, and turns her back on camera to face her own 
 door. She stoops over and places money in her stocking, 
 then she goes to her door, opens and enters. She is about 
 to close the door when Martel appears with a suitcase from 
 branch hall and goes to Elsie's door. Mrs. Wiggs opens 
 enough to see him. She makes a wry face at him and dis- 
 appears. 
 CUT to Scene 21 
 
 SCENE 21. 
 
 SITTING ROOM. Elsie discovered at door when Martel 
 enters. He embraces her perfunctorily, while she exhibits 
 alarm on seeing the suitcase and looks at him questioning 
 him with her eyes. He sits down on sofa and buries his face 
 in his hands, while she puts suitcase one side. She regards 
 him pityingly and begs him to tell her what is the matter. 
 He shakes his head in silence he does not want to say. She 
 tries to cheer him. She says brightly, 
 CUT to Scene 22 
 
 SCENE 22. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "If it is only money, I have a little in the savings bank. 
 
 Please use that if you need it." 
 CUT to Scene 23 
 
 SCENE 23. 
 
 SITTING ROOM, same as Scene 21, Elsie speaking and 
 offering aid. Martel shakes his head sullenly, then he rises 
 and paces the floor, in doubt as to how he may break the 
 news of his approaching departure. She regards him anx- 
 
A WORKING SCENARIO 129 
 
 iously, almost timidly, then she tries to smile as she goes to 
 the table and arranges two chairs. "See what a nice salad!" 
 she says to him. She tries to persuade him to sit down, but 
 he moves away from her. He turns suddenly in desperation 
 and says, 
 CUT to Scene 24 
 
 SCENE 24. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "I am at the end of my resources, and the only chance I 
 have is to go to South America with an old friend. I 
 can't say when we will return, maybe not for years." 
 
 CUT to Scene 25 
 
 SCENE 25. 
 
 SITTING ROOM, same as Scene 23, Martel speaking, 
 Elsie listening for an instant like one stupefied. The full 
 force of such an unexpected announcement would not reach 
 her comprehension at once. She looks around her in be- 
 wilderment. "Going away," she repeats to herself as if to 
 make sure that she hears aright. "Going away!" She tries 
 to smile. "You are only joking," she says. "Please don't 
 tease me like that." But her hands work nervously as she 
 sees no responsive smile on his face. "I mean it," he says 
 with determination. Elsie looks around her helplessly. 
 "What has she been living for, hoping for, all this time?" 
 She turns with sudden intensity and clasps her hands as if 
 she would pray to him, but he is unmoved. She bows her 
 head in supreme dejection. He regards her with pity, but 
 with no weakening of purpose. 
 CUT to Scene 26 
 
 SCENE 26. 
 
 HALL. Wiggs approaching Elsie's door from her own. 
 Wiggs is timorous about being caught eavesdropping. She 
 steals softly to door and listens. 
 CUT to Scene 27 
 
 SCENE 27. 
 
 SITTING ROOM, same as Scene 25, Martel regarding 
 Elsie with pity, but with settled purpose, she bowed in su- 
 preme dejection. She raises her head when he moves to- 
 ward suitcase and is roused to desperation. She interposes 
 and cries "You shall not." Her face is now tear-stained, but 
 she exhibits strength in opposing him. She is driven to des- 
 peration by his new attitude, and she begins to be reckless 
 of consequences, a desperation which reaches its climax later 
 
130 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 on, but which should be shown now in the strength she ex- 
 erts. In the struggle she loses her balance and falls. She 
 half rises and cries out, 
 CUT to Scene 28 
 
 SCENE 28. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "Don't! Don't! You are killing me!" 
 CUT to Scene 29 
 
 SCENE 29. 
 
 SITTING ROOM, same as Scene 27, Elsie crying out to 
 Martel, who stands above her. This is just a flash to show 
 her uttering the words "You are killing me," loud enough to 
 be heard by one listening, a mere flash. 
 CUT to Scene 30 
 
 SCENE 30. 
 
 HALL. Wiggs listening at door, quivers as if struck and 
 recoils. Her eyes are wide open with terror. She starts 
 back as if going to her own room, but her curiosity is strong- 
 er than her fear at this moment. She listens. 
 CUT to Scene 31 
 
 SCENE 31. 
 
 SITTING ROOM, same as Scene 29, Elsie on floor. Mar- 
 tel raises her and argues in low tones. "Now, now, be rea- 
 sonable." She is no longer reasonable. She is infuriated. 
 She flings herself upon the suitcase and throws it open. She 
 starts to scatter its contents and he to interfere, when she 
 finds a revolver. There is a look of triumph on her face 
 when she gets possession of the weapon, but it is shortlived. 
 She has risen with the pistol in hand when he seizes her 
 wrists and wrenches it from her. By this time she is almost 
 hysterical. She pats her breast significantly and dares him to 
 shoot her. Loudly she cries. 
 CUT to Scene 32 
 
 SCENE 32. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "Shoot me! What do I care? I have nothing to live for!" 
 CUT to Scene 33 
 
 SCENE 33. 
 
 SITTING ROOM, same as Scene 31, Elsie daring Martel 
 to shoot her. She is uttering the words, "I have nothing to 
 live for." A mere flash. 
 CUT to Scene 34 
 
A WORKING SCENARIO 131 
 
 SCENE 34. 
 
 HALL. Wiggs has heard Elsie and fears that murder is 
 to be committed. She hurries out by the exit to street. 
 CUT to Scene 35 
 
 SCENE 35. 
 
 STREET CORNER. Policeman O'Brien in evidence when 
 Wiggs comes running up to him and declares excitedly that 
 there is a murder to be committed in her house. O'Brien tells 
 her to go on about her business. Wiggs sticks to it and 
 argues with O'Brien. 
 CUT to Scene 36 
 
 SCENE 36. 
 
 SITTING ROOM. Martel lays revolver on mantel and at- 
 tempts to bring Elsie to reason. She is beyond that kind 
 of reasoning. She has but one thought in her mind. He 
 shall not go. She is too quick for him when he attempts to 
 pick up his suitcase. She winds her hand and arm in the 
 handle so that he cannot get it^without severely hurting her. 
 He draws back from the struggle, flushed and annoyed. He 
 notices the little clock on the table. Show the little clock in 
 a close-up it is twenty-five minutes past eleven. Martel 
 yields. A struggle for the case now means dangerous de- 
 lay. He makes an angry gesture of the hand and suddenly 
 exits. Elsie rises in high excitement and watches the door, 
 half-expecting that he will return. 
 CUT to Scene 37 
 
 SCENE 37. 
 
 HALL. Martel rushing through hall without suitcase. He 
 hesitates just an instant at the branch of the hallway and 
 looks back, then hurries on. 
 CUT to Scene 38 
 
 SCENE 38. 
 
 SITTING ROOM. Elsie falling to floor in dead faint. 
 CUT to Scene 39 
 
 SCENE 39. 
 
 HALL. Wiggs has persuaded O'Brien to enter the hall. 
 He reluctantly follows her to Elsie's door. He listens 
 there is naught but silence he has no right to enter he 
 turns away with a bored expression he has other work to 
 do. He passes out by exit to street, and Wiggs goes to her 
 room. 
 CUT to Scene 40 
 
132 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 SCENE 40. 
 
 STUDIO STREET. The street is full of revelers, blowing 
 horns, etc. Martel rushes through. As he does so, pretty 
 girls jostle him, blow their horns in his face, and try to take 
 him by the arm. He pushes all roughly out of the way as 
 he rushes along. They laugh and call after him. 
 CUT to Scene 41 
 
 SCENE 41. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM. District Attorney and Margaret 
 preparing to exit. They are rising and Margaret hands her 
 cloak to the District Attorney to place about her shoulders. 
 He does so and then suddenly remembers a couple of horns 
 which he has brought with him, and takes them from his 
 overcoat pocket. Margaret laughs and tries one as they leave, 
 CUT to Scene 42 
 
 SCENE 42. 
 
 DORLEY'S. It may be a dancing cabaret for a large 
 ensemble, according to the director's judgment. New Year's 
 decorations and boisterous crowd in evidence, people too 
 much occupied with themselves to notice the principals of 
 this story. Leonard on at opening of scene, and Martel 
 appears shortly after in a hurry with apologies for being 
 late.* The two men are unknown to the revelers and the 
 revelers to them. They take seats at a table after a cordial 
 greeting and order refreshments. 
 CUT to Scene 43 
 
 SCENE 43. 
 
 SITTING ROOM. Elsie rising pale and weak. Suddenly 
 recollecting what has happened, she clutches at her head 
 with one hand, her face assuming a wild, agonized expres- 
 sion, and her other hand on her breast which heaves with 
 emotion. Then with a quick movement, she throws herself 
 on the sofa, clutching the suitcase in her arms, and burying 
 her face in Martel's things, sobbing in short, quick gasps at 
 intervals. 
 CUT to Scene 44 
 
 SCENE 44. 
 
 STUDIO STREET. O'Brien discovered at his station in 
 the foreground. He stands swinging his stick and looking at 
 
 *As Martel approaches, Leonard draws watch from pocket 
 and looks at it, registering that Martel is late. Close-up of 
 watch showing time 11:30. 
 
A WORKING SCENARIO 133 
 
 the revelers. Margaret and District Attorney come into 
 scene on foot, or alight from an automobile. O'Brien salutes 
 the District Attorney. It is sufficient to show that these 
 three are closely grouped, all engaged in watching the rev- 
 elers. 
 CUT to Scene 45 
 
 SCENE 45. 
 
 SITTING ROOM. Same as Scene 43. Elsie prostrate on 
 sofa with head on suitcase, and arms about it. She has 
 stopped sobbing and raises herself slowly to a sitting pos- 
 ture, looks at suitcase. She takes things out of it one by 
 one and kisses each with an occasional stifled sob as though 
 her grief had almost spent itself. She then rises and turns 
 to revolver, and is about to pick it up, when she remembers 
 her money, takes it from her bosom, puts it in an envelope 
 and exits to hall. 
 CUT to Scene 46 
 
 SCENE 46. 
 
 HALL. Show Elsie with envelope in one hand closing the 
 door behind her with the other. She goes to Wiggs' door 
 and knocks. Wiggs comes to the door winding her alarm 
 clock. She stops in the midst of winding it to take the en- 
 velope handed her by Elsie who says, 
 CUT to Scene 47 
 
 SCENE 47. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "Keep this for me." 
 CUT to Scene 48 
 
 SCENE 48. 
 
 HALL. Elsie speaking, after which she lays her fingers on 
 her lips. Wiggs looks at envelope curiously, as Elsie enters 
 her own door and closes it, after which Wiggs continues 
 more slowly winding the clock. She glances at the face of 
 the clock. Show a close-up of clock with hands pointing a 
 quarter of twelve. She looks with perplexed expression to- 
 ward Elsie's door and listens. She thinks Martel is still there. 
 CUT to Scene 49 
 
 SCENE 49. 
 
 SITTING ROOM. Elsie, pale and tear-stained, is standing 
 near the door which she has just closed. She then staggers 
 to table, looks at revolver; with effort and an attempt to be 
 determined she picks up revolver, and drops it again, look- 
 ing from her hand which she keeps still in the same posi- 
 
134 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 tion as when she dropped the revolver, to revolver with ex- 
 pression of terror, and a sudden revulsion of feeling. "I 
 can't! I can't" she exclaims, wringing her hands. She tries 
 to steel herself against her own weakness, straightening up 
 and becoming momentarily calm. She turns to sofa and her 
 eyes fall on Martel's clothes. As she starts replacing them in 
 the suitcase again she commences sobbing as before, her 
 whole body becomes convulsed and trembles with her sobs. 
 In a moment of supreme despair she staggers to the table, 
 picks up the revolver and presses the muzzle against her 
 heart. 
 
 Note Have Elsie turn out the light so that just the flash 
 of the shot can be seen in the dark. 
 CUT to Scene 50 
 
 SCENE 50. 
 
 HALL. Wiggs standing near Elsie's door. She is looking 
 at the door curiously, has head twisted on one side so as to 
 be able to hear better, but jumps back almost the same in- 
 stant, throwing up her hands in horror and rushing to her 
 own door. There she stands trembling with hand on the 
 knob looking back at Elsie's door. As no one comes from 
 the door it finally occurs to Wiggs that she should notify 
 the police, and she dashes out of passageway. 
 CUT to Scene 51 
 
 SCENE 51. 
 
 STUDIO STREET. Just a flash to show where the char- 
 acters are at this time. Revelry at its height. 
 CUT to Scene 52 
 
 SCENE 52. 
 
 DORLEY'S. Leonard and Martel toasting each other.* 
 Revelry at its height. In expression of his good will, Leon- 
 ard takes out money and gives several bills to Martel. The 
 latter is jubilant. He is now sure that he is to go with Leon- 
 ard. They prepare to go, but Martel is to go first and alone. 
 Before leaving he says, 
 
 *Leonard looks at his watch, close-up of watch showing 
 hour is 12 o'clock. 
 CUT to Scene 53 
 
 SCENE 53. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "I must get my suitcase. Then I will join you at the dock." 
 Note This may be followed by a slice of Scene 52, show- 
 ing in a flash that the men part. 
 CUT to Scene 54 
 
A WORKING SCENARIO 135 
 
 SCENE 54. 
 
 STUDIO STREET. Revelry of the maddest sort 
 O'Brien, Margaret and District Attorney together when 
 Wiggs rushes to them gesticulating violently. O'Brien finds 
 it difficult to hear what she says, so great is the din, but the 
 others become interested, Margaret taking pity on the ex- 
 cited woman. She begs District Attorney and Policeman to 
 listen. < v 
 
 CUT to Scene 55 
 
 SCENE 55. 
 
 HALL. Martel comes along, his expression brighter. He 
 is smiling to himself, as much as to say, "I'll straighten things 
 out so that she won't mind so much." He knocks at Elsie's 
 door with one hand on the knob. 
 CUT to Scene 56 
 
 SCENE 56. 
 
 SITTING ROOM. Elsie is lying dead or dying, on the 
 floor, the revolver near her hand. Martel enters with a 
 smile on his face he has a new plan in mind, and he starts 
 toward the suitcase, but halts in alarm on seeing Elsie. He 
 kneels down beside her in terrible agitation. He attempts 
 to stop the flow of blood from a wound in her breast. 
 Whether she is dead or dying he does not know at this mo- 
 ment of discovery. He calls her name frantically. 
 
 Note Room is dark when Martel enters. He turns on 
 lights. 
 CUT to Scene 57 
 
 SCENE 57. 
 
 STUDIO STREET. Wiggs has convinced O'Brien that 
 something must be wrong, and he is leaving with her. 
 Wiggs is still chattering excitedly. Margaret laying her 
 hand on the District Attorney's arm says, "Let us go and 
 see what the matter is." They follow. 
 CUT to Scene 58 
 
 SCENE 58. 
 
 SITTING ROOM, same as Scene 56. Martel kneeling by 
 Elsie and calling her name while trying to stop flow of 
 blood from her wound. He rises in tremendous agitation. 
 On one hand is the necessity of joining Leonard at the dock. 
 On the other a possibility that Elsie may not have expired. 
 (It sometimes takes an expert to pronounce upon life and 
 death in such cases, and this man is far from being an ex- 
 pert, besides being in a bewildered state of mind.) In his 
 
136 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 wavering he picks up the weapon and lays it on the table. 
 He decides. He must go for help. He starts toward door. 
 His leaving case behind indicates his purpose, but, if it is not 
 clear enough, an imprint can be interposed, though it is a 
 poor time for explanatory imprints in the midst of a tragic 
 scene. He is starting for the door on a mission which 
 should be obvious, as he disregards the suitcase. 
 CUT to Scene 59 
 
 SCENE 59. 
 
 HALL. Must be timed carefully. Just as Martel is leav- 
 ing the door of Elsie's room, Wiggs and O'Brien appear at 
 the branch passage followed by the District Attorney and 
 Margaret. Martel at sight of them hesitates, turns back 
 and rushes toward Elsie's door, O'Brien running swiftly 
 after him. 
 CUT to Scene 60 
 
 SCENE 60. 
 
 SITTING ROOM. Martel, anxious to escape, is overpow- 
 ered in a struggle with O'Brien. This is necessary to more 
 deeply incriminate him. The distracted man may have only 
 thought of his original purpose, but the main idea is to 
 show his attempt to escape. Margaret and District Attorney 
 go to the body of Elsie. Margaret looks on with profound 
 pity while District Attorney makes an examination. This 
 action might be carried on in conjunction with the hand- 
 cuffing of Martel by the policeman. District Attorney rises 
 and pronounces Elsie dead. Margaret nearly overcome. 
 Policeman secures the pistol. Margaret rouses from indig- 
 nation when District Attorney names Martel as the mur- 
 derer, Wiggs sustaining the denunciation. Margaret says 
 to Martel, "You deserve the worst the law can give you." 
 Martel makes but a faint protest. A man in his condition 
 might resist, but he is surrounded by those who believe 
 him guilty, and so overcome by the swift whirl of events 
 that he would not be at his best. The innocent often act 
 more guilty than do hardened criminals who have crimes 
 to conceal and put up a front. Martel is led away under 
 arrest. Margaret, after a pitying glance at Elsie is induced 
 to leave by the District Attorney. This scene may be ended 
 at the discretion of the director. 
 CUT to Scene 61 
 
 SCENE 61. 
 
 THE DOCKS. This scene is at one o'clock in the morn- 
 ing. Tint night. Leonard has been waiting a long time. 
 
A WORKING SCENARIO 137 
 
 He glances at his watch, shrugs his shoulders, yawns and 
 concludes that Martel has given up the trip. He glances 
 around and leaves for the boat. 
 CUT to Scene 62 
 
 SCENE 62. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "January Second." 
 CUT to Scene 63 
 
 SCENE 63. 
 
 DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE. District Attorney 
 and Margaret concluding an examination of Wiggs and 
 O'Brien. Margaret is especially keen in suggesting, or ask- 
 ing, questions. Show that she is a factor in the examina- 
 tion. She, Wiggs and District Attorney are in a change 
 of dress. District Attorney concludes the examination and 
 directs attendant to usher the witnesses from room. When 
 they have gone, he turns to Margaret with professional tri- 
 umph and says, 
 CUT to Scene 64 
 
 SCENE 64. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "He will attempt to prove an alibi that is the usual thing 
 but our evidence is so overwhelming that we should 
 make this a record-breaking case." 
 
 CUT to Scene 65 
 
 SCENE 65. 
 
 DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, same as Scene 63. 
 District Attorney speaking. Margaret shares his enthusi- 
 asm, but does not notice that it greatly concerns her. She 
 turns to her work of arranging the papers with enthusiasm, 
 while he regards her with admiration. Her interest is large- 
 ly in her work. His interest is in making an impression 
 on her. 
 CUT to Scene 66 
 
 SCENE 66. 
 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 After a lame defense, Martel is convicted of murder in the 
 
 first degree. 
 CUT to Scene 67 
 
 SCENE 67. 
 
 COURT ROOM, or such a portion as will show the prin- 
 cipals. Foreman announces verdict. Show a small scope, 
 
138 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 as small as will include Mattel and Margaret. She is look- 
 ing at him with an air of virtuous indignation, when he 
 turns and looks at her. Show a very small scope, a close- 
 up of Martel alone. His face has a new dignity, a noble 
 sense of right, and he stares at camera (this is as she sees 
 hun) with reproach akin to indignation. Show her in the 
 same kind of close-up, first staring with indignation, then 
 uneasy, then highly nervous, then unable to withstand his 
 gaze. Now give the sentence in large scope and subse- 
 quent congratulations for the District Attorney' if this be 
 deemed of value. The main thing is to bring out that the 
 convicted man's attitude has aroused uncertainty in the 
 mind of Margaret. Her attitude must be grave thereafter. 
 CUT to Scene 68 
 
 SCENE 68. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 A Last Appeal. 
 CUT to Scene 69 
 
 SCENE 69. 
 
 DEATH HOUSE CELL. Martel writing on a block of 
 paper with a pencil. He is calm and dignified. He folds 
 his communication, addresses it and hands it to Attendant. 
 He paces the floor when alone, not with agitation, but in 
 thought. Then he kneels down and RAISES his face in a 
 prayer to his Maker, a face on which there is no sign of 
 fear. 
 CUT to Scene 70 
 
 SCENE 70. 
 
 DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE. District Attorney 
 discovered at his desk, facing camera, in a new suit. He 
 is feeling rather fine, on the way to larger success, when 
 Margaret enters in a change of costume. She has an open 
 letter in her hand and shows it to District Attorney, with 
 agitation. He reads the letter. 
 CUT to Scene 71 
 
 SCENE 71. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 Part of letter in Mattel's writing. 
 
 "Only Leonard knows that I am innocent. He was with 
 me from 11:30 until after midnight. Why not give me 
 a chance by waiting until he comes back?" 
 CUT to Scene 72 
 
A WORKING SCENARIO 139 
 
 SCENE 72. 
 
 DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, same as Scene 70. 
 District Attorney reading. Margaret watches him with high 
 anxiety, but he only smiles contemptuously. The evidence 
 was overwhelming; the appeal is merely one to gain time. 
 She is not sure about that. She makes a brave little ar- 
 gument to defer execution, but he is not impressed. He 
 explains to her with an air that is slightly patronizing she 
 is too inexperienced saying, 
 CUT to Scene 73 
 
 SCENE 73. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "I never yet convicted a man who did not claim that he 
 was innocent. I can do nothing now the highest courts 
 have upheld the conviction," 
 
 CUT to Scene 74 
 
 SCENE 74. 
 
 DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, same as Scene 72, 
 District Attorney speaking. Whether he rises like a gen- 
 tleman, or remains in his chair, his air is that of a man fully 
 conscious of his superiority to the capricious girl. For an 
 instant she is impressed by his attitude it is almost con- 
 vincing, but her natural compassion asserts itself. She 
 pleads. He turns cold it is impossible. Now there is a 
 sudden conversion. She bursts into a fury and expresses 
 her disgust for the office and all that pertains to it. He is 
 at first amused and then offended. She draws a line. "I 
 am through," she asserts. He bows. "I accept your resig- 
 nation." She turns her back on him and leaves the room. 
 He sits down to work with an amused expression on his 
 face it is all in a lifetime. 
 CUT to Scene 75 
 
 SCENE 75. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 And then, one day 
 CUT to Scene 76 
 
 SCENE 76. 
 
 DEATH HOUSE CELL. Martel waiting when his cell 
 door opens, and the Warden enters to tell him that the last 
 moment has come. Martel rises to his greatest height, his 
 chest expanded and points on high. "There is One," he 
 says bravely, "Who knows I am innocent." He clasps one 
 
140 SCREENCRAFT 
 
 hand on his heart, glances up with a breathed prayer and 
 submits to his fate, passing out in resignation. 
 CUT to Scene 77 
 
 SCENE 77. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 Leonard Returns After a Period of Several Months. 
 CUT to Scene 78 
 
 SCENE 78. 
 
 THE DOCKS. Leonard coming out of dock entrance 
 among other passengers. He carries a suitcase. He gives 
 a taxicab driver his suitcase, and calling a newsboy, buys 
 paper and is startled by the headlines. His eyes open wide 
 as he reads 
 CUT to Scene 79 
 
 SCENE 79. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 Exhibit of Newspaper Headline. 
 
 EDWIN MARTEL PAYS PENALTY. 
 
 Convicted Murderer Dies in Chair Without Confession. 
 
 STRANGE CASE FULLY PROVED. 
 Murderer Claimed Alibi Through John Leonard Absent 
 
 on Voyage. 
 CUT to Scene 80 
 
 SCENE 80. 
 
 THE DOCKS. Show Leonard thinking after reading pa- 
 per. He makes a decision and gives chauffeur careful in- 
 structions. 
 CUT to Scene 81 
 
 SCENE 81. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM. Margaret enters in a condition 
 verging on collapse. She is pale and shows that she has 
 lost sleep. She has a book, and she makes an attempt to 
 read, but she seems to feel a haunting presence. She drops 
 the book and shudders. She rises and paces the floor ner- 
 vously, and she is so engaged when servant announces 
 Leonard. Before Margaret can recover her self-control, 
 while she is yet dazed by the announcement, Leonard pushes 
 in newspaper in hand. Servant exits. Margaret is tremb- 
 ling when Leonard points to the article and asks if she 
 participated in that conviction. She admits in terror that 
 she did, but explains that she tried her best to get a delay. 
 
A WORKING SCENARIO 141 
 
 She pulls Mattel's letter from her waist, or pocket, and ex- 
 tends it. Leonard glances at it. He scowls deeply and de- 
 nounces her. He says, 
 CUT to Scene 82 
 
 SCENE 82. 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "He was innocent, but delay was a question of costs, not of 
 
 justice, and he was a poor man." 
 
 Note Here is the whole theme in a nutshell. L. R. H. 
 CUT to Scene 83 
 
 SCENE 83. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM, same as Scene 81, Leonard scowl- 
 ing as he denounces Margaret. She recoils, her eyes open 
 wide with horror, then she shivers from head to feet, tot- 
 ters and falls, burying her face in her arms. He stands stern 
 and unrelenting, not even looking at her he is thinking of 
 Martel. Now show him in a close-up, with a background for 
 double exposure. He stands facing the camera without mo- 
 tion or emotion, his face set in hard lines- Then appears by 
 double exposure the figure of Martel, a compassionate ex- 
 pression on his face. He may lay one hand on Leonard's 
 shoulder. He points to where Margaret is supposed to be 
 lying and expostulates. "Don't be hard on her. She knew 
 not what she was doing." The hard expression on Leon- 
 ard's face relaxes, and he sighs. Martel vanishes. Now in 
 large scope, show Leonard looking down on Margaret with 
 more compassion. He says, 
 CUT to Scene 84 
 
 SCENE 84 
 Screen Imprint. 
 
 "After all, you were but the instrument of a social system 
 out of accord with our ideals, in that it rarely accords 
 full justice to the poor, who need it most." 
 
 CUT to Scene 85 
 
 SCENE 85. 
 
 RECEPTION ROOM, same as Scene 83, Leonard speak- 
 ing and regarding Margaret with compassion. 
 Dissolve into Who's Guilty? 
 
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 .'V. 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY