Twenty Millions Weekly at "The Pictures"
"t is announced that Miss Constance and Miss Norma Talmadge, Miss Olive Thomas and Miss Dorothy Gish yesterday arrived at Southampton from New York. It is further an. nounced that Miss Marguerite Clark is also on her way to England."
Now the Superior Person to whom these names are unfamiliar may lift' an eyebrow and wonder whether these ladies represent a blue-stocking deputation or are the delegates of some American women's franchise association, an "Observer" correspondent writes. But such ignorance would in reality be unpardonable, for the names of these young women are known the world over to frequenters of the cinema, while in the United States they spell the True Romance for many millions. They are the bright. particular "stars" of the firmament of the film. They have twined themselves round the heart of American femininity as successfully as ever the late Ella Wheeler Wilcox stirred the emotions of our fair American cousins. They are even as beloved as that supersentimental-cum-pseudo-scientific autheress Gene Stratton Porter.
Nor are they very much less adored in this country. They will not, perhaps, receive the same rapturous ovation as was accorded to the one and only Mary Pickford. None the less, their welcome will be warm. And, as a matter of fact, not even the Superior Person has any right to be amused. These young women sway enormous masses of people. They stand for a great deal of what is good and clean and sweet in the heart of humanity. They do much to bring romance and pleasure, and even thought, into a somewhat war-weary and overwrought world. In almost countless thousands of cinema theatres, in many lands, they provide safety valves to millions of pent-up emotions and anodynes for smarting senses and troubled hearts.
That is why, at the moment, it is so essential that we in England, should take the industry a little more seriously. Apart from the fact that there always has been, and ever will be, money in romance, it is from' a national standpoint, most undesirable that the world should be flooded with an undiluted stream of purely American views and sentiment. The world, including the British Empire, is becoming Americanized] through the film. If we are not careful the producer at Los Angeles will presently rule the world.
And this is no mere casual statement. At the present time there are about 3,000 cinema, theatres in this country with an aggregate weekly attendance of 20,000,000
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.