Harking back to other and stranger days is a pleasant-ability in this quickly changing world. No century has passed in review such tremendous events or seen such vast changes, mechanically or otherwise, the' present as Noel Coward demonstrated so graphically in his epic "Cavalcade." Yet, within the space of a Noel Coward lifetime which started Just before the turn of the present century one can look back in retrospect on relatively ancient times without the longevity of a Methuselah but with far more wonderment and amazement. And those times were not peopled with the pretty creatures of A. A. Milne and his Christopher Robin family of wondering boys and fabulous kings, queens and soldiers. With radio, cinema, the aeroplane all the products of a third of a century there is material enough on which to sit and ponder and marvel that it 4s not so long ago that these things did not exist. cee picture it could truly be said that Ihere was real life in the jungle with much closer approach to genuine adventure than the very realistic sound pictures of to-day.
The appeal of the travelling cinema theatre must have gone a little later when the public appetite Iwas whetted by Hollywood and, via the reconstructed old Theatre Royal which abandoned wicked Jack Dalton, his scoundrelly whip, innocent girls with babies cast out into the cold night, and the fat lady who jailed in by leading the singing of popular songs flashed on the screen during the interval, the industry, as lit has now become, has grown to ithe stage of luxurious palaces searching the four corners of the Jearth for the latest in equipment land decoration.
With the travelling cinema theatre went the fair too it Mr. J. B. Priestley is any judge. In his atest book, "English Journey," Mr. [Priestley went to the Nottingham JGoose Fair and his description is pathetic.
The interesting series of "Screen Souvenirs" which make their all too infrequent appearance at Shanghai theatres is a memory tickler, so to speak, productive of interesting retrospect. The quaint dresses of yesteryear, the crude make-up, the rapid and emphatic action of the actresses revealing a technique taken direct from the harrowing melodrama of the old Theatre Royal fare amusing and contrasting to the methods and products of to-day, but there are equally bizarre con trests applying to the early screening of these masterpieces which are now used as burlesques. Take one English town typical of many, when the first films arrived and' swept public imagination under the name of cinematograph, bioscope oF Kinema, all of which purists of pronunciation spent years investigating until the new amusement was reduced to its present designation of movies or talkies. The first films were screened in the old Drill Hall where the Volunteers paraded every Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Indeed, the patron had to walk down a corridor lined with bundles containing the red and blue tunics of this gallant army. The projection department was merely a tin-lined box. practically a death trap for the operator, and the screen was at the far end' of the hall where once Poole's panoramas showed the brilliance of Lord Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. An early effort was a very yellow and uneven account of one of Sam Langford's victories in the carly days of the heavyweight world. It was followed by a comedy, which Aickered and jumped across the screen, and left the permanent influence of nightmare on the mind of the young observer. It ws called "The Devil Drives" and showed how a locomotive driver was induced to drink on duty, and, overcome by the powers of demon rum, he ran the train off the track, into the river and down to the sea, supposed to be a comedy ending with a moral on the evils of drink and if memory, and several months of subsequent nightmare are good reminders, it must have been one of the best illustrations of delirium tremen available at that early age in the cinema industry.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.