Five years ago in an oracular mood, I ventured to prophesy that moving-picture entertainments would soon be listed with symphony concerts. Probably, at the time, I wore the mask of Cassandra and nobody believed me. Nevertheless, my sapient prognostications have been amply fulfilled. No great composer, to be sure, has yet constructed a score to fit the flash-backs and double exposures of Bebe Daniels, but that will come later. Indeed, I am willing to predict that, within the next ten years, Igor Stravinsky will set a Chaplin film to music. Why not? In the meantime, while they gaze on Gloria Swanson in the arms of Wallace Reid, picture patrons are regaled with snippets of Verdi and Friml. Mary Pickford cutifies to a bar or two of Schubert, followed by a bar or two of Jerome Kern, while Norma Talmadge cavorts to remnants of Grieg and Offenbach. At the beginning of the show, and between the news and feature films, a more or less competent "symphony orchestra" of approximately ninety-five men (in the larger houses) performs music that hitherto could only
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Movies for Program Notes
