Page:Screenland October 1923.djvu/103

Is the Screen Afraid of Sex?

(Continued from page 37)

Whereupon Madame pointed out that there are two ways of looking at sex. Much like the opposing points of view of two persons who might he discussing it. One of these persons will say "Sex" and will mean innuendo, sensuality, peep-holes and a cartooning of the vital instincts which are as true and as necessary and should be as frankly and normally treated as the equally necessary functions of food and sleep.

Another person will say "Sex" and will mean frankly what he says, the creative functioning going on from the amoeba to the heirs of the First Man.

Strike at Morbid Curiosity

It is this last, frank, revealatory aspect of sex which Madame declares the screen fears.

The screen should have on orgy of such sex material.

Rend the skirts from the piano legs and deal morbid curiosity its death-blow. Or else dispense with it altogether. Abandon innuendo.

Provocative pandering with sensuality is the danger-point. And it is this parody of the organic functioning of sex of which the screen, paradoxically, is not afraid.

Instead of telling us that innocent little Daisy Dimple "went wrong" in order to pay dear, old mother's bills at the hospital or to buy her little lame brother a wheeled chair we should see the 'orrid truth about little Daisy, with the always inevitable consequences one way or another.

No Lession Taught by Sex Evasion

Instead of witnessing a cinema flapper entering an anomalous road house to the lilting strains of jazz never to reappear quite as she went in, but ever after, haloed with pensive peplum of pain we should be called upon to observe by what processes nature arrives at this sickly conclusion.

No lesson is taught by an evasion of fact.

It is the fact of sex which the screen shuns.

It is the fiction of sex with which, constantly, it whets the appetite of curiosity-mongers and half-feeds the amorous appetites of the audiences.

Once tell the truth about sex on the screen and there will be neither curiosity nor fear.

Thus spake Petrova.

Grand Larceny

(Continued from page 102)

Day"? With half a chance Miss Patterson will burn up the celluloid.

Watch for Sid Chaplin

Somebody once said that the only rival Charlie Chaplin has in comedy is his brother, Sid. Perhaps you think the statement is exaggerated. Charlie has kept Sid so busy being his manager that Sid has had little opportunity to display his talents. You remember him, perhaps, as the neighbor whose derby hat is used as a casing for a plum pudding in The Pilgrim.

The wise ones in Hollywood are saying that Sid Chaplin is purloining Marshall Neilan's picture, The Rendezvous. It is a Russian picture, written by Madeleine Ruthven, and Sid affords the comedy relief as a British soldier. He looks as if he had been lifted bodily from The Better 'Ole. Certain it is that Sid is contributing some rip-roaring comedy to an otherwise sombre story.

Watch for Moses

I

It seems highly irreverent to accuse so venerable a figure as Moses of stealinga picture, but that is what he appears to be doing. Theodore Roberts is a dominant figure in any scene. In fact his little playmates on the screen assert plaintively that he is too dominant, that he is too apt to rub his famous nose or chew his equally famous cigar while they "have the scene."

But as Moses, in The Ten Commandments, Roberts is doing some remarkable work that stands head and shoulders above the acting of the other members of a fine cast, it is said. Another triumph of brawn over beauty!

Barbara LaMarr fairly wrested her stardom from the reluctant hands of producers. They frowned upon her, because she would not bind herself with a long-term contract. But when they saw exhibitors feature the name of Barbara LaMarr over other members of the cast, in The Hero and Poor Men's Wives, they saw a great light. Everything Barbara achieved, she helped herself to. But now she is in such demand that she works in three pictures at one time. And dividing her energies thus, children, how many of those three pictures will Barbara steal? Quite right, Bobby, she won't steal any.

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