dark years of carpet-bag domination and negro government; 'Dixie,' which outlived that service and came to the North, and became a favorite there; 'Dixie,' which made every southern banquet memorable and makes some moment of every banquet today, and which has passed from revolt and revolution to symbolizing the land of the magnolia and magnanimity.

"What are we going to do with the song? A man was wise who said, 'Let me write the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws.' What did we do, with George Cohan's 'Over There'? That was created in an inspirational moment when this Nation stood on tiptoe and the drums went down the street; and today we are slowly creeping back in the tail-end of that procession, having recovered from the vice to which we receded the vice of materialism, without some of which, of course, we can not live. But let us not forget the emotional appeal, without which we can not advance.

"I don't want you statesmen - I don't mean you men who have anything of tenderness for particular industries but I want the statesman in each man here that transcends that thing to remember his country and remember if he lives it will be because of the writers of the song. Do not destroy them; don't snuff them out by discouragement. Let them grow. Do not assume the attitude of the boy with his first kitchen garden, who pulls up the growing vegetables each day to see if it has progressed.

"I thank you men for your attention. You have got my idea. It is of a very deep and basic principle; and it is the thing that so obliterates these little questions, which I am quite sure you will adequately adjust, that they are hardly to be thought of at this moment. But the

big thing is the exclusive right and the encouragement of art."

Mr. Thomas provokes here a train of thought which must be interesting to every writer. If you took away from Scotland her Robert Burns, even her Harrie Lauder, how much of her flavor and glamour would be left to the man in the street? Ireland, Germany, France, Russia think of them in terms of their imaginative appeal. How much of your attitude toward them unless you have traveled much is moulded by their songs? And how do you think America. stands before the world in this light?

We have produced a number of vigorous popular tunes which are being sung rather widely throughout the world. Fortunately, probably most foreigners who sing them do not know the meaning of the words, else our national pride would be much shocked by such representation. Good refrains are carrying the most assinine words to undeserved popularity. Yet it is unfair to expect that every composer should also be a poet.

Like every other type of effective creative effort, song-writing is a business. That is to say, most of the songs known and sung by the millions are written by a few professionals. Partly this is due to the technical requirements of composition which only a few have given time to master. In part, also, it is due to the entrenching of successful practitioners in the commercial machinery without the services of which a song cannot reach a large public. For example, the composition of lyrics and scores for a comic opera or revue is not thrown open to free competition. It is assigned to a song-writer who has previously given evidence of ability. Complaint arises again and again from amateur song-writers that it is impossible for an outsider, to get a hearing without an immense amount of personal salesmanship. An orchestra leader must give his audience a majority of new songs; the number of new pieces he may try out is limited. He probably has several of his

own that he wants to popularize and his song-writing friends are legion.

In view of this general situation, it is disconcerting to receive from time to time such letters as the following:

Editor of THE WRITER:

You may have heard of me as one of the lesser poets some magazine verse, quotations in several of the leading anthologies, and three volumes of collected verse which have had, as poetry goes, moderate success. Of course, none of my work in this field has paid me what I could have earned in the same time writing book reviews, which is little enough.

Naturally, I should like to make my talents in this direction sufficiently profitable that I might afford to give it more of my time.

Thinking along these lines, I took notice of advertisements in certain magazines of professional composers who offer to compose music to words at a fee. I am tempted by this, since it seems apparent that the royalties of one successful song would amount to more than I could possibly make from my poetry by giving my entire life to it. Since no such advertisements appear in THE WRITER, I assume that you are unsympathetic with these gentlemen. Is this true, and why? Entirely outside of the financial consideration, I am oppressed by the fact that my work, whatever its merit, reaches only a very few people, and that it will never reach many more. A song, it seems to me, reaches far deeper into the hearts of the people than any poem possibly could. I would trade all my hundreds of poems for the chance to write the words to one popular song. So would, I think, all of my contemporaries who are sincere in their art. Won't you try to give me a little light on this problem - perhaps publish something to help the many others like myself who, I am sure, are similarly troubled?

This is what a newspaper reporter would call a tough assignment. But it calls for a reply of some sort.

writer in connection with any scheme to get a song published is likely to be a fraud. There has never been a successful song published in this way as far as we can learn.'

Your general questions are more difficult. Without the ability to compose music to your own words, or the chance finding of a Sullivan to your Gilbert, your words will probably never be sung, however great your talent as a poet. Even should you succeed in having them set to music, the difficulties of getting the song before the public are very great.

If you are willing to accept the dictum that there is no more money for the amateur in song-writing than in poetry, and confine your efforts to bringing your work to the attention of a larger public, here is one experiment that you might try for amusement, mind you, not for profit.

About nine years ago, when I was in France for reasons that had nothing to do with poetry or song, I was walking along the bank of a peaceful little stream tributary to the Loire in Saumur. I heard ahead of me a strangely familiar tune. On coming nearer, I found that it proceeded from a youthful fisherman, singing to himself as he watched his cork floating on a quiet pool. You may imagine my amazement to hear a boyish treble querying to the peaceful sylvan world, I Vunder Who's Keesing Her Now?"

Then the other night, as I was reading Burns, I noticed how many of his poems were set to old Scottish tunes -an amazing number. You know, of course, what an important part of his development was this work. It started me trying to recall how many modern poems I had seen written to old or new tunes. Except for parodies and colleges songs, I could recall very few, which seemed strange in view of the fact that the composers are searching so frantically the scores of the past for old refrains that can be made new.

Somebody is going to take a hint from Bobbie Burns sooner or later, somebody who believes that we have in the past two or three centuries produced refrains worthy of preservation, and who will salvage them by writing to them words of dignity and force? It means going off the beaten track, but who ever arrived anywhere who didn't do just that?' After all, why should n't you be a better Gilbert to another Sullivan?

Even if for naught but your own training, why not publish as your next book a collection under the title, "New Words to Old Tunes"? You may discover that the wages of the pioneer are higher than you think, not in a financial way but in the pleasure of having started something.

Very truly yours,

The Editor.

To

O be bigger, better, and busier seems to be the slogan of the film industry. Bigger and busier it has grown, but better? Is it always evident? The picture business has gone from strength to strength until it has become a new Colossus bestriding the world, a giant, whose careless power has changed civilization, and been the occasion for apprehensive councils of state in England, Germany, Italy, and who knows where else. But the Colossus, for all his towering might, has a troubled heart.

Stories are the meat of the industry, upon which it has waxed great, the sine qua non, without which neither stars, nor presentations, nor Wall Street, are of the slightest avail. A shortage here would be troubling indeed. "But," you protest, "can there be such a thing as a shortage of stories, when almost any one can invent a plot over a luncheon table, a plot as good as half the ones that are used?" Of mediocre stories, no-there is no scarcity at all, but of good stories, yes. At any rate, not enough of them reach the screen. What constitutes a good screen story would make an interesting discussion, also whether or not eight hundred of them could have been found for the feature releases of the coming season, but we may draw something meanwhile from a brief survey of things as they are.

Not much contact with the producing companies is required to make it clear that, even granting that right material is hard to find, there are other factors that explain the low supply of pictures with good story value. These are mainly three: sometimes the story is not considered of much importance; in other cases, it is selected on a wrong principle; and, perhaps fully as often, it is spoiled in the making.

Strange to choose carelessly a tale

which is to hold thousands, perhaps millions, watching in absorbed silence, which is to fulfill its mission of laughter and comfort and surcease from misery in Burma, and Scandinavia, in Rio, and in New York; but unbelievable as it is, the story per se is often considered of slight importance. One of the most famous and successful producers, a man who has made millions in the industry, exclaims, "What's all this fuss about stories, anyway! There are only two kinds. Both have a man and a girl. In one the man gets the girl, and that's comedy. In the other, he does n't get the girl, and that's tragedy." Another producer of equal success pays up to $50,000 for a story, and never reads a book! These men, it must be granted, have something better for their purpose than cultural background and that is the complex ability called showmanship. They have a genius for giving the public what it wants. But to many of the men, high in the industry, one story is as good as another, so that when the question of a purchase is put to them, to judge of value, they can only fall back on figures. How many copies sold? How long a run on Broadway? How many prospective customers already familiar with the author's name? The intangible elements are beyond them, so they take refuge in the concrete. Whatever the incalculable merits of the narrative itself, here is a record of performance which is quite properly rated at a cash value. But, unfortunately, performance in one medium is no guarantee of success in another, so the concrete properties purchased may fail unaccountably, and the puzzled showman, still treating story value as an invincible mystery, is left wondering why the expensive picture did n't click.

Illogical as it is, the film factories are constantly turning out productions of

tremendous cost, in which every other factor is considered of more importance than a dramatic and convincing plot. In these, production expense sometimes works like the beautiful cost plus system of the contractors. The more money put into a picture, the higher the price to the exhibitor, for "production value" is again a measurable element in the midst of intangibles and is used as a selling argument. Stories that might be told as effectively by simple methods are smothered in elaborate detail that would often be little appreciated by audiences except for the ballyhoohing of the press agent. For the perfection of background and costumes, the large companies maintain research departments in which scholarly men and women compile data for the directors. The scrap books prepared in advance for a big feature are marvels of careful investigation. Photographs are collected from every possible source. through libraries, universities, and foreign consulates. Historians, archeologists, and experts in every branch of knowledge are consulted, to insure accuracy on minute points. Every setting is as scrupulously planned and executed as if it were to form part of a permanent structure. The architect makes his plans, the carpenter, his working drawings, with every detail of woodwork in careful harmony and faithful to period; the interior decorator hangs curtains and draperies, the property man places the right furniture and rugs, which have been obtained at whatever cost, while for the exteriors, photographs are reproduced on drops drops and glass screens. "Now for the story," says the director, perspiring from honest effort, "it is a little weak, but that won't show, surely, when we are doing it so beautifully. Besides, I still have other means of adding to its splendors and to the production value that is demanded of me." So crowds of extras, ballets, and "atmosphere" of every kind are added, and still more is lavished on costumes. All this is suitable and worthwhile when the story is right, but there seems to be a

sad delusion in certain quarters that it will make a good picture out of a poor story.

The story is treated as negligible in another way, when vehicles are chosen for some of the stars, especially the women. Plausibility, suspense, conflict, climax, every quality a dramatic production should have is deliberately sacrificed to the necessity for a big rôle for the star. She must have a chance to wear extravagantly beautiful clothes, and to use her most successful facial expressions. Her following must not be startled by her appearance in anything markedly different from what they have learned to expect. Some of them are justified, in as much as they seem to satisfy a certain demand by simply displaying themselves and their interesting costumes. With the men, this subordination of the story to the part is often made for the fighters. If the public expects a fight, they have to supply it. It may fit in with the plot; if it does n't, so much the worse for the plot. The following of the star must be maintained. This is a sound business reason, but, generally speaking, the prestige of the star suffers so much from weak stories, that sometime it may become evident that only well-built stories pay any time for any

one.

An interesting instance is the recent release, "The Love of Sunya." It was based on "Eyes of Youth," a successful play, and had the benefit of excellent direction and every latest development in lighting and camera angles. Beautifully presented, with settings by Hugo Ballin, and with one of the most gifted stars, Gloria Swanson, who gave a fine performance, it was still described. rather generally as a "flop." Why? Because, attractive as it was, the story was fundamentally wrong for a picture.

What makes a good screen story, it is plain to see, is not always what makes an entertaining play, or a successful novel. Most of the producers who make the Westerns, the comedies, and the melodramas are turning out consistently

satisfactory material, because they cling to tried and true formulae. Following simple principles inherited from the showmen of the ages, they hammer away on the same note year after year, afraid to break the spell by any change, and of course under no great temptation to do so, since their vast public is perennially pleased. In the remote event that American audiences should tire of them, there would still be the foreign countries, the less civilized the better. China, for instance, where the market has been hardly scratched, is very fond of Westerns. They are enjoying everywhere the same success as the tales of knight errantry in Spain, of which countless numbers followed the same pattern, until Cervantes killed them with ridicule. The discovery of new patterns is not so easy. A big success brings out dozens of imitations, but the copies are similar, usually, in settings or type of story and lacking in the dramatic elements that put the first picture over. This is a blind sort of proceeding but sometimes it has the aspect of a style wave, not an unfamiliar phenomenon perhaps to some of the cleverest of the film executives. At any rate, the film salesman is furnished with another selling point for a "natural boxoffice wise."

The success of innovations like "Nanook" and "Chang," with their absence of formal plot, or "Beau Geste," almost without love interest, or even the unconventional ending of "White Gold," takes the ordinary producer by surprise because he has followed beaten trails and given little thought to abstract principles. His success with the golden goose of the movies has been partly accidental, and so far, he has had little need for analysis or theories. It is when he finds his hitherto docile public cold to offerings made at perhaps ten times the old cost that he begins to feel the need of more definite principles. Sometimes he gives it up as a bad job, and, in spite of Mr. Hays, falls back on the good old sex angle, with strong and unmistakable

titles. The demand for sex stories never dies. They may not achieve the biggest success, but he finds in them something stable to cling to in a rocking world.

The scenario editors, who might be supposed to do most of the selection, are exceptionally conscientious and intelligent about their jobs, but they are given. little opportunity to be effective. They watch publications all over the world, making thousands of synopses in a year, and classifying novels, plays, and magazine stories under many heads. These they file and cross-file, So that directors have access to hundreds of summaries of every type of story. But a very small percentage of stories are bought on their recommendation. In one company, the ratio is: stories reported on, 4,476; stories bought, 9. The director buys a story that a friend of his wants to adapt; the production manager has a friend, too, who needs the commission, or the star's maid tells her about a good one. Hundreds of stories have been bought hit or miss, or because of a popularity unlikely to extend to the screen version. The emotional quality of Hutchinson's novels, for instance, compensates for defects in the written version, but the improbability of the situations and unsatisfactory development of plot is too apparent on the screen. "One Increasing Purpose" makes a poor picture, in spite of the fine work that has gone into the making of it.

So much for the unsatisfactory film stories that may be laid at the door of bad selection, but in spite of the imperfections of the system, many good stories are found and purchased, and an equal number are written especially for the screen. Why don't we see more of them, then?

This brings us to the third reason: Far too many well-chosen stories are spoiled in the making, and added to the list of "just movies" that have to be supported by "presentations" and jazz orchestras to keep the seats filled. The principal fault here is that there are too many cooks, or as Rupert Hughes called