Movies March On

[Music] the mark of time [Music] just off Fifth Avenue on a site long occupied by the oldfashioned town dwellings of the Rockefeller family stands the spanking new home of a nationally important institution the New York Museum of Modern Arts no Dusty Storehouse for Old Masters this museum is an up-to-date showroom for art in our time painting and sculpture architecture and still photography and the motion picture for more than four years the director of the Museum's film Library John Evans Abbott and his curator Iris Barry have been gathering together a vast and significant collection of Motion Picture films milestones in the progress of the youngest and liveliest of the art here preserved for all time our old negatives through which the people and the customs of an age long past will live [Music] forever and in the Museum's newly built vault is the accepted ancestor of today's vast movement industry a 10-minute film The Great Train Robbery produced in 193 for Thomas Edison was Man's first attempt to T A connected story through his newly discovered medium the motion picture [Music] today hardly 40 years after the great plane robbery the art of telling stories with camera and film has become the nation's fifth greatest industry with a capital investment of $3 billion and each production is a highly speculative Venture for its story its direction and its tast must please the everchanging tastes of those who support the industry an army of 250 million movie [Music] goers International capital of the motion picture is a fabulously press agented suburb of Los Angeles Hollywood a community whose name alone is a magic word throughout the world but in Hollywood where 65 % of all films are produced the making of movies is a serious and complicated business among the movie industry's 30,000 employees are men and women from nearly 300 trades and professions nowhere in the world are there craftsmen who take more exacting care or in the making of a picture carelessness in one single detail can Mar the combined work of the hundreds whose talents go toward the of a scene today Big Time movie making requires weeks and months of tireless research and preparation before a camera turns a single foot of [Music] film and a Big Slice of every Hollywood producer's budget must go for the studio sets which serve as background and atmosphere for his story for the great movie public becoming more and more observant theand scrupulous historical accuracy and strictest attention to details every Studio has its own museum immense warehouses crammed with furniture and fitting props from every nation in the world from every period in history but for years Hollywood producers have paid a quarter of their total production budget more than $40 million a year to the men and women who are their players for upon the popularity of Screen Actors many a producing company has built its Fame and Fortune today the industry is more insistent than ever that its artists have something beside Glamour and it demands that they know how to play a scene how to create a character for with the movie is no longer a novelty but an accepted art the cinema has a responsibility to the public a responsibility that must be upheld with all the creative skill the imagination and resources at its command [Music] out of its collection of books and original documents on the movies the largest library of its kind in the world the Museum of Modern Art film research staff is today compiling an encyclopedia of the cinema being added daily to this collection is important Source material pertaining to a young art whose entire history has been made within a few decades [Music] but far more vividly than in any printed book the museum is already teaching the history of the movies to the public through its educational programs of important films of the past today being widely circulated to us colleges and museums in New York City the museum has its own theater showing programs designed to face the progress of the motion picture since the days of its crude Beginnings in 1896 the first moving pictures projected on public screens were plotless incidents but a minute long that amazed and scandalized their [Music] audiences 16 years later in 1912 the moving picture had begun to tell simple stories in many of them Mary pford was the heroine lion o baramore her leading man [Music] by 1914 the screen had developed definite Trend the serial Thriller in the western which produced their greatest cowboy star in William esart [Music] [Music] [Music] the same year 1914 William Fox presented the world with the first great movie Vamp the Bara whose exotic screen romancers brought a nationwide storm of [Music] censorship throughout the early teens winning friends for the struggling movie industry were Max Sen Keystone comedies built upon a Shore Fire technique The Chase [Music] in 1914 a famed stage actress Marie wrestler making her scen deu had an obscure London comedian Charles Chaplan as her leading man in MA Senate's First featurelength comedy Tilly's punctured romance almost overnight the public discovered in this obscure London pantomimus a great artist and made him the most popular and highly paid comedian the world has ever known [Music] the year 1915 is one well marked in motion pictor history for it was in this year that David War griet released his mighty spectacle The Birth of a Nation the most important single picture ever produced it was the turning point at which the movies became established entertainment early in 1918 a young Prestige Seeker Samuel Goldwin lured Mary Garden from the Opera to play in his silent version of taes [Music] in 1921 Rex Ingram's Four Horseman of the Apocalypse launched Rudolph Valentino the greatest romantic Idol of the screen's history on his short and Brilliant career [Music] by 1922 comedian acrobat Douglas Fairbanks had given the elaborate costume spectacle a permanent place in Motion Pictures giving realism and dignity to the oldtime Western producer Jesse lasi and director James Cruz started a new trend with their epic of the covered [Music] wagon in 1925 with the big parade produced by Irving thalberg and directed by King VOR the silent Motion Picture reached a new peak of dramatic power [Music] the year 1927 brought to a close the era of the silent film and the years in which unrestricted by any language barriers Hollywood and its Stars monopolized the picture screens of all the world [Music] [Applause] [Music] well Remembered in the slow development of the talking picture are Dr Lee Deforest Theodore case and Earl sponable the research staffs of RCA Bell Laboratories Engineers Donald McKenzie and Edward winter well remembered too as the fall of 1927 when the late Sam Warner using Bell laboratory's equipment produced the most revolutionary picture in all movie history a film trademark vitaphone that was to give to the screen a new dimension and a new power M I'm coming I hope I didn't make you wait m I'm coming oh God I hope I'm not late Mary don't you know me it's a little baby I walk a million miles miles [Music] my with one sound picture the silent film was forever obsolete [Music] memorable was the terrifying realism of universals All Quiet on the Western Front greatest of War pictur [Music] he Unforgettable in Fox film's cavalcade was the restrained use of sound in the recreation of Queen Victoria's [Music] funeral five Kings riding behind you must have been a very little lady through the talkies Will Rogers was endeared to Millions throughout the world well all I know is what I read in the paper in Zola Paul mun demonstrated for all time that the talking picture was unquestionably a modern art before the whole world I swear that great is inoc by my 40 years of work by all I have written to spread the spirit of France I swear that greatness is in May all that Melt Away may my name perish if gra be not [Music] so young is Hollywood that many of its earliest Pioneers are still active in the industry men like Nicholas skink able chief of MGM and his brother Joseph chairman of the board of 20th Century Fox Harry Warner an industry veteran of 36 years as president of the great Warner Brother Enterprises heading Paramount is Barney Balaban who entered the picture business in 198 still a big name in Hollywood cesil B demill made his first feature nearly 30 years ago back in the studios working with Hal roach is the great DW Griffith on the stages of 20th century the veteran laugh makers Buster Keaton and Ma senet are at work again ever a master showman Wise Old Samuel Goldwin has for an assistant a son of the president of the United [Music] States as Overlord of the movies true diplomat will Hayes has been steering the industry through its problems and crises for 17 years since 1930 the hay production code voluntarily adopted by all major producers has been law to Hollywood Movie Makers to will Hayes enforcement officer geniel Joe Breen has gone the difficult job of making sure that no picture offensive to any race class or Creed shall reach the stream for in all its years Hollywood has pursued one great objective to please and entertain its public but the Hollywood of 1939 is finding that the public has new ideas of entertainment richly has it rewarded Walt Disney whose Snow White shattered traditions and box office records and established a new kind of feature a new kind of movie star another tradition breaker is Jack L Warner smart and successful producer of a long list of films in which the public has found both entertainment and significance meeting the growing demand for important drama R Ko's president capable George schaer has signed Raymond Massie for the part of Lincoln in the screen version of 1939's pullet Surprise Play representative of Hollywood's growing progressiveness is Walter wer soon to produce Vincent Shan's outspoken narrative on present day problem and we have facts to face War abroad social and economic distress at home threats to democracy everywhere it is time for us to assume our responsibilities and to deal truthfully and freely with the problems which face us today Master of the Art Of Motion Picture entertainment is Columbia's Ace director producer Frank Kaa for his newest picture Mr Smith Goes to Washington director Kaa has drawn on the almost untouched wealth of story material on the national political scene [Music] for John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath 20th century Daryl zanic has paid $75,000 announced that he will Faithfully portray the plight of us migratory workers and eagerly awaited by movie goers everywhere is a film in which the world's most feared political figure will be burles by the world's greatest comedian 50-year-old Charlie Chaplan but to Hollywood each new trend is an experiment for 250 million movie goers each week pass final judgment on the most powerful medium of expression the world has ever known an art form as great as any in man's history I'm Marches On