A Talk On The “Talkies.”

The other day I heard a “high-brow” friend denouncing vehemently the “regime” of the Talkie—not only were they thoroughly harmful to society and “lowering” to the intellect of the young generation—but according to her they were responsible for neglected homes, false ideas of right and wrong, and crime in general!

“The people of our country are being entertained with a petty form of amusement,” she said, “because their intellectual ability is regarded as not existing!”

I flippantly suggested that no doubt she would expect a woman, tired and depressed after a hard day of unromantic housework, to find relaxation and pleasure in a Greek tragedy.

Why do we go to the “Talkies?” Surely to escape for two hours from the often uninteresting routine of our daily lives—to live for a brief moment in, not necessarily an ideal world—but at least in a world which offers many joys impossible for us. Like Cinderella we can dance at the Ball, and twelve o'clock will strike all too soon. And the effect is hardly one of dissatisfaction with our lot—most of us are philosophical enough to accept our pleasures for what they are worth to us. Seldom do we muse in misery on what we have seen and heard at the “Talkies”—we laugh, we criticize, we weep—and we forget.

Most women pick up a book for the same reason—to escape. For always in the human race is this tendency to dwell in the realms of romance, from the days when the young knights of King Arthur went off in search of the Holy Grail. We are still looking for it—and if our search leads us into the cheap seats of a “Talkie,” it is nevertheless health-giving and harmless.

If you have to live in a tiny house—replica of hundreds of others in a row, if you have to do the washing every Monday, iron, cook, mend and bring up a noisy, lovable family—why should you not be dazzled by the lights of “Broadway,” see the old Thames gliding under the Tower Bridge where once your grandfather played, and be ravished by “creations” from Paris? And is this harmful to your morals and “lowering” to your intellect? Most emphatically not!

Think of all the “Talkies” represent in this year of grace, 1932! It is as if we had borrowed the Magic Carpet of our childhood days and can sail away to unknown lands. How many people have never been to London, the heart of the world? Yet now, for one and sixpence, they can stand (and not in imagination) page 58 beneath the dome of St. Paul's—they can wander through the heart of Africa hunting big game—they can listen spellbound to the world's greatest musicians. Surely this is an advantage indeed—a curtain is lifted and new realms are displayed to us, more realistically than those in books—for we can see and hear things as they actually are.

We smile at the “Film Fan” who is an absolute authority on Norma Shearer's eyebrows or Ronald Coleman's personal taste in ties; we sometimes deplore the Yankee slang which is creeping into the language of our six-year-old son, who answers “O.K. big boy” to his father—but any moderate person must admit that “losses on the round-a-bouts mean gains upon the swings.”

Out here in this tiny island, swept about by the Great Pacific, we are far from the pulsing life of the Continent, but a whisper comes to us from the “Talkies.” We cannot often hear great pianists nor be present at “first night” appearances of London's geniuses, but we would be foolish indeed if we were to scorn the opportunity of laughing with Ralph Lynne, of suffering with Ruth Chatterton—if we were “above” the absurdities of Marie Dressler and unimpressed by the realism of Gerald du Maurier. Therefore—“Long Live the Talkies,” and may they long continue to offer us their gifts!

All of us who are worth anything spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth—Shelley.