'Crime for
crime's sake' is to be condemned. Sensationalism and forbidden themes
are seldom seen nowadays."
Aside from murder and suicide, why is it that so many young authors
imagine that to be strong a story must have at least one violent or
tragic death-scene? That there are hundreds of gripping stories,
pictures with the biggest kind of "punch," in which no death or
suggestion of death is shown, is well-known to every photoplay patron
whose mind and heart are in good working order. And yet editors are
every day returning scripts in which a murder, a suicide, a death as
the result of a duel, or a death arising from disease or accident, is
shown--all for no other reason than that the writer imagines he is
thereby producing a strong drama.
_3. Depressing Dramas_
Death in a picture is neither undesirable nor out of place--_provided
it is necessary to the proper and inevitable development of the plot_.
But the mistaken idea that to snuff out a human life in a thrilling or
a heart-rending manner, when there is really no logical necessity for
it, makes a picture either strong or dramatic is responsible for
scores of unaccepted scripts. Yet it would not be well to try to apply
to all picture stories Mr. George Cohan's motto, "Always leave them
laughing," for, as every intelligent exhibitor knows, and as a certain
producer once said, "they come to weep as well as to laugh.
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