DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 165, 3 October 1927, Page 14

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

MOTION PICTURES (Copyright , 1927) SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA is probably the best known region in the world. In London, in France, in Budapest and in Peking people are familiar with the landscape of this region. They know the kind of houses that are built and the way the country looks. They did not learn this out of books and their teachers did not tell them about it. They learned it in the best way people learn anything, by their amusement. This costs a lot of money. The money comes from almost four billion people yearly going to picture show's and paying on an average of 35 cents a person or a little over one billion dollars. And this money is mostly invested in Hollywood. Sixty-seven million dollars annually is spent for engraving and advertising. The amount of profit on films is estimated at almost two billion dollars and the investment in the industry is one and one-half billions. Ranking the fourth largest industry in the United States, it is the centre of the ambitions of thousands of people. This calling employs an immense army of people, many of them in production, thousands of musicians in the thirty thouihnd theatres where films are shown, and the business gives employment to an army of extras. That the industry is more than a passing amusement fad is indicated by the fact that both Columbia University and Harvard University have adopted motion pictures in their course of study, and a library is being created at Harvard. I wonder if the average person knows that the motion picture industry far surpasses the Pittsburg steel industry.