Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/167

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

called "belly laughs." Deane achieved a more subtle humor. By balancing laughter and tears he made real the marionettes on the screen. He chose stories about real people. When he launched them upon their melodramatic ways, guided them through situations often vague and distorted, he made them seem plausible because of the sincerity and the reality of the playing. He wanted the audiences to see themselves in these simple interpretations of every-day people—and they did.

The public soon began watching for the pictures which Deane was directing. They could laugh at them, they could cry over them. "Human," they called them.

Deane was a skilled mechanic. He would not have himself called anything else. He could not see much art in the "movies." If the public wanted pap, he would give it to them. He would grind out happy endings, which would bring success and money both to him and George Beauregard, for whom he was working.

At college, while he was studying to be a chemist, he had noted the possibilities of motion pictures as a new prosperous industry with Gargantuan power. He saw that with intelligent coördination this new medium possessed potentialities for the actual enlightenment and amusement of the masses.

When he finished college, received his Bachelor's Degree of Science, and knew he had a profession to fall back upon, he turned to the moving picture studios, keenly curious. He was interested in the amazing strides already made in the studio laboratories. Each year new inventions made more beautiful the photography on the screen. Each year more skilled mechanics improved the electrical department, until there had been perfected gigantic powerful lights which brought a semblance of clear crystal daylight onto the very stages of the studios. Architects were contributing their