Meanwhile “Title writing” remains a commercial necessity.  In this field there is but one person who has won distinction—­Anita Loos.  She is one of the four or five important and thoroughly artistic brains in the photoplay game.  Among them is the distinguished John Emerson.  In combination with John Emerson, director, producer, etc., she has done so many other things well, her talents as a title writer are incidental, but certainly to be mentioned in this place.

The outline we are discussing continues through

Book III—­More Personal Speculations and Afterthoughts Not Brought Forward so Dogmatically.

Chapter XIV—­The Orchestra, Conversation, and the Censorship.  In this chapter, on page 189, I suggest suppressing the orchestra entirely and encouraging the audience to talk about the film.  No photoplay people have risen to contradict this theory, but it is a chapter that once caused me great embarrassment.  With Christopher Morley, the well-known author of Shandygaff and other temperance literature, I was trying to prove out this chapter.  As soon as the orchestra stopped, while the show rolled on in glory, I talked about the main points in this book, illustrating it by the film before us.  Almost everything that happened was a happy illustration of my ideas.  But there were two shop girls in front of us awfully in love with a certain second-rate actor who insisted on kissing the heroine every so often, and with her apparent approval.  Every time we talked about that those shop girls glared at us as though we were robbing them of their time and money.  Finally one of them dragged the other out into the aisle, and dashed out of the house with her dear chum, saying, so all could hear:  “Well, come on, Terasa, we might as well go, if these two talking pests are going to keep this up behind us.”  The poor girl’s voice trembled.  She was in tears.  She was gone before we could apologize or offer flowers.  So I say in applying this chapter, in our present stage of civilization, sit on the front seat, where no one can hear your whisperings but Mary Pickford on the screen.  She is but a shadow there, and will not mind.

Chapter XV—­The Substitute for the Saloon.  I leave this argument as a monument, just as it was written, in 1914 and ’15.  It indicates a certain power of forecasting on the part of the writer.  We drys have certainly won a great victory.  Some of the photoplay people agree with this temperance sermon, and some of them do not.  The wets make one mistake above all.  They do not realize that the drys can still keep on voting dry, with intense conviction, and great battle cries, and still have a sense of humor.

Chapter XVI—­California and America.  This chapter was quoted and paraphrased almost bodily as the preface to my volume of verses, The Golden Whales of California.  “I Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry,” a song of some length recently published in the New Republic and the London Nation, further expresses the sentiment of this chapter in what I hope is a fraternal way, and I hope suggests the day when California will have power over India, Asia, and all the world, and plant giant redwood trees of the spirit the world around.