_To Members of Parliament, Mayors, Lecturers and other Public Men
and Women._
"The Cinema has become the cheapest, the surest and most rapid road
to publicity. It is estimated that a third of the population attend
the Cinema once a week. Messrs. Mump and Gump have therefore fitted
up a special studio for film work, in which you can now have your
own film taken, representing you in any action you may desire. This
method of publicity is specially recommended to Members of
Parliament. For instance one can be filmed writing a letter, which
can be closed down and handed to a messenger, which action can be
followed by the letter itself being thrown on the screen.... Think
what this means to a prospective Candidate when he goes to a
constituency where he is unknown. He takes with him twenty or more
films. Your constituents must see and know you before you can hope
for their vote. The Cinema introduces your personality and your
policy.
"Your film will cost you--
First reel ... Three guineas.
Each extra reel. One guinea."
The more I see of business-men the less they seem to me to know about
business. I never read an advertisement without thinking, "How much
better I (or even you) could have done that!" Yet they will tell you
that it is their advertisements which make the money. It only shows....
However. Messrs. Mump and Gump, for instance, have scarcely skimmed the
surface possibilities of their brilliant notion. This invention is going
to make politics tolerable at last. No man minds being in the House of
Commons; it is being in his constituency which is so dreadful. _And now
he need never go there._
For instance, when the constituency is tired of the letter-film, he can
be filmed making a speech, which can be taken down and handed to a
typist, which action can be followed by the speech itself being thrown
on the screen--in instalments. The constituency will enjoy this, because
it will take much less time to read it than it would to listen to it,
and they can argue out loud about the meaning of Early English phrases
like Datum-line and Functional Representation. In fact they can go on
arguing during the _Whips of Sin_ which will follow.
As for the public man, it won't take him two minutes to be filmed making
the speech, unless, of course, he has any very complicated gestures; and
it won't take him any time at all to compose it, because the private
secretary will do that; and the private secretary will be able to make
sure that his joke about JEREBOAM is not turned into a joke about
JEHOSHAPHAT at the last minute, or simply shelved in favour of a
peroration on rainbows. After the speech the M.P. can be filmed opening
a flowershow and, if necessary, writing a cheque to the local
hortiphilist society, which cheque can be thrown on the screen amid loud
applause, but need not, of course, go any further.
There is one other point, but it is rather a delicate matter: Messrs.
Mump and Gump say to the prospective Candidate, "Your constituents must
see and know you before you can hope for their vote." Are they quite
right? I have seen a good many Candidates in my time, and I can think of
some to whom I should have said, "Your constituents must _never_ see you
if you hope for a single vote." I mean, when one looks round the present
House of Commons, one really marvels how.... But perhaps I had better
not go on with that. The point is that a Candidate of that kind never
_need_ be seen by his constituents now. A handsome young private
secretary, uniformed and beribboned, and the film does the rest.
Then I rather resent the assumption that Members of Parliament, Mayors,
Lecturers and Actors are the only people who require publicity. I should
have thought that those who spend their time writing things in the
public Press, which are read by the public (if anybody), might have had
at least the courtesy title of Public Man. Anyhow, I am going to have
three guineas' worth. The only question is, what sort of picture will
most thoroughly "get" my personality before a third of the population
once a week? The moment when I am most characteristic is when I am lying
in a hot bath, and to-morrow is Sunday; but I doubt if even a sixth of
the population would be really keen on that. I don't mind writing a
letter or two, only, if it meant an extra reel every time I decided to
write it to-morrow instead, it would be rather a costly advertisement.
Really, I suppose, one ought to be done _At Work in His Study_; but even
that would require a good deal of faking. Ought one, for instance, to
remove the golf-balls and the cocoa-cup (and the rhyming dictionary)
from The Desk? Then I always write with a decayed pencil, and that would
look so bad. Messrs. Mump and Gump would have to throw in a quill-pen.
And I have no Study. I work in the drawingroom, when the children are
not playing in it. To go into The Study I simply walk over to my table
and put up a large notice: "THE STUDY. DO NOT SPEAK TO ME. I AM
THINKING." Do you think that had better be in the film?
Or I wonder if a Comic would be more effective--a Shaving reel or a
Dressing reel? It is the small incidents of every-day life that one
should look to for the key to the character of a Public Man; and once a
whole third of the population had seen for themselves what pain it gives
me to put links and studs and all those things in a clean shirt, they
would understand the strange note of melancholy which runs through this
article.
But of course an author should have several different reels
corresponding to the different kinds of work which he wants to
publicitise. (That is a new word which I have just invented, but you
will find it in common use in a month or two.) People like Mr. BELLOC
will probably require the full politician's ration of twenty or more,
but the ordinary writer might rub along with four or five.
When his _Pug, Wog and Pussy_ is on the market there will be a Family
reel, in which he is pretending to be a tree and the children are
climbing it. And when he has just published _The Cruise of the Cow_;
or, _Seven Hours at Sea_, he will be seen with an intense expression
tying a bowline on a bight or madly hauling on the throat-halyard--at
Messrs. Mump and Gump's specially-equipped ponds. And for his
passionate romance, _The Borrowed Bride_---- But I don't know what he
will do then.
And even now we have not exhausted the list of Public Men. There are
clergymen. Don't you feel that some of those sermons might be thrown on
the screen--and left there? A. P. H.
* * * * *
The Merry Bishop.
The Dean of CAPE TOWN with a critical frown
To the jests of St. Albans' gay Bishop demurs;
But the Bishop denies the offence and implies
'Tis the way of all asses to nibble at FURSE.
* * * * *
"Harvest Festival celebrations took place at St. John's Church on
Sunday evening, when the choir rendered the anthem 'Praise the young
ladies of the choir.'"--_Yorkshire Paper._
And we have no doubt they deserved it.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Butcher_ (_at conclusion of scathing criticism of
horse_). "WELL, THAT'S MY OPINION, ANYWAY. AND I OUGHT TO KNOW SOMETHING
BY NOW ABOUT A BIT OF 'ORSEFLESH WHEN I SEES IT."
_Groom._ "YES--AND SO OUGHT YOUR CUSTOMERS TOO."]
* * * * *