And the stories they told were very simple.

 Most people thought that movies were just a passing novelty. But a few of the men who were making movies in that early period saw their great potential. Soon the directors and producers decided to make longer and better stories, and they began to demand better acting. Among the pioneers in movies making was David Wark Griffith, an American director, whose most popular film was a three-hour story about the American Civil War, the Birth of a Nation. With this film, for the first time, the movies began to” grow up” as fine entertainment and as works of arts, like fine novels and fine plays.

A suburb of Los Angeles, California, named Hollywood, started to become the center of the film industry. The reason Hollywood was a natural place for making movies was that the sun shines there nearly every day. In the early years most movies were made outdoors with natural light and not indoors with artificial light.

For many years, until 1926, movies were silent. They had no sound or music to go with them. The actors only made motions, while the words they “spoke” were printed on the screen. In the theater a musician played the piano or organ while the film was shown. Many movies starts came to fame in the silent days---Mary Pickford with her beautiful curls, William S. Hard in cowboy films, such comedians as Harold Lloyd and the great Charlie Chaplin. Many films were serials, which told a long story that had a new chapter every week.

In the late 1920s the talkies came. Movies had found a voice, and music and talk became a part of the film---first with photograph records and then by a sound track that was printed on the film next to the pictures. This change brought many newa actors and actresses into the film industry. Some of the stars of the silent films—those whose voices were not very well trained---had to retire.

Since the development of the talkies, there have been many other advances on film making and showing. One of these is the addition of color. Colors were added to sound, so that trees that were black in the old films became green, girls’ lips became red, sky and water became blue. Another technical advance is the use of the wide screen, which makes the objects of the film much larger, so that sometimes, for instance, the face of the actor is 3 feet long. In certain theaters, too, there are very wide and high screens that curve in front of the audience, so that you seem to be almost “in” the picture yourself. All these ideas have been developed to give the movies greater realism, although they have not always given them greater artistry.

Hollywood is no longer the only place where a large number of movies are made. In England such producers as J. Arthur Rank and such actors as Laurence Olivier have made British films important and popular. Other countries are making many movies that are both skillful and artistic.

Some movies use serious subjects and treat important problems which would have been too advanced ten or twenty years ago. In this sense the movies seem to be growing up, appealing more and more to adult minds, telling us things that only books or plays told us about years ago. But many movies are still made to give sheer pleasure and excitement. As we watch them, we forget about our own troubles. We laugh; we cry; we live other people’s lives awhile.