Four Famous Writers Consider the Films
Four Famous Writers Consider the Films is an article/interview of four writers (Thomas Burke, Sir Anthony Hope, Ralph D. Blumenfeld and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) written by published in Motion Picture Classic in april 1926.
Four Famous Writers Consider the Films
[Below is the Conan Doyle part only.]
The First of a Series of Talks About Motion Pictures With Famous English and Continental Authors
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE is as different from Burke as day is from night, which is a fitting simile. He is a great big, smiling, spontaneous fellow; enthusiastic about everything, particularly some new "finds" he had made in the spirit world, of which he showed me the negatives. Then he showed me some alleged photographs of fairies that had recently come into his hands.
All movie fans will readily recall "The Lost World," taken from a book of the same name by Doyle, by the way. It is no more the story of a group of scientists who went out and stumbled over a lost world of still-existing prehistoric uncivilization than it is a spectacle of the drama in the lives of those mastodonic animals under the pressure of a great catastrophe. The marvelous feature of the picture lies in the reproduction of all the antediluvian — "auruses" — dinosauruses, ichthyosauruses, etc. — in the life.
"How did you like the filming of 'The Lost World'?" I asked Sir Arthur.
"Oh, the films did it very well, very well," he said enthusiastically.
"Do you go to the cinema much?"
"I cant spare much time for them — you see, I have my own little shows to carry on." He indicated a long box full of slides he was looking over. "I'm on my way to Brighton now to give a lantern-slide lecture. This little box has been all over America with me — competing with the films." He laughed good-naturedly.
"Did you collaborate at all in the making of 'The Lost World'?"
"Oh, no. Why should I? They know their work amazingly well, it's a great art in itself. They made an amazing thing out of my book, I should say. Dont you think so? Altho I confess, I dont think it will ever add much to my reputation — you know what I mean — it's not the sort of thing I'm really doing, you know."
I thought I knew what he meant and I told him that I did not think that anything could ever add to his reputation after doing "Sherlock Holmes." But Sir Arthur did not know that Holmes had been filmed.
He shook his head uncertainly about it. "What I am looking forward to is the appearance of moving — that is, animated — photographs of the fairy and spirit world. They are bound to come!"
He always came back to his fairies or his spirits. "It's my life-work," he added later in explanation. "But there is no doubt whatever that the films reach a great audience and their power for good — and evil — is enormous. For that reason alone they all ought to be good — I mean well conceived, well done and bring about well being. Come, wouldn't you like to run down and see my Psychic Book Shop which I have just opened in conjunction with Sir Oliver lodge? I'll call a taxi."
