Source: Chicago Sunday Tribune, 6 May 1928, pt. 7, pg. 5.
Dear Miss Tinée: In my opinion the cinema today is excellent. But the presentations surrounding these beautiful films are egregious. I wonder what the distinguished Chicago cinema impresarios (showmen, if you will) think of this—perchance they read it. I always visit the cinema theaters with a grand piano in their lobbies. When I enter the magnificent auditoriums of these theaters I am encompassed by ineffable splendor but what do I hear? Tin Pan Alley.
Therefore I return to the lobby and listen to some salon music played on the grand piano, but music nevertheless, until the feature film comences. Then I reenter the auditorium and enjoy the film.
Doubtless these jazzy stage presentations appeal to many people but they appeal to our most primitive, our animal instincts, for the music is indubitably cheap. Jazz I love when dancing, or at a cafe, musical comedy, or circus, but for everyday listenting, music that stirs the soul is the only panacea.
The cinema is a noble, exalted art and requires inspired music of exquisite loveliness, colorful blending, gorgeous harmonies and modulations, fascinating, exotic rhythms—ah, countless beauties. Instead the cinema is degraded by flagrant, vulgar and gaudy presentations and music.
New York City film houses have many of the finest musical artists of this generation perform weekly, while Chicago nonchalantly wades in the gutter music. Ten years ago the Chicago cinema impresarios had a superb conception of what should accompany the film, but unfortunately they have become beauty-blind.
