AMUSING PEOPLE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 20, 16 November 1910, Page 42

AMUSING PEOPLE.

By

FREDERIC THOMPSON.

IF I wen asked (although, of course, nobody would ever think of asking me), what I considered to be the most typically American In■titutiuns. 1 should very unhesitatingly •ay the Genius for Industrial Organisation. the American Girl and Summer Amusement. And 1 should bracket the American Girl and Summer Amusement—they are so very inextricably interwoven. \\ heu I say summer amusement. 1 mean, of c-ourse, what you mean; that thing which draws millions of people to hundreds of places, in scores of cities, ©ver the very broad acres of our land. 1 mean those places which cause railroad terminals to lx* choked on hot evenings, and decent Saturdays ami almost any sort of Sundays, and- crowd and delay ■trolley cars, and make much worry for the traffic authorities. If you really want to be more specific: Picture many white steeples, and numerous minarets, •ml innumerable highly-decorated building of every conceivable architecture, from the prototype of a Turkish mosque to the styles obtaining among the more imaginative of the Japanese, with a •train of the architect in al fashions which •re creditably supposed to obtain in fairyland: imagine swirling things, and tortuous things, ami very quickly moving things, and gentlemen with rather bright clothes, and (unfortunately) some- ■ what hoarse voices who make vigorous announcements of activities within; imagine countless crowds of women in jvhite and quite as many men in many colours, strolling, waiting, peering, laughing; being borne off in curious contrivances that rush and dash; being carried again by other curious contrivances that jump and dance—imagine the sounds of distant bands and present chatter; above all, imagine movement, movement, movement evervvvhere—and vou have a tolerable

idea of summer amusement to day, as people understand summer amusement. Some methodical gentleman, with’ a nicely-balanced head for figures, recently computed that £10.000.000 are invested in America to-day in those white and shining places which I have spoken about, and in the whirling things which they contain. He calculated very nieely, also, the exact number—in millions—of people who visit Coney Island in the summer season: also the stun total of the season's taking in that most colossal of American amusement institutions. I have forgotten how much it was just now, but it was a very satisfying fabulous figure. Whatever it was, however, it would justify the question as to how it all came about. And of course you're going to ask the question. .

Think, then, of the cellar door—the cellar-door of childhood. For that door was the first step -in the evolutionary process of that white house, or all those white houses, of minarets and towers and elaborate ornateness which I've been telling you about. That little door was the protoplasmic germ—if you want to be scientific-—of modern American summer amusement. For summer amusement evolved from it, just as man was evolved from that little speck which scientists talk so scientifically about. Because that little door had within it the mystery, the thrill, the glamorous uncertainty which is the foundation of all success in the corridors of summer amusements. You remember —they- opened that little door and there was a blackness there. They closed it on you and you trembled, trembled deliciously. You wondered what would happen if they forgot about you. You shivered for a little while there in the blaek—and then you issued forth again with a strange exultancy. Your little nerves had cried to be thrilled

—and they were thrilled. Henceforth, you regarded that little cellar door with a strange reverence, a joyous fear. And it wan a versatile thing, too, because when the thrill of the dark wore off vou could slide down its slippery surface, ‘and that was another thrill—a thrill that never ceases. It was not until you grew up and got beyond it that you craved the thrill of something else. And that craving to thrill, that undeniable universal craving to thrill which possesses every man or woman, boy or girl—is the objective point at which all summer amusement providers aim. We develop many amplifications of the little door, all over the country. At times we spend £12,000 or £15,000—for one little door. And if you shiver and exult, as you shivered and exulted in those other days,- we get the money back, and then some pounds over. Me win in that case—and you don’t lose. We both get what we started out for. But the thrill is the thing. It has been so throughout the evolution of American summer amusement. When the fat ladies and the tall ladies and the bearded ladies and the thin ladies, and the abnormally strong men and the sword-swallowing persons appeared before you, it was with the simple idea that you should be thrilled. When the raucous-voiced “spielers’ of the old fashion proclaimed the thrilling merits of the man from Borneo it was with the same virtuous intent. When they announced "the most stoopenjious creat-uuu-ure ” who was " half a dorg and half a man,” they aimed at precisely the same thing. And the moving terrors pictured '' on the old brown posters — those old brown, canvas, weather-beaten posters which

we knew' so well—had a similar moving aim. It was the little cellar door again—vulgarised—but that same little cellar door.

That was what might be termed the middle evolutionary period. The amusement park at that time was an unorganised waste. Coney Island was a desert of sand dunes. There were dingy painted shows there —and confidence men. But in those days the American summer amusement idea was not universal in its appeal. It was then that I conceived the idea that summer amusement could be made universal in its scope by being made legitimate. Later sprang up the white palaces, first at Coney Island, and afterward throughout the country. That was but nine years ago. Now the Luna Parks and the Dreamlands and the Wonderlands and the various extraordinary lands of amusement parks represent this investment of the ten millions. Having explained which I may now properly come to the psychology of summer amusement. And the first thing which the summer amusement provider has to recognise is that men and women are not really men and women at all, but only children grown up. He eomes to recognise that the average mature human is not the complex thing which he had previously imagined. He comes to learn that all people are primitive in their tastes and pleasures. He comes more directly to his point, it is true, than the exponent of the high-brow drama; but the governing principles are essentially the same. Suspense. thrill and—grateful satisfaction—this is the body and the spirit of all amusement, high, low ami middle-browed. Even in the most removed of dramas there must be a thrilling mome»L The

summer amusement provider learns he must make his thrilling momenta more frequent, more personal than anj which have gone before. Study the little girl with her doll, and you will have discovered the basic.rule of all amusement, winter or summer) high-browed or low. When the little golden head of that doll has been almost knocked off, the little giri is in despair, But when some kind uncle comes and patches it up. the little girl is much! more joyous than before. She has had her moment of anxiety. This instinct is the one unalterable fact to be remembered in summer amusement production. So far, it all sounds easy, doesn't it? You learn 'that instinct and you succeed, eh? There are*, unfortunately, other things to be taken into consideration. This child-nature is the first thing which you must sedulously follow, and study, and refuse to be parted from it if you would be a successful promoter, of summer-amusement. You must leartr, for instance, that no truly great success can be other than simply arrived at—■ provided, of course, that the necessary; amount of thrill is there. You will find that the most popular appeals are those which are the most starklv primal—and blood-related to some children’s game. Taking a ride, for instance. Only this must be a longer ride, a steeper ride, SC more thrilling ride than that which the other children —the children not grown up —demand. The cellar door must be enlarged. And now begin the problems to be solved when you cater to these children long since grown. Their nature, it is true, undergoes no change. But their* tendencies do. And their tendencies

make up for their nature. Their tendencies are constantly changing. They, are even working overtime in the matter, of change. “A newer one, a newer one,” is continually being borne to you. “Another thrill, a different thrill” batters eternally at the walls of your consciousness. These grown-up children want new toys all the time, and new dolls are headless ere they are well dressed up. You must make newer cellar doors, more elaborate ones all the time, to replace those old affairs which are flying from the hinge. Only in this ease the dolls and cellar doors are most expensive things. You can’t reinstate a new one without much thought: so you can see that amusing the publie during the heated period is not so simple as it seems. It requires far more thought and demands far more risk than your purely, winter amusement. The life of youg average summer device is ephemeral—an hour in the scheme of days. You learn that those human tendencies are as fickle as the smiles of sunshine or the days of spring. And as the days go on these characteristics come forth more boldly. Each season the grown children become more insatiable. They are thrill-hungry. They ask a new thought; they demand a new laugh; they clamour for a new sensation. The devices of yesterday have become older than the Pyramids. It ia part of the psychology of summer amusements that you must unite to-day and to-morrow. It ie only necessary to look back a few years for illustrations. The humble old merry-go-round, which fasciitated our fathers and beguiled our mothers to joy—the old merry-go-round with its wooden horses, drawn' through the country village by .a horse—>is gone inUt

Wio limbo of things. New desires hare created the devices which cause you to plunge down steep inclines into water, % and turn somersaults in the air, and jump over abysses, and make lightning dashes through gorges and caverns and multifarious other things which must get quicker and steeper and more joyously terrifying all the time if they are io succeed. The cyclorama, not so very iong ago, too, was looked upon as a desirable and uplifting thing. Viewing the anxieties of others was found to be wholesome and gratifying. You used to watch a shipwreck and be perfectly satisfied. Aou viewed the fragments of the train wreck with active pleasure. The appeal to the eye then wholly satisfied. All that you desired an thoee early days was optical satisfaction. Now, however, you must hear the boat crash or the train fall apart; or you must have the sensation of going down some dizzy incline. You are victim of the snowball of sensation which promoters must follow. It gets greater all the time. And following it takes all the skill, Experience and intuition which you can give it. You watch your successful devices as a cat watches a mouse. You are open to any suggestion or complexity of variation which could possibly grow out of it. You become a hunter for ideas, a stalker for suggestions. You become a sort of humanised sponge for ideas, ideas for those millions of insatiable ones. And in the matter of ideas ? The best ideas like the best in all

YOU WOULD SCORN THE IDEA OF PAY TO GO THROUGH things, are the most naturally come by. They are those which “just come.” They are mostly the result of accident or develop out of the necessities of something else. Thus the helter-skelter became devised in order that some midgets fwho were playing on an “up-level” could meet the audience at the end of the performance. In order to do this, we built a groove slide out of rattan. Then ave saw r the possibilities and made a bigger, one. And 'there was your helterskelter!

You find, too, that ideas come through the development and discussion of other subjects. You are planning a very elaborate effect, perhaps, including a subterranean trip in which you reach a chasm of fire. It is necessary to cross the chasm. Chasms are made to ■be crossed. How?

.. An airship, say. An airship inevitably suggests itself; and the airship once firmly imbedded <in your mind, you immediately commence to speculate as to Bvhat other things you could do with it. Where could you send your airship? How can mystery —that universal parent of all thrill—be blended with it? Thon the moon suggests itself, and “A Trip to the Moon” becomes formulated. •And then the moon in its turn suggests something else. This is the usual process in the evolution of ideas. AH the subjects may be incalculably varied, but jdeep-set, within the bosom of each, must be the same potentiality of exaggerated Child’s play blended with apparent physical hazard. These absolutely must be

present or your device will be a failure. Of course, this sounds ridiculously (easy—simply |to get dozens of little “.shoot-ideas” from each succeeding conception. It even seeme to indicate a certain fatal ease which you may observe in the process of shelling peas. Unfortunately, however, for the beauty of this comparison, there are many other gentlemen —many other very ingenious gentlemen —doing exactly the same thing. You learn that it is not only necessary to thrill but to compete with other people's thrills, if you are to succeed. And as each idea is going to cost you a good many thousands of dollars to experiment with, you naturally become rather careful. You discard a thousand ideas for the one which you retain. You have a positive dislike to see that money with which you are going to back your conception evaporate before your eyes. You hate to see your own attraction neglected and the other man's borne under by streams of people. It is a commercial age. There is one necessary thing, however, which, in addition to thrill, every idea should have. Your idea must be simple in order to be successful. The child-man, or woman,may have more strenuous ideas of excitement that when they viewed the jittle cellar door, but the fascination of the barbarically simple never dies within the human breast. Your average person does not want a conception to be suggested to him. He wants a conception to dazzle, to stun him, to hit him on the head like the crack of doom. Neither, in this relation, does the child-nature of men and women ever out-

CHOPPING WOOD, BIT HERE YOU THE SAME MOTIONS. grow that other clement which is so much a part of child-nature —vanity. These, indeed, are the only two appeals which you can make to people in the matter Of amusement—thrill and vanity. 1 have spoken of the average person's inborn hungering for terror, that most overpowering of ail human delights. An understanding of the psychology of vanity is almost as important to the summer amusement provider. The promoter of summer devices for amusement comes to understand as no other man does, the overpowering ambition of ■those grown-up children called the human race to be seen "doing things.” Your average citizen, for instance, will go through inconceivable effort to indicalte of what tine material he is made. At the very idea of chopping wood for Mrs. Fenderson on a hot day, Mr. Fenderson will frown. But get him with a heavy hammer at Goney Island or at any other amusement resort in the country, put him up against an indicator which will indicate to his fellow humans the vast physical possibilities of Mr. Fenderson and Mr. Fenderson will pay for the privilege of working three times as hard as he ‘would in the infinitely more useful and domestic avocation of chopping wood.

But in the last case. Mrs. Fenderson is the only looker-on. If it were possible to gather an audience while Mr. Fenderson chopped wood, and that audience could be induced to think what a wonderful wood-chopper Mr. Fenderson was, fh.it amiable gentleman would probably chop it with great industry. This is an-

other phase in the psychology of summer amusements. Knowing that mankind and womankind like to be seen doing things, it becomes the immediate aim and object in life of every amusement promoter to allow mankind and womankind to be seen—doing things. It is largely for this reason that young ladies and young men are provided—publicly—with opportunities of shooting down sliding stairways. So the girl gets into the twirling tub or the rushing helter-skelter to show everybody how gracefully she can do it. She tucks in her skirts and comes down with the overpowering unconsciousness which you might expect in the restful environment of hammocks and river banks. She will whisk round in whirligigs to indicate how statuesque and contained she is under all conditions. She will whizz about aerial railways to show how brave she is; while your man will grasp the hammer and knock the block up to show them ‘‘how strong I am.” • So an amusement promoter comes to learn that the average man wants to prove that he can do things better than anybody else. And the amusement promoter advances—as an amusement promoter —because he knows this, and gives that average man every opportunity in the world to do it. It is for this reason that most of the devices which you see and which can appeal to vanity are placed where every opportunity for observation exists. This, too, lias a double effort. A certain opportunity to view things, or the portions of things, exercises an influence in inducing other people to “do” them too. You make provision in this way also to draw people who take pleasure in watching other people “do it.” And it is really to general admission that I look for profit.

A promoter comes to learn, too. that it is futile to make any appeal to class in tins matter of amusement. The human race is a great democracy in the matter of amusement. The summer promoter comes to know that al! his attractions must appeal to primitive desires —because all people are primitive.

He knows that the man of the world is just a grown-up child as is his less sophisticated brother, -and that he only appears to live in a rarefied atmosphere; and that under his decorative exterior the same earthly impulses exist. The society woman is no longer a society, woman under the province of the somersault. She is just a nicely-groomed child —as are the rest. The only appeal to class is what may be termed the indecent appeal, and this is only a five per cent appeal. Places which cater to this sentiment apparently get the money, though you never see anybody who provides this class of entertainment that has any. Quite apart then from the moral reprehensibility of introducing such “.--hows." the indecent appeal is not even a paying proposition. IJeeency changed the whole character of t oney Island and made it an Fl Dorado—for the man who understood t oney. As important as any other thing then, from a commercial standpoint, is to preserve the spirit as well as the letter of decency when you entertain people.

Another thing which one learns is (he commercial unproductiveness of exaggerated statement in the matter of attraction. Not to allow a single statement to appear upon a poster is now an accepted condition in the matter of the first grade of summer entertainments. It has been found that it does not pay to claim a better entertainment than you have. The spirit of the high claim died with the bearded lady and hairy monstrosity. Side by side, the hundred dollar "fake” and the fifty-tliousaiid-dollar amusement venture fought out the issue. The hundreddollar place went down, not because it was a hundred-dollar place, but because it could not live tip to the claims pictured on its boardings and voiced by its spielers. It has been discovered, too, that it is bad policy to make a personal appeal. In the modern places of amusement the “spielers" are instructed to look over the heads of the people while making their announcements, and are particularly warned against extravagance of statement. It may not be that this

moderation indicates virtue. It merely suggests that exaggeration in claim dues not pay.

Having got. then, your foundation of thrill an<l vanity, and your knowledge of the child-nature of man and woman, the aim is, as far as possible, to scientifically cover the whole broad ground of the human senses. Tasting and smelling are outside your provine*. We may safely lease tleose to the gentlemen who provide that al fresco food—the frank-

furter. Of the sensation of touch of course I have already referred to. If you want to be shocked—electrically shocked —you can become shocked. The sensation of speed, or the rushing of eool air. of falling, of bumping, of twisting, of turning—all are provided in innumerable variety. But the psychology of entertainment demands that the eyes likewise shall be phased by some little suggestion of mystery or wonderment, for which the human race is ever hungry. And here is explained the fantastic suggestiveness of the architecture. ; The aim is. as far as possible, to duplicate the cities'of fairy stories, in the material—to appeal to the child-imagination in sight as well as feeling. So when you Bee the imitation mosques and the minarets next time, think of this and follow the mental process of its creation. Notice the classical form and the fantastic shape and know the reason for each of these things, which is an attempt to

make the universal appeal to that which exists iu varying proportions to varying people.

And in the matter of hearing—bands, bands, bands, for the reason that they exhilarate, and unconsciously exeite and prepare tlie mind for the rushing things about them. They help along what people are pleased to term ‘’the carnival spirit.” This is the reason for the band. It has instructions to move about every hour playing, for the reason that it stirs up people and keeps them moving, which means, of course, potential success and money. For the first idea, the very basic idea of summer entertainment is to get people in good humour—and keep them there. When you do that, success is an almost calculable proposition. Therefore must you create movement, which is a thing which reacts on —admissions. The man who smiles wants to see things. And you are there for the purpose of showing him things. So you've got to make him smile and to do that you've got to keep him moving about. And if you can start ten men laughing naturally they make ten more men laugh. The twenty start the rest. But you cannot create an artificial laugh or thrill. The thing must be natural; and the mysterious quality of the natural cannot be duplicated. It is for this reason that it is of no commercial use to hire people to move about and applaud. The spirit of movement is lacking. No claque ever started applause at an opera. It merely helps to sustain it. Finally, and in brief, you must imagine your public—your grown-up human children—as a great elock which your experience and intuition enables you to wind up. The average man lives very largely the creature of conventions, the tragic victim of set and settled circumstances. Custom and habit force him to take life solemnly. This is your problem if you are going to be successful as a summer amusement promoter. You must wind that man up. You must wind up the clock that operates the other side of the average person. You must “get him going” as the saying has it. And to do this, you must give him a tilt to get him started. Onee started he’ll do the rest himself.

Of course, all these things sound exceedingly foolish. They are. But it is their very foolishness which makes their ehiefest success. Because these, our grown children, like to be foolish at the bottom of their heart. They must be amused and thrilled. They will admit that it is all foolishness themselves afterward.

They laugh at themselves with perfect charity—and come again. But the one great secret which the caterer in public amusement has learned and must learn well is that mankind never loses the heritage of its great mvsterv—the mvstery of childhood.