Cinema: Who, What and How

When Margaret Farrand Thorp heard that 85,000,000 persons buy admissions every week to 17,000 movie houses in 9,000 U. S. towns & villages, she decided to find out why. She also wanted to know who the 85,000,000 are, what movies do to them and how they do it. Recently Author Thorp published her findings. Though she modestly says that any such book as hers (America at the Movies, Yale University Press; $2.75) must be "inadequate," "inaccurate," "written rapidly and superficially," to many a reader it may seem crisp, witty, just—a comprehensive roundup of candid facts about people who make, act in...