MOVIE MURDERS

A Nashville woman is reported to have slain her seat-neighbor in a movietheatre for reading the sub-titles out loud. Enduring the unpleasant interruption as long as she was able, she must finally have given way to "that uncontrollable impulse" and have imposed summary justice upon the offender. And "justice" of a kind it certainly was, for another movie-goer in another part of the country was fined severely some time ago for this same offence which brought about the demise of the first Nachville woman.

There is some doubt as to the verdict which the Nashville murderess is to receive, but if the general opinion of the movie public were consulted, the act might well be considered "justifiable homicide". Men have been killed upon much less provocation in this country before. And were the lady to be let off scot-free and undoubted interest would be added at all performances in the future. Heretofore most movie-murders have been perpetrated on the screen, and the audience has contented itself with a passively vicarious thrill. Recently, even, melodrama has slopped over on to the stage producing several bundred more unjustifiable homieides at which the audience has crected its small hairs in horror. But with the possibility of having a mysterious knife thrust among one's ribs for inadvertent observations on the picture, even a news reel of the Coney Island bady parade would become interesting, and the more the subtitles, the more thrilling the picture would be. But such dreams seem doomed. The prosaic fine is more lawful than the glamorous murder, and all gangmen and impulsive female murderesses will be confined either to the screen or to the jail.