Nothing whatever is so close to the heart strings of any people as its "good" old songs. The first chapter of the best history of the United States is "Yankee Doodle," and the Civil War songs tells more about us than all the books in the Congressional Library. Several motion pictures have presented the same idyllic story as this Selig offering does, and some have also given it as memory visions that look back from the present to days before the war and war times. Several have made skillful use of old songs to help out some picture story, but, so far as we know, no one before has got as much American experience in one picture as Hettie Gray Baker has in "Old Songs and Memories." It is tremendously effective to such as remember war times. The present reviewer does only through his kin, but he, too, was deeply moved. There were people in front of us who frankly dried their eyes. Few Americans of the generation it pictures will fail to see their own story in it. But it might have been much more effective if more carefully done. The soldier pictures might have been much more natural, and the photography is poor. The producer is Colin Campbell, and the two principal parts are played by Eugenie Resserer, as the old lady who dreams on the porch, and Thomas Santschi, the old G.A.R. man. - The Moving Picture World, November 30, 1912
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