Business screen magazine (1938)

Close-ups and Long Shots THE NEWS REVUE OF THE BUSINESS FILM WORLD ♦ Abandonment of tniploye sports activities for Studebaker workers and sulistitution of entertainment and educational programs for employes and their families were announced last week by Walter S. Gundcck. director of industrial relations for the company. At tlic first meeting, held recently in the company's athletic clubrooms in South Bend. Ind.. -t.OOO persons, histead oj an expected crowd of 1.000 attended the shoiving oj instructive films. Concerts and employe singing groups will be on future programs, which supersede athletics that had been open to proselytizing, Mr. Gundeck said. Radio and Films Combined ♦ 1,500 persons attended the meeting of the Esso Dealers of Allegheny county. Pa., hekl reccntl.v in the ballroom of the William Penn hotel in Pittsburgh. A showing of the Esso Marketers new motion picture. Design for Power, was the high spot of the evening. Dealers also saw a broadcast of The Esso Reporter program and special radio and stage shows featuring widely-known stars. Esso Dealers who attended rated it the largest and most successful dealer meeting ever held. Appiiint Cliicayo Representative ♦ Associated Sales Company of Detroit has announced the opening of a new Chicago office. B. M. Ikert, formerly an educational and merchandising director for manufacturers of automotive products, now is the executive in charge. Craii/head In \ew Position ♦ Norman D. Craighead of Jam Handy Theatre Service, Inc., has been appointed to the creative contact staff of Jam Hand}' Picture Service. Inc.. according to Jamison Handy, president of both organizations. New Agency Film Department ♦ Centralization and coordination of the agency's various facilities for handling all typos of commercial motion pictures has been effected b,v J. Walter Thompson Company which announces the formation of a Motion Picture Department headquartering in their New York office. Fred H. Fidler, former St. Louis office manager for the company, will manage the new department with Wallace R. Boron heading the creative group. The department will act for clients on all creative and production phases of motion pictures and slide films for use as consumer advertising and for public relations, sales training and merchandising work. McCaU's Critic on Industrials ♦ The recent McCaU's whose movie critic. Pare Lorenz. is already well known to audionoos and producers alike as an able film documontarian. features a discussion of Men Make Steel, recent all-color production. Of importance arc Critic Lorenz' remarks, reprinted by arrangement: "The most exciting picture I have seen in many weeks is neither a short nor a feature; there are no stars, and there is no plot or romance in the production. It was produced for the U. S. Steel Corporation . . . and photographed in Technicolor, and is called, none too aptly. Men Make Steel. "This four reel color movie, on .strict grounds of dialogue, editing and nuisic, is not a firstclass piece of work. You have to listen to Edwin C. Hill's roaring voice; the musical score is weak and inept, and the film editor jumps from one location to another leaving you a bit confused. "But it is paradoxical that this industrial educational movie should turn out to be the most beautiful color picture over made, and for the color alone. I recommend Me)i Make Steel to you: the dull blues of the gigantic furnaces, the red and gold fountains of molten steel; the squat Bessemers pouring their great ladles against a dark sky — these are thrilling and awe-inspiring photographs. "As far as Hollywood is concerned, the producers will say, "It's an advertising picture and has no box office worth," and let it go at that — that is, they will say that if they continue the policy they have maintained for years in the movie industry. "But whatever they say. within the year these so-called industrial pictures are going to have a sic/nifica?it effect on the entire movie uorld. I have discussed this before, but now there is visible proof that b.v their own limitations Hollywood producers have lost millions of potential customers. "For the past ten years we have been thinking a great deal about the facts of this country: If you are a combination writer and contact man . . . experienced in writing commercial motion pictures and sound slidefilms and can work with executives oi large corporations, there may be an opening for you in a large, well-known producing organization. Write and SELL us you are the man we need. Give your age. weight and height. Replies confidential. Members of our staff know this ad is being published. Box 31. Business Screen Magazine. of its land, its social and economic problems, and about its great factories. "Yet in the last decade no movie company has even attempted to use the actual drama of our national life as photographic material. To be stn'o we did have the gangster cycle, but when you saw Underworld you saw them all, "If a movie company spent several hundred thousand dollars making four-reel pictures, there is no question they would eventually go bankrupt, and I can accept the argument from a producer that U. S. Steel can afford to .spend more money making a short picture about the steel business than any company that has to live by selling movies to theaters. "On the other hand, if Hollywood demands the right — or at least has the power, at present, to make all the pictures we see on all the screens in the country; if they consistently refuse, through ignorance of the country they live in, to experiment with now subject material, and new methods of using it, then, no matter who produces the picture, some organization, or group of organizations, will inevitably produce better and more imaginative movies. "And that is why I stated earlier: that within the year the so-called industrial film should have a profound infiuouoo on the motion picture business. "Many corporations for years have been producing short pictures: for their salesmen, for educational groups, and for home projectors. "Next year, however, there are two World's Fairs (you couldn't expect us to be content with just one AVorld's Fair) and there will be probably over a hinidred movies made by business firms, and industrial organizations, and government movies to show along with their exhibits. "Offhand, that sounds like a rather dull business, but consider this: the corporations, unlike some Hollywood producers, have learned quite a bit about movie making during the past ten years, and they will probably spend a great deal of money on these movies. "But the real value oj these pictures is that they unit shoiv millions oj people jor the first time just how many bewildering machines. proces.<ies and gadgets make up an industrial civilization . "Thus, as has happened bejore. it may be that a group oj non-theatrical corporations may come to the resctie, and make the jactual film exciting enough to give audiences once again a curiosity about movies. "The great German directors rescued Hollywood in the twenties with their new technique and their new material, and after them the Russians gave the technicians some new ideas. It would not be too far-fetched to predict that U. S. Steel has offered them still a new. and. as yet. unexplored photographic world iu which to work: that is. the world in which we happen to be li\'iiig." (Continued on Page i6)