Harrison's Reports (1938)

156 HARRISON'S REPORTS September 24, 1938 Film salesmen will make every effort to impress upon their accounts the fact that they cannot sell a contract unless short subjects are on the WPP. It is my belief that this is not true — that shorts can be bought on a reel basis, that until the producers make shorts, all of which have entertainment value, the exhibitor is in no way obligated to pay for the entire contract at its full price. Of the new season's reels already screened by the writer it looks as if the 1938-39 season will be a repetition of the 1937-38 season — excess newsreel footage, dated vaudeville acts, drag travelogues, and orchestras hanked in the corner of a night club. Not until money and brains start going into short subject production can the exhibitor be expected to shoulder pait <if the responsibility. * * # Radio's Threats Movies' friendly enemy, radin, is reported to be wailing and gnashing its teeth because it has received none of the large advertising appropriation for the "Motion Pictures Are Your Best Entertainment" campaign. Reprisals are threatened because broadcasting executives assume that they have been very generous to tin screen. According to Variety they base that assumption upon four points: (1) Amount of gratis time for previews, gossip spielers, nutshell dramatizations; (2) Extent of plugging for him tunes : (3) Use of platters and free chatter sent out by Hollywood praiserics; (4) Number of stars employed on radio programs. Let us break down their generosity, point by point, and see how much of it is real and how much fancied. In the first place, the time given over to previews seldom if ever interferes with any commercial program. The time it consumes is invariably taken away from a sustaining program of the run-of-the-mill variety. As for the gossip Spielers, I doubt very much if there is a single showman who would even as much as whisper a protest if they were permanently barred from the air. Of the free air time only nutshell dramatizations could, by any stretch of the imagination, be classed as generosity on the part of the broadcasters. In the second place, where would radio be if film tunes were suddenly taken off the air? They had a short taste of such a situation recently when the publishing houses controlled by Warner Bros, denied them the privilege of broadcasting the songs on which they held the copyrights. Thirdly, most stations have been almost as glad to accept free platters as the Hollywood "praiserics" were to send them. Those same were played on local stations for local theatre managers and not for the industry itself. Lastly, how the broadcasters could have even dared to cite the employment of stars on radio programs as an act of generosity is beyond me. Have they been completely deaf to the pleas and threats of exhibitors over the air appearances of picture stars? Lest the radio executives think that they are doing the motion picture industry any favors by putting stars on the air, thus making it attractive tor prospective theatre patrons to sit home and listen to the radio, let me be one of the thousands of exhibitors to tell them that they are sadly mistaken. Make no mistake about it — pictures owe radio nothing. Whatever radio has done for pictures it has been fully repaid. Possibly not in cash, but in building a reputation for itself. BOX-OFFICE PERFORMANCES OF 1S37-38 SEASON'S PICTURES— No. 3 Paramount "Cocoanut Grove," with Fred MacMurray and Harriet Hilliard, produced by George M. Arthur and directed by Alfred Santell, from a screen play by Sy Bartlett and Olive Cooper: Very Good-Fair. "Hunted Men," with Lloyd Nolan, Mary Carlisle and Lynne Overman, produced by Stuart Walker and directed bj Louis King, from a screen play by Horace McCoy and William R. Lipman: Good-Fair. "You and Me," with George Raft and Sylvia Sydney, produced and directed by Fritz Lang, from a screen play by Virginia VanUpp : Good-Fair. "Prison Farm," with Shirley Ross, Lloyd Nolan and John Howard, directed by Louis King, from a screen play by Eddie Welch, Robert Yost and Stuart Anthony : GoodFair. "Bar 20 Justice," with William Boyd, George Hayes and Russell Hayden, produced by Harry Sherman and directed by Lesley Selander, from a screen play by Arnold Belgard : Good-Poor. "Tropic Holiday," with Martha Raye, Bob Burns, Dorothy Lamour and Ray Milland, produced by Arthur Hornblow, Jr., and directed by Theodore Reed, from a screen play by Don Hartman, Frank Butler, John C. Mofhtt and Duke Atteberry : Very Good-Good. "Booloo," with Colin Tapley, produced and directed by Clyde E. Elliott, from a screen play by Robert E. Welsh: FairPoor. "Professor Beware," with Harold Lloyd, produced by Mr. Lloyd and directed by Elliot Nugent, from a screen play by Delmer Daves: Very Good-Fair. "Bulldog Drummond in Africa," with John Howard, Heather Angel and H. B. Warner, produced by Harold Hurley and directed by Louis King, from a screen play by Garn^tt Weston : Fair. • The Texans," with Joan Bennett and Randolph Scott, produced by Lucien Hubbard and directed by James Hogan. from a screen play by Bertram Millhauser, Paul Sloane and William W. Haines: Very Good-Fair. Fifty-four pictures have already been released. Grouping the pictures of the different ratings (including Westerns) from the beginning of the season, we get the following results : ExcellentVery Good, 1 ; Excellent-Good, 1 ; Very Good, 1 ; Very Good-Good, 3 ; Very Good-Fair, 5 ; ( iood, 3 ; GoodFair, 12; Good-Poor, 7; Fair, 11; Fair-Poor, 7; Poor. 3. Fifty-three pictures were released during the 1936-37 season, excluding the Westerns ; they were rated as follows : Excellent. 1; Excellent-Very Good, 2; Very Good, 3; Very Good-Good. 5; Good, 9; Good-Fair, 4; Fair, 9; Fair-Poor, 17; Poor, 3. RKO "Blind Alibi," with Richard Dix, Whitney Bourne and Eduardo Ciannelli, produced by Cliff Reid and directed by Lew Landers, from a screen play by Lionel Houser. Larry Segall and Ron Ferguson : Fair. "The Saint in New York," with Louis Hayward and Kay Sutton, produced by William Sistrom and directed by Ben Holmes, from a screen play by Charles Kaufman and Mortimer Offner : Good-Fair. "Blond Cheat." with Joan Fontaine and Derrick De.Yiarney, produced by William Sistrom and directed by Joseph Santley, from a screen play by Charles Kaufman, Paul Yawitz, Viola Brothers Shaw and Harry Segall : FairPoor. "Border G Man," with George O'Brien, produced byBert Gilroy and directed by David Howard, from a screen play by Oiiver Drake: Good-Poor. "Having Wonderful Time," with Ginger Rogers and Douglas Fairbanks. Jr., produced by Pandro S. Berman and directed by Alfred Santell, from a screen play by Arthur Kober : Very Good-Good. "Crime Ring," with Allan Lane and Frances Mercer, produced by Cliff Reid and directed by Leslie Goodwins, from a screen play by Gladys Atwater and J. Robert Bren : Fair. "Sky Giant," with Richard Dix, Chester Morris and Joan Fontaine, produced by Robert Sisk and directed by Lew Landers, from a screen play by Lionel Houser : Fair. "Mother Carey's Chickens," with Anne Shirley, Ruby Keeler, James Ellison and Fay Bainter. produced by Pandro S. Berman and directed by Rowland V. Lee, from a screen play by S. K. Lauren and Gertrude Purcell : GoodFair. "I'm from the City," with Joe Penner, produced by William Sistrom and directed by Ben Holmes, from a screen play by Nicholas T. Barrows, Robert St. Clair and John Grey: Fair-Poor. "Painted Desert," with George O'Brien, produced by Bert Gilroy and directed by David Howard, from a screen play by John Rathmell and Oliver Drake: Fair-Poor. Fortv-one pictures have already been released. Grouping the pictures of the different ratings (including Westerns) from the beginning of the season, we get the following results : Excellent-Good, 2; Very Good-Good, 1; Good-Fair, 7; Good-Poor, 7; Fair, 8; Fair-Poor, 14; Poor, 2. The first 41 of the 1936-37 season were rated as follows: Very Good-Good, 2; Good, 3; Good-Fair, 9; Fair, 11; Fair-Poor, 12 ; Poor, 4.