Hollywood Spectator (1931)

June 20, 1931 5 The satisfactory form for the new picture is one that tells its story almost entirely with the camera, which has very little dialogue, and a synchronized musical score. If Hollywood would begin to make such pictures, prosperity would return to the industry. There are plenty of people in Hollywood who could introduce this reform and maintain it at a level that would earn the generous patronage of the public. There is no hope for it, however, while our present executives control production. To them, and to them alone, belongs the blame for the financial condition of the industry. The greatest proof of their incompetency is their failure to recognize that they are incompetent. ▼ TV An Alibi THE GREATEST contribution that the general financial depression has made to the film industry’s private depression takes the form of an alibi. Producers try to derive some satisfaction from the fact that as all business is bad, it is natural that theirs should be also. They know, however, that theirs is not a panic business. It was not affected greatly by former business depressions. Why should it be by this one? Even if there were no general depression, the picture business would be little better off than it is at present. The fact that business is not good does not affect the public’s taste in entertainment. The picture that would be a success in good times would be a success in bad times. It will be the same with television. The Radio group is spending millions on it, but I haven’t heard of it making an effort to learn what it should do to keep television going after it has been perfected. ▼ T T A Cow ON A SUNDAY morning a few weeks ago I called on a lady, a most important and aristocratic lady of the Holstein family. It was on the ranch of Alan Hancock at Santa Maria. Corona — that is the name of the Holstein lady — looked at me with large and gentle eyes and seemed to be wondering why I was interested in her. She is the only intelligent-looking cow I can remember having met socially, and in my time I have stroked the necks of a great many cows. Whenever I get near enough to any animal to stroke it, my hands feel empty until I do. But it was not Corona’s beautiful head, nor the velvet smoothness of her neck nor the puzzled depths of her intelligent eyes that drew me to her. Even while I was caressing the lady I was not sentimental. I was judging her from a commercial standpoint. Corona weighs seventeen hundred pounds. During each month in 1930 she produced twenty-four hundred pounds of milk — seven hundred pounds in excess of her own weight. That means a tremendous amount of butter, but I have forgotten the figure. Corona is a useful citizen. She is a champion of something — of the world, I think. And, withal, she has feminine graces. v ▼ EVERYTHING that I have said for almost three years about the folly of the producers in substituting dialogue for the camera as their story-telling medium, is proven to be true by the fact that the big baseball leagues are enjoying a season of real prosperity. The two are related in that both are amusements and business depression must affect both alike. Even in the hardest times, the public must have amusement. Heretofore pictures were selected. This summer baseball is getting the amusement money and picture houses are starving to death. Give the public the kind of screen entertainment it wants and there will be no depression in the picture business. V V V Television WITH ONE of the most powerful financial groups in America interested in the development of television, we may take it for granted that the practical stage of the invention will be reached shortly and that it then will be possible for us to have a combination of sight and sound as entertainment in our homes. Already the same group has given us another development of its laboratories — the talking picture. And as has been the case with the sound camera, I think we will find that its sponsors are devoting all their brains to the development of television and none to the development of the entertainment that it will provide. Television will be important only to the extent of its ability to entertain. At first we were interested in talking pictures solely because they talked. In the Next Spectator ▼ We Acknowledge That We’re Licked Are Warner Brothers Through? Folly of the Retake System New York Salesmen Should Keep Hands Off The Plaint of P. G. Wodehouse Decent Hours for Studio Girls Double-Feature Programs Inevitable Lubitsch and Yon Sternberg Score —By THE EDITOR More Scintillating Comments —By R. E. SHERWOOD Some Current Reviews BY FRANK DAUGHERTY Remarks Well Worth Reading By DALTON TRUMBO ▼ Some Pictures Reviewed Kiki Secret Six Vice Squad Maltese Falcon American Tragedy Women Love Once I Take This Woman Forbidden Adventure Indiscreet Hell Bound l\ight Nurse T ransgression Lawyer's Secret Smiling Lieutenant Drums of Jeopardy Young Donovan's Kid