Hollywood Spectator (1931)

June 20, 1931 7 small percentage of his salary to make up this million. To offset the waste, which was due solely to his incompetence, he is willing that all the people on the studio pay-roll should contribute something from their salaries. I think that is very decent of him. T T T New Offices BEFORE very long the Spectalor is going house hunting. It needs a bigger office and it is going to seek one where offices aren’t. It is going to find a bungalow on some quiet street — one of those Hollywood streets that consist of sunshine and flowers and lawns; and rows of architectural delights in which people live and are happy and healthy. The first feeling of rebellion that California instilled in me culminated in my decision never to wear a hat again until someone told me why I should. No one has. Since that time I have remained a slave to other conventions, but now I find myself rebelling against the one that demands that an office should be in an office building. I want the young women who help us with the Spectator s business to sit by windows that look upon lawns and to breathe air that is scented by garden flowers. I want to take them away from streets that are clamorous with discordant noises and relieve their ears with the hum of bees. Instead of their vista being a building opposite with cells like theirs, I want them to gaze at bougainvillaea and gladioli and zinnias and other delights that the garden we’ll have will offer them. ▼ ▼ And WHEN visitors call upon me I want to take them to the shade of a tree in the rear and let them sit in reclining chairs and go to sleep if they want to while I tell them what’s the matter with the film business. And I want a place to which Dalton Trumbo can bring his Airedale puppy and give me a chance to develop the great friendship with it that will be the inevitable consequence of our better acquaintance. I don’t know yet where the office will be, but it will be on a street where one can park in front of it and where we can scare up a bunch of kids for a ball game when there isn’t much going on. Or even when there is, for ball games are important. In these days of motor cars it doesn’t make much difference where an office is. About the worst place I can imagine for one is in an office building. ▼ T T Stories ANYONE who views cinematic conditions with any degree of intelligence would have considerable difficulty in determining which is the major asininity indulged in by motion picture producers. As each one is contemplated it looms so large that it seems to be the greatest. I find myself frequently about to start a paragraph with some such opening as “The greatest stupidity of the film industry — but before I get the sentence set down I think of a score of other stupidities just as great, and I have to start off in some other way. Degrees can not be determined when the whole producer mentality is so low. But let us take one stupidity that is not exceeded in stupidity by any other — the belief that there is a story shortage. There is no reason whatever why one of the major organizations should buy another story for the next ten years. If it would train, and keep employed, writers who know how to put motion pictures on paper, writers who know the camera and the entertainment value that can be derived by a director from a well-written script, the files of the organization would provide enough story material to keep the studio going for a decade. ▼ V T Music AT THE Beverly theatre recently there was a Charley Chase two-reeler in which Charley sings with a male sextette backing him up. There also was some ensemble instrumental music. I enjoyed every foot of it. I found that I was somewhat hungry for some music with my screen entertainment. With the advent of the sound device the screen was given an opportunity to gain tremendously by the judicious inclusion of music in its product. The proper understanding of its opportunities being beyond its mental capabilities, the industry proceeded to handle music in a manner that brought down upon it the derision of the public. Then in a manner consistent with its usual thought process, the industry decided that the public did not like music, quite the funniest conclusion it ever had reached. In groping about for some cure for the present sickness of the box-office, it would be wise of the producers to try music again. First, however, they should get someone to tell them just where music belongs in screen entertainment. It has a definite place, just what the place is being quite plain to anyone familiar with the rudiments of screen art. T ▼ T Not Bad THAT bad pictures are responsible for the present unsatisfactory condition of motion picture finances seems to be the general understanding. Hollywood has an infallible method of determining the degree of merit possessed by a picture. If it does well at the box-office, it is a good picture; if it does badly, it is a poor one. As nearly all pictures are proving to be box-office disappointments, nearly all pictures are bad. As a matter of fact, Hollywood is not turning out poor pictures, if by pictures we mean stories told on the screen, good acting, capable direction, elaborate production and satisfactory examples of screen writing. Never before in its history has Hollywood turned out better stories, more gripping dramas, than it is providing for the public to-day. Never before has Hollywood expressed itself upon the screen with a greater degree of technical perfection. And still the box-office languishes. Why? ▼ ▼ BECAUSE Hollywood is expressing itself in a language foreign to its medium. Its medium is the camera and it is