Motion Picture Herald (Apr-Jun 1931)

April 4 . 19 3 1 MOTION PICTURE HERALD 29 THE PITFALLS and PRACTICE on the STAGE By JAMES WILLIAM FITZPATRICK W HEN the operation of grafting vocal chord on the camera had been successfully performed ; when it became apparent that the patient would not only live but thrive ; and when the jubilation consequent upon the realization of a theorist's dream was over, the makers of talking pictures found themselves for the first time, in the strict interpretation of the phrase, "in the show business." Added to the trials, problems, and perplexities of the studio they took on the difficulties and headaches and intricacies of the socalled legitimate stage with which, then and there, they came into active competition. There had been competition before but it was competition based on diversity of entertainment offered rather than on similarity. The silent picture had long been sneered at and despised by purveyors of the spoken drama as a brat who had no proper place in the house of Thespis ; film producers, distributors, exhibitors scorned as mere pushcart peddlers in the entertainment market; just nouveaux-riches in the category of amusement society. The consistent financial success and the growth in popular appeal of motion pictures after a time brought an alteration in that attitude but only so far as it had to do with the money making angle of the business. The feeling of superiority in other particulars remained and with it continued to persist a sort of inferiority complex among all and sundry connected with the film world. The producers had been told so long that they were lucky accidents, the actors had endured so silently the oft screamed epithet of "Ham" from their fellows, and the authors impressed so thoroughly that they were nothing but "hacks," that they believed it. It was all caused by the twaddle which had been written and preached — and accepted— on the Art of the Theatre. Now the only valid arts connected with the theatre are pantomime and writing because they alone contain its essence which is creation. It apparently never dawned upon picture producers that they were providing a home for pantomime against which the stage entrepreneurs had closed their theatres just as it never occurred to actors that they alone were working in an institution which fostered and developed a true art. Perhaps the truth had not been told them or if it had been sufficient emphasis and repetition had been neglected. The most amazing feature of the situation lay in the fact that motion pictures steadily growing in power, vital with new and aggressive blood, and fecund with alm^ost illimitable possibilities continued to look with deference upon the stage which, night after night, was losing its hold upon the public, which had ignored its potentialities, and was rapidly rotting from its OF PRECEDENT The blindfold guessing TEST passion for the drama of sex. With the successful making of speaking films, with the combination of the art of pantomime to the trade of the speaking stage any loitering sense of inferiority should disappear from the minds of everyone connected with the business. The stage still retains, however, its uses for the picture industry." It furnishes an experimental laboratory in which the dramatic values of plays may be estimated; it presents a listening post from which reactions on audiences can be noted ; and it gives an opportunity to observe the craftsmanship of players and the art of playwrights. "It can be," to quote a shrewd observer, "an important contributor to the flow of motion picture material." Danger, however, lies in placing too much dependence on the standards of value set by the speaking stage and being fooled by the label, "A Broadway success." The reason is the fact that most Broadway "successes" concern themselves with something motion pictures have thrown into the junk heap as bad business, sex in its pornographic aspect and its provocative appeal. No one with a sense of drama or an honest love for its presentation would suggest the complete elimination of "the desire of woman for the desire of man" from the storehouse of material proper for theatrical consumption. The stupid error {Continued on page 46)