Motion Picture Herald (Nov-Dec 1948)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD MARTIN QU1GLEY, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher TERRY RAMSAYE, Editor Vol. 173, No. 7 ASlBfl November 13, 1948 FURTHER EXPLANATION BY way of adding complication to their embarrassment over the debacle of their national election predictions the pollsters have taken to the radio to explain. The result does certainly lend to a clarification by extending their confessions of confusion. Over the Columbia network Mr. Elmo Roper said: "Nobody likes to admit that he had in his hands a well-engineered, almost microscopically accurate measuring instrument and didn't know how to use it, but that is apparently what happened." One reflects that it was the same hands which both "engineered" the instrument and used it. Over the National network, Dr. George Gallup called it all the "challenge of a lifetime" but expressed confidence that the public will still use polls as a guide. "I hope," he said, "all thinking people, once they've understood the various problems and factors we must cope with, will not lose confidence." Considering the "factors and problems" that says what? It would now be interesting to have a Roper-Gallup poll on what's wrong with the poll system. They could get an answer, but who would take it? * * * * It would appear that possibly those hopeful picture makers and sanguine magazine editors who have been seeking nourishment and guidance from the opinion samplers might have to turn back to their own resources and abilities in fashioning their product. So far the best findings about the merits of the product have been had in the box office receipts, upon which an industry was built without benefit of poll-searching. ■ ■ I ASSORTED AUDIENCES EVIDENCES that the motion picture audiences are sorting themselves out multiply apace. The solid core of the commonality is and ever will be dominant, and to that the motion picture as an industry will continue to address itself with diligence, although a sometimes questioning devotion, flecked with questioning and experiment. The drive-in theatre stands today the most conspicuous adventure in pursuit of the audience that has come in that long sequence from black tent to store show to nickelodeon to movie theatre to picture palace. The drive-in is a cutback to the shirt sleeves-and-overalls audience, of the five-cent long ago, in modern terms and with an unexpressed rebellion at the disciplines and elegances of today's cinema. There are, obviously, other factors, but basically the appeal partakes of those highway restaurant signs which say: "Come in as you are." It is perhaps inevitable that the screen theatre's development progress having reached the ceiling of million dollar magnificence, should not burst its seams at the bottom. Up at the other end, and for curious and complex reasons, one observes a break through the movie ceiling into another audience stratum with the Theatre Guild presentations of J. Arthur Rank's "Henry V" and "Hamlet", neither of which are motion picture in any orthodox sense and which are yet attrac tions to what the late Joseph Medill Patterson used to call "the culturines". The Shakespearian manifestation is special and probably transient in its nature. Despite the brave boasts of grosses, it is not made at all plausible that either of those ambitious productions will be paying their whole way. They have come, somewhat belatedly, as a part of a campaign to establish the grandeur of the British cinema and were made in a period when the logistics of the international scene were very different. They were admirably chosen for the purpose but the lines of the campaign moved faster than the film. Never-the-less the culturine audience is being demonstrated, and identified by the Theatre Guild, as it has not been before. It is the while to be remembered that the "little art theatre" which tended to flourish a spell and which has now all but vanished, was also the benficiary of accidental and misfit product resulting from ill-advised produced projects susceptible to "intelligentsia" promotions. Anyway there plainly is an audience on top which would like some motion pictures that are not tied to the taste range of the commonality, which has the buying power to dominate the art. Again comes reactions from the wide field of the majority customers indicating that they are finding more imposing ideas, explorations and essays at significance in much of the fare than is to their liking. They know that life is earnest, life is real, but that seems to be what they are trying to get away from when they go to the movies. And they do not mind in the least that metropolitan critics call names and use such words as "escapist". Most of the customers would rather look at a picture than read about it. If there is to be an order of theatres serving customers for "think" pictures it will have to evolve rapidly enough to inspire a flow of product to keep them open, and on a cost basis considerably below that for the popular product for the multitudes, rich in their agglomerated buying power. A development in that direction would be, however, a relief to all hands, in that it would help to drain off the complaints of the few about what the many prefer. ■ ■ ■ COMPETITION for the pay roll dollars grows, with the department stores starting their Christmas selling campaigns early, right now in fact. Also they are issuing gay catalogues with bright color and pitched at the popular tastes and lower buying power brackets. The high falutin' costly novelties of the lush war-spending years are gone, and there is an accent on what are called "practical gifts". They are hot after the same dollar that goes to the box office. ■ ■ ■ CJ Way down under at Adelaide, Mr. Ewen Waterman, of that famed Waterman Circuit in South Australia, retiring president of Rotary, had friendly words for America's European recovery program. He sees it as "further evidence that the United States has a vital interest — humanitarian, economic, strategic and political — in helping participating countries to achieve economic recovery". He suggests that Australians eliminate the words "foreign" and "alien" in contacts with Americans. — Terry Ramsaye