Variety (Jan 1949)

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y PICTURES Forly ■ third P^g^TY Annhersnry WrdncBflay, January 5, 1949 Zanuck, Schary, Geotz, Krim Concur On One Thing-Good Fix Can Be Made Cheaper, Generally Must Be Made Better, Or Else The boxoffice year ahead for Hollywood should be good for those who have realistically realigned their resources irstrengthertsto/y preparation and production m keeping w^th the domestic and foreign postwar changes, witn me aoiuco market" is gone and so Hollywood likewise must do away with the "easy" methods ;«rf.vpf6dj^^^ tibn This necessary st^eaiftliffling has been accbmpUshefl in most garters and I believe the future can be faced With great confidence; V . "Realighment" is a better word top what has taken place ih most studips rather than retrenchment, a term tbat carries with it wrong ittipUcations. Hollywood has simply cut out the "plush"' and has gone to work; „ ' Instead of reduced effort in our Darjrl F, ZanneK studio, and I am sure this -holds •oually true in others, everyone here has become realistic •nd rearranged plans to put on the screen every dollar we spend. In the past, lush war years so much that was spent was sheer waste and did not appear on the icreen. The savings thus accomplished in this new realignment program for 1949 wiU in no way affect quality of screen production, but wil^Strengthen it. Hollywoo* simply hds faced a tighter economic world realistically and made plans accordingly. The coming year should be a healthy one. All studios have trained their guns on the boxoffice target. Business is still good for the studio that turns out pic- tures that warrant it. Granted, the public generally hasn t the surplus cash of the years before the price of steaks, ' automobiles and rents became such consuming burdens. But entertainment—Good Entertainment—is today a ' public necessity. The public must have a "lift," be sup- plied with good escape, or shown motion pictures of out- standing merit. sThere still is no other medium that, will reach so many millions so economically and effectively. The only problem is to'Shape the costTto^nfprm with the public entertainment pilrsc and to be sure that the quality . is in each film. Pleasure, or entertainment from a showman's point of view, has become a necessary part of the American stand- ard of living. For the several years past, production costs in the film industry mounted, but production did not bring, its "money's worth" because the efl'ort wasn't made to insure this. When the bottom drolpped out of the war-flushed at- tendance boom, readjustment toward efficiency became necessaryi Gosts were cut mainly by eliminating uneces- ' * aary, footagCi : , So we start off into 1949 with our lessons learned, our studios in shape to meet coming exigencies, and the knowledge that we can iiave a good year if we make good pictures. ''Coming exigencies" however will not be lacking this year, because the film industry has never had smooth sailing and has always had to face problems. Like "The Mad Marches" of Michael Arlen, Hollywood is "never let off anything." The problems ■ of self-government ivitholn^ our ranks, of Government intervention in distribution and ■ exhibitionv^these and many other problems will have to be reckoned with in the year just starting.. . ; Most significant and hopeful of all the signs for the coming year, in my opinion, is the public reaction to a picture we made with great trepidation as to popular reaction. Though 1 will say here that we were never: in the least hesitant about producing it: it was a picture which simply had to be put on the screen if : Hollywood ls_ to fulfill its purpose and continue to grow. ' In order not to be too cryptic I must intrude a commercial title ■and name "The- Snake. Pit" by name. • The public response to it has been greater than we dared hope. And approval has come not only from those exceptional filnigoeis who are attracted by exceptional pictures, but also from the rank and file of regular film patrons. It is this mass: approval which gives us new hope and heart. ^ i ■ This signifies that the screen is no longer reaching for maturity in the film masses. The screen public has ma- tured! We have assurance now that producers no longer reed to fear a subject of drama because it requires a thinking response on,.the part of audiences. Thoughtful pictures, significant/pictures, enlightening pictures at last can be m^^e, and/vve^who make them need only be mind- ful: of thel_prijHary responsibility of imparting entertain- «-r«ient to th^isocial substance in order to give them popular appeal. :0f all the results of the past and promi-ses of the future, this, to mci is the most significant! - : ' that, instead of examining some of their prob.leras re- alistically, they assumed that the threat was a true one. . Through some of the bad will engendered by some ill- considered public relations, the picture business alw^s inherits people who complain and jump upon us as soon as the opportunity presents itself. This year they haim mered at us from every direction. These criticisms were in various forms . . . from the calm, dispassionate; artic- ulate ones ... to some of the longhaired commentators . . and then finally to a certain segment of the press which nibbled in the wallow of scandal, dtsgusting in- nuendo, half-truths and implication. Certainly we have real problems. But therF are an- swers to all of them. The showmen who creited this industry have not suddenly lost their wits, nor their tal- ents, nor their ability, to think out a situation. High cost is solved by making low-cost pictures. That's being done now. Costs are coming down and good pic- tures are being made. You meet competition by making better-quality films. We're beginning to make theni. You solve the British situation by not counting on the foreign market. We're beginning to readjust our economy to that point Legal problems you solve by litigation, and we re certainly going through them. When the decisions come, we will adjust ourselves to those decisions. As long as the'herd instinct exists and a group of peo- ple will gather together anywhere—in a stadium, a thea- tre or a hall, to hear or to watch anything—good pictures can command good audiences. Let's stop worrying. Let's stop being dismal about the future. Let's continue the trend towards making better pictures all the time, and some of the many who have been making dire predic- tions about the picture industry will one day be as un- comfortable as some of the pollsters, were in the wee small hours of Election night. Co8le Prescnt-Day Grosses Plenty. OK If Only ^Would Come Dovm—^William Goets There is nothing wrong with grosses; there is plenty wrong with costSv ^ ■ - . .- A lot of people keep asking,. "What happened to the moVie business?" The question is generally intoned with ■ the mournful respect accorded to s^^eone who has just died, and been laid away. The motion picture ' business ■ is neither dying, dead nor bmrifed. .The motion picture business is .-Still- very much with usi If certain itt;(6ndarice losses are incurred, because /of com- peting amusements^ the • }iigh cost of living or similar deterrents, there are offsetting factors to stabilize attends ance: increases in population,. new groups of adolescents acquiring.. the "motion picture habit" and such.- You ' BUI Oqetz might call it a standoff in relation to gains and losses in attendance. , Everybody is putting too much stress on motion picture grosses. The^roblem is to produce pictures at a cost com- mensurate with,today's market potential. Not too long-ago a gross of $2,500,000 was considered small time. That gross today still makes a picture with a production cost of $2,200,000 a flop. That same gross for a picture costing $1,200,000 will keep the home fires burning. So it isn't the gross that really tells the story. Experiences of the last few years have proved to all of us in production that money unwisely spent does not increase the gross.. Indeed, too frequently it has" merely increased the loss.' Every company in the business has; enough evidence in its backlogs to prove conclusively that just spending money in any and all sections of production will not guarantee quality or boxoffice value. It's about time that producers, directors, writers, stars or anyone else with a voice in production started thinking about making motion pictures for the public in.stead of lor our personal and individual satisfaction. The Stiowhirn Who Created "Tljig Industry Haven't Suddenly Lost Their Talents—-fDore SrlUiry The yea"r of offifial panic ended on Dec. 31, 1948/There were ,many contributing factors to making thi.s the-year of panic, but, despite all Die evils aiid'dangcrs that beset the industry. Hie panic was, in tlie main, a state of mind. , Certainly we had enormous problems piled upon us as a result of the Brit- ish, situation; high costs;. diminishing boxoffice returns domestically; violent legal problems; plus the competition from other entertaifiment and in- formation sources. Problems are not solved by permitting a state of panic to exist. The problems have to be solved by looking at them squarely, and: then figuring out a way under, •ver, around or through them. .-: To some people in the industry, the •nique position of being warned by p^,^ scbarv ■keptics that the picture business was ' . to dissolve into: nothing was such an alarming one Oiin Clark 1948 Wrote Off Costly Mistakes of Lale '46 .And '47, Leaving '49 In Good Prmjteel'r—Arthur Kriin The year 1948 has been one in which we have writtten off our mistakes and our losses on pictures made during the high cost periods of late 1946 and 1947. This is true of most corfipanies, so that all of us face 1949 with a relatively clffan slate. For 12 months now the adjustment of costs to anticipation of lower revenues has been under- way. For some companies, who are loaded with eommit- ments/this adjustment is more difficult than for others, but, by and large,, the law of compensatir«n has been Such that the companies with the most difficult adju.stment problems are also, those wit*h the largest cash reserves against which to draw to navigate their difficulties. I will • be surprised if the obstacles prove to be insurmountable ^ for the established companies. To prejJare ourselves for the future, we have learned a lot of Ifessons the hard way these pa.st ■ two vears—by suftering through our mistakes instead of avoiding them —and this kind of experience you never forget. Fortu- nately, the discipline of not over-committing ourselves during the buildup period is now paying off in the fact that we are mobile and ready to profit by our experience and try new expedients as the occasion arises. -We have learned several important lessons during the past 12 monllis. Wo have found that when pictures are properly planned, there is a large potential profit in the domestic market alone, even in these times. These pic- tures were made by knowledgable producers who made certain that all moneys spent reached the screerKiind who correctly anticipated that the public would be\rfiTjre« in- terested in exploitable ingredients and good picture-mak- ing than, in name casts. We have learned that we must avoid paying exorbitantly for personalities who -are stars In Hollywood but who either do not he}^ a picture op actually hurt a picture wheji it reaches the public. We have learned, too, that the emphasis on idea pictures can- not reach formula proportions and that a well-balanced' program must include some marquee names—the^prob- lem being to find the right ones—and that we must invest time, energy and money in the ever-continuing search for new personalities. In all of this, the exhibitors must come forward to help us. We—that is, .all the Studios—are trying to do an honest job for them. We ask that in their own best interests. They must recognize the importance of a new supply of good product. Enclqsed Please Find Or What a Script Editor Has to Put Up With—^From Feelthy Pictures to a Chi-Type Torpedo By OLIN H. CLARK ' •{Eastern Story Editor, MetroGoldwyn-Mayer) It's a tossup for first place between the gentleman In Somalilabd and the lady in Oregon. \ He enclosed a postcardi^fi the kind college boys acquire in the Rue Blondell and then worry the rest of the sum- mer about how tough the customs Officials could get in re the importa- tion of pornography. ' She enclosed a hand-written piece; : to be used as the basis of a picture ' proving that VD in the Armed Serv*! ices was due solely to Hnfair amaiteur competition and if the boys would only stick to professioiials neither their mothers nor- their dhaplain* need worry. She :made put a . ^ood case too and her ;aufhority was im- peecalsle: she stated that she was the "manager" of a long-established and well-regarded "house'* on the out- skirts of Portland. , That's the kind Of enclosure you never see on the screen or read in the magazines. It's the end-product, so to speak, of an editor's activities. Too bad that" you can't see it, because oftentimes it's funnier than what passes for entertainment in the mass me<iia. Oh; yes; the gentleman in Somaliland offered the ^'feelthy peecture" in exchange for a few stills of our stars. It could be that he regretted the deal since our ladies wore a lot more clothes than his did. Or did he ■ write the wrong company? Whenever the gods of our mailroom.come across a com- munication addressed to the company rather than an individual, whose contents fall into no known departmen-. - tal classification, it is routed invariably to my desk.: From ■ which you could conclude that the Story Department is ; a sort of humanized catch-all or even wastebasket.. But along with the bores a nd cranks com e a lot of laugh.s . I ^ Dusting the Attic [ : For example, there was the dear did lady who wrote ; from the deepest and darkest southern state. She didn't ■ enclose anything for a: very good reason, but it got here ,iust the- same. The crate arrived shortly after her letter. When opened there was disclosd what seemed to be the entire contents of her attic. And it was a large attic. She offered us all. the diaries and letters and snapshots and memory books and pressed flowers of her family back to Grampaw and even unto third-cousin-by-marriage Emmy Lou; If; I'd started reading them then I'd still be reading them now. The dear old lady had » good idea; She was too busy with social affairs to read the family archives but if I would undertake same and then write a scenario based thereon she would not only split the proceeds but' also guarantee that the picture would make "Gone With The Wind" look like a quickie. It would have at that, come to think about it. Sometimes the endosed-plea.se-finders follow up per^ sonally. That's bad. Especially for my Girl Friday who is much braver a.nd: more diplomatic than her boss'. She is my shock-troops and disposes of nine-tenths of the eager beavers. But every once in a While one getis past her. Then I'm stuck. One day an individual just came right in without an- nouncing himself or even knocking. The first I s;iw of him he was putting his coat on my table, his hat on my desk and his, himself that is, in my chair. He talked out ot one side of his mouth for five minutes and shifted to the other side for another five minutes without dropping a syllable. Turned out he was an ex-con who wanted to sell his memoirs. (I'll never know why he didn't pick Fox or Paramount or Warners; but MGM must have i^ome- Ihing they haven't got.) All this time he kept his right hand in his pocket where it .seemed to make an especially large lump. As .soon as I got a chance to .say a word— which was "no"—he pulled his hand out to pound on my desk. The lump was still in his pocket and it was no hand ia there. In fact, it bore a striking resemblance in shape to a .45 automatic; all right, make it a .38. At that point things got a bit blurred, but I remember opening my desk drawer and displaying a large pair of shears, a brass-edged ruler and a sharp letter opener, which mustv have done the trick because when they brought me to he had gone. It was np sale for him but he had a mighty , fine sales argument. Never a Rejcetion Slip J Most ot the customers are supreme optimists. They practically never forget not tp enclose.,return postage, which makes it pretty obvious that they do not expect their stuff to.be returned, so why take a chance on wast- ing stamps? It's an estimable attitude but hard on my postage account. The prime exhibit was the lady who wrote from a hrench Provmce and enclosed seven, I said sevev, paper- backed French novels, all with her byline. Her reque.st was simple: I should a) read them; (2)' make English synopses; (3) submit the books and my synopses to all S!?.1lt companies if, in its mistaken judgment. MGM didn t buy them; (4) failing any movie sale, which was practically inconceivable, ship the books to a, pub- isher of my choice in French Canada and arrange for their publication up there. Nothing was said about ex- penses or even a share of the loot. The books still repose (Continued on page 54)