Boxoffice (Jul-Sep 1940)

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY ASSOCIATED PUBLICATIONS VoL. 37 Number 13 August 17, 1940 Member Audit Bureau of Circulations Editorial Offices: 9 rockefeller plaza, new YORK city; Publication Offices: 4804 e. 9th ST., KANSAS CITY, MO./ Hollywood: 6404 Hollywood ELVD.; Chicago: 332 S. Michigan blvd. BEN SHLYEN Publisher MAURICE KANN Editor -in-Chief LOUIS RYDELL Advertising Manager William G. Pormey, Editor; Jesse Shlyen, Managing Editor; J. Harry Toler, Modern Theatre Editor; A. J. Stocker, Eastern Representative; Ivan Spear, Western Manager. COMPLETING THE CIRCLE AGAIN The GALLUP poll on double features, recording a fifty-seven per cent vote against and a forty-three per cent vote for, makes clear one important point. It is this: "While a majority of the American public prefers single features, it would be untrue to say that double features are directly responsible for keeping many persons away from the boxoffice. The reasons go deeper. "The adverse vote on double bills is more a reaction to 'poor' pictures commonly found on double bills than to the fatigue and length of time involved in seeing a double bill. "Persons interviewed who disliked double features were asked whether they would change their attitude if both pictures on a double bill were good. When this qualification is added, opinion divides sixty-four to thirty-six in favor of double features. However, the public seems to believe that this is an impossible hypothesis." Thus is established in terms of this investigation anyway that it is not length and it is not fatigue which comprise opposition to duals, but lack of quality. No one within the industry will be surprised. It is this department's prediction the survey conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion will be noted with interest and nothing done about it. For it is hardly likely in these upset times that any experimentation will be undertaken by way of disturbing the status quo for a hop, whether mild or otherwise, into the unknown and its unpredictable hazards. Not when children are more than three to one for doubles and the lower income group fifty-three per cent in favor. But the immediate, and also the obvious, thought which, nevertheless, follows leads to a consideration of the second feature in terms of production. That consideration automatically encompasses the question if the "B," so plotted on studio paper and thereafter turned out in its allotted groove, need be as lack lustre a finished job as it now is; whether, at the same budget, more discrimination in story and cast selection, plus greater attention and less indifference stemming from the top, might not bring about a better result. This is no suggestion the focal power intensified on the "A" be diffused to a point where topline product would suffer. No studio would countenance such an idea; no studio should. The general thought, however, is one swinging around the feasibility of nurturing Hollywood's production step-children to the end they get less kicking around when they arrive at the theatre. If, through any such plan, the quality equation could be strengthened, the result at the boxoffice finally will reflect an upsurge. Your visionary is quite aware this is asking for, and hoping for, a great deal from an industry which rushes along with little time for stops at way stations. He understands also that it is sounding off on the oldest of chromos to write about better pictures. In fact, to do so appears suspiciously like a mid-summer editorial slump and a feeble leap toward the bottom of the page where this typewriter ends its chore. But if double features continue — and Gallup poll or no, we believe they will — it makes some sense to ponder ways and means of making the best of the situation. This, we take it, becomes a problem with several angles. For instance, it might be dangerous to assume that duals, of and by themselves, will continue to draw merely because they are so definitely of the bargain counter variety. Theatre grosses, even with duals, show a wide fluctuation up and down the line and there is, of course, the instance of the triple feature to remember and to worry over. Therefore, and as paradoxical as it may appear to be, the industry is confronted with the serious job of keeping the twin bill situation attractive enough so that it does not deteriorate into something worse. As we see it, this suggests the standard of the "B" will have to be improved simply for the purpose of maintaining what the business now has and, to repeat it, to ward off further retrogression in the guise of an additional feature slapped on top of the existing two. In any process of making the minor feature more attractive, however, there is the seed of something else. If, in the doing, it is possible gradually to raise the entire level of production so that the public ultimately will become aware it is getting a good "B" along with the presumably superior "A," it does not seem too remote or too far-fetched to conclude more people will go to theatres with greater regularity. Thereby, the total weekly audience figure might be raised from the approximately 54,000,000 to 60,000,000 it currently enjoys to something gratifyingly beyond.