Boxoffice (Oct-Dec 1939)

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY ASSOCIATED PUBLICATIONS VoL. 35 Number 20 October 7, 1939 Member Audit Bureau of Circulations Editorial Offices: 9 rockefeller plaza, new YORK city; Publication Office: 4804 e. 9th ST., KANSAS CITY, MO.,’ HollyWOOd: 6404 HOLLYWOOD blvd.; Chicago: 332 s. Michigan blvd. BEN SHLYEN Publisher MAURICE KANN Editor -in-Chief LOUIS RYDELL Advertising Manager William G. Formby, Editor; Jesse Shlyen, Managing Editor; J. Harry Toler, Modern Theatre Editor; A. J. Stocker, Eastern Representative; Ivan Spear, Western Manager. ALL-AMERICAN CHIPS The wish fulfillment running around in this industry until now has defied all understanding. Year after year, it has seen important foreign markets drop entirely away or dry up. In Italy and Japan, totalitarian interference would not be brooked by the American producer; and so, he is out. A score or more nations have imposed various forms of money embargoes. Great Britain has enacted two guota laws. The German field long since has been discounted, although three companies persist in sticking it out. Austria and Czechoslovakia have been destroyed in the Nazi iriferno. Spain has been wracked by civil war. The China incident still flourishes. It defies rationalization, with these storm signals flapping all over the map, to figure how this industry could, or would, proceed in the blithe and uninterrupted tenor of its foolhardy ways without once seriously halting to analyze, or seeking to analyze, what might be done while time still allowed. It may defy reason, but it is the fact. It was the fact, that is, until September 1. Until then the golden stream poured out from England with no interruption. All was well as long as the British market flourished. The rest of the dark and darkening spots apparently were incidental. Now, of course, the tale is vastly different. Theatre business in Great Britain is improving, but money is hard to get and worse is expected. Millions, representing much of the cushion and working capital, are in serious jeopardy now and conferences on what to do steadily grow apace. A great deal has been said, more hopefully than factually, that South America and those still "good" foreign territories will yield more revenue than they currently do. There is around the hope wartime business will lead into an exhibition boom here. Maybe. In the meantime, what? Is the industry to hitch its future to another distant star, hoping and hoping hard that everything will be all right soon again? Or is it to make up its mind that the future carrying the most assurance is the future drawn from the possibilities and the limitations, whatever they may be, in the domestic market? Drawing upon past and current happenings in other lands, it appears about time for the industry to accept the realization it is right here at home and betting with all-American chips that the gambling ought to be done. If market potentialities here allow for a plentiful supply of $1,000,000 productions, as reliable and conserva tive distribution opinion already has declared, what else need Hollywood be told? If, at that cost, the product places a return and a profit within comfortable attainment, as these same distribution experts agree, the objective becomes entirely clear. Nothing in a program of this nature precludes or narrows proper enterprise directed toward foreign grosses. Not at all. Let that continue. Let it intensify, but let no dependence on these markets, with all of their demonstrated and unpredictable uncertainties, rule the fate of the industry within its own continental borders. Disagreement with this argument will be inevitable. It will be argued it cannot be done. We maintain it can. That there will be great difficulties in the readjustment period is apparent, at once. But those difficulties, as represented by expensive negatives already finished and now deprived of their anticipated overseas returns, no longer have to be anticipated. They are at hand, large and formidable. As a marker of the times, read what the head of a large studio thinks. He is a man responsible for a program which will run into eight figures this season: "Under conditions existing today, due to the war and other conditions which I believe will exist after the war to a certain degree, it seems to me every producing organization must work out its plans to produce pictures based upon the domestic market. Any income from the foreign can then be applied to the net profit of the ledger. "Certainly, it should not be an impossible task to make good motion pictures at a cost that should return profits to the producers. When I make this statement, 'at a cost,' I mean at a cost with quality maintained. Quality should not be sacrificed, but every effort should be made not only to preserve it but to improve it. Extravagance and waste must be eliminated and the money spent in making the pictures must be reflected on the screen. If this is done, quality con be maintained and certain costs reduced." The overwhelmingly significant argument, and this one executive at least realizes it, is that the opportunity to reach out in the all-vital direction of self-sufficiency is at hand. It must not be kicked around, ignored or muffed.