Boxoffice (Oct-Dec 1939)

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY ASSOCIATED PUBLICATIONS VoL. 36 Number 3 December 9, 1939 Member Audit Bureau of Circulations BEN SHLYEN Publisher MAURICE KANN Editor-in-Chief LOUIS RYDELL Advertising Manager 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. William G. Formby, Editor; Jesse Shlyen, Managing Editor; J. Harry Toler, Modern Theatre Editor; A. J. Stocker, Eastern Representative; Ivan Spear, Western Manager. UNREST ALONG THE PACIFIC LL IS NOT quiet in Hollywood. There is worry over the war and what it may mean. There exists concern over the lack of big league story material. The cursings thrown at the head of the double feature situation bounce from studio to studio. The competitive race for names continues a timeless thing. Labor is doing better and will continue to do so. Rather than go down, as a consequence, costs will go up. Those limited few who bother about grosses after the product leaves the stages know the theatre situation is not precisely hotsy totsy. Someone has to have his ears pinned back for part, or all, of these goings on and, in the eyes of several of the Hollywood mighty, it is the exhibitor. No distinction as to affiliated or independent theatre operator plays a part in this. It's merely the exhibitor, large and small alike, who stifles Hollywood's best efforts because (1) he fails to recognize values, (2) sits on his haunches and expects the public to chew up his doors and (3) never pays what the product is worth. So goes the argument. And it's pretty heated, too. The upshot of this wholesale criticism is a twofold affair, neither part of which has resolved itself into action. The first part deals with apparently serious ponderings about cutting production in numbers, not in costs, on the theory it is the big attraction only that counts now in this market. It is considered that the approach to the super attraction is to forget the weaklings for a concentration on the strong. This, of course, means fewer pictures. Out of this springs the belief exhibition at large will adjust itself to a reduced output by immediately going to extended runs. The other part poses a belief that the producer must have greater protection for his superior attraction, or what he views as his superior attraction. The argument here, in the words of one major studio head, quickly is this: 'T am reaching the point where I am totally disinclined to have my $1,500,000 pictures kicked around in the theatres without the safeguards I think their importance rates. I believe I am entitled to set up restrictions as to double featuring, advertising, length of run and admission prices not only in the cause of my investment, but in the cause of the exhibitor as well. 'T think you may find the day arriving soon now when conditions controlling the theatre run, such as these outlined, will be insisted upon not only by me but by other producers of top-ranking attractions as well. If we are going to make this type of film, we have to be rewarded for the work and the gamble." Hollywood's representatives speaking in this vein make out a clear and simple case — for themselves. The question is if they do not make it out too simple. There are lazy and incompetent exhibitors. And there are theatremen who have a soft time of it. But there are incompetent producers making pictures who have no greater understanding of their market requirements than the distance from Hollywood Boulevard to The Brown Derby which is no distance at all. The extremely competent producer quoted above does not touch upon Hollywood's errors, but confines his analysis to the successes which are fe-w. He overlooks the discouraging number of klucks which the exhibitor must play as he waits, often with his tongue hanging out, for a real one to hit the deck and temporarily take him out of his boxoffice misery. It seems to us that Hollywood and its average leading spokesmen are too impetuously sweeping in their demands for the globe and all the heavenly bodies on the basis of erratic deliveries of smash attractions. The exhibitor gets his windfall when those nice babies come along, of course, and the distributor usually does all right by himself, too. But, as this page remarked only recently, it's a long time between drinks in this business and the men who operate the theatres are no camels even if they smoke them. The producer cannot expect to bounce along on the tops of high grossing mountain peaks without ever coming down into the valleys. Neither can the exhibitor. There must be a levelling off process through which all industries and those in them pass. It's the natural thing to expect.