Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1963)

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JUNE 10, 1963 lewpotnts 1963 * VOLUME 31, NO. 12 St a p Trying To "Cure9 the Critics We do not agree with Warner Brothers that there is justification for or good judgment in the company's suspension of advertising in the New York Herald Tribune as retribution for a caustic review and subsequent untoward comment on the film "Spencer's Mountain". Such action is the remnant of a management ethic, not entirely exclusive to the movie industry but peculiar to it, that equates the placement of advertising space with the sovereign and inalienable right to a "good press." We say it has no place in the modern corporate concept, no matter how intemperate a review nor grievous the imagined injury. We say this taking into full account the personal peccadillos of some critics who fancy themselves inquisitors of an excessive and blatant "Hollywood", and those smart alecks who are wont to exhaust torturous paragraphs about a movie for the sake of a single japery that might amuse their readers. Yes, for all their abuse of the license they enjoy, critics are indigenous to a free, untrammeled press. We must admit that the gaudy values of our own business encourage them to practice a kind of "show business" technique in writing their reviews. And we must admit that since the industry makes ample use of quotations from the testaments of acclaim, it must be prepared to accept the bad reviews with the good. It is the very nature of modern enterprise that producers of new products troop their colors before the press and other communications media, and take their chances from there. The latitude for criticism is merely far wider where an entertainment — movie, play, novel — is concerned. But fashion commentators have been known to decimate mountains of inventory by a sniff of their anointed nostrils, with resulting anguish to not one but a complex of industries. Nor are the auto manufacturers today free of the need to run the guantlet of critical examination. The growth of the trade show practice in that field, revealing the new models prior to public sale, has exposed the car makers to the adjudication of a newly-sprung class of pundit, the automotive editor. There have been critical comments of the new car models, and, considering the impact within a tooling and investment context that pales movie-making by contrast, it is evident that the first-class press will have its say even about this most coveted advertiser. The difference between the movie and the auto is merely that a critic cannot wax as grandiloquently scornful of a widetrack assembly as of a rendering of life and death on the staked plain. If ever a vested interest found its very foundations threatened by disclosures and comments in the popular press, it is the cigarette industry. In this instance, all the communications media are transmitting information and opinions that strike at the vitals of an industry that has been for many years the largest advertiser in the nation. That industry, realizing that implications of the detrimental news barrage about the cause-effect relationship between smoking and cancer and heart disease, has sought to turn the fight against this threat on the marketing and research BULLETIN Film BULLETIN: Motion Picture Trade Paper published every other Monday by Wax Publications. Inc. Mo Wax, Editor and Publisher. PUBLICATION -EDITORIAL OFFICES: 1239 Vine Street, Philadelphia 7, Pa., LOcust 8-0950, 0951. Philip R. Ward, Associate Editor; Leonard Coulter, New York Associate Editor; Berne Schneyer. Publication Manager; Max Garelick, Business Manager; Robert Heath, Circulation Manager. BUSINESS OFFICE: 550 Fifth Avenue, New York 36 N. Y., Circle 5-0124; Ernest Shapiro N Y. Editorial Representative. Subscription Rates: ONE YEAR, S3. 00 in the U. S.; Canada, S4.00; Europe, $5.00. TWO YEARS $5.00 in the U. S.; Canada, Europe. $9.00 fronts. To our knowledge, there have been no withdrawals of space by the tobacco companies from any of the media reporting the scientific findings and commenting upon them. It is not the practice generally of book publishers or theatrical producers to pull out their advertising in retaliation for unkind criticism. To the contrary, a not uncommon practice for them is to take increased space in the publications that hurt most, quoting the more favorable reviews of others. The flamboyance of show business, and its weakness for hyperbole, make it a choice target for the critics. The tendency to self-praise is a form of industrial masochism we foster upon ourselves, and the critic tends to respond sometimes in terms as immoderate as our own. Movie people fall into the error of equating cost and quality, as though the expenditure of a vast sum automatically creates an inviolable warrant to a first-rate film, a responsive public, an adoring press. When this benign misapprehension is shattered, as it repeatedly is, industry executives occasionally take the wrong step to strike back at those who disagree with their notion. Thus we witness these periodic attempts to crush critics to conformity through economic sanctions. It doesn't work, usually; the contrary is more apt to be the result. We find it exceedingly difficult to grasp the logic of Warners' action. Judith Crist's review in the Herald Tribune of "Spencer's Mountain" was her opinion, and there is no reason to assume that she did not state it honestly; nor is it any one's privilege to deny her right. Even her subsequent immoderate attack on the Radio City Music Hall for exhibiting the film dare not be denied her. The Music Hall is a public institution which must be prepared to receive its share of censure with the praise so (Continued on Page 19) Film BULLETIN June 10. 1963 Page 5