Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1963)

The Vim frw OutAitfe by ROLAND PENDARIS Needed: Elder Statesmen In industry, as in government, there are usually elder statesmen to whom younger executives can turn for disinterested counsel. An elder statesman is best qualified for this portfolio if his aloofness from current partisanship is based upon his own wishes. Thus, Herbert Hoover qualified not simply because he was an ex-President but rather because, a generation after he left the Presidency, he was giving actively of his time and knowledge, in a non-partisan way, to the commission for the reorganization of the federal government. In the same way, Bernard Baruch became an elder statesman after he left government under his own steam. The purpose of this lengthy preamble is to define our terminology when we approach the subject of the elder statesmen in the motion picture industry. Ours is an industry which has been in existence for more than half a century, about the same as the automobile business and certainly less than the federal government. But the automobile business has its elder statesmen and has always had them; the federal government has had them; a younger industry such as broadcasting has them. Where are ours? Stop to think of all the heads of major motion picture companies that you can remember, going back as many years as you wish. How many of them ever retired on their own initiative? How many who retired continued to be asked for counsel? Oddly, most of the retired pioneers came from the production side of the film world. Maybe California is conducive to that sort of thing. In the East, the rule seems to have been established that voluntary retirement is sissy stuff. Consider every change in the presidency of a major production-distribution company in recent years, for example, and you will find that it has been either the grim reaper or an ouster move by stockholders or the board of directors that took an old president out and a new president in. Possibly some small portion of this strange industry record is due to the fact that while other companies and most governments have compulsory retirement ages there is no such general practise at the top executive level among the movie corporations. Retirement is not an automatic birthday present in the film business. The effect of this lack of voluntary retirement upon the folkways and mores of corporate film families is a subject worthy of at least a separate column. I should like to devote the rest of this present essay to considering the consequences of our lack of elder film statesmen upon the general state of the business. It seems to me that every business and every important endeavor of man, including the movie industry, has a strong and continuing need for disinterested and experienced veterans who can view with alarm when alarm is in order, give us the recipe for the required mixture of daring and caution in the face of crisis, rally industry-wide efforts and serve as the conscience of their calling. We certainly need such men, now. I believe we need elder statesmen now because the motion picture industry is going through a major period of change. The elder statesman has gone through other major changes. He knows how it feels. So, if I may, I should like to address a series of questions to the unhappily mythical elder statesmen of the New York film business. Pull up a park bench and join me. Mr. Elder Statesman of pictures, let me call you Esop for short. Now then, Esop, what about our supply of pictures? In your day did you ever encounter a shortage of product, and if so what did you do about it? What did you do to develop new stars when the old ones asked too much money? While we are at it, Esop, let's have some of your reminiscences about the days when people were staying home from the movies to listen to 1 the radio. What did you do about that? And from your advantageous point of view, what do you think basically we are doing wrong? How can we do better? I realize that some of these questions are pretty general, Esop, and maybe you'd rather talk about the time you showed that Wall Street banker how little he knew about the movie business; but I'm asking the questions that occur to me, and I hope that you will make all the comments that occur to you. One of the best things about having elder statesmen, you see, is that they can criticize constructively from a uniquely experienced point of view. Right now, the movie business can use such advice. I recognize that a lot of our problems just didn't happen in your day, Esop. For example, I don't think you had to worry about high bracket income taxes and collapsible corporations and residuals and subscription television. But there are many other challenges which go on from one generation to the next, and plenty of parallels between the past and the present. Think back, Esop, to the days of First National. Can you tell me now how come an exhibitor group at that time was able to form a production company and get off the ground with it, while this same step has proven virtually impossible today? I see that you are thinking of your own busy days in the film industry. What are you remembering? The way you ballyhooed pictures? The way you set up tent theatres when you couldn't make a deal in a one-theatre town? The way you saved money by bicycling two prints among four locations? Think about those days, Esop, and then think about now, and tell me what you think. I may not agree with you, but I want to know. A lot of new people in every business or sport make no bones about their feeling toward the old-timers. "Things have changed," they say. "The old-timers would be lost today." Maybe so, but there never was a generation yet that didn't have a lot to learn from the past. Machines change, tastes change, designs and languages change; but basic values remain. One of the things that differentiates man from the other animals is that man learns not only from his own experience but also from the experience of others. Maybe way back some old gaffer recalls an interesting method for listing the pictures of the actors along with the cast credits. Maybe another Esop sits back and compares today's blockbuster with the way he sold "Birth of a Nation" and sees where an old approach might be revived. Maybe some younger film executive could learn by soliciting the advice of Esop. But there's the rub. As I said at the outset, we simply do not have an Esop, an elder statesman of pictures. We have distinguished pioneers like Sam Goldwyn, who certainly qualifies at the production end, and we have an Adolph Zukor, still holding office with a major company. A man in other fields does not have to be in his eighties to be an elder statesman. He has to be — first of all — retired, and this is where the motion picture industry runs out. Nobody knows how to quit. They have to be pushed. I'd like to see an occasional volunteer. Page 4 Film BULLETIN July 22, 1943