Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1963)

The Vieu> frw OutMje by ROLAND PENDARIS The Durability of Talent There is a pet word among the flesh peddlers. "Exposure" is the thing. You're sunk if you have too much exposure, and you're equally sunk if you don't get enough exposure. As part of the subtleties of the art of exposure, a star will appear with Johnny Carson late in the evening, but not on a matinee TV program; another will only do a straight interview (no act), while a third wants at least a half hour on the air all to herself. Exposure is simply what you make it out to be. No movie performer exposes himself to the public more than Jerry Lewis — and so far all his movies have made money. But the decline and fall of half a dozen new stars every few years is blamed on over-exposure. I think it is time to lay this myth to rest. Nobody is overexposed as long as the public wants to see him. And when they stop wanting him, it isn't because they've seen too much of him. It's because they've seen too much of him doing the same old act. People don't become disinterested gradually in an old act. They accept it until the point when they've had enough of it, and then they abruptly refuse to accept it anymore. The popularity of a screen star can be durable. It can be so durable that we fail to recognize its decline. Gloria Glamorous is a top star. She commands top vehicles, top leading men, top grosses. After a while, it's the co-stars, the leading men, the vehicles that are holding Gloria up on top. But no one knows this until she makes a picture without them — and then her box office decline comes as a sudden shock, and we are told that the public is fickle and poor Gloria is the victim of over-exposure. Gloria is the victim of nothing more than having no new tricks. Comics are among our longest lived stars, and the reason is that they live on new routines — new variations of old routines. A great profile has to become something more — a glamour girl has to out-sexpot the new entries (which becomes more difficult each year). < ► The art of capturing and holding the attention of the public does not depend on exposure of talent half as much as on the ability of talent to grow. Clark Gable was a sensation as a romantic personality, but he was the King because he grew before the public as a man and as an actor. Errol Flynn, a man of infinite charm and ability, went in the opposite direction. Today there seems to be a great tendency to forget the dynamics of movie stardom in favor of bloodless criteria like "the right exposure." For true star material, there are few rights and wrongs. Marilyn Monroe profited by calendar art that would have hurt Doris Day. What's right for one person can be dead wrong for another. The movies need big stars, not one-string-to-their-bow characters whose single facet must be rationed for public view, but full-blown personalities whose every appearance just makes the public want to see them more. There are any number of competent actors — but most of the great stars were striking personalities before they really learned how to act — like Gable or Crosby or Audrey Hepburn or Spencer Tracy. I don't mean they were incompetent — far from it. I mean that at the outset the impact of their personalities was far more electric than the professionalism of their performances. What makes for this personality impact? I don't know. I do know that you can't sit around waiting for it. You've got to look for it. You've got to talent scout and search and keep at this kind of quest all the time. It is my impression that in the days when the motion picture companies were enjoying their greatest popularity, they had large staffs of talent scouts ranging throughout the country and all over the world looking for likely screen prospects. It is my impression that today these large scouting staffs are virtually non-existent and that most of the talent hunting is done in front of the television screen or from an aisle seat at a Broadway theatre. But even if today's talent scouts were as numerous, as ubiquitous and as peripatetic as those of the golden age, they would be up against one considerable handicap. There just isn't as much chance today as there used to be to give budding talent an opportunity to prove itself on the screen. Darned few directors or producers will agree to write in a bit in the multimillion dollar production simply to try out a new performer on the public. The great genius of creative motion picture making has been that it was able to project personalities more successfully than any other medium. Television in its palmiest days never came up with a Valentino or a Monroe or a young Brando. But as long as motion pictures continue to recruit actors and have them do the same kind of acting they do on the stage or on television, that old touch of celluloid magic is going to be hard to find. I do not believe that the magic is lost. I can't help wishing, however, that a few more people were trying to find it. A lot of corny lines have been written about how this starlet was discovered in a filling station and that one in the soda fountain at Schwab's, and this romantic mythology has somehow obscured the fact that motion picture talent can be found in the darndest places. Discovering talent is a matter of hard work and diligent searching. It requires not only careful attendance at every kind of event where potential performers may be on view; it also requires the expenditure of considerable time and money in testing and testing — producing 50 screen tests before you come up with one more than middling possibility. This is precisely the kind of effort which most of the motion picture companies today insist they cannot afford. Their insistence, it seems to me, is somewhat like an aviation manufacturing company claiming it cannot afford to recruit new engineers or design new plans. Research and development can be the keys to a bigger and better industry, but research and development must be conducted on a businesslike basis, which, in this case, means that they must be done in sufficient quantity and with sufficient quality to be really meaningful. Few businesses are as dependent as motion pictures on the indefinable aspects of personal magnetism and appeal that are embodied in the product itself. Few businesses, it seems to me, do as little to find new assets. There was a time when the lure of Hollywood was so great that its production people could wait comfortably in their offices while talents eager for an opportunity pursued them. That situation no longer applies. The talent must still be available, but it is not knocking on Hollywood's door, hat in hand. Whatever Hollywood wants, Hollywood had better start digging for, and digging wide and deep. Page 10 Film BULLETIN August 19, 1943