The Film Daily (1937)

THE 10 -a&H DAILY Tuesday, May 18, 1937 SQUAWK PARADE Pertinent paragraphs sifted from the hundreds of replies by leading American critics, reviewers and columnists to questions submitted in the fifth annual Critics' Forum. (Continued from Page 1) lie would prefer one REALLY GOOD feature and rest of program made up of "Mickey Mouse," "Popeye," sports shorts (like Grantland Rice), travel shorts, LaurelHardy shorts, good comedies (most of them are lousy-plus). Have observed that most applause comes to good travel shorts. There is hardly a person living who wouldn't LIKE to travel. Next best thing is movies. GARDNER CAMPBELL, Wakefield, Muss. "Daily Item". LOCALIZED MANAGEMENT-. Chain picture companies ought to give their managers fuller reign. Day and date playing in neighborhood theaters should be avoided. More showmen, and fewer glamourfied ushers are needed at theater helms. I think time is ripe for return of vaudeville in at least one theater in each town. A valuable source of talent is being neglected. Studios should send more photos to home towns of players, even the extras are big shots at home. Everybody likes to read about 'em. A series of "salutes to American towns" would be welcome, like "March of Time" in style and like Major Bowes' radio spiels in content. Large and small communities alike should be included, one at a time. JULIAN B. TUTHILL, Hartford, Conn. "Daily Times". TITLE CHANGES— I will never understand why the movies continue to lose the box office appeal of a well known story title by changing it to the trite title of a type so many movies bear. From my own personal standpoint I have read many stories that impressed me and registered as movie material. Most of these stories are in current magazines. I believe that these stories impressed other people too, who probably kept an eye peeled in their favorite newspaper to see when the movies grabbed them. But they never can tell, unless the local movie paragrapher is alert enough to catch the original title before it is lost under a Hollywood bromide. Quite often 1 have heard people in a theater audience say: "Why I read this story the other day — I wonder why they changed the title." That person probably was a casual theater customer who just as likely as not would have dropped into some other theater, but would have made a special effort had he had any idea the picture was from a story he had read. ED KLINGLER, Evansville, Indiana "Press". • AMERICAN TALENT— Granting that many exceptional stars have come to the American screen from abroad, I am yet of the opinion that the r\ industry is overlooking an opportunity in its lack of intense concentration upon the valuable material here at home. Those who desire to see the industry attain a full measure of the cultural imminence it deserves know that talent here should be encouraged. The traditions being created in motion pictures should tend to raise it even higher. What greater factor to Ihe advancement of motion pictures could there be than an American public which loves the screen as a cultural and uplifting institution? In every town and hamlet — in every school and Little Theater are people young and old, eager to become a part of the industry. Among them are your great stars and geniuses of tomorrow. Why discourage their faith in the industry by seemingly searching only in foreign lands for star material. This opinion is, I hope, not a narrow and bigoted one. It is given with a full apprecia tion and understanding of the Garbos, Dietrichs and others. HARLAN HOBBS, Little Rock "Arkansas Democrat". PURSUING WOMEN— Just now my pet squawk is the insistent cheapening of womanhood by making her the pursuer instead of the pursued. Romance is based on chivalry, and womanhood's chief attribute is charm and not brazenness. I am getting tired of watching "heroes and heroines" pass half the screening time of a picture pouring out drinks or smoking cigarettes. I am disgusted with producers making infidelity seem smart and drunkenness funny. I am fed up on smart alecs and long to see respectability played up over terrorists, gangsters, gamblers, touts and molls. I ASSORTED SQUAWKS Our plaint is unchanged. We still want to repeal that unwritten law that says all newsreels must be alike. We are tired of emptying our wastebasket always filled with press sheet imaginations and pix showing Miss So-and-so as a domesticated female at the same time the wires are relating her defense in court against charges of perennially engaging in the counterpart of playboying. Are we different or does every theater manager think we can sell ourselves for a pair of passes or an iota of increase in advertising space? Does every female have to smoke, chain fashion, even if the script doesn't call for it? And are all the excuses for cocktail drinking written in? CHARLES R. HORTON, Greenville, Tex. "Banner". • My pet squawks are broadly as follows: Double feature bills first, for they are lowering the quality of Hollywood's product and giving excuse for that inexcusable phenomenon, the Class B picture. Second: The run of the mill musical film that has neither plot, grace or originality to recommend it and looks as though it had been put together in off moments from scraps left over from other pictures. In fact, I have reached the point of saying down with all elaborate production numbers, which tire the eye and obstruct the dancing of Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Eleanore Powell and Ray Bolger. Third: Down with all child prodigies who ape their elders and get away with murder because they look cunning, even if what they are doing is precocious rather than attractive. Fourth: Please, no more medical films; we've had enough doctors and operations this season to cure or kill the entire country; they are usually gruesome and often inaccurate. In fact, down with cycles of any sort — except "The Thin Man" — for only the originals are good. Fifth: I should like to encourage the belief that films are primarily designed for action, not talk, and hence to overcome the idea that a good play is necessarily apt to be a good film. Let the stage maintain its identity, take its ideas when necessary but get rid of the belief that it is either a feeder or an infallible arbiter. ELINOR L. HUGHES. Boston "Herald". » Trailers have again reached the colossal stage. There is a tendency on the part of company-made trailers to be overlong and too full of praise for the producer and what has been done in the past, just as if that is going to make the coming feature the best of the year. Screen credits take up entirely too much footage. "Variety" put it nicely when it said they were nothing but a bore outside of the Los Angeles city line. I see no reason why the credits cannot be limited to the director and the producer. Too many Academy award candidates and not enough big pictures for the masses. Essentially, pictures are for t'ne masses and the highbrow stuff is no go — ask the small town theater manager whose grosses don't get national publicity? Longer chasers with appropriate music on each feature are needed. It will go a long way in building new personalities if more time is given to acquaint the public with the players' names. Spectacular musicals which only serve to let someone's imagination run wild and waste a lot of money are still being made. They're nothing but one long yawn to the audience. PETER LEE, Altoona, Pa., "Tribune". INDUSTRY AIDES (^ To representative journalists, its own unofficial aides, the industry again is indebted for thoughtful appraisals and constructive suggestions. Sixth installment appears tomorrow. love "show business" and wish it everything it deserves. CHARLES A. LEEDY, Youngstown, O., "Vindicator and Telegram". DUALS, TRASH AND TRAILERS— Our prime squawk is against the wretched double-feature programs our theaters force down our gullets. My experience has been that these twin feature programs serve no better purpose than to permit producers and distributors to give their patrons a double barrelled barrage of agony at one sitting. Tied in with this squawk is the corollary wail agains tthe vast amount of drivel the screen is spawning. Let's close the flood gates on this trash. There is enough worthy material in the world library to provide good film fare for all time. It is probably too much, however, to expect improvement until the 1Q of the men behind the film industry climbs above the zero mark — assuming that were biologically possible. Another squawk we raise — more local by nature — is against the trailers that afflict us every time we sit through a show. Why not run the trailers in a dark corner of the lobby and save the screen for something worthwhile? RAYMOND J. DULYE, Middletown, N. Y. "Times Herald". ATTENTION STORY EDITORS— This squawk is a repeat on last year's. There is a dearth of good material for pictures, according to executives. I cannot feel that this crying need is as sad as they would have us believe. The trouble lies with the haphazard methods of story editors, who depend upon a threeparagraph synopsis of a submitted yarn for their decision. It is unfair to the people to pay them such fancy salaries to select material this way and, of course, unfair to the authors. A smart editor can tell whether a story is acceptable or not after reading the first three pages of a script. There is probably no record cf such conscientious work being done by even one editor. Their stooges don't care one way or the other. And the result is — no stories. SYLVIA SMITH, Newark, N. Y. "Ledger". STORIES AND DIALOGUE— The movies are making amazing %>yes in particular instances but the banal plot material and adolescent dialogue of the average product are still bad enough to turn the stomach. FRANCIS "Banner". ROBINSON, Nashville I v i