The Film Daily (1935)

THE 18 ■SBtl DAILY Monday, May 20, 1935 ♦ ♦ TOPICS of TIMELY INTEREST ♦ \ Sees Films Providing National Laboratory WHLL HAYS, President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., finds no cause for disappointment in the 1934 American public. On the contrary, in his annual report there is cause for gratification on the part of those elements in the body politic that sometimes despair for the national intelligence but never give up hope for its eventual development into recognition. The public is exhibiting a frank interest in better and higher type pictures. It is recording its favor in what amounts to the public's thumbs up in the talkie arena — it is paying its way in. Hays was responsible for the dictum issued a few years back on the elimination of objectionable scene and phrase from a medium that must be presented to young and old alike. Resulting obedience to the order has not gone as far as some would like. Even in the interim, the Hays army has had to contend with the League of Decency and its auxiliaries. But if Mr. Hays is correct — and his finger is on the financial pulse of the movie box office — in the main the Nation is satisfied. Too much praise can hardly be accorded this very real achievement in the industry. Among the improvements which are entitled to full recognition is a closer adherence to book story in the screen presentation. In "David Copperfield," for instance, motion pictures deferred to Mr. Dickens and not to the director. In addition, there has been a noticeable trend to excellent staging and better acting. The movie has ceased to be the medium for the dumb but beautiful or handsome and today demands a very high standard in the acting art. The trek to Hollywood is enlisting ability instead of pulchritude. Thoughtfully and accurately, the Hays report says the industry can not stand still. It points to the fact that while 1934 gets the credit for an astonishing list of good pictures, the real responsibility belongs to other years. The great successes of 1934 were begun much earlier, some as far back as 1931. The Hays report promises continuance of a policy which has proved itself sound. The motion picture is by far the best public laboratory in which the reactions of the American Nation are easily discernible. There is real promise in improved taste and demand for the Action/ Now In Release: "CALLING ALL CARS" with Jack La Rue "RESCUE SQUAD" with Ralph Forbes "GET THAT MAN!" with Wallace Ford Coming: "RADIO DRAGNET" 6 "PHANTOM RIDER" WESTERNS PRODUCING UNITS Mayfair Productions, Inc. Kinematrade, Inc. ACTION DRAMAS WESTERNS — SERIALS EMPIRE FILM DISTRIBUTORS INCORPORATED 723 SEVENTH AVENUE NEW YORK, NEW YORK I1 type of pictures once ignored in favor of sex and slaughter. As Mr. Hays says of his trade, it lives to please and must please to live. The gratifying thought is that it is proving that the public is pleased with high and not low standard production. — Dallas Morning News. Urges Discarding Old Situations F THE producers wish to keep pace with the more exacting audience, they probably will find it well to lay to rest several other old situations which are now no more amusing than anything else mummified. There is, for instance, that trick of having the love-hungry hero gaze at feminine radiance, while the lady herself gives a flower or horse or Mont Blanc the onceover. The lady says, "Lovely, isn't she?" And the ogling Romeo, agrees, deceivingly, "I'll say!" all the while knowing they're not talking about the same thing. Somewhere the film canners got a laugh out of an audience by having a pair of lovers hold up traffic to carry on their sweet communion. It has obtained a chain-letter circulation. In the last class of cuteness is the bad-timing of movie laughter, with the two performers still in hysterics after the audience has straightened its face. Too many dancers in love remain on the floor after the music has stopped, too many servants peek through keyholes and fall inside when the door is opened. Granting that it is the unalienable right of every young thing to cry on a bed when her feelings are hurt, the custom seems to have gone beyond the unique. A suggestion is that feelings be hurt in an airplane, in an elevator between floors or in a swimming-pool. But worse than the dust storms of this spring is the new name for woman-kind. "Toots"! — C. Mc. in St. Louis "Post-Dispatch". Attorney General Praises "G" Film T HAVE always believed the movies were an educational force, a tremendous one. Of course, they might educate to good or bad. It is an intense satisfaction to me to find this new type of crime picture educating for good. "G Men" is an example of what is to come along this line; I believe it will be a powerful deterrent to crime. The old pictures had a tendency to throw an aura of romance about the gangster. Consciously or subconsciously, this glamour crept into the spec tator. Such movies even had the effect of building up a feeling in persons of resistance to the law, a definite tendency toward despising the police and detectives. But this new type picture brings home most emphatically an old and true saying, "Crime does not pay." It shows the true end of those men of twisted minds who live by the gun. It shows it in all its horror. I am gratified to see that the movies have at last presented the fighters of crime in this nation as the fine, clean, courageous men that they are. — John J. Bennett Jr., Attorney General, State of New York. Year's Winning Film Lauded in Editorial p^OLLYWOOD'S society with the long name — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — bestows its laurel for 1934 on the comedy, "It Happened One Night." It awards others to the picture's two stars, Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable; to Frank Capra for his direction of the same film, and to the adapter who transcribed the original story to its screen form. It is evidently the industry's idea of the perfect motion picture play, and Hollywood was perhaps helped to that conclusion by its robust prosperity at the box-office, and by a popularity which extended well beyond the United States. Needless to say it was a clean picture, that came easily within the standards of censoring authority everywhere. It brought to the screen a casual quality new to films. It put to use the fascination of the conversation that is not so much heard as overheard, and captures the observers' attention by seeming oblivious to his presence. — Editorial in Helena, Mont., "Record-Herald." Bemoans Passing Of Oldtime Villains W/'HAT'S happened to the old "Simon Legree" type of villain? With the passing of Ernest Torrence, George Seigmann and several others of this beloved type, Hollywood seems bereft of the ancient hissinspiring character of yesterday. The villain of today is a dapper, sleek, smooth, well educated and silk-gloved man with a disarming smile. There see; to be an abundance of this t; In ye ancient times it wa! Simon Legree; today it's the suave Dillinger type that sets the style apparently. — Irving Cummings.