Harrison's Reports (1951)

Entered as second-class matter January 4, 1921, at the post office at New York, New York, under the act of March 3, 1879. Harrison’s Reports Yearly Subscription Hates: United States *15.00 U. S. Insular Possessions. 16.50 Canada 16.50 Mexico, Cuba, Spain 16.60 Great Britain 17.50 Australia, New Zealand, India, Europe, Asia .... 17.60 35c a Copy 1270 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS (Formerly Sixth Avenue) New York 20, N. Y. A Motion Picture Reviewing Service Devoted Chiefly to the Interests of the Exhibitors Published Weekly by Harrison’s Reports, Inc., Publisher P. S. HARRISON, Editor Established July 1, 1919 Its Editorial Policy: No Problem Too Big for Its Editorial Circle 7-4622 Columns, if It is to Benefit the Exhibitor. A REVIEWING SERVICE FREE FROM THE INFLUENCE OF FILM ADVERTISING Vol. XXXIII SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 1951 No. 4 VICTOR RIESEL’S UNFAIRNESS Victor Riesel, the syndicated columnist and one of the bitterest enemies of Communists, reviewed “The Steel Helmet” in his January 16 column and condemned it severely. “The film,” says he partly, “vividly shows an American sergeant brutally killing a North Korean prisoner. To make the crime even more heinous, the kid from America murders the Korean in a Buddhist Temple.” Based on what Mr. Riesel had to say, one who had not seen the film would feel as if Samuel Fuller, the writer-producerdirector, William Berke, the associate producer, and Robert L. Lippert, head of the firm releasing it, should be, either burned at the stake or shot at sunrise. But the facts are not exactly as Mr. Riesel describes them. To begin with, the prisoner, a North Korean Major, is not a regular prisoner; he is a spy, who had con' cealed himself in the Buddhist Temple where the Americans had established an outpost to watch the North Koreans, who had attacked the South Korean Republic without any provocation, and to whose rescue the American troops, representing the United Nations, had rushed. This major, while hiding in the temple and watching the Americans, kills an Ameri' can soldier by stabbing him in the back, unobserved. When he is caught, he is so defiant that he even spits in the face of the American sergeant. The sergeant had just been informed that a South Korean boy had been shot and killed by a North Korean sniper hiding up a tree. The sergeant, whose life the twelve-year'old boy had saved, had learned to love the little fellow, even though he does not show it, and when he is in' formed that he will never see the youngster again he is heartbroken. A paper is found on the boy’s back, written in Korean, and when the paper is translated and it is found that it was the boy’s prayer to Buddha that he make the sergeant like him, the sergeant’s grief is deeper. At this moment, the North Korean prisoner mocks at the prayer and at the sergeant’s grief, and the sergeant, unable to control himself, turns and shoots him down. But the Lieutenant in charge repri' mands the sergeant severely for losing his head. Thus the “crime,” if a crime it is, is not condoned by higher authority. These facts Mr. Riesel ignored. Mr. Riesel committed another unpardonable sin for an observing columnist; he passed in silence the fact that a North Korean sniper had shot and killed a South Korean boy of twelve. Wasn’t that a “heinous” crime? Mr. Riesel condemns the sergeant for having done the killing in a “Buddhist Temple.” In what place did the prisoner murder the GI? Was it in a battle and in a fair fight? Was it not in the very same temple, the place of worship of the prisoner’s people? Why should Mr. Riesel demand that the American show respect towards the temple when the North Korean had not? Mr. Riesel asks in another part of his article the following question: “Just ask any friend of Dick Deverall, the AFL outpost man in India, what will run through the minds of Asiatic audiences when they see one of their temples desecrated by a raving American soldier.” Why can’t we show to the Asiatic audiences pictures of GI’s shot in cold blood by North Koreans, with their hands tied behind their backs; or a newsreel of Major General Emmet O’Donnell char' acterizing the North Koreans as thugs, who swing an ax behind your head? They will understand this bet' ter than they would the sight of a sergeant losing his head because of provocation, and killing the man who had murdered a GI in cold blood, and whose sniper had killed a twelve'year'dd boy of his own race. That is the act that Mr. Riesel should have characterized as brutal. THE CASE OF “BORN YESTERDAY” A controversy has been created by certain action and dialogue in Columbia’s “Born Yesterday.” Some critics look upon the picture as subtle Communist propaganda and have, therefore, condemned it as in' jurious to the national interest, while some people from within the industry have risen to the defense of the picture by denying that there is a Communistic tinge in any part of the film or that it contains any' thing that will serve Communistic ends. In the opinion of this paper, the critics are wrong in one respect and the defenders in another. Where the critics are wrong is that, by a wide stretch of the imagination, they have found Communistic charac' teristics and influences lurking behind certain actions and lines of dialogue where none exist. These critics do point out, however, that the film shows a gangster' type racketeer controlling a United States Senator to put over his shady dealings and this, they say, will be used by the Communists to discredit our form of government. On the other hand, the defenders are wrong in stating that the showing of a gangster’s control of an elected public official is not harmful. To show that the defenders are wrong in their contention, all we have to do is to examine the effect that Columbia’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” has had on the national interest. When the picture was first released in 1939, Harrison’s Reports condemned it, even though it was a fine comedy, on the ground that the Nazis would use it to discredit our form of government. As pointed out in these columns frequently, the Nazis used this picture to their advan ( Continued on bac\ page)