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 Rates: United States *15.00 U. S. Insular Possessions. 16.50 Canada 16.50 Mexico, Cuba, Spain 16.50 Great Britain 17.50 Australia, New Zealand, India. Europe, Asia .... 17.50 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, FEBRUARY 3, 1951 No. 5 CRITICIZING THE CRITICS In a bulletin sent to his membership this week, Abram F. Myers, National Allied’s chairman of the board and general counsel, criticizes the attitude of the newspaper and magazine critics towards the movies. Under the heading, “If It Ain't Highbrow, It’s No Good," Mr. Myers had this to say, in part: “We’ve been grousing a long time about motion picture reviewers — not all of them, but most. “They've been steadily edging up-stage and now have gone so far they have lost contact with the great majority of movie-goers. “If a picture doesn’t meet their exacting standards — and few do — they kick it all over the lot and are unwilling to concede that it might have some entertainment value for movie-goers — those quaint people who support our industry and, incidentally, make the reviewers’ jobs possible. “In this they are falling down on the job, misleading their readers and hurting the movie business. It is time they started telling their readers whether the pictures reviewed, despite their ivory tower point of view, will give the audience a good time.” As an example of the type of reviews he resents, Mr. Myers, stating that “no one reading it could possibly want to see the picture,” cites the following Time magazine review of “At War with the Army," published in the January 29, 1951 issue: “AT WAR WITH THE ARMY (Paramount) was not much of a play on Broadway in 1949, but Script-Producer Fred F. Finklehoff’s film version shows that it could have been much worse. The training-camp farce now serves as a vehicle for Comics Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and their ragbag of nightclub bits and pieces. “The film's plot, however feeble, is enough to cramp the free-style wackiness of Martin & Lewis. In turn, their witless routines put a blight on whatever slim fun the play once offered in situations and dialogue. Between straight-man chores, Crooner Martin imitates Bing Crosby in the picture’s songs, including one that gets billing as a Crosby imitation. Though he mugs, screeches, gyrates, even swishes through a female impersonation, Comedian Lewis sorely lacks one prop that has bolstered his success: A well-oiled nightclub audience." As proof that the public point of view rarely agrees with the critics' “ivory point of view," Mr. Myers points to a news story in the January 25 issue of The Film Daily, in which it is reported that "At War with the Army" is doing such record-breaking business throughout the country that Paramount has found it necessary to order fifty additional prints to meet the requests for bookings. The news story stated that, at the New York Paramount Theatre, the picture has proved to be the biggest non-holiday grosser in the past five years, surpassing such top hits as "Paleface," “Mr. Music,” “A Foreign Affair" and “Welcome Stranger." Concluding his blast at the critics, Mr. Myers had this to say: “So convinced are we that professional reviewers no longer breathe the same air as the theatre-goers that we are thinking of starting a scrapbook, pasting on opposite pages some of the sour technical reviews and the trade paper reports of the pictures’ boxoffice performances. If the results are as we expect they will be we may send the volume to the reviewer with the lowest average, in place of the usual fur-lined bathtub. Of course, our efforts could only cover a few national periodicals and would be only a surface indication of the point we are trying to make. We wish exhibitor organizations in the key cities would follow this plan with respect to the local papers. “This, we believe, would go far toward convincing some of the professional critics who are now soaring in the stratosphere to come down to earth and try to find out what their readers are like. Then maybe they'll start writing reviews for the movie-goers instead of the Faculty Club at Yalevard College." Mr. Myers’ attack on the “ivory tower" critics is not without justification, as many exhibitors, from their own experiences, will agree. As this paper has pointed out in previous columns, the attitude of a large percentage of the newspaper and magazine critics is one of condescension. Many of them, having been nurtured in the traditions of the stage, can see little that is good in motion pictures, and whenever they do say something nice about a picture now and then, they say it with condescension. Frequently, these critics report that a particular picture is “corny,” but grudgingly admit that the audience laughed heartily — a reaction they cannot fathom. They just can’t seem to get it through their minds that pictures are produced, not for critics, but for the public. Unlike the criticisms of drama critics, who can close up a stage play whenever they are against it unanimously, the adverse criticisms of the motion picture critics do not, as a general rule, have the same effect because they either are not read by the great majority of picture-goers or little heed is paid to them. If a picture is not entertaining, the movie-goers soon find out for themselves through word-of-mouth remarks. These critics, however, do have their readers and, though these readers make up no more than a small percentage of the movie-going public, their failure to see a particular movie because of having been misled by an “ivory tower" critic is hurting the movie business considerably. If the critic on your local newspaper is too exacting in his or her appraisal of pictures and seems to have lost touch with what constitutes entertainment values for the vast majority of picture-goers, you may do well to follow through on the suggestion put forth by Mr. Myers. 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