Harrison's Reports (1929)

IN TV/O SEdTlONS—SECTION ONE Sintered as second-claise ftutter January 4, 1931, at the poet ofBce at New York, New York, under the act of March 3, 1879. Harrison’S Heports Yearly Subscription Rates: 1440 BROAD 'WAY Published Weekly by United States $10.00 -ar » »» ir HARRISON U. S. Insular Posses NcW York, N. Y. Editor and Publisher sions ; . . . 12.00 Cai^ada^and Mexwo.^ 12.00 ^ Motion Picture Reviewing Service by a Former Exhibitor Established July 1, 1919 Z^ialand .... 14.60 Devoted Exclusively to the Interests of Exhibitors Tel. : Peni;i;h;;nia 7649 Other Foreign Coun Cable Address : tries 16.50 its Editorial Policy: No Problem Too Big for Its Editorial Harreports 25c. a Copy Columns, if It is to Benefit the Exhibitor. (Bentley Code) A REVIEWING SERVICE FREE FROM THE INFLUENCE OF FILM ADVERTISING Vol. XI SATURDAYrjAi^AR^^ 5, 1929 N^l An Out-pouring of the Cesspools of Holly'woodI ‘’A magician is told by the villain that his wife loved him (the villain) and that she was gettingready to run away with him. The magician grapples with the villain. The villain shoots and wounds him. As a result of the wound, his legs are paralyzed and he is crippled for life. The magician’s wife disappears and the magician lliinks that she had run away with the villain. A few years later his w'ife returns with a little daughter. But before she had a chance to talk to him she dies. He keeps the child. He vows to wreak vengeance on the villain. Years later he learns that the villain was a prosperous ivory trader in Kongo, Africa, and goes there. He overawes the natives with his fire eating and with other tricks ; they think he is a god, and do his bidding. He has them steal as much of the Hllain’s ivory as they can get hold of. All the while he lays plans of revenge. The child, which he had thought was the daughter of his wife and of the villain, grows to womanhood. As part of his revenge plan, the magician has the little girl reared in one of the worst dives in Zanzibar. Naturally she becomes syphilitic. As his revenge plans mature, he sends for the young woman. He then sends w'ord to the villain to call on him so that he might tell him who the thief of his ivory was. There was a custom among the natives of Kongo to burn the wife, or the daughter, alive, when the husband, or the father, died. With the hope of seeing the young woman burned on a pyre as a part of the natives’ religious custom, he issues an order to the natives to shoot and kill the supposed father of the girl immediately after the interview. The villain arrives and is surprised to recognize the old magician. The magician, pointing out to his supposed daughter, tells him what he had done to her. The villain bursts out laughing and tells the magician : “She is not my daughter! She is yours !’’ He tells the magician that his wife, after hearing what he (the villain) had done to him, refused to follow him. The magician’s spirit is crushed when he finds out that the girl whose life he had wrecked as a part of his revenge plan is his own daughter. The villain leaves but soon a black messenger comes to the magician and tells him that he (the villain) had been shot in accordance with his orders. After the death of the villain, the natives call on the magician and demand that he deliver to them the daughter, so that they might carry out their religious ceremonies and then burn her on a pyre. The magician, by performing one of his old magic tricks, succeeds in helping the girl and a derelict doctor, who had learned to love her, escape through the swamps. But he pays the price with his life.” This piece of filth is the stage play “Kongo.” And it is upon this play that the Metro-GoldwynMayer picture “West of Zanzibar” has been founded. How any normal person could have thought that this horrible syphilitic play could have made an entertaining picture, even with Lon Chaney, who appears in gruesome and reinilsive stories, is beyond comprehension. But here it is, a MetroGoldwyn-iMayer picture, which you will be compelled to show to the people of the United States as an entertainment. For your information let me say that “Kongo” was banned by Mr. Hays. But like other plays and books that he has banned, it has been put into a picture just the same; the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production heads, whose organization is a member of the Hays organization, did not think that Mr. Hays’ interdiction against the play should prevent them from putting it into a picture, so long as it fitted their production plans. From what I have so far seen, no producer, member of the Hays organization, seems to pay any attention to Mr. Flays’ excommunications of books or plays. The first one to disregard his order was Jesse L. Lasky himself, several years ago. Mr. Hays told Mr. Lasky that "West of the Water Tower” was not a book fit for tlie screen. But he put it into a picture, just the same. Since that time “Rain,” in the form of “Sadie Thompson,” “They Knew What They Wanted,” in the form of “The Secret Hour,” and other banned plays have been put into pictures, not forgetting “A Woman of Affairs,” which is our old friend “The Green Hat,” by Michael Aden, under a new name. ( To Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer belongs the credit for the making into a picture also of this book.) If business is bad, don’t attribute it to any business depression — people will, as a rule, deprive themselves of food rather than deprive themselves of entertainment ; what makes it bad is the quality of the pictures. Wliat mother will allow her young daughter to set foot into your theatre again after learning that she saw a picture of the “West of Zanzibar” type? In the issue of HARRISON’S REPORTS of November 24, in the article entitled, “Let the Moving Picture Be Dry,” I told you of the experience an exhibitor had ;he was told by a mother that she feared to allow her children to attend the performances at his theatre lest they learn how to drink by seeing how screen characters become intoxicated. What will that mother do if she should learn that her children have seen “ West of Zanzibar” ? And how about the millions of other mothers like her ? Any wonder, then, that the picture theatres are starving for lack of patronage ? {Continued on last page)