Harrison's Reports (1932)

HARRISON’S REPORTS 92 This is not the first time that they promised to keep this word out of the pictures and broke their promise ; they did so at the Trade Practices Conference, held in October, 1927, under the auspices of the Federal Governement, represented by the Federal Trade Commission. You may say that I am picking on picayune things, a sort of splitting hairs. That is not so ; what I am trying to do is to prove to you that the producers make promises and break them. Besides, there are millions of picture-goers who belong to some church or another. These naturally object to the use of this word, and keep away from the picture whose title contains it. And who can say it is wise to offend his customers, or to wound their sensibilities? Under the heading, “COSTUME,” the Code says : “Complete nudity is never permitted. This includes nudity in fact or in silhouette. * * * ” The producers were not under any moral obligation to include in this interdiction “complete nudity”; if any one should show adult persons in the nude, he would land behind the bars in no time. As far as the “silhouette” nude is concerned, the producers have often violated this principle. In subsection 2 of this heading, there is said : “Undressing scenes should be avoided, and never used save when essential to the plot.” As usual, the producers are hiding behind a flexible term : “essential to the plot.” Almost every society picture shows women undressing in their boudoirs, and left only with their “undies.” Quite often, women are shown completely in the nude ; but the producer has taken care to have the camera so move as to disclose only the legs. I do not remember one single instance where such a scene furthers the plot; or where this was not resorted to solely for the purpose of inflaming the sexual passions. In one part, the Hays Moral Code says: that obscene titles shall not be used. This term, too, is flexible and allows a wide interpretation. Does Mr. Hays think that “Sinners in the Sun,” “World and the Flesh,” “Impatient Maiden,” “Wiser Sex,” and the like are decent titles? {To be continued) straight' FROM THE SHOULDER FORECASTER TALKS EDITORIAL No. 1 The same kind of pre-season publicity blarbs the producers dished out in former years they are dishing out also this year. To them, every picture is “great” I Every one of them is “wonderful”! How are you going to know whether there is any foundation at all to the statements they are making about their programs, particularly about the individual pictures which they are going to use as the bellwethers? Take, for instance, the one the Fox Film Corporation is advertising as an outstanding production — “Cavalpde.” On the particular page of the insert they have put in the trade papers there is said; “Noel Coward’s Tremendous International Drama — Talk of 2 Continents as a Stage Play — Awaited by the Whole World as a Motion Picture ! Spectacular Torrent of Humanity Swept Along by Epochal Forces of the 20th Century — Sensational Cast of 2,500***” These are, you must admit, pretty strong statements for a company to make about an unmade picture. What are the facts on which they base these statements? Are their assertions justifiable, or the product of a fertile imagination? How many of the facts arc accurate? How many fanciful? Are the accurate facts such as to justify these claims? If some of them should be fanciful, do the remaining facts justify such assertions? How are you going to talk to the film salesman intelligently? Where are your facts? Where are the figures? Where is the information yon need to enable you to buy intelligently? There is just one medium that can supply you such information— The Harrison Forecaster. I have read the play and, with the facts that I was able to gather, have written the Forecaster review. It is an accurate appraisal of the play’s value as a talking picture. This review alone is worth the price of the season’s subscription to this service. And there are dozens of other reviews like this one. You might think that, with the industry cracked up, and with the theatre attendance shrunk to about thirty per cent of what it used to be at normal times, the producers would have learned their lesson and would have got together this season the best material that human ingenuity could conceive— better than any line-up of pictures they have ever offered you. If you have such an idea, I may just as well tell you that you are sadly mistaken, for there has never been a year when the product was more putrid. Let me give you some samples, taken from the “pile,” without any choice : June 4, 1932 Exhibit No. 1 : The heroine, an illegitimate daughter of a Javanese mother and of a white sailor, is seduced by a colored sailor when ten. At thirteen, she creeps aboard a tramp steamer bound for Port Said, Egypt. More sailors in her life — a whole crew of them. At Port Said she becomes a waterfront prostitute, and plies her trade for some time. Circumstances so shape themselves that she eventually comes to the United States. Being beautiful, she is picked up by a wealthy American and kept in an apartment. But she has ambitions ; she wants education. And her lover sends her to a finishing school. Her classmates, among whom is a young one who, too, was kept by a wealthy man, snub her because of her race. She resents their treatment and in time she comes to hate them all and vows some day to revenge herself on them. When she graduates, she uses a modified form of the poison pen method and brings misfortune, misery and distress upon them all. One of them takes her life ; another lands in an insane asylum ; still another murders her husband ; she tells one of them that she is going to die of a dreaded disease; another, that her boy will die at a certain date. All her predictions come true because of mental suggestion except the death of the boy; her trickery had been detected and the boy’s life saved. She is struck and killed by a train while trying to escape arrest. Exhibit No. 2 : The heroine and a friend of hers, homeless because of their inability to pay their rent, go to two friends, prostitutes, to bunk with. That night the hosts bring two Filipinos into the room. The girls beg forgiveness for the embarrassment they are about to cause to the heroine and her friend because of the smallness of their quarters but they said that the Filipinos, whom they hate, had offered them twenty dollars each and this is no time to look down upon color when they offer so much money. The heroine, unable to obtain a job, goes to a person who had been recommended to her and this person gives her a job in a Lesbian act she had been managing. This won’t do for her and she eventually is forced to pick up the mate of a ship; he gives her a good time and pays her well. From that time on she has one man after another until finally her heart-strings arc moved by the sight of the death of a little son of a friend of hers, and she gives up everything and goes back to hard work. These two exhibits are not the worst ; the worst are yet to come. I shall have one for next week where the husband of the heroine goes out of his mind as a result of a venereal disease he had contracted years previously, forcing the heroine, who is pregnant, to have blood tests to find out whether she had contracted the disease from him or not. “Sweet” stuff ! Some of you may say : “What is the use of subscribing to the Forecaster when I have to run everything they make ! They will not sell me the ones that I want.” In answer to this, let me say that you have not yet fully realized how powerful is publicity. Last year the Forecaster review stopped Metro-Goldwyn-Maj'er from putting into pictures “Wife to Hugo,” in which interrelations between three brothers and their wives was the feature — nothing else. Suppose you take the Forecaster reviews of these dirty pictures to the presidents of the women’s clubs and of other civic associations ; to the presidents of all fraternal or even business organizations, not excluding the minister of your church, and show them to them ; do you think that the producers will dare put them into pictures? The producers may say to you that their editorial departments will change these stories before putting them into pictures. This is in the main a falsehood, for what prompted them to buy such stories was not the richness of the material but the filth in it. I can assure you that most of these dirty stories will not make any better pictures than those Paramount used during the 1931-32 season ; when the story lacks human interest the people will not go to see it, sex or no sex. The Forecaster will do to this sort of stories what the Hays Morality Code has not been able to do. It will act as a sort of searchlight, thrown on dark corners. You cannot afford to be without the Forecaster service this year. And just to ease up your mind, let me say to you that there is no profit in this service. Last year it cost me eight hundred dollars more than I took in, without counting even one cent for my work, and I shall be content if I break even this year. The $200 rate for the studios and the distributors you saw on the back of the subscription blank means nothing; last year I had just one studio subscription and this year I have none. But I consider the service so essential that I am going to carry it on even at a loss.