Harrison's Reports (1937)

204 "Thoroughbreds Don't Cry," with Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Ronald Sinclair, Sophie Tucker, and C. Aubrey Smith, produced by Harry Rapf and directed by Alfred E. Green, from a screen play by Lawrence Hazard : Good. Twelve pictures have been released since the beginning of the season ; they are rated as follows : Very Good-Good, 5 ; Good, 4; Good-Fair, 2; Fair, 1. The first 12 of the 1936-37 season were rated as follows: Very Good, 2; Good-Fair, 1; Fair, 6; Fair-Poor, 2; Poor, 1. There has been a decided improvement this season. FRANK LLOYD'S REASONS FOR ABANDONING BIG PICTURES While in New York early this month, Frank Lloyd, the famous director, gave a statement to the newspapers, the gist of which was the impossibility of making spectacular films, because of the expense now involved in hiring extras. That this statement sounded peculiar to the newspaper men may be evidenced by the opening paragraph of Mr. William Boehnel's article in the World-Telegram : "Many strange reasons have been advanced for not producing spectacular films," said he, "but one of the most startling comes from Frank Lloyd — he gave the screen such lavish productions as 'Mutiny on the Bounty,' 'Cavalcade' and others — who is through making 'epics' because the extras are too expensive." The following is a quotation from Mr. Lloyd's statement : "Nowadays it costs a fortune to employ unskilled labor, which is what extras are. In the old days, we used to be able to get them for $3 and $5 a day. Today labor costs are terrific. The average extra gets $8 for an eight-hour day, which begins the moment he reports at the studio and ends when he checks out there. "If I ask one of them to say, 'Hello there, Jim,' during a scene, he automatically becomes an actor, and his daily salary goes up to $25. The cost of extras in 'Wells Fargo' is staggering. Because of the magnitude of the film I had to employ 2,000 of them, the lowest paid of whom receives $8 for a day's work. Actually they worked only five hours, because it took an hour to transport them from the studio to the Paramount Ranch, an hour for lunch and an hour to get them back to the studio. "Add up their salaries, plus the cost of transportation, the cost of make up and costumes, not to mention other incidentals such as food, and the cost of using extras for that one day was well over $50,000. And yet the production demanded it, because it was geared up to that scale. The only thing to do with 'epics' is to limit their scope. If they can't be adjusted to a smaller scale of cost, they should be discarded." Since the issuing of this statement was made around the time Paramount held a trade showing of "Wells Fargo," it is reasonable to assume that Mr. Lloyd issued it for the purpose of bringing the picture to the attention of the public, so that a desire might be created in them to see it. What has he really told the public? Several things. Let us take them one at a time : (1) Because it costs too much money to hire extras, he is not going to make big pictures any longer, "Wells Fargo" being the last one ; and, by inference, that the other directors, too, and the industry in general, will stop making big pictures. Consequently, after "Wells Fargo" the pictures-goers are going to see only smaller pictures. (2) The extras receive too much money when they demand $8 a day instead of $5, the amount they received before. They should be satisfied with $5. (3) "Wells Fargo" cost $1,500,000, and $50,000 for the extras has proved too much. Such a cost for extras may break any company. Hence the decision to abandon production of $1,000,000 or $1,500,000 productions. When about four years ago the industry was struck by a wave of economy, many producers got together, under the chairmanship of Pat Casey, head of the labor department of the producers, to determine where they could cut down, what salaries they could reduce. Different studio heads made different recommendations. The recommendation Harry Cohn, of Columbia, made was that the salaries of the workers in the laboratories, who were probably receiving anywhere from fourteen to twenty dollars a week, be cut down two dollars a week. December 18, 1937 What Pat Casey told Harry Cohn at that time in answer to that recommendation made me yearn to grab Pat's hand and squeeze it until every bone of it almost broke. I wish Pat Casey were there when the Lloyd statement was framed. Of the millions of people who go to the theatres weekly, the greatest number are workers. Most of them either work at low wages or don't work at all. For him, then, to tell these suffering folk that $8 a day for extras, when such extras work probably no more than two days a week, is too much cannot help creating resentment in their hearts. And neither Mr. Lloyd nor any one else in the industry can afford to create such a resentment, particularly when most of them know of the waste that is going on in Hollywood. CAN PARAMOUNT AFFORD A CAMPAIGN OF REPRISALS? In dealing with the decision of the Paramount lawyers to prosecute the strike leaders in Philadelphia in last week's issue, I stated that the Paramount executives, before embarking upon a policy of reprisals, should look into their sales books to find out what effect the strike has had on their sales. Because of the fact that many people resent advice given gratuitously, even though with good will, I have a suspicion that the Paramount executives have not carefully looked into their books. For this reason I am going to give some facts myself : The Baltimore News-Post gives every day the pictures that play in all the Baltimore theatres. The issue of Thursday, October 14, contained the programs of fifty-seven theatres ; and since it is a single feature territory (except in two cases), of fifty-nine feature pictures. Of the fifty-nine only one new feature was a Paramount — "Blonde Trouble," playing at the Hampden Theatre ; and two theatres played, as a second feature, an eight-year-old Paramount picture, "Sweeties," — the Garden and the Flynn. And this is not all : a check up in New Jersey has told another similar story. The facts will be printed in one of the forthcoming issues. If the Paramount executives, instead of allowing the lawyers to talk them into going after the strike leaders, devoted their efforts toward recapturing the lost exhibitor good will, they would be rendering their company a greater service. But they seem not to have done so, and the fear is that the strike, whch was abandoned when the exhibitors thought that the settlement had wiped out every score, will be resumed, with the result that the Paramount organization will prove the loser in the end. No company, in any industry, and above all the motion picture industry, can afford to fight its customers, even if it is as strong as Paramount, particularly when it is putting out a product much poorer than last season, and of lesser quality than that put out by rival companies, not even as strong as Paramount. Let us examine the facts : In the check-up of the box office performances of the Paramount pictures, which I have just made, and which will appear in next week's Harrison's Reports, the first 24 pictures of the 1937-38 season show that there is none of Excellent rating, whereas there was 1 in the last season's first 24 ; and none of Excellent-Very Good, whereas there were 2 in last season's. And the lower grades show a similar fall off in quality. Remember the first 24 pictures were produced before the decision to cut down production budgets was made ; imagine what the quality of the Paramount pictures may turn out to be with curtailed budgets. These are the facts that make it difficult, if not impossible, for Paramount to continue a campaign of reprisals against those exhibitor leaders who lead the revolt against the Paramount injustices — facts which the Paramount executives seem reluctant to face. Harrison's Reports hopes that the Paramount executives will announce the abandonment of the policy of reprisals before there is a resumption of the exhibitor aloofness in considering the purchase of Paramount pictures, as is bound to be if no such abandonment is announced. Paramount has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars by not selling its 1937-38 pictures to the exhibitors in the beginning of the season, before the depression set in, for no exhibitor now will pay for Paramount pictures as much as he would have paid in the beginning of the season. Harrison's Reports extends to its readers and subscribers the greetings of the season. HARRISON'S REPORTS