Harrison's Reports (1944)

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: 1270 SIXTH AVENUE Published "Weekly by United States $15.00 R«om 1 R1 2 Harrison's Reports, Inc., U. S. Insular Possessions. 16.50 aouih 1014 Publisher Canada 16.50 New York 20, N. Y. P. S. HARRISON, Editor Mexico Cuba, Spain 16.50 A MoUon picture Reviewing Service ureat amain ............ lo.ia Devoted Chiefly to the Interests of the Exhibitors Established July 1, 1919 Australia, New Zealand, India, Europe, Asia .... 17.50 Jtg Editoria, Policy . No probiem Too Big for Its Editorial circle 7-4622 6bc a copy Columns, if It is to Benefit the Exhibitor. A REVIEWING SERVICE FREE FROM THE INFLUENCE OF FILM ADVERTISING Vol. XXVI SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1944 No. 44 The Screen Directors' Guild Takes Exception Hollywood, Cal. October 21, 1944 P. S. Harrison, Editor Harrison's Reports 1270 Sixth Ave. New York 20, N. Y. Dear Mr. Harrison: The Directors' Guild wishes to answer your three-issue series entitled "Wanton Waste in Production" in which the Director was continuously labeled the "Wanton Waster." The quotations you used were so grossly misleading that the matter might have been laughable were it not for the fact that thousands of exhibitors read your paper and consider your Reports somewhat Biblical in reliability. May we remind you of the old saw in Logic: "Joe is a fool. Joe is a man. Therefore, all men are fools." The quotations you have seen fit to print seem to be governed by that kind of logic. Your first executive interviewed said : "I have seen Directors shoot as many as sixty takes of the same scene — a cruel waste." That, Mr. Harrison, is like saying: "I have seen an actor under the influence of narcotics . . ." — perhaps true, but so rare as to be ludicrous as an example of either directors, in the first instance, or actors in the second! Your executive's next attack is on a director who ordered twenty-three takes printed on one scene! The crafty executive ordered five of the takes printed into twenty-three positives; he said the director "did not know the difference." This ancient practical joke has been kicked around Hollywood for many years. There is not a studio in Hollywood that would permit a director to print twenty-three takes of one scene today. This is 1944, Mr. Harrison. Pictures have sound now. We are at war. You pick up the attack yourself next: "Shooting should be merely routine work, for after all the director is merely the interpreter of the action that is in the script." The "Wanton Waster" now becomes a different kind of target. If directing is merely routine work, why will executives pay one director a hundred thousand dollars to direct a picture yet pay another but one thousand?? Could it be because the executive has found that the first director does not do "merely routine work," but delivers him pictures that substantiate the higher salary in profits to the company? Your first executive announces that his studio is determined to free themselves of "the director bondage," whatever that means, and that he kicked out a director who refused to cut down certain scenes. There is another side to this picture — the long list of directors who have been "kicked out" because they refused to shoot a bad script given them by executives; then there is the sadder list of directors who, through economic necessity, have been forced to shoot bad scripts in spite of their protests, because some executive wanted to fulfill a committment. The "grateful" executive has then "kicked out" the director in expiation of his sins. This same executive said: "I have known cases where, in a two-hour picture, the first rough assembly was 150,000 feet " Mr. Harrison, he means ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY REELS OF FILM! Thousand foot reels. Many, many years ago Von Stroheim made a picture called "Greed" which was supposed to have run over a hundred reels. We challenge your executive to name one picture since the advent of talking pictures that has run one hundred and fifty thousand feet in rough assembly. He knows "cases" (plural) — ask him to prove it! The next attack reads: "Many directors still go under the theory that, unless they WASTE MONEY for 'perfection,' they will not be considered good directors." Throw out the words "waste money for" and substitute "strive for" and your sentence makes sense. Why label a director's efforts to get a memorable scene on the screen a waste of money? Leo McCarey is a "perfectionist" — would you prefer that he didn't "waste money" to achieve pictures like "Going My Way?" Your first executive then outdoes himself in pontifical wisdom by asserting: "The actors should study their lines before appearing before the camera; and they should be rehearsed on the set before shooting starts." He certainly knows the answers, or had you gotten around to the doorman's opinion of directors at this time, along with the grips, etc.? "So sensational were this executive's disclosures," you state, that you interviewed the heads of other studios. It is astonishing to read, in this general effort to prove that directors are wanton wasters, that one executive stated : "Those responsible for the waste of directors are the heads of the companies more than the directors themselves." However, this studio head made his attack in a new direction: "Every director feels that the picture he is producing (sic) should win him the Academy Award," a pleasant thought, but not quite true. "He wants to dazzle the industry, not with the profits that the picture will bring, but with his direction." You note that this statement is linked o "every director." Believe us, Mr. Harrison, if any, not every, director merely "dazzles the industry" and brings in no profit, he will very soon, to use your earlier executive's pretty phrase, be "kicked out." If an executive signs an "industry-dazzler" to direct a picture, who is the fool, the director or the executive?? A director's record is no secret, he is chosen because of that record, the films he has directed. In spite of these executives' charges of "wanton waste" on the part of the directors, your first executive confesses: "most scripts are over-written . . ." and hundreds of thousands of dollars are lost "just because the screen play was not prepared with patience and judgment so as to eliminate the unnecessary shooting." For the edification of your readers, the screen play the executive mentions is the script the EXECUTIVE has given the director to shoot, a script prepared under the supervision of an executive. Wanton waste? And your last executive has this confession to make: (Continued on last page)