Hollywood (1942)

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Cracking Down on the Movie Critic* ■ Who's right? Is a movie that satisfies 2,000.000 people worth the effort? Or are six guys sitting in a cocktail lounge the ultimate arbiters of the worth and destiny of an enterprise that has employed the brains, skill and ingenuity of 1,000 professionals, who know their trade as well as the doctor who did your tonsillectomy? That's what Hollywood wants to know, and quick. The function of a movie critic, if you are to credit the West Coast guys whose life and livelihood are dependent on producing entertainment, is to be a guidepost and indicator to the jolly old public as to which theater they should squander their money in. It is an accepted fact that any family with a buck in the larder will spend part of it for movies, the only academic question remaining being, "Which movie?" The critic's place in this scheme of things, as a matter of cold efficiency, is to stand half-way up the Olympian mountain and say, figuratively, "Catch this one!" or "Miss that one!" His only useful purpose in the movie set-up is to act in the capacity of animated signboard. Comes now a slightly less than delightful situation in which the critics in the city of New York set themselves up as a queue of voluntary Typhoid Marys warning perfectly solvent and sane citizens away from the very movies they want to see. Kings Row is the .beautiful example. When it opened at the Astor Theater in New York it took an unmerciful pasting from the critics. Judging by the metropolitan reviews, the picture was one of the cruelest ordeals since the Spanish Inquisition. All the newspapers of the town, through the dexterous typewriters of their movie critics, gave Kings Row the hotfoot in forest-fire proportions. The Hollywood Reporter, a trade paper in Hollywood which no self-respecting movie Shanghai Gesture got a terrific slugging from the critics, yet the film broke box-office records everywhere By DUNCAN UNDERBILL employee would miss in the morning any more than he would neglect to put his pants on, summed up the Manhattan reviews this way: "The cinemassassins bowled over Kings Row like a bunch of duckpins. This doesn't necessarily mean anything because Jekyll and Hyde and Shanghai Gesture got the same slugging from the critics and went on to make box-office history." The "cinemassassins" of the New York papers had this to say about Kings Rou>: Bosley Crowther in the New York Times: "The disappointing fact is that Kings Row, as it turgidly unfolds on the screen, is one of the bulkiest blunders to come out of Hollywood in some time." Kate Cameron in the Daily News: "The story is unfit for the screen and although it has been given the benefit of the best production efforts and has been skillfully directed and acted, there is no excuse for Warners putting this two hour and seven minute pageant of horror on the screen at this time." Eileen Creelman in the New York Sun: •A singularly depressing film. Mr. Cummings plays Parris like a high school juvenile." William Boehnel in the New York World-Telegram: "There are enough themes for half a dozen films in Kings Row but precious little entertainment unless, of course, you think insanity, cancer, murder, suicide, sadism, psychiatry, seduction and frustration are entertainment. If you do, then see this film and have a field day. If, like me, you don't think so, then shun it, for seldom have I seen so Can the highly lauded critics be wrong? They gave Kings Rote a sensational hotfoot! yel it burned up box-offices all over much gloom at one time. Or such widespread gloom." Archer Winsten in the New York Post found the film running "very continuously." The Daily Mirror's Lee Mortimer said in a headline, "Full of blood and blunder." Casey Robinson, probably the highest paid scenario writer in Hollywood, took the brunt of the beating. The consensus was: Casey went to bat and struck out. Ann Sheridan, who has never shoved Eleanora Duse off the boards as an actress, got the best notices. In this jungle of dissidents, Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune, broke out with a slight rave, namely: "Sam Wood has written his" signature large over this production. With its brilliant script and knowing direction it is a picture which no one who cares about motion picture quality can afford to miss." An oracle named Leo Mishkin, of the New York Morning Telegraph, reported to a breathless world: "If this is what Hollywood means by 'entertainment,' then somebody must have called the wrong number." Well, without telegraphing the punch, let us give you a slight indication of how well-advised the citizens of New York were on this specific picture and to what extent they paid attention to the critics. Kings Row, the movie that had its pants panned off by all the well-washed and theoretically literate movie reviewers of the great New York newspapers, merely went out and broke box-office records in that same city of New York, proving that the public is not a dope, regardless of the opinions of the tight little critical circle that meets in the lobby during the climax of the best-intentioned movies ever made and says, "Same old stuff." These same critical sleepy-time boys are the ones who loused up the public acceptance of a dozen good movies this year. Just as much as the conduct of Joe Critics urged movie-goers to stay away from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but the public refused to listen