Hollywood (1942)

DiMaggio and other New York Yankees influences the batting and throwing style of sandlot ballplayers, the attitude of the New York critics set the pace for the bushleague movie reviewers. Despite the critical shafts of the provincial reviewers, copied in some cases word-for-word from the New York papers, Kings Row did all right for itself because it was a good movie. In Louisville, Kentucky, it did more business and made more money than The Great Lie and The Man Who Came to Dinner. At the Astor Theater, New York, Kings Row set the pace for its national acceptance. This is the theater at which TJie Big Parade made history and at which Sergeant York established its fabulous money records. Kings Row opened its run modestly by running neck-and-neck with Sergeant York, which was greeted by the critics as one of the box-office hotcakes of all time and which won an Academy Oscar for its leading man. From there on the boxoffice reports came in like machine-gun fire, justifying Sam Wood, the actors and the producers and making bums out of the New York critics. Two hundred and fifty-seven daily newspapers, a huge hunk of the total of American gazettes, serialized the story, using as many as nine photographs of the movie cast members in one issue. The Chicago Tribune, the second largest paper in the nation, ran the yarn in full-page installments, with the movie actors' pictures. One million, two hundred thousand circulation was the total on this single publicity deal. Even when the national ball had started rolling and it was a generally accepted fact that Kings Row was a good picture, the New York critics in their Saturday and Sunday summaries took a belt at it in memoriam, as if to fortify and confirm their earlier bum steers. Meanwhile the picture, in general release, began to burnup the box-offices in outlying districts. Its second week in Memphis it was 60% over The Great Lie, a box-office phenomenon, and on a tryout date in Lawrence, Massachusetts, it was 105% over the same criterion. In Dayton, Ohio, a representative city if ever there, was one, since it is only a quick, sprint from the mythical "MidcLLetown, U. S. A." of the sociological investigators, Kings Row was 40% over T7ie Man Who Came to Dinner and 68% over One Foot in Heaven, a picture which was designed especially for Dayton, its prototypes and environs. In rebuttal against the New York critics, NEXT MONTH! RITA HAYWORTH and CHARLES BOYER In our great on-the-set story TALES OF MANHATTAN including a big all-star cast who have been sensationally wrong before on such pictures as North West Mounted Police and Virginia, Sam Wood has nothing to say except the calm reflections of a man who has been justified by his fellowcitizens, the critics notwithstanding. His view, simply, is this: "Without seeming to be like a terrier snapping back at people who have snapped at me, I can truthfully say that professional critics, as such, have never entered into the blueprints of any of my pictures. "A surgeon's workmanship is neither enhanced nor lowered by the circumstance that his efforts are under the scrutiny of a jury composed of people who know something about the technics in which he is working. "The ultimate jury is beyond the critics. If the opinion of the critics and the people happen to coincide, everybody is gratified. If the director must make a choice between pleasing the critics and justifying his own judgment, the critics get second consideration. Movies are made for the masses. I, for one, can not subscribe to the oft-voiced opinion that 'the public is an ass.' " And there the matter rests. The New York critics, who have been accused of "swapping votes" in order to electioneer favorable notices for their pet performers, the actors who visit New York four times a year and entertain lavishly at various swank spots, may sulk and frown, stamp their feet and bite their nails in frustration, but the public, which buys the tickets and keeps them alive, is the best judge. And a damned good one. | DON'T LET INHALING ALL SMOKERS SOMETIMES INHALE-BUT YOUR THROAT NEEDN'T WORRY! There's a cigarette that is proved better for you . . . even when you do inhale! Read these facts reported by eminent doctors who compared the leading popular brands . . . that: SMOKE OF THE FOUR OTHER LEADING POPULAR BRANDS AVERAGED MORE THAN THREE TIMES AS IRRITATING -AND THEIR IRRITATION LASTED MORE THAN FIVE TIMCS AS LONG AS THE STRIKINGLY CONTRASTED PHILIP MORRIS1 Real protection — added to your enjoyment of Philip Morris' finer tobaccos. No worry about throat irritation even when you inhale! CA1L FOR PHILIP MORRIS AMERICA'S flJViST CIGARETTE? 57