Hollywood Motion Picture Review (1937-1940)

Page 2 HOLLYWOOD MOTION PICTURE REVIEW June 5, 1937 JOE BLAIR Editor Publisher Published weekly by Hollywood Motion Picture Review. Joe Blair, Editor-Publisher. Agnes Blair, Associate Editor. Executive and Editorial Offices 1040 North Martel Avenue. Phone: HE. 5982 Hollywood, Calif. Subscription rates $10.00 per year Foreign $15.00 Single copies 25c Vol. Ill HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, JUNE 5, 1937 No. I Gouging Exhibitors Continues! Exhibitors stand for more gouging than do merchants in any other business! Take the trailer racket for instance! A majority of all the trailers released are made by the concerns themselves. Some are even assembled from scenes off the cutting room floor, while other trailers are prepared by advertising men who are trying to sell picture entertainment. After a trailer is completed by one of our producing companies, it is turned over to National Screen Service to rent to the Exhibitor. Thus you have a situation of a theatreman buying pictures of a film concern, even though many of the films are played on percentage, then going next door to buy trailers, made by the very same concern, in order to advertise the product. Please explain the logic of an Exhibitor being compelled to play pictures on a percentage arrangement and then forced to pay several dollars extra an a flat rental for a trailer to sell the article. Considering the theatre holdings, overhead and running expense, the Exhibitor is receiving the worst of the present percentage arrangement split. It is common knowledge that the distributors forced this percentage arrangement upon the Exhibitor. All trailers and accessories necessary in advertising a picture, played on a percentage basis, should come free of cost to the Exhibitor or deducted from the gross receipts. An Exhibitor is a sap to stand for any unequitable situations. Still pictures used by Exhibitors for advertising forthcoming product, in newspapers, lobby and window displays, cost him the general retail price of lOc to 15c each with few rebates. What a racket! The merchant pays for articles to sell the other fellow's product. How many Exhibitors know that every studio in Hollywood mails out each week, free of charge to newspapers, magazines and syndicates, from 2000 to 5000 — 8 X 10 photographs in build up campaigns? (A great percentage of these hit the waste paper basket and are never printed.) Why don't they give you Exhibitors free still picfures? Don't they realize the easiest place to put over a star or sell a picture, is in the Producers' Showcase (the Exhibitor's Lobby)? Then there is the score charge heaped onto the Exhibitor. To improve or enhance the entertainment value of his film, the producer adds music. After he has agreed upon a percentage or flat rental deal, he levies on the score charge. Some pictures are individually scored by groups of musicians but a great majority of the pictures released today are scored from negative scores stored in vaults and used time and again — yet the Exhibitor is expected to pay the full score charge on every picture each time the distributor can level down on him. Several smart showmen are not signing contracts until the distributor waives all score charges, trailer rentals and many other extra gadget costs, especially on percentage pictures. This the distributor is doing in many localities. If he can do it for one showman, he can do it for others. Exhibitors stand firm! If the big concerns aren't fair with you, buy one or two groups and then purchase every small concern's product on the selective buying arrangement, 1. e. you sign up for 20 or 30 pictures in a group and you have preference in choosing 10 or 15 and weeding out the bad ones. By watching HOLLYWOOD REVIEW'S preview page, you won't go wrong on booking your pictures! No amount of Influence or pressure will cause us to waver in our determination to write honest reviews! There is such a thing as honesty in writing reviews, but what about accuracy? Keep a check on the accuracy of our reviews and you'll find our batting average exceedingly high when it comes to calling the turn on both good and bad product. JOE BLAIR THIS WEEK IN NEWS Gregory La Cava has started cameras grinding on RKO-Radio's "Stage Door," v^ith Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn co-starring. The impressive cast of the Pandro S. Berman production also includes the names of Adolph Menjou, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier, Leona Roberts and Marjorie Lord. The screen play of "Stage Door" is being written by Anthony Veiller from the Broadway hit of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. Claude Binyon, author of the screen play for "I Met Him in Paris," current Paramount release starring Claudette Colbert, will write the screen play of Carole Lombard's next Paramount starring picture, "True Confession," which Wesley Ruggles is scheduled to direct. Virginia Field has been assigned one of the important feminine roles in "in Old Chicago" at 20th Century-Fox Studio. Tyrone Power and Don Ameche have the leading male roles. Henry King is scheduled to direct, with Kenneth Macgowan serving as associate producer. "Alcatraz Island", dramatic screen play centering around the famous penal institution in San Francisco Bay, has been placed In production at the Warner Bros. -First National Studios, with William McGann directing. Dick Purcell, Ann Sheridan and Mary Maguire form a trio of romantic leads in the film. Others prominent in the cast include John Litel, William Hopper, Gordon Oliver, Peggy Bates, George E. Stone and Addison Richards. "Alcatraz Island" is an original screen play by Crane Wilbur. Gene Lockhart, one of Hollywood's most gifted character actors, is leaving Hollywood soon, having been cast in one of the prominent roles of the big musical spectacle, "Virginia," which will hold forth all Summer at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Gene is currently enacting one of the main supporting roles in the Republic production, "She Didn't Want A Sheik," a new Ramon Navarro picture which Irving Pichel is now directing for Republic. Howard J. Green has been signed by Samuel Goldwyn to do the screen treatment for the forthcoming $2,000,000 musical extravaganza "The Goldwyn Follies." Green will work with Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, song-writing team who are writing the "book" tor the musical numbers. "The Goldwyn Follies" will be Goldwyn's first technicolor production under his recently announced plan to make all his future pictures in color. Leigh Jason has been signed to direct the picture. John Cromwell has been signed by Samuel Goldwyn to direct the Gary Cooper starring picture "The Adventures of Marco Polo." The film, which will go into production about the middle of June, will be from the script by Robert Emmet Sherwood, internationally famous playwright. Opposite Cooper will appear Slgrid Gurie as the Tartar Princess Kukachin. Glenn Tryon will direct "Face the Facts," Stuart Erwin's second starring picture for Grand National, and with Arnold Belgard, is at work writing additional scenes and dialogue for the screen version of this Clarence Budington Kelland original story. Richard Rowland, who will produce "Face the Facts," has set the starting date for early next month. Spencer Tracy will co-star with Luise Rainer in M.G.M.'s "Big City", to be produced by Norman Krasna, who wrote the original. Frank Borzage will direct. The story presents a foreign girl who arrives in the U. S. to make her fortune.