Hollywood Spectator (1931)

June 20, 1931 11 beach house in what I think is termed an oil field. Anyway, there are plenty of panting derricks in the immediate vicinity of our abode, but they don’t bother us any more than they would if they were on the other side of the sea. There are none between us and the surf, and that is all that counts. My writing place is the front porch which the most venturesome surf exuberances just manage to reach before they expire. Pelican, sea gulls, and some long-legged birds that perpetually seem to be in a terrific hurry to get nowhere, are distractions that I must get used to. An occasional seal is an event good for at least an hour’s loaf. Our milkman informs me that we have as neighbors Janet Gaynor, Mae Murray, Frances Marion and George Hill, but I haven’t prowled around yet. I go in swimming every morning and I have a lot of tar on my feet. My smoking tobacco is too damp. ▼ ▼ V ▼ ▼ THE WILD scramble now for novels and plays is due solely to the inability of production heads to think in terms of their business. It merely is another evidence of their monumental stupidity. Owing to conditions which they should understand, but which are beyond their ability to grasp, producers find the industry drifting rapidly towards the panic stage and the first thing at hand to blame it on is the difficulty in securing stories. Instead of looking for motion pictures, they look for plays and novels; instead of making motion pictures, they are putting the plays and novels on the screen. And so dense is their ignorance, so vast their incompetence, that they do not know why the financial condition of the industry is more alarming than it ever was before. And so great is their egotism that there is no use telling them. ▼ Y T ▼ ▼ PRODUCING organizations can not stop the doublefeature-program practice by inserting a clause in their releasing contracts providing that their pictures are to be shown singly. As is the case with everything pertaining to the film business, the public will be the determining factor. In Montreal, for instance, where the double-feature practice originated, sixty-four houses regularly show two feature pictures on every program. Their patrons expect them and will be content with nothing less. In spite of anything the producers can do, the practice will continue to spread, even though it is hard to understand how any audience can endure two pictures of the sort that is being turned out now. One at a time is quite enough for me. T T y ▼▼ What DOES the public want? Producers, lacking an understanding of their business that would provide the answer, ask one another this question and succeed only in continuing to give the public what it doesn’t want. I’ll tell them one thing that the public would like: A human drama in which Claude Gillingwater had the leading part as the grandfather of young people whose romance became his concern. Gillingwater is a superb artist whom the fool industry is neglecting to its own loss. He could make an old-man role a cinematic gem that would make box-offices happy. ▼ ^ METRO was annoyed with me for saying that it is driving Norma Shearer into oblivion by presenting her in a series of pictures that were based on various phases of prostitution. It even did not give me credit for being generous when I advised it to put her in pictures that were more consistent with the charm of her personality. But the advice was taken. She is going to do Smilin' Through as a talkie. It will not score the success it did as a silent, but it is clean and decent, and that is something. y v v ▼▼ Thus far I have been fortunate in having missed the showing of any of the series of “comedies” in which chickens, ducks and geese play all the parts. I have seen one of Metro’s dog pictures which is quite enough of that sort of thing to do me for a long time. I can not understand how anyone can get any amusement out of watching dumb creatures being forced to do things that it is not natural for them to do. y y y ▼ ▼ Raine BENNETT, who contributes to this Spectator some spirited thoughts on fantasy as applied to motion pictures, is “the poet of the air” who offers a rare treat on KFI every Saturday evening. If you like beautiful thoughts expressed in beautiful English, light your pipe at seven-forty-five, turn the dial to KFI and listen. I hope to tease Bennett into making many more contributions to these pages. y y y ▼ v When Mayor Porter returns to Los Angeles there should be a tremendous mob at the depot to welcome him home by asking him why he made such a sublime ass of himself in France. It is somewhat humiliating to be a resident of a city that could so far forget itself as to make such a damned fool its mayor. y y y ▼▼ The DAY after Darryl Zanuck was given supreme command of Warner productions, Warner stock reached the lowest point in its career. And all the time I’ve been laboring under the impression that Wall Street had no idea of what was going on in Hollywood. y y y ▼ ▼ A LOCAL magazine, Came and Cossip, an interesting and beautifully printed publication, has an article glorifying somewhat Peter the Hermit. It has been hard for me to enthuse over Peter since the day two or three years ago that I was tramping past his camp and saw him cruelly beating one of his dogs. y y V ▼ ▼ Metro boasts that twelve different writers, all notable craftsmen, worked on one of its stories while it was being prepared for production. In any other profession or industry such a statement would not be a boast. It would be a confession. y y y ▼▼ JUDGING BY conditions as we find them in Hollywood, producers are showing more real brains in keeping people off their lots than they are in getting money into the box-office.